ALEXANDER. 161

to have been derived, as a special term for superfluous and over-curious forms of adoration ; and that Olympias, zealously affecting these fanatical and enthusiastic inspira- tions, to perform them with more barbaric dread, was wont in the dances proper to these ceremonies to have great tame serpents about her, which sometimes creeping out of the ivy and the mystic fans, sometimes winding themselves about the sacred spears, and the women's chaplets, made a spectacle which the men could not look upon without terror. Philip, after this vision, sent Chseron of Megalopolis to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, by which he was commanded to perform sacrifice, and henceforth pay particular honor, above all other gods, to Ammon ; and was told he should one day lose that eye with which he presumed to peep through the chink of the door, when he saw the god, under the form of a serpent, in the com- pany of his wife. Eratosthenes says that Olympias, when she attended Alexander on his way to the army in his first expedition, told him the secret of his birth, and bade him behave himself with courage suitable to his divine extraction. Others again affirm that she wholly disclaimed any pretensions of the kind, and was wont to say, " When will Alexander leave off slandering me to Juno ? " Alexander was born the sixth of Hecatomboeon, which month the Macedonians call Lous, the same day that the temple of Diana at Ephesus was burnt ; which Hegesias of Magnesia makes the occasion of a conceit, frigid enough to have stopped the conflagration. The temple, man's religion is vain. Pure relig- tended to that of habits and practices ion and undefiled before God," etc. of religious living, and was selected By this time it had naturally, from as the proper word for what we call the notion of performances for the a religion, " according to the most propitiation of a deity, been ex- straitest sect of our religion."

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