ENGASTRIMYTHI, in Pagan theology, the Pythias or priestess of Apollo, who delivered oracles internally, without any action of the mouth or lips. The ancient philosophers, and others, are divided upon the subject of the engastrimythi. Hippocrates mentions this peculiar manifestation as a disease; others will have it a kind of divination; others again attribute it to the operation or possession of an evil spirit; and others to art and mechanism. Scottus maintains that the engastrimythi were poets, who, when the priests could not speak, supplied the defect by explaining in verse what Apollo dictated in the cavity of the sacred tripod.