De Defectu Oraculorum
Plutarch
Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. V. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1936 (printing).
Souls therefore, all possessed of this power, which is innate but dim and hardly manifest, nevertheless oftentimes disclose its flower and radiance in
The best of seers is he that guesses well;no, the best of seers is the intelligent man, following the guidance of that in his soul which possesses sense and which, with the help of reasonable probability, leads him on his way. But that which foretells the future, like a tablet without writing, is both irrational and indeterminate in itself, but receptive of impressions and presentiments through what may be done to it, and inconsequently grasps at the future when it is farthest withdrawn from the present. Its withdrawal is brought about by a temperament and disposition of the body as it is subjected to a change which we call inspiration. Often the body of itself alone attains this disposition. Moreover the earth sends forth for men streams of many other potencies, some of them producing derangements, diseases, or deaths; others helpful, benignant, and beneficial, as is plain from the experience of persons who have come upon them. But the prophetic current and breath is most divine and holy, whether it issue by itself through the air or come in the company of running waters; for when it is instilled into the body, it creates in souls an unaccustomed and unusual temperament, the peculiarity of which it is hard to describe with exactness, but analogy offers many comparisons. It is likely that by warmth and diffusion it opens up certain passages through which impressions of the future are transmitted, just as wine, when its fumes rise to the head, reveals many unusual movements and also words stored away and unperceived.
according to Euripides,[*](Bacchae, 298.) when the soul becomes hot and fiery, and throw’s aside the caution that human intelligence lays upon it, and thus often diverts and extinguishes the inspiration.
- For Bacchic rout
- And frenzied mind contain much prophecy,
At the same time one might assert, not without reason, that a dryness engendered with the heat subtilizes the spirit of prophecy and renders it ethereal and pure; for this is the dry soul, as Heracleitus has it.[*](A dry soul is best (and/or wisest) is the dictum of Heracleitus, which is often quoted; see Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 100, Heracleitus, no. b 118; Cf. also Moralia, 995 e, and Life of Romulus, chap. xxviii. (36 a).) Moisture not only dulls sight and hearing, but when it touches mirrors and combines with air, it takes away their brightness and sheen.[*](Cf. Plutarch, Moralia, 736 a-b.) But again the very opposite of this may not be impossible: that by a sort of chilling and compacting of the spirit of inspiration the prophetic element in the soul, as when steel is dipped in cold water, is rendered tense and keen. And further, just as tin
when alloyed with copper, which is loose and porous in texture, binds it together and compacts it,[*](Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, ii. 8 (747 a 34).) and at the same time makes it brighter and cleaner, even so there is nothing to prevent the prophetic vapour, which contains some affinity and relationship to souls, from filling up the vacant spaces and cementing all together by fitting itself in. For one thing has affinity and adaptability for one thing, another for another, just as the bean[*](Cf. H. Blümner, Gewerbe und Künste bei Griechen und Römern (Leipzig, 1875), i. 236.) seems to further the dyeing of purple and sodium carbonate[*](Ibid. 238.) that of scarlet, when mixed with the dye;All in the linen is blended the splendour of glorious scarlet,as Empedocles[*](Cf. Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 255, Empedocles, no. b 93.) has said. But regarding the Cydnus and the sacred sword of Apollo in Tarsus we used to hear you say, my dear Demetrius, that the Cydnus will cleanse no steel but that, and no other water will cleanse that sword. There is a similar phenomenon at Olympia, where they pile the ashes against the altar and make them adhere all around by pouring on them water from the Alpheius; but, although they have tried the waters of other rivers, there is none with which they can make the ashes cohere and stay fixed in their place.
