Chapter III: On the Cessation of the Oracles (3)

XLV. Demetrius said: ‘I cannot say how things are now, for it is a long time since I left home, as you know; the [Sidenote: D] oracle of Mopsus was in full force when I was there, and also that of Amphilochus. I can tell you of a very remarkable thing which happened to that of Mopsus, in my presence. The propraetor of Cilicia was himself still of two minds about religious questions; from the weakness of his scepticism, I imagine, for his general character was violent and bad; but he had about him certain Epicureans, professed mockers at all such things on the strength of their fine physiology. He sent in a freedman, equipping him like a spy going into an enemy’s land, with sealed tablets inside which was written the question, but no one knew what it was. The man spent a night in the [Sidenote: E] sanctuary, as the custom was, and went to sleep. The following day he reported a dream, which was this. He thought that a handsome man stood over him, and said the one word “Black”, nothing more, and went straight away. This appeared to us strange, and caused much perplexity. However, that propraetor was struck with consternation, and worshipped; then he opened the tablets and showed us this question written inside: “Shall I sacrifice a white bull or a black?” Even the Epicureans [Sidenote: F] were confounded at this, and he himself completed his sacrifice, and ever afterwards held Mopsus in reverence.’

XLVI. After saying this, Demetrius was silent. As I wished to bring the discussion to a head, I glanced again at Philippus and Ammonius, who were sitting together. They appeared to me to wish to exchange some remarks, and again paused. Then Ammonius spoke: ‘Philippus has also something to say on our past discussion; his own view, as that of most people, is that Apollo is not a different God from the sun, but the same. [Sidenote: 435] My own difficulty is a greater one, and turns on greater matters. Just now we managed to let the argument take its own way with due solemnity, to transfer prophetic art simply from Gods to daemons. But now it seems to me that we are thrusting the latter out in their turn, chasing them hence from oracle and tripod, and resolving the origin—I would rather say the existence and power—of prophecy into winds, and vapours, and exhalations. What we have heard about temperatures, and [Sidenote: B] heatings and sharpenings, withdraws no doubt the credit from the Gods, but thereby suggests the inference as to cause which the Cyclops in Euripides[193] draws:

_The earth by force, whether it will or no,
Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and hinds._

Only he says that he does not sacrifice to Gods,

_but to myself,
And this great belly first of deities_,

whereas we sacrifice and pray to get our oracles; and why do we do it, if souls carry within themselves a power of prophecy, which power is stirred up by temperature of some sort in air or breeze? And then the condition of the priestesses, what does [Sidenote: C] that mean, and the refusal to respond unless the whole victim from the hoof-joint up be set quivering when it is sprinkled? For it is not enough, as in other sacrifices, for it to shake the head, the shivering must be in all the parts, and with a tremulous sound; otherwise they tell you that the oracle is not giving responses, and do not bring in the Pythia. Now, if they ascribe the cause mainly to a God or daemon, it is reasonable to do and think thus, but on your view it is not reasonable. For the exhalation, if it be there, will produce the transport whether the sacrifice quiver or not, and will affect the soul, [Sidenote: D] not only of the Pythia, but equally of any chance comer who has physical contact with it. Thus it is mere folly to employ one woman only for the oracles, and to take trouble to keep her chaste and holy all her life. For that Coretas who fell in, as the Delphians tell you, and was the first to make evident the virtue of the place, was in no respect different, as I think, from the other goatherds and shepherds, always supposing that this is not a story and an idle fiction, which I think it is. Then, when I reckon up the great benefits of which this oracle has been the cause to the Greeks, in wars, in the founding of cities, in [Sidenote: E] times of pestilence and of failure of crops, I think it dreadful to ascribe its discovery and origin, not to God and Providence, but to Chance and automatic causes. It is this point’, he added, ‘that I want Lamprias to argue; will you not wait?’ ‘Indeed I will,’ said Philippus, ‘and so will the others, the discussion has stirred us all.’

