Читать книгу Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity онлайн

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Theophrastus, bishop of Alexandria, showed the inhabitants of that town the hollow statue into which the former priests of the pagan oracle had privately crept whilst delivering their responses; and a modern traveller corroborates this fact, by a similar discovery made among the excavations at Pompeii. “In the temple of Isis,” says Dr. J. Johnson, “we see the identical spot where the priests concealed themselves, whilst delivering the oracles that were supposed to proceed from the mouth of the goddess. There were found the bones of the victims sacrificed; and in the refectory of the abstemious priests were discovered the remains of ham, fowls, eggs, fish, and bottles of wine. These jolly friars were carousing most merrily, and no doubt laughing heartily at the credulity of mankind, when Vesuvius poured out a libation on their heads which put an end to their mirth.”[2]

“To cut the Gordian knot” has long been proverbial for an independent and unexpected way of overcoming difficulties, however great. It took its rise from a circumstance related with some variations by several ancient authors, and with great simplicity by Arrian; it is the more a curiosity as coming from a man of his eminence in his enlightened age.