De Pythiae oraculis

I should not, therefore, be surprised if there j were times when there was need of double entendre, indirect statement, and vagueness for the people of ancient days. As a matter of fact, this or that man assuredly did not go down to consult the oracle about the purchase of a slave or about business. No, powerful States and kings and despots, who cherished no moderate designs, used to appeal to the god regarding their course of action; and it was not to the advantage of those concerned with the oracle to vex and provoke these men by unfriendliness through their hearing many of the things that they did not wish to hear. For the god does not follow Euripides[*](Phoenissae, 958.) when he asserts as if he were laying down a law:

1. None but Phoebus ought
2. For men to prophesy.

But inasmuch as the god employs mortal men to assist him and declare his will, whom it is his duty to care for and protect, so that they shall not lose their lives at the hands of wicked men while ministering to a god, he is not willing to keep the truth unrevealed, but he caused the manifestation of it to be deflected, like a ray of light, in the medium of poetry, where it submits to many reflections and undergoes subdivisions, and thus he did away with its repellent harshness, There were naturally some things which it was well that despots should fail to understand and enemies should not learn beforehand. About these, therefore, he put a cloak of intimations and ambiguities[*](For example, the famous oracle given to Croesus (Herodotus, i. 53; Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii. 5 (1407 a 39)) that if he crossed the river Halys he should overthrow a great kingdom; but the kingdom was his own.) which concealed the communication so far as others were concerned, but did not escape the persons involved nor mislead those that had need to know and who gave their minds to the matter. Therefore anyone is very foolish who, now that conditions have become different, complains and makes unwarranted indictment if the god feels that he must no longer help us in the same way, but in a different way.