Note 668 — THE ADORATION OF FIRE

Here also was the temple of the [668]Muses, which stood close upon a reeking stream. But, what rendered Delphi more remarkable, and more reverenced, was the Corycian cave, which lay between that hill and Parnassus. It went under ground a great way: and Pausanias, who made it his particular business to visit places of this nature, says, that it was the most extraordinary of any which he ever beheld. [669]Αντρον Κωρυκιον σπηλαιων, ὡν ειδον, θεας αξιον μαλιστα. There were many caves styled Corycian: one in Cilicia, mentioned by Stephanus Byzantinus from Parthenius, who speaks of a city of the same name: Παρ' ᾑ το Κωρυκιον αντρον Νυμφων, αξιαγαστον θεαμα. Near which city was the Corycian cavern, sacred to the nymphs, which afforded a sight the most astonishing. There was a place of this sort at [670]Samacon, in Elis; and, like the above, consecrated to the nymphs. There were likewise medicinal waters, from which people troubled with cutaneous and scrofulous disorders found great benefit. I have mentioned the temple at Hierapolis in [671]Phrygia; and the chasm within its precincts, out of which there issued a pestilential vapour. There was a city of the same name in [672]Syria, where stood a temple of the highest antiquity; and in this temple was a fissure, through which, according to the tradition of the natives, the waters at the deluge retired. Innumerable instances might be produced to this purpose from Pausanias, Strabo, Pliny, and other writers.