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ii8 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE offences he had signally visited, engraved, presumably, by the temple authorities. In the medical temples of Cos, Rhodes, and Cnidus, there were, as early as the sixth century B.C., full notes of interesting diseases, giving the symptoms, the treatment, and the result. There were, doubtless, records of prodigies and their expiations. There were certainly lists of priests and priestesses, sometimes expanding into a kind of chronicle. These were public and subject to a certain check. But there were also more esoteric books, not exposed to the criticism of the vulgar. The ceremonial rules were sometimes published and sometimes not ; the Exegetai at Athens had secret records of omens and judgments on points of law or conscience ; in Delphi and other centres, where the tradition was rich, there were written vrrofiv^- fxara (' memoirs ') of the stories which the servants of the god wished to preserve. And, of course, outside and beyond the official temple-worship, there was the private and unauthorised preacher and prophet, the holder of mysteries, the seller of oracles, the remitter of sins — men like Onomacritus, Tisamenus the I amid, Lampon, and the various Bakides, whose misty and romantic stories can frequently be traced in Herodotus. And there were also the noble families. Their bare genealogies were often in verse, in a form suitable for quoting, and easily remem- bered among the public. But even in the genealogies other branches of the same stock were apt to have con- tradictory versions ; and when it came to lives and deeds, which might be forgotten or misrepresented, the family did well to keep authentic records, suitably controlled, in its own hands.