It is not, therefore, anything to excite amazement if, although the earth sends up many streams, it is only such as these that dispose souls to inspiration and impressions of the future. Certainly the voice of legend also is in accord with my statement;
for they record that here the power hovering about this spot was first made manifest when a certain shepherd fell in by accident and later gave forth inspired utterances, which those who came into contact with him at first treated with disdain; but later, when what he had foretold came to pass, they were amazed. The most learned of the people of Delphi still preserve the tradition of his name, which they say was Coretas. But I incline most to the opinion that the soul acquires towards the prophetic spirit a close and intimate connexion of the sort that vision has towards light, which possesses similar properties. For, although the eye has the power of vision, there is no function for it to perform without light[*](See 436 d, infra, and Plato, Republic, 508 a - 509 b.); and so the prophetic power of the soul, like an eye, has need of something kindred to help to kindle it and stimulate it further. Hence many among earlier generations regarded Apollo and the Sun as one and the same god; but those who understood and respected fair and wise analogy conjectured that as body is to soul, vision to intellect, and light to truth, so is the power of the sun to the nature of Apollo; and they would make it appear that the sun is his offspring and progeny, being for ever born of him that is for ever. For the sun kindles and promotes and helps to keep in activity the power of vision in our perceptive senses, just as the god does for the power of prophecy in the soul.Those, however, who had reached the conclusion that the two are one and the same god very naturally dedicated the oracle to Apollo and Earth in common, thinking that the sun creates the disposition and temperament in the earth from which the prophet-inspiring
vapours are wafted forth. As Hesiod,[*](Theogony, 117.) then, with a better understanding than some philosophers, spoke of the Earth itself asOf All the unshaken foundation,so we believe it to be everlasting and imperishable. But in the case of the powers associated with the earth it is reasonable that there should come to pass disappearances in one place and generation in another place, and elsewrhere shifting of location and, from some other source, changes in current,[*](Cf. 432 e, supra.) and that such cycles should complete many revolutions within it in the whole course of time, as we may judge from what happens before our eyes. For in the case of lakes and rivers, and even more frequently in hot springs, there have occurred disappearances and complete extinction in some places, and in others a stealing away, as it were, and sinking under ground[*](A not uncommon phenomenon in Greece; cf. Moralia, 557 e.); later they came back, appearing after a time in the same places or flowing out from below somewhere near. We know also of the exhaustion of mines, some of which have given out recently, as for example the silver mines of Attica and the copper ore in Euboea from which the cold-forged sword-blades used to be wrought, as Aeschylus[*](Cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 107, Aeschylus, no. 356. The hardness and temper of cold-forged copper is well attested.) has said,
Euboean sword, self-sharpened, in his hand.And it is no long time since the rock in Euboea ceased to yield, among its other products, soft petrous filaments like yarn.[*](An interesting early notice of the use of asbestos.) I think some of you have seen towels, nets, and women’s head-coverings from there, which cannot be burned by fire; but if any become soiled by use, their owners throw them into a blazing fire and take them out bright and clear. To-day all this has disappeared, and there are scarcely any attenuated fibres or hairs, as it were, running through the mines.
And yet the school of Aristotle[*](Cf. Aristotle, Meteorologica, i. 3 (340 b 29); Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 19 (38); ii. 57 (117).) would make it appear that exhalation is the author of all these changes that have taken place in the earth, and that things of this nature must of necessity follow with it in disappearing, changing their locality, and bursting forth once more in full vigour. Plainly the same sober opinion is to be held regarding the spirits that inspire prophecy; the power that they possess is not everlasting and ageless, but is subject to changes. For excessive rains most likely extinguish them, and they probably are dispersed by thunderbolts, and especially, when the earth is shaken beneath by an earthquake and suffers subsidence and ruinous confusion in its depths, the exhalations shift their site or find completely blind outlets, as in this place they say that there are still traces of that great earthquake which overthrew the city. And in Orchomenos they relate that a pestilence raged and many persons died of it, and the oracle of Teiresias become altogether obsolescent and even to this day remains idle and mute. And if a like fate has befallen those in Cilicia, as we have been told, there is nobody, Demetrius, who could give us more certain information than you.