XLVII. I turned to him. ‘Stirred us, Philippus? It has confounded me, to think that before so large and so grave a company I should seem so to forget my years as with a show of plausible rhetoric to upset and disturb any view about religion which is established in truth and holiness. I will [Sidenote: F] defend myself by producing Plato, as witness and advocate in one. Plato[194] found fault with old Anaxagoras because he attached himself too much to physical causes, and because, in his constant pursuit of the working of necessary law in all which affects bodies, he dismissed the better causes or principles, the Final and the Efficient. He himself, first of the philosophers or more than any of them, went into both sets, attributing to God the origin of all things which are according to reason, but [Sidenote: 436] refusing to deprive matter of the causes necessary for their production; he recognized that in some such way the whole sensible universe is organized, yet is not pure nor free from admixture, but has its origin in matter involved with reason. Now look at this first in the case of the artists. Take, for instance, the famous base or stand, called by Herodotus[195] “cup-stand”, of the bowl here; it had its physical causes, iron, steel, fire to soften and water to temper it, without all which the object could not possibly be produced; but the more potent principle [Sidenote: B] which stirred the others and was working through them, was furnished to it by Art and Reason. Now the name of the maker or artificer has been inscribed on these several figures or works of imitation:

_Here Polygnotus, son of Aglaophon,
The Thasian, painted towering Ilion’s sack._

You may see it for yourself. But without pigments crushed and compounded it would be impossible to present such a composition to the eye. Does then the man who seeks to grasp the physical principle, investigating and laying down the effects and [Sidenote: C] the changes of a mixture of Sinopic red earth with yellow, or Melian gray with black, rob the painter of his glory? Or he who follows out the processes of tempering or softening steel, how it is weakened by fire and submits itself to be drawn and hammered, then, plunged into fresh water and compressed and densified by the cold, because of the softness and rarefication induced by the fire, acquires temper and consistence—“the iron’s might” Homer[196] calls it—does he any the less preserve for the artist his part in the causation? I think not! There [Sidenote: D] are those who criticize the properties of medical appliances; they do not overthrow the art of Medicine. As, for the matter of that, Plato[197] in proving that we see by means of the flash of our eyes mingling with that of the sun, and hear by the pulsations of the air, did not rule out the fact that we have received our sight and our hearing in accordance with Reason and Providence.

XLVIII. ‘The whole matter, as I maintain, stands thus. All becoming has two causes, of which the most ancient theologians and poets chose to turn their attention to the stronger only, pronouncing over all things the universal refrain:

_Zeus first, Zeus middle, all things are of Zeus_,[198]

while they never approached the necessary or physical causes. Their successors, called physicists, did the very reverse; they [Sidenote: E] strayed away from that beautiful and divine principle, and refer everything to bodies, and pulsations, and changes, and temperaments. Hence the systems of both are deficient; they have ignored or neglected, the latter the person through whom and the agent by whom, the former the things from which and the means through which. He who first distinctly grasped both, and attached by necessary law the subject affected to the rational Maker and Mover, relieves us as well as himself from any charge of contempt or detraction. We do not make [Sidenote: F] prophecy a godless or irrational thing, when we assign to it for its matter the soul of man, and for its instrument, or harp-quill, the inspiring current and the exhalation. For, in the first place, the earth which breeds the exhalations, and the sun who gives to earth all power of temperature or of change, are reckoned Gods in the traditions of our fathers. Further, in leaving daemons to preside over and guard this temperature, as though it were a melody, to relax the strings in due course [Sidenote: 437] or to tighten, to clear away that excess of ecstasy and agitation which it causes in the worshippers, and to leave excitement a painless and harmless compound, we shall not be thought to do what is irrational or impossible.

XLIX. ‘Nor can we allow that in offering the previous sacrifice, or crowning the victim, or pouring on it lustral draughts, we do anything repugnant to this view. For when the priests and holy men sacrifice the victim, and sprinkle it, and watch its movement and its trembling, they do not profess to get from it an intimation of anything but the one fact that the God is giving answers. For the thing offered in sacrifice must be pure both in body and in soul, and free from any injury or taint. As to body, it is not very difficult to make [Sidenote: B] out visible proof; the test of soul is to offer corn to the bulls, pease to the he-goats; an animal which refuses is reckoned out of health. For the she-goat it is cold water; a soul in a normal state cannot be apathetic and motionless under the sprinkling. For my own part, even if it be certain that trembling is a sign that the God is ready to give responses, the contrary that he [Sidenote: C] is not, I see no disastrous consequence. As I said before, every natural force produces its result better or worse according to season; if the right season is escaping us, it is to be expected that the God should signify the fact.

