Having been beaten in a trial of soothsaying, Calchas died of chagrin or committed suicide.
The great blot on his memory is his cruelty, which at times was frightful, and showed itself in its full fierceness in the punishment of persons accused of witchcraft, soothsaying or magical practices.
As contrasted with the baru or soothsaying priest, as he is called by Zimmern, we have the asipu, who was the priestmagician who dealt in conjurations (siptu), whereby diseases were removed, spells broken, or in expiations whereby sins were expiated.
If the modus operandi was akin to soothsaying it was only because that special form of soothsaying was peculiar to the particular cult of that god, and even this as a secondary development.
Soothsaying was no modern importation in Arabia; its characteristic form - a monotonous croon of short rhyming clauses - is the same as was practised by the Hebrew " wizards who peeped and muttered " in the days of Isaiah, and that this form was native in Arabia is clear from its having a technical name (saj`), which in Hebrew survives only in derivative words with modified sense.'
