De Defectu Oraculorum

As an illustration of this subject, Xenocrates, the companion of Plato, employed the order of the triangles; the equilateral he compared to the nature of the gods, the scalene to that of man, and the isosceles to that of the demigods; for the first is equal in all its lines, the second unequal in all, and the third is partly equal and partly unequal, like the nature of the demigods, which has human emotions and godlike power. Nature has placed within our ken perceptible images and visible likenesses, the sun and the stars for the gods, and for mortal men beams of light,[*](All last night the northern streamers flashed across the western sky.) comets, and meteors, a comparison which Euripides[*](Cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 674, Euripides, no 971. Plutarch quotes the lines again in Moralia, 1090 c.) has made in the verses:

1. He that but yesterday was vigorous
2. Of frame, even as a star from heaven falls,
3. Gave up in death his spirit to the air.

But there is a body with complex characteristics which actually parallels the demigods, namely the moon; and when men see that she, by her being consistently in accord with the cycles through which those beings pass,[*](Cf.Moralia, 361 c, and the lines of Empedocles there quoted.) is subject to apparent wanings and waxings and transformations,some call her an earth-like star, others a star-like earth,[*](Ibid. 935 c.) and others the domain of Hecate, who belongs both to the earth and to the heavens. Now if the air that is between the earth and the moon were to be removed and withdrawn, the unity and consociation of the universe would be destroyed, since there would be an empty and unconnected space in the middle; and in just the same way those who refuse to leave us the race of demigods make the relations of gods and men remote and alien by doing away with the interpretative and ministering nature, as Plato[*](Cf.Republic, 260 d, and Symposium, 202 e.) has called it; or else they force us to a disorderly confusion of all things, in which we bring the god into men’s emotions and activities, drawing him down to our needs, as the women of Thessaly are said to draw down the moon.[*](Cf. the note on 400 b supra.) This cunning deceit of theirs, however, gained credence among women when the daughter of Hegetor, Aglaonicê, who was skilled in astronomy, always pretended at the time of an eclipse of the moon that she was bewitching it and bringing it down.[*](Cf.Moralia, 145 c.) But as for us, let us not listen to any who say that there are some oracles not divinely inspired, or religious ceremonies and mystic rites which are disregarded by the gods; and on the other hand let us not imagine that the god goes in and out and is present at these ceremonies and helps in conducting them; but let us commit these matters to those ministers of the gods to whom it is right to commit them, as to servants and clerks, and let us believe that demigods are guardians of sacred rites of the gods and prompters in the Mysteries, while others go about as avengers of arrogant and grievous cases of injustice. Still others Hesiod[*](Works and Days, 123, 126; cf. also Moralia, 361 b, supra.) has very impressively addressed as

1. Holy
2. Givers of wealth, and possessing in this a meed that is kingly,

implying that doing good to people is kingly. For as among men, so also among the demigods., there are different degrees of excellence, and in some there is a weak and dim remainder of the emotional and irrational, a survival, as it were, while in others this is excessive and hard to stifle. Of all these things there are, in many places, sacrifices, ceremonies, andlegends which preserve and jealously guard vestiges and tokens embodied here and there in their fabric.