I do not know, said Demetrius, the state of affairs there at present; for as you all know, I have been out of the country for a long time now. But, when I was there, both the oracle of Mopsus and that of Amphilochus were still flourishing. I have a most amazing thing to tell as the result of my visit to the oracle of Mopsus. The ruler of Cilicia was himself still of two minds towards religious matters. This, I think, was because his scepticism lacked conviction, for in all else he was an arrogant and contemptible man. Since he kept about him certain Epicureans, who, because of their admirable naturestudies, forsooth, have an arrogant contempt, as they themselves aver,[*](Frag. 395 Usener; Diogenes Laertius, x. 135.) for all such things as oracles, he sent in a freedman, like a spy into the enemy’s territory, arranging that he should have a sealed tablet, on the inside of which was written the inquiry without anyone’s knowing what it was. The man accordingly, as is the custom, passed the night in the sacred precinct and went to sleep, and in the morning reported a dream in this fashion: it seemed to him that a handsome man stood beside him who uttered just one word Black and nothing more, and was gone immediately. The thing seemed passing strange to us, and raised much inquiry, but the ruler was astounded and fell down and worshipped; then opening the tablet he showed written there the question: Shall I sacrifice to you a white bull or a black? The result was that the Epicureans were put to confusion, and the ruler himself not only duly performed the sacrifice, but ever after revered Mopsus.
When Demetrius had told this tale he lapsed into silence. But I, wishing to crown, as it were,
the discussion, glanced again towards Philip and Ammonius who were sitting side by side. They seemed to me to be desirous of saying something to us, and again I checked myself. Then Ammonius said, Philip also has some remarks to make, Lamprias, about what has been said; for he himself thinks, as most people do, that Apollo is not a different god, but is the same as the sun.[*](Cf. 376 b, supra, and 1130 a, for example.) But my difficulty is greater and concerns greater matters. I do not know how it happened, but a little time ago we yielded to logic in wresting the prophetic art from the gods and transferring it merely to the demigods. But now it seems to me that we are thrusting out these very demigods, in their turn, and driving them away from the oracle and the tripod here, when we resolve the origin of prophecy, or rather its very being and power, into winds and vapours and exhalations. For these temperings and heatings and hardenings that have been spoken of serve only the more to withdraw repute from the gods and suggest in regard to the final cause some such conclusion as Euripides[*](Euripides, Cyclops, 332-333.) makes his Cyclops employ:But there is one difference: he says that he does not offer them in sacrifice to the gods, but to himself and to his belly, greatest of divinities, whereas we offer both sacrifices and prayers as the price for our oracles. What possesses us to do so, if our souls carry within themselves the prophetic power, and it is some particular state of the air or its currents which stirs this to activity? And what is the significance of the libations poured over the victims and the refusal to give responses unless the whole victim from the hoofjoints up is seized with a trembling and quivering, as the libation is poured over it? Shaking the head is not enough, as in other sacrifices, but the tossing and quivering must extend to all parts of the animal alike accompanied by a tremulous sound; and unless this takes place they say that the oracle is not functioning, and do not even bring in the prophetic priestess. Yet it is only on the assumption that they ascribe the cause almost entirely to a god or a demigod that it is reasonable for them to act and to believe thus; but on the basis of what you say it is not reasonable. For the presence of the exhalation, whether the victim be excited or not, will produce the inspiration and will dispose the soul auspiciously, not only the soul of the priestess, but that of any ordinary person with whom it may come into contact. Wherefore it is silly to employ one woman alone for the purpose of the oracles and to give her trouble by watching her to keep her pure and chaste all her life. As a matter of fact, this Coretas, who the people of Delphi say was the first, because he fell in, to supply any means of knowing about the power with which the place is endowed, was not, I think, any different from the rest of the goatherds and shepherds, if so be that this is not a fable or a fabrication as I, for one, think it is. When I take into account the number of benefactions to the Greeks for which this oracle has been responsible, both in wars and in the founding of cities, in cases of pestilence and failure of crops, I think it is a dreadful thing to assign its discovery and origin, not to God and Providence, but to chance and accident. But regarding these matters, he added, I wish that Lamprias would say something to us. Will you wait?
- The earth perforce, whether it will or no,
- Brings forth the grass to fat my grazing flocks.
Certainly I will, said Philip, and so will all who are here. For what you have said has set us all thinking.
