De Pythiae oraculis

Then, besides, there is nothing in poetry more serviceable to language than that the ideas communicated, by being botind up and interwoven with verse, are better remembered and kept firmly in mind. Men in those days had to have a memory for many things. For many things were communicated to them, such as signs for recognizing places, the times for activities,[*](As in Hesiod’s Works and Days.) the shrines of gods across the sea, secret burial-places of heroes, hard to find for men setting forth on a distant voyage from Greece. You all, of course, know about Teucer and Cretines and Gnesiochus and Phalanthus and many other leaders of expeditions[*](Cf.Geographi Graeci Minores, i. p. 236, Scymnus, no. 949; scholium on Apollonius Rhodius, ii. 351.) who had to discover by means of evidential proofs the suitable place of settlement granted to each. Some of these made a mistake, as did Battus.[*](Battus was sent by an oracle to found a colony in Africa, but settled in an island (Plataea) off the coast. Since the colony did not prosper, he came again to consult the oracle: cf. Herodotus, iv. 155-157; Pindar, Pythian Odes, v.; Aristotle, frag. 611. 16 (ed. Rose).) For he thought that he had been forced to land without gaining possession of the place to which he had been sent. Then he came a second time

in sore distress. And the god made answer to him[*](The same lines are found in Herodotus, iv. 157.):

1. If without going you know far better than I, who have gone there,
2. Africa, mother of flocks, then I greatly admire your wisdom,

and with these words sent him forth again.

Lysander also failed to recognize the hill Orchalides (the other name of which is Alopecus) and the river Hoplites[*](Life of Lysander, chap. xxix. (450 b-c).) and

Also the serpent, the Earth-born, behind him stealthily creeping,

and was vanquished in battle, and fell in that very place by the hand of Neoehorus, a man of Haliartus, who carried a shield which had as its emblem a snake. Numerous other instances of this sort among the people of olden time, difficult to retain and remember, it is not necessary to rehearse to you who know them.

For my part, I am well content with the settled conditions prevailing at present, and I find them very welcome, and the questions which men now put to the god are concerned with these conditions. There is, in fact, profound peace and tranquillity; war has ceased, there are no wanderings of peoples, no civil strifes, no despotisms, nor other maladies and ills in Greece requiring many unusual remedial forces. Where there is nothing complicated or secret or terrible, but the interrogations are on slight and commonplace matters, like the hypothetical questions in school: if one ought to marry, or to start on a voyage, or to make a loan; and the most important

consultations on the part of States concern the yield from crops, the increase of herds, and public health — to clothe such things in verse, to devise circumlocutions, and to foist strange words upon inquiries that call for a simple short answer is the thing done by an ambitious pedant embellishing an oracle to enhance his repute. But the prophetic priestess has herself also nobility of character, and whenever she descends into that place and finds herself in the presence of the god, she cares more for fulfilling her function than for that kind of repute or for men’s praise or blame.

We also, perhaps, ought to have this frame of mind. But as it is, we act as if we were anxious and fearful lest the place here lose the repute of its three thousand years, and some few persons should cease to come here, contemning the oracle as if it were the lecturing of some popular speaker; and we offer a plea in defence and invent reasons and arguments for matters which we do not understand, and which it is not fitting that we should understand. We try to appease and win over the man who complains, instead of bidding him take his leave for all time,

Since for himself first of all it will prove to be more distressing,[*](Adapted from Homer, Od. ii. 190.)

if the opinion which he holds about the god is such that he can accept and admire the maxims[*](Cf.Moralia, 164 b, 385 d, 511 a.) of the Wise Men inscribed here, Know thyself and Avoid extremes, because of their conciseness especially, since this very conciseness contains in small compass a compact and firmly=forged sentiment, and yet he can impeach the oracles because they give nearly all their communications in brief, simple, and straightforward language. Now such sayings as these of the Wise Men are in the same case with streams forced into a narrow channel, for they do not keep the transparency or translucence of the sentiment, but if you will investigate what has been written and said about them by men desirous of learning fully the why and wherefore of each, you will not easily find more extensive writings on any other subject. And as for the language of the prophetic priestess, just as the mathematicians call the shortest of lines between two points a straight line, so her language makes no bend nor curve nor doubling nor equivocation, but is straight in relation to the truth; yet, in relation to men’s confidence in it, it is insecure and subject to scrutiny, but as yet it has afforded no proof of its being wrong. On the contrary, it has filled the oracular shrine with votive offerings and gifts from barbarians and Greeks, and has adorned it with beautiful buildings and embellishments provided by the Amphictyonic Council. You yourselves, of course, see many additions in the form of buildings not here before and many restored that were dilapidated and in ruins. As beside flourishing trees others spring up, so also does Pylaea[*](A suburb of Delphi, presumably on the road to the Crisa, meeting-place of the Amphictyonic Council.) grow in vigour along with Delphi and derives its sustenance from the same source; because of the affluence here it is acquiring a pattern and form and an adornment of shrines and meeting-places and supplies of water such as it has not acquired in the last thousand years.

They that lived in the neighbourhood of Galaxium in Boeotia became aware of the manifest presence of the god by reason of the copious and overabundant flow of milk[*](Cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. iii. p. 719, Adespota, no. 90; Pindar, Frag. 101-102 ed. Christ; Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Hermes, xxxiv. p. 225.):

1. From all the flocks and all the kine
2. Like purest water from the springs
3. Milk in abundance welling down
4. Made music in the milking-pails.
5. And all the folk in eager haste
6. Filled every household vessel full;
7. Wineskin and jar were put to use,
8. Each wooden pail and earthen tun.

But for us the god grants clearer, stronger, and plainer evidence than this by bringing about after a drought, so to speak, of earlier desolation and poverty, affluence, splendour, and honour. It is true that I feel kindly toward myself in so far as my zeal or services may have furthered these matters with the co-operation of Polycrates and Petraeus[*](L. Cassius Petraeus; cf. Pomtow, Beiträge zur Topographie von Delphi, p. 122.); and I feel kindly toward the man who has been the leader in our administration and has planned and carried out practically all that has been done.[*](There is a lacuna in the mss. here, but the sense is clear.) But it is not possible that a change of such sort and of such magnitude could ever have been brought about in a short time through human diligence if a god were not present here to lend divine inspiration to his oracle.

But, just as in those days there were people who complained of the obliquity and vagueness of the oracles, so to-day there are people who make an unwarranted indictment against their extreme

simplicity. Such an attitude of mind is altogether puerile and silly. It is a fact that children take more delight and satisfaction in seeing rainbows, haloes, and comets than in seeing moon and sun; and so these persons yearn for the riddles, allegories, and metaphors which are but reflections of the prophetic art when it acts upon a human imagination. And if they cannot ascertain to their satisfaction the reason for the change, they go away, after pronouncing judgement against the god, but not against us nor against themselves for being unable by reasoning to attain to a comprehension of the god’s purpose.