Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/52

30 by ancient writers, was celebrated at Oropos. This inscription tells us that prizes were given in this festival for Epic, Dramatic, Lyrical, and Musical contests, also for a variety of athletic exercises and chariot-races. It should be observed that the introduction of the regular drama into festivals of this kind was an innovation which probably took place in the time of Alexander the Great, and such embellishments were thought by the ancient critics to have impaired the simplicity of the public festivals.

The date of the inscriptions probably ranged from Olymp. IIG to Olymp. 145. There can be no doubt, from the evidence of the inscriptions, that the temenos at Mavrodhilissi was that of Amphiaraos, which is noticed by Pausanias. The cubes on which the inscriptions were placed must have originally formed part of the walls of this cella. It may be seen by the well-known example of the Parthenon that the Greeks were in the habit of covering the inner walls of their temples with inscriptions.

The Amphiaraïon, or Temple of Amphiaraos, of which I thus discovered the site, was of considerable celebrity in antiquity as an oracle which sick persons consulted for the treatment of their maladies. Here, as elsewhere in the temples of deities to whom the gift of healing was attributed, the mode of consultation was by the process called 🇬🇷 or incubation. The consultant, after undergoing lustration in honour of Amphiaraos and the other deities associated with him, sacrificed a ram, and,