De Pythiae oraculis

When Sarapion had said this, Theon smiled and

said, Sarapion has yielded as usual to his propensity by taking advantage of the incidental mention of Mischief and Pleasure. But as for us, Boëthus, even if these verses be inferior to Homer’s, let us not believe that the god has composed them, but that he supplies the origin of the incitement, and then the prophetic priestesses are moved each in accordance with her natural faculties. Certainly, if it were necessary to write the oracles, instead of delivering them orally, I do not think that we should believe the handwriting to be the god’s, and find fault with it because in beauty it fell short of that of the royal scribes. As a matter of fact, the voice is not that of a god,[*](Cf. 404 b and 414 e, infra.) nor the utterance of it, nor the diction, nor the metre, but all these are the woman’s; he puts into her mind only the visions, and creates a light in her soul in regard to the future; for inspiration is precisely this. And, speaking in general, it is impossible to escape you who speak for Epicurus[*](Frag. 395.) (in fact you yourself, Boëthus, are obviously being borne in that direction); but you charge the prophetic priestesses of old with using bad verse, and those of the present day with delivering their oracles in prose and using commonplace words, so that they may not be liable to render an account to you for their wrong use of a short syllable at the beginning, middle, or end of their lines

In Heaven’s name, said Diogenianus, do not jest, but solve for us this problem, which is of universal interest. For there is not one of us that does not seek

to learn the cause and reason why the oracle has ceased to employ verse and metre.

Whereupon Theon, interrupting, said, But just now, my young friend, we seem rather rudely to be taking away from the guides their proper business. Permit, therefore, their services to be rendered first, and after that you shall, at your leisure, raise questions about any matters you wish.

By this time we had proceeded until we were opposite the statue of Hiero the despot. The foreign visitor, by reason of his genial nature, made himself listen to the various tales, although he knew them all perfectly well; but when he was told that a bronze pillar of Hiero’s standing above had fallen of itself during that day on which it happened that Hiero was coming to his end at Syracuse, he expressed his astonishment. Whereupon I proceeded to recall to his mind other events of a like nature, such, for example, as the experience of Hiero[*](Cf. Pausanias, x. 9. 7, with Xenophon, Hellenica, vi. 4. 9. Presumably the same man is referred to in both passages, as he may well have lived till the battle of Leuctra in 371 b.c., and he may be mentioned also in Xenophon, Hellenica, i. 6. 32, but where his name was Hiero or Hermon cannot, apparently, be determined with certainty.) the Spartan, how before his death, which came to him at Leuctra, the eyes fell out of his statue, and the stars disappeared which Lysander had dedicated from the naval battle at Aegospotami; and the stone statue of Lysander[*](Cf.Life of Lysander, chap. xviii. (443 a).) himself put forth a growth of wild shrubs and grass in such abundance as to cover up the face; and at the time of the Athenian misfortunes in Sicily, the golden dates were dropping from the palm-tree and ravens were pecking off the edge of the shield of Pallas Athena[*](Cf. Pausanias, x. 15. 5.); and the crown

of the Cnidians which Philomela, despot of the Phocians, had presented to the dancing-girl,[*](Cf. Athenaeus, 605 c.) Pharsalia caused her death, after she had emigrated from Greece to Italy and was disporting herself in the vicinity of the temple of Apollo at Metapontum; for the young men made a rush for the crown, and as they struggled with one another for the gold, they tore the girl to pieces.

Aristotle[*](Rhetoric, iii. 11 (1411 b 31); cf. Frag. 130 (ed. Rose).) used to say that Homer is the only poet who wrote words possessing movement because of their vigour; but I should say that among votive offerings also, those dedicated here have movement and significance in sympathy with the god’s foreknowledge, and no part of them is void or insensible, but all are filled with the divine spirit.

Yes indeed, said Boethus. It is not enough to incarnate the god once every month in a mortal body, but we are bent upon incorporating him into every bit of stone and bronze, as if we did not have in Chance or Accident an agent responsible for such coincidences.