Then I, addressing myself to him, said, Not only has it set me thinking, Philip, but it has filled me with confusion, if, in the presence of so many men such as you all are, I seem, in contradiction to my years, to give myself airs over the plausibility of my argument and to upset or disturb any of the beliefs regarding the Deity which have been conceived in truth and in piety. I shall defend myself by citing Plato as my witness and advocate in one. That philosopher[*](Plato, Phaedo, 97 b-c.) found fault with Anaxagoras, the one of early times, because he was too much wrapped up in the physical causes and was always following up and pursuing the law of necessity as it was worked out in the behaviour of bodies, and left out of account the purpose and the agent, which are better causes and origins. Plato himself was the first of the philosophers, or the one most prominently engaged in prosecuting investigations of both sorts, to assign to God, on the one hand, the origin of all things that are in keeping with reason, and on the other hand, not to divest matter of the causes necessary for whatever comes into being, but to realize that the perceptible universe, even when arranged in some such orderly way as this, is not pure and unalloyed, but that it takes its origin from matter when matter comes into conjunction with reason. Observe first how it is with the artists. Take as our first example the far-famed stand and base for the mixing-bowl here which
Herodotus[*](The stand, dedicated by Alyattes (king of Lydia from 617 to 560 b.c.), was of wrought iron and welded together, not riveted. Cf. Herodotus, i. 25; Pausanias, x. 16. 1. Of interest also in this connexion is the dedication recorded in the Sigeum inscription. C.I.G. i. 8, or Roberts, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, no. 42 (p. 78).) has styled the bowl-holder; it came to have as its material causes fire and steel and softening by means of fire and tempering by means of water, without which there is no expedient by which this work could be produced; but art and reason supplied for it the more dominant principle which set all these in motion and operated through them. And, indeed, the author and creator of these likenesses and portraits here stands recorded in the inscription[*](Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. iii. p. 502, Simonides, no. 160; or Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, ii. p. 399 (L.C.L.). Cf. also Pausanias, x. 25. 1.):so that it may be seen that he painted them. But without pigments ground together, losing their own colour in the process, nothing could achieve such a composition and sight. Does he, then, who is desirous of getting hold of the material cause, as he investigates and explains the behaviour of the red earth of Sinopê and the changes to which it is subject when mixed with yellow ochre, or of the light-coloured earth of Melos when mixed with lamp-black, take away the repute of the artist? And he that goes into the details of the hardening and the softening of steel, how it is relaxed by the fire, and becomes pliant and yielding for those who forge and fashion it, and then, plunged anew into clear water, is contracted and compacted by the coldness because of the softness and looseness of texture previously engendered by the fire, and acquires a tenseness and firmness which Homer[*](Od. ix. 393.) has called the brawn of steel — does such an investigator any the less preserve intact for the artist the credit for the creation of the work? I think not. In fact there are some who question the properties of medicinal agents, but they do not do away with medical science. And thus when Plato[*](Cf. 433 d, supra, and Plato, Republic, 507 c-d, and 508 d.) declared that we see by the commingling of the irradiation from our eyes with the light of the sun, and that we hear by the vibration of the air, he certainly did not mean by this to abrogate the fundamenta! fact that it is according to the design of Reason and Providence that we have been endowed with sight and hearing.
- Thasian by race and descent, Aglaophon’s son Polygnotus
- Painted the taking of Troy, showing her citadel’s sack;
To sum up, then: while every form of creation has, as I say, two causes, the very earliest theological writers and poets chose to heed only the superior one, uttering over all things that come to pass this common generality:
Zeus the beginning, Zeus in the midst, and from Zeus comes all being[*](Orphic Frag. vi. 10 (21 a, 2); cf. Mullach, Frag. Phil. Graec. i. p. 169. 11.);but as yet they made no approach towards the compelling and natural causes. On the other hand the younger generation which followed them, and are called physicists or natural philosophers, reverse the procedure of the older school in their aberration from the beautiful and divine origin, and ascribe everything to bodies and their behaviour, to clashes, transmutations, and combinations. Hence the reasoning of both parties is deficient in what is essential to it, since the one ignores or omits the intermediary and the agent, the other the source and the means. He who was the first to comprehend clearly both these points and to take, as a necessary adjunct to the agent that creates and actuates, the underlying matter, which is acted upon, clears us also of all suspicion of wilful misstatement. The fact is that we do not make the prophetic art godless or irrational when we assign to it as its material the soul of a human being, and assign the spirit of inspiration and the exhalation as an instrument or plectrum for playing on it. For, in the first place, the earth, which generates the exhalation, and the sun, which endows the earth with all its power of tempering and transmutation, are, by the usage of our fathers, gods for us. Secondly, if we leave demigods as overseers, watchmen, and guardians of this tempered constitution, as if it were a kind of harmony, slackening here and tightening there on occasion, taking from it its too distracting and disturbing elements and incorporating those that are painless and harmless to the users, we shall not appear to be doing anything irrational or impossible.
