Trophonius and his brother Agamedes were famous architects. While building a certain treasure vault, they contrived to leave one stone movable so that they might secretly enter and steal the valuables stored there. A trap was set by the owner, who had discovered the plot, and Agamedes was caught. To prevent discovery, Trophonius decapitated his brother and fled, hotly pursued. He hid in the grove of Lebadia, where the earth opened and swallowed him up. The spirit of Trophonius thereafter delivered oracles in the grove and its caverns. The name Trophonius means "to be agitated, excited, or roiled." It was declared that the terrible experiences through which consultants passed in the oracular caverns so affected them that they never smiled again. The bees which accompany the figure of Trophonius were sacred because they led the first envoys from Bœtia to the site of the oracle. The figure above is said to be a production of a statue of Trophonius which was placed on the brow of the hill above the oracle and surrounded with sharply pointed stakes that it could not be touched.

Of those, too, who at one time lived as men among the Egyptians, but were constituted gods by human opinion, were Hermes the Theban, and Asclepius of...

Cnaxzbi is, by derivation, the plague, from its gnawing (knaiein) and destroying diafqeirein, and qxyai is to consume with a thunderbolt. Thespis the ...

For thy forebear, Asclepius, the first discoverer of medicine, to whom there is a temple hallowed on Libya’s Mount, hard by the shore of crocodiles, i...

Why enumerate Telemus, who, being a prophet of the Cyclops, predicted to Polyphemus the events of Ulysses' wandering; or Onomacritus at Athens; or...

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Accordingly, he who composed the Pharonis writes,- "Callithoe, key-bearer of the Olympian queen: Argive Hera, who first with fillets and with fringes...

To Thrasybulus by night, the sky being moonless and stormy, a fire appeared leading the way, which, having conducted them safely, left them near Munyc...