De Defectu Oraculorum

As for the various tales of rapine and wanderings of the gods, their concealments and banishment and servitude, which men rehearse in legend and in song, all these are, in fact, not things that were done to the gods or happened to them, but to the demigods; and they are kept in memory because of the virtues and power of these beings; nor did Aeschylus[*](Aeschylus, Supplices, 214.) speak devoutly when he said

Holy Apollo, god from heaven banned;

nor Admetus in Sophocles,[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 311, Sophocles, no. 767 (no. 851 Pearson).)

My cock it was that sent him to the mill.

But the greatest error in regard to the truth is that of the theologians of Delphi who think that the god once had a battle here with a serpent for the possession of the oracle, and they permit poets and prose-writers to tell of this in their competitions in the theatres, whereby they bear specific testimony against the most sacred of the rites that they perform.

At this Philip the historian, who was present, expressed surprise, and inquired against what hallowed rites Cleombrotus thought that the competition bore testimony. These, said Cleombrotus, which have to do with the oracle here, and in which the city recently initiated all the Greeks west of Thermopylae and extended the rites as far as Tempê. For the structure which is erected here near the threshing-floor[*](At the right of the second section of the sacred way, as one progresses upwards toward the temple of Apollo.) every eight years[*](See Moralia, 293 b-e.) is not a nest-like serpent’s den, but a copy of the dwelling of a despot or king.[*](That is, a copy of the primitive circular house.) The onset upon it, which is made in silence through the way called Dolon’s Way, by which the Labyadae with lighted torches conduct the boy, who must have two parents living, and, after, applying fire to the structure and upsetting the table, flee through the doors of the temple without looking back; and finally the wanderings and servitude of the boy and the purifications that take place at Tempê — all prompt a suspicion of some great and unholy deed of daring. For it is utterly ridiculous, my good friend, that Apollo, after slaying a brute creature, should flee to the ends of Greece in quest of purification and, after arriving there, should offer some libations and perform those ceremonies which men perform in the effort to placate and mollify the wrath of spirits whom

men call the unforgetting avengers, as if they followed up the memories of some unforgotten foul deeds of earlier days. And as for the story which I have heard before about this flight and the removal to another place, it is dreadfully strange and paradoxical, but if it has any vestige of truth in it, let us not imagine that what was done in those days about the oracle was any slight or common affair. But that I may not seem to be doing what is described by Empedocles[*](Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 235, Empedocles, no. b 24.) as

1. Putting the heads of myths together,
2. Bringing no single path to perfection,

permit me to add to what was said at the outset the proper conclusion, for we have already come to it. Let this statement be ventured by us, following the lead of many others before us, that coincidently with the total defection of the guardian spirits assigned to the oracles and prophetic shrines, occurs the defection of the oracles themselves; and when the spirits flee or go to another place, the oracles themselves lose their power, but when the spirits return many years later, the oracles, like musical instruments, become articulate, since those who can put them to use are present and in charge of them.