De E apud Delphos

After what I have spoken to you, I said, Yet one short word to those about Nicander,

I’ll sing to men of skill.

For on the sixth day of the new moon, when you introduce the Pythia into the Prytaneum, the first of the three lots tends with you towards five, casting neither three, nor two, one to another.[*]( I leave this corrupt passage as I find it in the old translation. The Greek cannot be tortured into any sense. (G.)) For is not this so?

It is so, said Nicander; but the cause is not to be told to others.

Well then, said I smiling, till such time as the God admits us, being consecrated, to know the truth, this also shall be added to those things that have been spoken concerning the quinary. This end, as I remember, had the discourse of the arithmetical and mathematical encomiums of E.