Читать книгу Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity онлайн
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Thunder and lightning on the following night, says Arrian, confirmed the assertion that Alexander had effected what the oracle had declared was to be done only by one who should be lord of Asia. Accordingly on the morrow he performed a magnificent thanksgiving sacrifice, in acknowledgment of the favour of the gods, thus promised: a measure as full of policy as devotion.
In Cornwall are to be found enormous piles of stone, which bear the name of Ambrosian, Logan, or Rocking Stones. Structures of this kind, as they may, perhaps, reasonably be called, are of very great antiquity, being represented on medals of Tyre. They appear to have been composed of cones of rock let into the ground, with other stones adapted to their points, and so nicely balanced, that the wind could move them; and yet so ponderous, that no human force, unaided by machinery, could displace them. The figures of Apollo Didymus, on the Syrian coins, are placed sitting on the point of the cone, on which the more rude and primitive symbol of the Logan stone is found poised; and we are told, that the oracle of the god near Miletus existed before the emigration of the Ionian colonies, more than eleven hundred years before Christ.