LETTER FROM MR. COCKERELL.

507

receive us. We meant to have slept here, but the cats and dogs howled so terribly (a symptom always of the plague) that I could not sleep in comfort, so as the moon shone bright we mounted and rode six hours further to a village opposite Parnassus, passing in safety the fountain famous for robbers, who are almost always stationed there. The scenery is here very fine and romantic: in six hours more, after crossing two little plains besides that of Charonea, we arrived at Livadia.'

دو

DISSERTATION

ON

THE ORACLE OF DODONA;

WITH

An Appendix

ON

THE SITE OF THAT OF DELPHI.

BY

SAMUEL BUTLER, D. D.

HEAD MASTER OF SHREWSBURY SCHOOL.

A DISSERTATION,

&c. &c.

THE oracle of Dodona is often mentioned in Homer, and was the most ancient and most celebrated in the early ages of Greece. In after times the glory of the Delphic oracle eclipsed that of the Dodonean, which by degrees fell into comparative neglect, partly on account of the superior splendour of Delphi, partly on account of the superior skill or charlatanerie of the priests there, and perhaps principally on account of the much greater facility of access to a city situated like Delphi in civilized Greece, than to one in an almost barbarous and impracticable country.

As so little is known of Dodona, it may perhaps be acceptable to give such an account of it as can be gleaned from the scattered notices in ancient writers with regard to Delphi I shall confine myself to conjectures on its site alone.

The first mention of Dodona in Homer is Il. B'. 749:

— μενεπτόλεμοί τε Περαιβοὶ

Οἱ περὶ Δωδώνην δυσχείμερον οἴκι' ἔθεντο.

Where from the epithet durxiagos we must conclude that it stood in an elevated situation much exposed to winds. The lesser scholiast here calls it a place iv úgbogi Olías, in the extreme north of Thesprotia; but Thesprotia is a vague term, the limits of that region having been changed according to the prosperous or adverse circumstances of the nation, and though it certainly at one time comprehended Dodona, because it then comprised also Molossia, it is no less certain that at other periods Dodona was not comprehended in its jurisdiction. Undoubtedly Dodona was on the confines of these Perrhæbi, who are not to be confounded with the Perrhæbi in the north of Thessaly, about Larissa, and though a branch of that nation, were separated from them by the chain of