Nor again, in offering the preliminary sacrifice to learn the god’s will and in putting garlands on victims or pouring libations over them, are we doing anything to contradict this reasoning. For when the priests and holy men say that they are offering sacrifice and pouring the libation over the victim and observing its movements and its trembling, of what else do they take this to be a sign save that the god is in his holy temple? For what is to be offered in sacrifice must, both in body and in soul, be pure, unblemished, and unmarred. Indications regarding the body it is not at all difficult to perceive, but they
test the soul by setting meal before the bulls and peas before the boars; and the animal that does not eat of this they think is not of sound mind. In the case of the goat, they say, cold water gives positive proof; for indifference and immobility against being suddenly wet is not characteristic of a soul in a normal state. But for my part, even if it be firmly established that the trembling is a sign of the god’s being in his holy temple and the contrary a sign of his not being there, I cannot see what difficulty in my statements results therefrom. For every faculty duly performs its natural functions better or worse concurrently with some particular time; and if that time escapes our ken, it is only reasonable that the god should give signs of it.I think, then, that the exhalation is not in the same state all the time, but that it has recurrent periods of weakness and strength. Of the proof on which I depend I have as witnesses many foreigners and all the officials and servants at the shrine. It is a fact that the room in which they seat those who would consult the god is filled, not frequently or with any regularity, but as it may chance from time to time, with a delightful fragrance coming on a current of air which bears it towards the worshippers, as if its source were in the holy of holies; and it is like the odour which the most exquisite and costly perfumes send forth. It is likely that this efflorescence is produced by warmth or some other force engendered there. If this does not seem credible, you will at least all agree that the prophetic priestess herself is subjected to differing influences, varying from time to time, which affect that, part of her soul with which the spirit of inspiration comes into association, and that she
Whenever, then, the imaginative and prophetic faculty is in a state of proper adjustment for attempering itself to the spirit as to a drug, inspiration in those who foretell the future is bound to come; and whenever the conditions are not thus, it is bound not to come, or when it does come to be misleading, abnormal, and confusing, as we know in the case of the priestess who died not so long ago. As it happened, a deputation from abroad had arrhed to consult the oracle. The victim, it is said, remained unmoved and unaffected in any way by the first libations; but the priests, in their eagerness to please, went far beyond their wonted usage, and only after the victim had been subjected to a deluge and nearly drowned did it at last give in. What, then, was the result touching the priestess? She went down into the oracle unwillingly, they say, and halfheartedly; and at her first responses it was at once plain from the harshness of her voice that she was not responding properly; she was like a labouring ship and was filled with a mighty and baleful spirit. Finally she became hysterical and with a frightful shriek rushed towards the exit and threw herself down, with the result that not only the members of the deputation fled, but also the oracle-interpreter Nicander and those holy men that were present. However, after a little, they went in and took her up, still conscious; and she lived on for a few days.
It is for these reasons that they guard the chastity of the priestess, and keep her life free from all
association and contact with strangers, and take the omens before the oracle, thinking that it is clear to the god when she has the temperament and disposition suitable to submit to the inspiration without harm to herself. The power of the spirit does not affect all persons nor the same persons always in the same way, but it only supplies an enkindling and an inception, as has been said, for them that are in a proper state to be affected and to undergo the change. The power comes from the gods and demigods, but, for all that, it is not unfailing nor imperishable nor ageless, lasting into that infinite time by which all things between earth and moon become wearied out, according to our reasoning. And there are some who assert that the things above the moon also do not. abide, but give out as they confront the everlasting and infinite, and undergo continual transmutations and rebirths.These matters, I added, I urge upon you for your frequent consideration, as well as my own, in the belief that they contain much to which objections might be made, and many suggestions looking to a contrary conclusion, all of which the present occasion does not allow us to follow out. So let them be postponed until another time, and likewise the question which Philip raises about the Sun and Apollo.