De Defectu Oraculorum

Yes, said Cleombrotus, I hear this from many persons, and I observe that the Stoic Conflagration, just as it feeds on the verses of Heracleitus and Orpheus, is also seizing upon those of Hesiod. But I cannot brook this talk of universal destruction; and such impossibilities, in recalling to our minds these utterances, especially those about the crow and the stag, must be allowed to revert upon those that indulge in such exaggeration. Does not a year include within itself the beginning and the end of all things which the Seasons and the Earth make grow, [*](Cf. Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 97, Heracleitus, no. b 100.) and is it not foreign to men’s ways to

call it a generation? As a matter of fact you yourselves surely agree that Hesiod by the word generation means a man’s life. Is not that so?

Yes, said Demetrius.

And this fact also is clear, said Cleombrotus, that often the measure and the things measured are called by the same name, as, for example, gill, quart, gallon, and bushel.[*](Cf. Censorinus, De die natali ad Iu. Caerellium, xviii. 11, and Geffcken in Hermes, xlix. 336.) In the same way, then, in which we call unity a number, being, as it is, the smallest number and the first; so the year, which we use as the first measure of man’s life, Hesiod has called by the same name as the thing measured, a generation. The fact is that the numbers which those other persons produce have none of those notable and conspicuous qualities which may be inherent in numbers. The number nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty[*](Cf. 415 d, supra.) has been produced by adding together the first four numbers and multiplying them by four,[*]((1 + 2 + 3 + 4) x 4 = 40.) or by multiplying four by ten. Either process gives forty, and when this is multiplied five times by three it gives the specified number.[*](40 x 35 = 9720.) But concerning these matters there is no need for us to disagree with Demetrius. In fact, even if the period of time in which the soul of the demigod or hero changes its life[*](Cf. 415 b, supra.) be longer or shorter, determinate or indeterminate, none the less the proof will be there on the basis which he desires, fortified by clear testimony from ancient times, that in the confines, as it were, between gods and men there exist certain natures susceptible to

human emotions and involuntary changes, whom it is right that we, like our fathers before us, should regard as demigods, and, calling them by that name, should reverence them.