Of omens taken from what we call the inanimate world salient examples are those derived from trees and water. Both were in vogue at Dodona, where the ecstatic method of prophecy was never used; we hear of divination there from the bubbling stream, and still more often of the "talking oak"; under its branches may once have slept the Selloi, who interpreted the sounds of the boughs. (Horn. 11. xvi. 233, Od. xiv. 327; Hesiod, ap. Schol. Soph. Trach. 1169; Aesch. Prom. Vinct, 82o). At Corope in Thessaly we hear vaguely of an Apolline divination by means of a branch of the tamarisk tree (Nicander, Theriaka, 612, Schol.), and there is a late record that at Daphne near Antioch oracles were obtained by dipping a laurel leaf or branch in a sacred stream (Robertson Smith Relig. Sem. p. 128). We find water divination at Daphne, Taenarum and Patrae. Thunder magic, which was practised in Arcadia, is usually associated with thunder divination; but of this, which was so much in vogue in Etruria (see HARUSPICES) and at Rome, the evidence in Greece is singularly slight. Once a year watchers took their stand on the wall at Athens and waited till they saw the lightning flash from Harma, which was accepted as an auspicious omen for the setting out of the sacred procession to Apollo Pythius at Delphi ; and the altar of Zeus ImuctXos, the sender of omens, on Mount Parnes, may have been a religious observatory of meteorological phenomena (Paus. i. 32. 2). No doubt such a rare and portentous event as the fall of a meteor stone would be regarded as ominous, and the State would be in clined to consult Delphi or Dodona as to its divine import.
We may conclude the examples of this main department of pain-ucii by mentioning a method that seems to have been much in vogue in the earlier times, that which was called 7) otli, 07(1)cov ilaproci, or divination by the drawing or throwing of lots ; these must have been objects, such as small pieces of wood or dice, with certain marks inscribed upon them, drawn casually or thrown down and interpreted according to a certain code. This was practised at Delphi and Dodona by the side of the more solemn procedure; we hear of it also in the oracle of Heracles at Bura in Achaea (Cic. De div. i. 76; quid. s. v. Paus. vii. 25. 1o). It is this method of "scraping" or "notching" (xpacy) signs on wood that explains probably the origin of the words xpncr,u6s Xoiabat, aPacpav for oracular consultation and deliverance. In Italy, oracles by lot (sortes) are the only native kind of whose existence we are certain; that of Fortuna at Praeneste was the best known.
All these methods are world-wide, and may depend on belief in the mana of the bird, spring, lot, etc., or in the controlling in fluence of a spirit or god. And, again, if we are to understand the most primitive thought, we probably ought to conceive of it as regarding the omen not as a mere sign, but in some confused sense as a cause of that which is to happen. By sympathetic magic the flight of the bird, or the appearance of the entrails, is mysteriously connected, as cause with effect, with the event which is desired or dreaded. When of the three beasts over which three kings swore an oath of alliance, one died prematurely and was supposed thereby to portend the death of one of the kings (Plut. Vit. Pyrrh. c. 6), or when in the Lacedaemonian sacrifice the head of the victim mysteriously vanished, and this portended the death of their naval commander (Diod. Sic. xiii. 97), these
omens would be merely signs of the future for the comparatively advanced Hellene ; but we may discern at the back of this belief one more primitive still, that these things were somehow casually or sympathetically connected with the kindred events that fol lowed.
The other branch of the mantic art, the ecstatic or inspired, has had the greater career among the peoples of the higher religions; it is no doubt of great antiquity, and it is found still existing at a rather low grade of savagery. Therefore it is unsafe to infer from Homer's silence about it that it only became prevalent in Greece in the post-Homeric period. It did not altogether super sede the simpler method of divination by omens; but being far more impressive and awe-inspiring, it was adopted by some of the chief Apolline oracles, though never by Dodona.
The most salient example of it is afforded by Delphi. In the historic period, and perhaps from the earliest times, a woman known as the Pythia was the organ of inspiration, and it was generally believed that she delivered her oracles under the direct afflatus of the god. The divine possession worked like an epileptic seizure, and was exhausting and might be dangerous; nor is there any reason to suppose that it was simulated. This communion with the divinity needed careful preparation. Originally, as it seems, virginity was a condition of the tenure of the office; for the virgin has been often supposed to he the purer vehicle for divine communication ; but later the rule was established that a married woman over 5o years of age should be chosen, with the proviso that she should be attired as a maiden. As a preliminary to the divine possession, she appears to have chewed leaves of the sacred laurel, and then to have drunk water from the prophetic stream called Kassotis which flowed underground. But the culminating point of the afflatus was reached when she seated herself upon the tripod; and here, according to the belief of at least the later ages of paganism, she was supposed to be inspired by a mystic vapour that arose from a fissure in the ground. Against the or dinary explanation of this as a real mephitic gas producing convul sions, there seem to be geological and chemical objections (see Oppe, "The chasm at Delphi," fount. Hell. Stud., 1904) ; nor have the recent French excavations revealed any chasm or gap in the floor of the temple. But the strong testimony of the later writers, especially Plutarch (De defectu Orac. c. 43), cannot wholly be set aside; and we can sufficiently reconcile it with the facts if we suppose a small crack in the floor through which a draught of air was felt to ascend. This, combining with the other mantic stimu lants used, would be enough to throw a believing medium into the condition, familiar enough nowadays, of a "trance." It is probable that what she uttered were only unintelligible murmurs, and that these were interpreted into relevance and set in metric or prose sentences by the "prophet" and the "holy ones" or `Oatoi.. as they were called, members of leading Delphic families, who sat round the tripod, who received the questions of the consultant beforehand, probably in writing, and usually had considered the answers that should be given.