L. ‘I think, further, that the exhalation is not always the same, it has times of relaxation and of intensity. In proof, I can bring forward witnesses, many of them strangers, and all the members of the temple staff. For the room in which they place consultants of the God, is, at intervals, which are not frequent or fixed, but come as it may happen, filled with fragrance and a sweet gale, such as the most costly spices might emit, which are thrown up, as out of a well, from the sanctuary. [Sidenote: D] We may suppose that they burst out by the action of heat or of some other force within. Or, if this does not seem to you convincing, you will at least grant that the Pythia herself appears to show at different times different states and moods of that part of the soul which is in contact with the current, and does not present throughout one temperament, like a melody which never changes. Many conscious troubles and excitements, more which are unnoticed, seize her body and stream on into the soul; and when she is charged with these, it is better for her not to go in, not to present herself to the God when she is not perfectly pure, like an instrument well strung and tuneful, but is passionate and disordered. Wine does not always affect [Sidenote: E] the hard drinker in the same way, nor the flute one susceptible to its music; the same men are stirred to tipsy revelling, now less now more, according to difference of temperament. The imaginative part of the soul seems, more than any other, to be controlled by variations in the body, and to change with it. This is clearly shown by dreams; sometimes we find ourselves among many visions of every sort in our sleep, at others again there is a perfect calm and relief from such illusions. We know [Sidenote: F] ourselves Cleon here of Daulia, who says that in the many years which he has lived he has never once seen a dream-vision. In an older generation the same is recorded of Thrasymedes of Heraea. The cause is bodily temperament, just as, on the other side, there is that of melancholic persons, all dreams and phantoms; although these are supposed to have the gift of dreaming right, for their imagination turns them this way or that, [Sidenote: 438] just as those who shoot often, often hit.

LI. ‘When then the imaginative and prophetic faculty of the soul is attempered to the current as to a drug, the inspiration must be brought about in the persons who are to prophesy, when not, not; otherwise the result will be a distortion by no means free from trouble and disturbance, as we know was the case with the Pythia who lately died. A deputation came from abroad to consult the God; the victim remained motionless and impassive under the first sprinkling, then the priests in [Sidenote: B] excess of zeal persisted, and at last it did give in when drenched with their shower-bath. What happened to the Pythia? Unwillingly and with no alacrity, they say, she went down into the vault. In her very first answers she made it clear by the hoarseness of her voice that she could not bear up; she was like a ship driven by the wind, filled with a dumb bad spirit. At last she became all agitation; with a terrible cry she made towards the door of exit, and dashed against it, so that not only the members of the deputation fled, but also the prophet Nicander and the holy persons present. However, after a short [Sidenote: C] time, they went in and recovered her. She was then in her senses, and lived on for a few days. For these reasons, they keep the person of the Pythia free from intercourse, and from any sort of communication or contact with strangers; and they take the signs before proceeding to the oracle, thinking that it is quite clear to the God when she has the temperament and condition which will allow her to undergo the inspiration with impunity. For the force of the exhaled air does not affect all persons, nor the same persons always in the same way; it only provides fuel, a foundation, as has been explained, for [Sidenote: D] those who are fit to be subjected to the change. It is essentially divine and daemonic, not however exempt from failure, or destruction, or age, nor is it capable of enduring through that infinite space of time in which all things between moon and earth are exhausted, according to our theory. Some go on to say that the things also which are above the moon do not endure, but fail in presence of the eternal infinite, and suffer abrupt changes and new births.

LII. ‘These things’, I continued, ‘I commend to your repeated consideration, and my own, as offering many openings for objection and many suggestions of an opposite view, which the present opportunity does not allow us to follow out in their [Sidenote: E] entirety. Let them stand over then, and also the problem raised by Philippus about the sun and Apollo.’

Footnote 128:

Whose account is, for convenience, somewhat recast and amplified. The
fact is understated. ‘There cannot be more than five solids, each of
which has all its faces with the same number of sides, and all its
solid angles formed with the same number of plane angles.’ Todhunter,
_Spherical Trigonometry_, c. 151.

Footnote 129:

_Il._ 10, 173, and Leaf’s note.

Footnote 130:

_Od._ 3, 367-8.

Footnote 131:

_Il._ 10, 394. See p. 265.

Footnote 132:

Herodotus, 8, 133-5. I have followed W.’s reconstruction.

Footnote 133:

See _Life of Aristides_, c. 19.

Footnote 134:

_W. and D._ 199.

Footnote 135:

See p. 231.

Footnote 136:

Fr. 149: see above, p. 77.

Footnote 137:

Herod. 9, 28 (and see ib. c. 21).

Footnote 138:

Fr. 729. Cp. _O. C._ 607.

Footnote 139:

The words ‘and here—heroes’ have been supplied from a quotation in
Eusebius, _Praep. Evan._ 5, 4.

