Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity

by R. A. Davenport

Bœotia was also a country famous for the number of its oracles, and from its localities was well suited for such impostures, being mountainous and full of caverns, by means of which sounds and echoes, apparently mysterious, could be easily multiplied to excite the astonishment and terror of the supplicants.

Herodotus informs us, that one of the first oracles in Greece was imported from the Egyptian Thebes. It happened, says Mr. Mitford in his History of Greece, that the master of a Phœnician vessel carried off a woman, an attendant of the temple of Jupiter, at Thebes on the Nile, and sold her in Thesprotia, a mountainous tract in the northwestern part of Epirus, bordering on the Illyrian hordes. Reduced thus unhappily to slavery among barbarians, the woman, however, soon became sensible of the superiority which her education in a more civilized country gave her over them; and she conceived hopes of mending her condition, by practising upon their ignorance what she had acquired of those arts which able hands imposed upon a more enlightened people. She gave out that she possessed all the powers of prophecy to which the Egyptian priests pretended; that she could discover present secrets, and foretell future events.

Her pretensions excited curiosity, and brought numbers to consult her. She chose her station under the shade of a spreading oak, where, in the name of the god Jupiter, she delivered answers to her ignorant inquirers; and shortly her reputation as a prophetess extended as far as the people of the country themselves communicated.

These simple circumstances of her story were afterwards, according to the genius of those ages, turned into a fable, which was commonly told, in the time of Herodotus, by the Dodonæan priests. A black pigeon, they said, flew from Thebes in Egypt to Dodona, and, perching upon an oak, proclaimed with human voice, “That an oracle of Jupiter should be established there.” Concluding that a divinity spoke through the agency of the pigeon, the Dodonæans obeyed the mandate, and the oracle was established. The historian accounts for the fiction thus: the woman on her arrival speaking in a foreign dialect, the Dodonæans said she spoke like a pigeon; but afterwards, when she had acquired the Grecian speech and accent, they said the pigeon spoke with a human voice.

The trade of prophecy being both easy and lucrative, the office of the prophetess was readily supplied both with associates and successors. A temple for the deity and habitations for his ministers were built; and thus, according to the evidently honest, and apparently well-founded and judicious, account of Herodotus, arose the oracle of Jupiter at Dodona, the very place where tradition, still remaining to the days of that writer, testified that sacrifices had formerly been performed only to the nameless god.

The responses of the oracles, though given with some appearance of probability, were for the most part ambiguous and doubtful; but it must be acknowledged that the priests were very clever persons, since, while they satisfied for the time the wishes of others, they were so well able to conceal their own knavery. A fellow, it is said, willing to try the truth of Apollo’s oracle, asked what it was he held in his hand—holding at the time a sparrow under his cloak—and whether it was dead or alive—intending to kill or preserve it, contrary to what the oracle should answer—but it replied, that it was his own choice whether that which he held should live or die.

Many of the sages and other great men evidently paid no regard, or real veneration, to the oracles, beyond what policy dictated to preserve their influence over others.

The researches of modern antiquaries and travellers have discovered the machinery of many artifices of the priests of the now deserted fanes, which sufficiently account for the apparent miracles exhibited to the eye of ignorance. There remain many instances of this kind to show how general this system of imposture has been in all ages; and, as may be supposed, the priests did not fail to exact a liberal payment in advance.

Cyrus,—according to the apocryphal tradition,—a devout worshipper of the idol Bel, was convinced by the prophet Daniel of the imposture of this supposed mighty and living god, who was thought to consume every day twelve measures of fine flour, forty sheep, and six vessels of wine, which were placed as an offering on the altar. These gifts being presented as usual, Daniel commanded ashes to be strewed on the floor of the temple, round the altar on which the offerings were placed; and the door of the temple to be sealed in the presence of the king. Cyrus returned on the following day, and seeing the altar cleared of what was placed thereon, cried out “Great art thou, O Bel, and in thee is no deceit!” but Daniel, pointing to the floor, the king continues, “I see the footsteps of women and children!” The private door at the back of the altar leading to the dwellings of the priests was then discovered; their imposture clearly proved, they were all slain, and the temple was destroyed.

The circumstance of fire being so frequently an object of veneration amongst pagans, is thought to have arisen thus: the sun, as a source of light and heat, was the most evident and most benignant of the natural agents; and was worshipped, accordingly, as a first cause, rather than as an effect; as however it was occasionally absent, it was typified by fire, which had the greatest analogy to it.