Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir in Germanic mythology. The image of a horned eagle holding a hare in its talons and a fish in its beak is another symbolic representation of the Thracian shamanistic cosmology: the eagle represents the element of the Air and the "above," the hare represents the Earth and the "middle," and the fish represents Water and the "below". This animal representation of the Cosmos might have been related to the custom among ancient Iranian peoples whereby defeated kings symbolised that they were handing over their lands to kings who defeated them by an offering of earth and water. Divination In Thrace, the "Dionysian" aspect of was a god of divination under whose influence all prophecies were made and who held the most reputed oracles, and during the night, fire was lit on the altar of the temple of and wine libations were poured on the fire, and the resulting flaring up or dying down of the fire were believed to be prophetic signs which had to be interpreted. The altar's royal oracle was especially renowned and had a reputation for giving reliable answers on dynastic issues, and it was believed that high flames would blaze when someone predestined to be king would pour libations on the altar: the approval or rejection of a person as a ruler were believed to have been given by the "Dionysian" himself and was in itself a form of investiture. This happened when the flames rose high over the roof of the sanctuary each time during Alexander the Great's and the father of the Roman emperor Augustus's respective visits to this temple (the latter was told by the priests that his son would become "lord of the world"). The importance of the royal oracle of the temple of was why who controlled the temple was of paramount importance to the Thracians. The temple itself initially did not belong to any single tribe, but it later became the object of inter-tribal disputes, and when the Romans took it away from the Satrae and gave it to the Odrysians, its Bessi high priest, Vologases, started a rebellion. Song and dance The ancient Thracians had a rich epic tradition which embodied their historical memory and ideas in a mythical form, and which were handed down in the form of song and dance to help the people remember the story. This is reflected in myth by