Footnote 140:

From a fragment, Gaisford, _Poetae Minores_, ii, p. 489 (cp. Ausonius,
_Id._ 18; and Sir T. Browne, _Vulgar Errors_, 3, 9).

Footnote 141:

Fr. 165.

Footnote 142:

As Ausonius, loc. cit.

Footnote 143:

Fr. 87.

Footnote 144:

1 + 2 × 1 + 3 × 1 + 2^2 + 3^2 + 2^3 + 3^3 = 54.

Footnote 145:

See _Timaeus_, 35.

Footnote 146:

_Il._ 20, 8-9.

Footnote 147:

See Heraclitus, Fr. 34.

Footnote 148:

Inserting, with Mezirius, ἢ δεκάκις before τεσσάρων.

Footnote 149:

The meaning is simply that 40 × 3^5 = 9720, and ‘triangle-wise’ seems
irrelevant.

Footnote 150:

Fr. 961 (from the _Phaethon_).

Footnote 151:

_Sympos._ 202 F.

Footnote 152:

_W. and D._ 125. Cp. Plato, _Crat._ 397.

Footnote 153:

2, 171.

Footnote 154:

Pindar, Fr. 208 (cp. _Sympos._ 7, 5, 4).

Footnote 155:

_Suppl._ 214.

Footnote 156:

Fr. 730.

Footnote 157:

See additional note, p. 312.

Footnote 158:

Cp. _Life of Timoleon_, c. 1.

Footnote 159:

Cp. Herod. 2, 145.

Footnote 160:

See p. 54.

Footnote 161:

Reading οὐ πολλά (‘nihil secum trahit impossibile’. Xylander). See
Preface, p. vi.

Footnote 162:

_Timaeus_, 55.

Footnote 163:

As Aristotle, _De Caelo_, I, 8, 276 a 18.

Footnote 164:

_Od._ 21, 397.

Footnote 165:

_Il._ 15, 189.

Footnote 166:

_Tim._ 31 A, 55 C.

Footnote 167:

Reading, with Madvig (partly anticipated by Emperius) ... ὃ μὴ κοινῶς
ποιὸν ἢ ἰδίως ἐστίν· ὁ δὲ κόσμος οὐ λέγεται κοινῶς εἶναι ποιός· ἰδίως
τοίνυν ...

Footnote 168:

See e. g. _De Caelo_, 1, 6, 275 b 29, and Burnet, _Early Greek
Philosophy_, p. 397 note; see also p. 270 foll.

Footnote 169:

Inserting κάτω, with Meziriac.

Footnote 170:

_Il._ 13, 1 foll.

Footnote 171:

See p. 115.

Footnote 172:

_Tim._ 55 E, foll.

Footnote 173:

There is a play on the words for ‘fire’, ‘Pyramid’.

Footnote 174:

_Soph._ 249 B.

Footnote 175:

_Is. et Osir._ c. 12.

Footnote 176:

_De Caelo_, 2, 4, 286 b 10.

Footnote 177:

_Tim._ 55 C.

Footnote 178:

_Tim._ 57 C.

Footnote 179:

_Tim._ 52 E.

Footnote 180:

Fr. 925.

Footnote 181:

See p. 70.

Footnote 182:

_W. and D._ 124.

Footnote 183:

_W. and D._ 122.

Footnote 184:

μᾶλλον δὲ ὄντα. Cp. Plato, _Philebus_, 33, διὰ μνήμης πᾶν ἔστι τὸ
γεγονός.

Footnote 185:

See Thuc. 1, 12.

Footnote 186:

Fr. 963.

Footnote 187:

_Bacchae_, 297-8.

Footnote 188:

Fr. 75.

Footnote 189:

The text is corrupt, but probably contained ὁμίχλην. Cp. Plato,
_Sympos._ 736 A.

Footnote 190:

_Theogon._ 117.

Footnote 191:

Fr. 371.

Footnote 192:

_Meteor._ 1, 3, 340 b 29.

Footnote 193:

_Cyclops_, I. 332-3 (Shelley’s tr.).

Footnote 194:

_Phaedo_, 97 C.

Footnote 195:

1, 25, where the work is ascribed to Glaucus.

Footnote 196:

_Od._ 9, 393.

Footnote 197:

_Rep._ 6, 18, 507 C.

Footnote 198:

Cp. Plato, _Laws_, 716 E.

ON THE INSTANCES OF DELAY
IN DIVINE PUNISHMENT