De Pythiae oraculis

Theon, taking up the subject, said, But these matters have actually undergone great changes and innovations, whereas you know that many of the oracles here have been given out in prose, and those that concerned no unimportant matters. For, as Thucydides[*](Thucydides, i. 118.) has recorded, when the Spartans consulted the god about their war against the Athenians, his answer was a promise of victory and power and that he himself would come to their aid, bidden or unbidden; and in another oracle that if they would not allow Pleistoanax to return from exile, they should plough with a silver ploughshare.[*](Ibid. v. 16. The meaning seems to be that they would have to buy their grain.)

When the Athenians sought advice about their campaign in Sicily, he directed them to get the priestess of Athena at Erythrae; the name which the woman bore was Quiet.[*](Cf.Life of Nicias, chap. xiii. (532 a), where it is explained that the god advised them τὴν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, to keep Quiet.)

When Deinomenes of Sicily asked advice about his sons, the answer was that all three should rule as despots; and when Deinomenes rejoined, To their sorrow, then, O Lord Apollo, the god said that he granted this also to Deinomenes, and added it to the response. You all know, of course, that Gelo, while he was despot, suffered from dropsy; and likewise Hiero from gall-stones; and the third, Thrasybulus, became involved in seditions and wars, and it was no long time before he was dethroned.

Then there was Procles, the despot of Epidaurus, who did away with many men in a cruel and lawless manner, and finally put to death Timarchus, who had come to him from Athens with money, after receiving him and entertaining him with much show of hospitality. The body he thrust into a basket and sank in the sea. All this he accomplished through Cleander of Aegina, and nobody else knew anything about it. But later, when his affairs were in sad confusion, he sent here his brother Cleotimus to ask advice in secret concerning his flight and withdrawal to another country. The god therefore made answer that he granted Procles flight and withdrawal to the place in which he had bidden his friend from Aegina deposit the basket, or where the stag sheds his horns. The despot at once understood that the god ordered him to sink himself in the sea or to bury himself in the earth (for stags, whenever their horns fall off, bury them out of sight underground[*](Cf.Moralia, 700 d.)); but he waited for a short time, and then, when the state of his aflairs became altogether desperate, he had to leave the country. And the friends of Timarchus seized him, slew him, and cast forth his dead body into the sea.

Most important of all is the fact that the decrees through which Lycurgus gave form and order to the Spartan constitution were given to him in prose.

Now Herodotus and Philochorus and Ister, men who were most assiduous in collecting prophecies in verse, have quoted countless oracles not in verse; but Theopompus, who has given more diligent study to the oracle than any one man, has strongly rebuked those who do not believe that in his time the prophetic priestess used verse in her oracular responses. Afterwards, wishing to prove this, he has found to support his contention an altogether meagre number of such oracles, indicating that the others were given out in prose even as early as that time.

Some of the oracles even to-day come out in metre, one of which an affair has made famous. There is in Phocis a shrine of Heracles the Womanhater, and it is the custom that the man who is appointed to the priesthood shall have no association with a woman within the year. For this reason they usually appoint as priests rather old men. By exception, only a few years ago, a young man, not at all bad, but ambitious, who was in love with a girl, gained the office. At first he was able to control himself, and succeeded in keeping out of her way; but when she suddenly carne in upon him as he was resting after drinking and dancing, he did the forbidden thing. Frightened and perturbed in consequence, he resorted at once to the oracle and asked the god about his sin, whether there were any way to obtain forgiveness or to expiate it; and he received this response:

All things that must be doth the god condone.

However, even if anybody were to grant that no word of prophecy is uttered in our time without being in verse, such a person would be in much more perplexity regarding the oracles of ancient times which gave their responses at one time in verse and at another time without versification. However, neither of these, my young friend, goes counter to reason if only we hold correct and uncontaminated opinions about the god, and do not believe that it was he himself who used to compose the verses in earlier times, while now he suggests the oracles[*](Cf. 397 c, supra, and 414 e, infra.) to the prophetic priestess as if he were prompting an actor in a play to speak his words.

However, it is worth our while to discuss these matters at greater length and to learn about them at another time; but for the present let us recall to our minds what we have learned in brief: that the body makes use of many instruments[*](Cf.Moralia, 163 e.) and that the soul makes use of this very body and its members; moreover, the soul is created to be the instrument of God, and the virtue of an instrument is to conform as exactly as possible to the purpose of the agent that employs it by using all the powers which Nature has bestowed upon it, and to produce, presented in itself, the purpose of the very design; but to present this, not in the form in which it was existent in its creator, uncontaminated, unaffected, and faultless, but combined with much that is alien to this. For pure design cannot be seen by us, and when it is made manifest in another guise and through another medium, it becomes contaminated with the nature of this medium. Wax, for example, and gold and silver I

leave out of account, as well as other kinds of material,[*](Obviously what is left is marble, the less plastic material.) which, when moulded, take on the particular form of the likeness which is being modelled; and yet each one of them adds to the thing portrayed a distinguishing characteristic which comes from its own substance; and so also the numberless distortions in the reflected images of one single form seen in mirrors both plane and concave and convex. Indeed, if we contemplate the shining constellations, there is nothing that shows greater similarity in form, or which, as an instrument, is by nature more obedient in use than the moon. Receiving as it does from the sun its brilliant light and intense heat, it sends them away to us, not in the state in which they arrived, but, after being merged with it, they change their colour and also acquire a different potency. The heat is gone, and the light becomes faint because of weakness.

