De Pythiae oraculis

What statement, then, shall we make about the priestesses of former days? Not one statement, but more than one, I think. For in the first place, as has already been said,[*](403 e and 404 a, supra.) they also gave almost all their responses in prose. In the second place, that era produced personal temperaments and natures which had an easy fluency and a bent towards composing poetry, and to them were given also zest and eagerness and readiness of mind abundantly, thus creating an alertness which needed but a slight initial stimulus from without and a prompting of the

imagination, with the result that not only were astronomers and philosophers, as Philinus says, attracted at once to their special subjects, but when men carne under the influence of abundant wine or emotion, as some note of sadness crept in or some joy befell, a poet would slip into tuneful utterance[*](Cf.Moralia, 623 a.); their convivial gatherings were filled with amatory verses and their books with such writings. When Euripides said

1. Love doth the poet teach,
2. Even though he know naught of the Muse before,[*](The quotation, from the Stheneboea of Euripides, Plutarch repeats in more complete form in Moralia, 622 c and 762 b. Cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 569, Euripides, no. 663.)

his thought was that Love does not implant in one the poetical or musical faculty, but when it is already existent in one, Love stirs it to activity and makes it fervent, while before it was unnoticed and idle. Or shall we say, my friend, that nobody is in love nowadays, but that love has vanished from the earth because nobody in verse or song

1. Launches swiftly the shafts
2. Of sweet-sounding lays
3. Aimed at the youth beloved,

as Pindar[*](Pindar, Isthmian Odes, ii. 3.) has put it? No, that is absurd. The fact is that loves many in number still go to and fro among men, but, being in association with souls that have no natural talent nor ear for music, they forgo the flute and lyre, but they are no less loquacious and ardent than those of olden time. Besides it is not righteous nor honourable to say that the Academy and Socrates and Plato’s congregation were loveless, for we may read their amatory discourses[*](Such, for example, as the Phaedrus of Plato.); but they have left us no poems.[*](A few epigrams (some amatory) attributed to Plato may be found in the Anthology; cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. 295-312; Edmonds, Elegy and Iambic, ii. pp. 2-11 (L.C.L.); and for Socrates’ poems see Suidas s.v.; Plato, Phaedo, 60 c-d; Diogenes Laertius, ii. 42; Athenaeus, 628 e; Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. 287-288.) As compared with him who says that the only poetess of love was Sappho, how much does he fall short who asserts that the only prophetess was the Sibyl and Aristonica and such others as delivered their oracles in verse? As Chaeremon[*](Cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 787, no. 16; cf. also 437 d-e, infra.) says,

Wine mixes with the manners of each guest,

and as he drinks, prophetic inspiration, like that of love, makes use of the abilities that it finds ready at hand, and moves each of them that receive it according to the nature of each.