Again and again, as I said before, he exhibited the
serpent to all who requested it, not in its entirety,
but exposing chiefly the tail and the rest of the body
and keeping the head out of sight under his arm.
But as he wished to astonish the crowd still more,
he promised to produce the god talking—delivering
oracles in person without a prophet. It was no
difficult matter for him to fasten cranes’ windpipes
together and pass them through the head, which he
had so fashioned as to be lifelike. Then he answered
the questions through someone else, who spoke into
the tube from the outside, so that the voice issued
from his canvas Asclepius. S. Hippolytus (l.c., 28) mentions a tube made of windpipes of cranes, storks, or swans, and used in a similar way. Du Soul has a note in the Hemsterhuys-Reitz Lucian (ii, p. 234), telling of a wooden head constructed by Thomas Irson and exhibited to Charles I, which answered questions in any language and produced a great effect until a confederate was detected using a speaking-tube in the next room. Du Soul had the story from Irson himself. 
 
These oracles were called autophones, and were
not given to everybody promiscuously, but only to



 

those who were noble, rich, and free-handed.