I imagine that you are familiar with the saying found in Heraeleitus[*](Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 86, Heracleitus, no. b 93.) to the effect that the Lord whose prophetic shrine is at Delphi neither tells nor conceals, but indicates. Add to these words, which are so well said, the thought that the god of this place employs the prophetic priestess for men’s ears just as the sun employs the moon for men’s eyes. For he makes known and reveals his own thoughts, but he makes them known through the associated medium of a mortal body and a soul that is unable to keep quietior, as it yields itself to the One that

moves it, to remain of itself unmoved and tranquil, but, as though tossed amid billows and enmeshed in the stirrings and emotions within itself, it makes itself more and more restless.

For, as the eddies exercise no sure control over the bodies carried round and round in them, but, since the bodies are carried round and round by a compelling force, while they naturally tend to sink, there results from the two a confused and erratic circular movement, so, in like manner, what is called inspiration seems to be a combination of two impulses, the soul being simultaneously impelled through one of these by some external influence, and through the other by its own nature. Wherefore it is not possible to deal with inanimate and stationary bodies in a way contrary to their nature by bringing force to bear upon them, nor to make a cylinder in motion behave in the manner of a sphere or a cube, nor a lyre like a flute, nor a trumpet like a harp. No, the use of each thing artistically is apparently no other than its natural use. And as for the animate, endowed with power to move of itself and with its share of initiative and reason, could anyone treat it in a manner other than in keeping with the condition, faculty, or nature, already pre-existent in it, as, for example, trying to arouse to music a mind unmusical, or to letters the unlettered, or to eloquence one with no observation or training in speeches? That is something which no one could assert.

Homer[*](Il. ii. 169; v. 1.) also gives testimony on my side by his assumption that practically nothing is brought to pass for any reason without a god[*](For example, Od. ii. 372; xv. 531.); he does not,

however, represent the god as employing everything for every purpose, but as employing each thing in accordance with the aptitude or faculty that each possesses. Do you not see, he continued, my dear Diogenianus, that Athena, when she wishes to persuade the Achaeans, summons Odysseus[*](Il. ii. 169.); when she wishes to bring to naught the oaths, seeks out Pandarus[*](Il. iv. 86.); when she wishes to rout the Trojans, goes to Diomedes[*](Il. v. 1.)? The reason is that Diomedes is a man of great strength and a warrior, Pandarus a bowman and a fool, Odysseus adept at speaking and a man of sense. The fact is that Homer did not have the same idea as Pindar, if it really was Pindar who wrote God willing, you may voyage on a mat;[*](From the Thyestes of Euripides: Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Euripides, no. 397; but the line is sometimes ascribed to other poets also.) but Homer recognized the fact that some faculties and natures are created for some purposes and others for others, and each one of these is moved to action in a different way, even if the power that moves them all be one and the same. Now this power cannot move to flight that which can only walk or run, nor move a lisp to clear speaking, nor a shrill thin voice to melodious utterance. No, in the case of Battus[*](Cf. Herodotus, iv. 155; Pindar, Pythian Odes, v., and the scholium to Pythian iv. 10.) it was for this reason, when he came to consult the oracle for his voice, that the god sent him as a colonist to Africa, because Battus had a lisp and a shrill thin voice, but also had the qualities of a king and a statesman, and was a man or sense. So in the same way it is impossible for the unlettered man who has never read verse to talk like a poet. Even so the maiden who now serves the god here was born of as lawful and honourable wedlock as anyone, and her life has been in all respects proper; but, having been brought up in the home of poor peasants, she brings nothing with her as the result of technical skill or of any other expertness or faculty, as she goes down into the shrine. On the contrary, just as Xenophon[*](Oeconomicus, 7. 4-5.) believes that a bride should have seen as little and heard as little as possible before she proceeds to her husband’s house, so this girl, inexperienced and uninformed about practically everything, a pure, virgin soul, becomes the associate of the god. Now we cherish the belief that the god, in giving indications to us, makes use of the calls of herons, wrens, and ravens; but we do not insist that these, inasmuch as they are messengers and heralds of the gods, shall express everything rationally and clearly, and yet we insist that the voice and language of the prophetic priestess, like a choral song in the theatre, shall be presented, not without sweetness and embellishment, but also in verse of a grandiloquent and formal style with verbal metaphors and with a flute to accompany its delivery I