DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9184#0434
Chap. XIV.]
Dodona and the Oracles.
411
him expedient, carrying on at the same time his own
craft." This votary clearly preferred that the god only,
and not his ministers, should have a voice in his affairs.
In another case a group of persons who make a common
enquiry seem to prefer to limit the reply to certain lines.
They ask "whether they shall best prosper by going to
Elina (a place not mentioned elsewhere) or to Anacto-
rium, or by effecting a certain sale." Evidently they
had discussed the matter well among themselves, and
though they were willing to let the god decide among
their divergent views, did not care to run the risk
°f his suggesting some course which would please
nobody.
Requests such as these roughly engraven on lead
tablets were laid before the god. But of the method in
which answers were given the excavations give us no clear
information. Nor is there among our tablets any certain
specimen of a written response, though there are a few
fragments which may be parts of such responses. These
questions, couched in rude and uncouth dialectic forms,
and full of bad grammar and false spelling, seem to bring
vividly before us the hopes and fears, the customs and
beliefs of a bygone age. The rude races who dwelt
around stormy Dodona, Epirotes and Acarnanians and
Locrians preserved their belief in the responses of the
gods, when more polished and sceptical races of Greece
had ceased to believe in any god except Fortune. The
questions which they brought to Dodona were not
merely such as modern people would naturally bring
to a priest, questions of cult and sacrifice, but also such
as we might put to a physician, a lawyer, or a stock-
broker. Our own ancestors of a few generations back
might have put such questions to the wise woman, or
have opened the Bible at random to try and light on a
solution for them in a Scripture-text, but they would not
Dodona and the Oracles.
411
him expedient, carrying on at the same time his own
craft." This votary clearly preferred that the god only,
and not his ministers, should have a voice in his affairs.
In another case a group of persons who make a common
enquiry seem to prefer to limit the reply to certain lines.
They ask "whether they shall best prosper by going to
Elina (a place not mentioned elsewhere) or to Anacto-
rium, or by effecting a certain sale." Evidently they
had discussed the matter well among themselves, and
though they were willing to let the god decide among
their divergent views, did not care to run the risk
°f his suggesting some course which would please
nobody.
Requests such as these roughly engraven on lead
tablets were laid before the god. But of the method in
which answers were given the excavations give us no clear
information. Nor is there among our tablets any certain
specimen of a written response, though there are a few
fragments which may be parts of such responses. These
questions, couched in rude and uncouth dialectic forms,
and full of bad grammar and false spelling, seem to bring
vividly before us the hopes and fears, the customs and
beliefs of a bygone age. The rude races who dwelt
around stormy Dodona, Epirotes and Acarnanians and
Locrians preserved their belief in the responses of the
gods, when more polished and sceptical races of Greece
had ceased to believe in any god except Fortune. The
questions which they brought to Dodona were not
merely such as modern people would naturally bring
to a priest, questions of cult and sacrifice, but also such
as we might put to a physician, a lawyer, or a stock-
broker. Our own ancestors of a few generations back
might have put such questions to the wise woman, or
have opened the Bible at random to try and light on a
solution for them in a Scripture-text, but they would not