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The messengers who were despatched to make trial of the oracles were
given the following instructions: they were to keep count of the days
from the time of their leaving Sardis, and, reckoning from that
date, on the hundredth day they were to consult the oracles, and to
inquire of them what Croesus the son of Alyattes, king of Lydia,
was doing at that moment. The answers given them were to be taken down
in writing, and brought back to him. None of the replies remain on
record except that of the oracle at Delphi. There, the moment that
the Lydians entered the sanctuary, and before they put their
questions, the Pythoness thus answered them in hexameter verse:
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I can count the sands, and I can measure the ocean;
I have ears for the silent, and know what the dumb man meaneth;
Lo! on my sense there striketh the smell of a shell-covered tortoise,
Boiling now on a fire, with the flesh of a lamb, in a cauldron
Brass is the vessel below, and brass the cover above it.
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