Then, said I, does it seem to you that chance and accident have ordered every single one of such occurrences; and is it credible that the atoms slipped out of place and were separated one from another and inclined towards one side neither before nor afterwards, but at precisely the time when each of the dedicators was destined to fare either worse or better? And now Epicurus[*](Frag. 383.) comes to your aid, apparently, with what he said or wrote three hundred years ago; but it does not seem to you that the god, unless he should transport himself and incorporate

himself into everything and be merged with everything, could initiate movement or cause anything to happen to any existent object!

Such was my answer to Boëthus, and in similar vein mention was made of the oracles of the Sibyl. For when we halted as we reached a point opposite the rock which lies over against the council-chamber, upon which it is said that the first Sibyl[*](Cf. Pausanias, x. 12. 1 and 5; and the scholium on Plato, Phaedrus, 244 b.) sat after her arrival from Helicon where she had been reared by the Muses (though others say that she came from the Malians and was the daughter of Lamia whose father was Poseidon), Sarapion recalled the verses in which she sang of herself: that even after death she shall not cease from prophesying, but that she shall go round and round in the moon,[*](Cf. Plutarch, Moralia, 566 d.) becoming what is called the face that appears in the moon; while her spirit, mingled with the air, shall be for ever borne onward in voices of presage and portent; and since from her body, transformed within the earth, grass and herbage shall spring, on this shall pasture the creatures reared for the holy sacrifice, and they shall acquire all manner of colours and forms and qualities upon their inward parts, from which shall come for men prognostications of the future.

Boëthus even more plainly showed his derision.

The foreign visitor remarked that even if these matters appear to be fables, yet the prophecies have witnesses to testify for them in the numerous desolations and migrations of Grecian cities, the numerous descents of barbarian hordes, and the overthrow of empires. And these recent and unusual occurrences

near Cumae and Dicaearcheia,[*](Cf.Moralia, 566 e; this is, of course, the famous eruption of Vesuvius in a.d. 79, which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. Dicaearcheia is the Latin Puteoli (Pozzuoli).) were they not recited long ago in the songs of the Sibyl? and has not Time, as if in her debt, duly discharged the obligation in the bursting forth of fires from the mountain, boiling seas, blazing rocks tossed aloft by the wind, and the destruction of such great and noble cities that those who came there by daylight felt ignorance and uncertainty as to where these had been situated, since the land was in such confusion? Such things, if they have come to pass, it is hard to believe, to say nothing of foretelling them, without divine inspiration.

Thereupon Boëthus said, My good sir, what kind of an occurrence can there be that is not a debt owed by Time to Nature? What is there strange and unexpected round about land or sea or cities or men which one might foretell and not find it come to pass? Yet this is not precisely foretelling, but telling; or rather it is a throwing and scattering of words without foundation into the infinite; and oftentimes Chance encounters them in their wanderings and accidentally falls into accord with them. As a matter of fact, the coming to pass of something that has been told is a different matter, I think, from the telling of something that will come to pass. For the pronouncement, telling of things non-existent, contains error in itself, and it is not equitable for it to await the confirmation that comes through accidental circumstances; nor can it use as a true proof of having foretold with knowledge the fact that the thing came about after the telling thereof, since Infinity brings all things to pass. Much more - is it true that the good

guesser, whom the proverb has proclaimed the best prophet,[*](The reference is to a much quoted line of Euripides which will be found in 432 c, infra: bene qui coniciet, vatem hunc perhibeto optimum, as Cicero translates it, De Div. ii. 5 (12). See Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Euripides, no. 973; and Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. 65, Menander, no. 225.) is like unto a man who searches the ground over, and tries to track the future by means of reasonable probabilities.

These prophets of the type of the Sibyl and Bacis toss forth and scatter into the gulf of time, as into the ocean depths with no chart to guide them, words and phrases at haphazard, which deal with events and occurrences of all sorts; and although some come to pass for them as the result of chance, what is said at the present time is equally a lie, even if later it becomes true in the event that such a thing does happen.