De Defectu Oraculorum

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. IV. Goodwin, William W., editor; Midgley, Robert translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

To which purpose Xenocrates, one of the familiar friends of Plato, was wont to allege the example of triangles, which agree very well with the subject; for that triangle which has equal sides and equal angles he compared unto the divine and immortal nature; and that which has all three unequal, to the human and mortal nature; and that which has two equal and one unequal, to the nature of Daemons, which is endued with the passions and perturbations of the mortal nature, and the force and power of the divine. Even Nature has set before us sensible figures and resemblance of this; of the Gods, the sun and the stars; of mortal men, the comets, flashings in the night, and shooting-stars. And this similitude is taken up by Euripides, when he saith:

He that but now was fleshy, plump, and gay,
As a fall’n star his glories melt away;
Like that extinguished on the ground he lies,
Breathing his soul into the ambient skies.

And for a mixed body representing the nature of Daemons, we have the moon; which some, observing it to be subject to increase and decrease and wholly to disappear, have thought very agreeable to the mutable condition of Daemons; and for this reason they have termed her a terrestrial star, others Olympic earth, and others the inheritance and possession of Hecate, both heavenly and earthly. As one

then that should take from the world the air, and remove it from between the moon and the earth, would dissolve the continuation and composition of the universe, by leaving an empty place in the midst, without any contexture to hold the two parts together; so those that do not allow Daemons oppose all communication and conference of the Gods with men, seeing they destroy that nature (as Plato says) which serves as an interpreter and messenger between them both; or else they constrain us to perplex and confound all things together, by mixing the divine nature with human passions, and plucking it down from heaven, as the women of Thessaly are said to do the moon. Even this fiction has met with belief in some women, because Aglaonice, the daughter of Hegetor, being skilful in astrology, made the vulgar believe, whenever the moon was eclipsed, that by means of some charms and enchantments she brought it down from heaven. But as to us, let us not think there are any oracles or divinations without some divinity, or that the Gods are not pleased with sacrifices, and our services, and other ceremonies. And, on the other hand, let us not think that God is present in them, or employs himself personally about them; but rather believe that he does commit them to his officers, the Daemons, who are the spies and scouts of the Gods, wandering and circuiting about at their commands,—some beholding and ordering the sacred ceremonies and oblations offered to the Gods, others being employed to revenge and punish the high misdemeanors and enormous injustices of men. There are, moreover, others, to whom Hesiod gives a very venerable name, calling them the distributers of riches and donors of largesses among mortals; for the Gods have allowed them the privilege, and granted them a royal commission to see them duly distributed. He informs us here, by the way, that to be beneficent and liberal of favors is the proper office of a king. For there is a difference of

virtue between these Daemons, as much as between men. For there are some of them in whom still there are some small remains (though weak and scarcely discernible) of the sensitive and irrational soul, which, like a small quantity of excrements and superfluities, stay still behind. Others there are, in whom there abideth a greater measure of these gross humors, the marks and traces of which are to be seen in many places, in the odd and singular ceremonies and sacrifices and the strange fables which prevail.

As to the mysteries and secret ceremonies, by which we may more clearly than by any other means understand the nature of Daemons, let me keep a religious silence, as Herodotus says. But as to the certain feasts and direful sacrifices which are held as unfortunate and mournful days, and are celebrated by eating raw flesh and tearing the skin with the nails, or days wherein they fast and smite their breasts, and in several places utter filthy and dishonest words during the sacrifices,

Wagging their heads in frantic wise,
With strange alarms and hideous cries,—

I will never think these done on any of the Gods’ account, but rather to avert, mollify, and appease the wrath and fury of some bad Daemons. For it is not likely there ever was a God that expected or required men to be sacrificed to him, as has been anciently done, or who received such kind of sacrifices with approbation. Neither must we imagine it was for nothing, that kings and great men have delivered their own children to be sacrificed, or that they sacrificed them themselves with their own hands; but they intended hereby to avert and appease the malice and rancor of some evil spirits, or to satisfy the violent and raging lusts of some, who either could not or would not enjoy them with their bodies or by their bodies. Even as Hercules besieged the city of Oechalia for a wench that

was therein, so these powerful and tyrannical Daemons, requiring some human soul which is still compassed with a body, and yet not being able to satisfy their lust by the body, do therefore bring the plague and famine into towns, raise wars and seditions, till such time as they obtain and enjoy that which they love. Others, on the contrary (as I remember I observed in Crete, for I was some considerable time there) celebrate a feast in which they show the figure of a man without a head, calling it Molus, the father of Meriones, who, having violently laid hands on the Nymph, was afterwards found without a head.

The rapes committed on boys or girls, the long voyages, flights, banishments, and voluntary services of the Gods, which are sung by the poets, are passions fitting to be attributed not to Gods, but to Daemons, whose fortunes were recorded in memorial of their virtue and power. Neither is Aeschylus in the right, when he says,

Divine Apollo banished from the sky;

nor Admetus in Sophocles, saying of a God,

My cock by crowing led him to the mill.

The divines of Delphi were far from the truth when they asserted that there was a combat between Apollo and a Dragon about the possession of this oracle. No less are they to blame who suffer the poets or orators in the open theatres to act or speak of such matters; whereby they seem to condemn those things which themselves perform in their sacred solemnities. Philippus (for this man was an historian, and then present in the company), wondering at what was last said, enquired what divine solemnities they contradicted and condemned who contended one against another in the theatres. Even those, quoth Cleombrotus, which concern the oracle of Delphi, by which this city has lately admitted into these ceremonies and sacrifices all the Greeks without Thermopylae, including those

that dwell as far as the vale of Tempe. For the tabernacle or hut, which is set up every ninth year within the court-yard of this temple, is not a representation of the Dragon’s den, but of some king or tyrant; as likewise the assaulting of it in great silence, by the way termed Dolonia, in which they lead hither a youth whose father and mother are still living, with torches burning; and having set this tabernacle on fire and overthrown the table, they run away as fast as they are able through the doors of the temple, never looking behind them. In fine, this boy’s wanderings, together with his servile offices, and all the expiatory sacrifices about Tempe, seem to declare the commission of some horrid crime in this place. For it looks silly to affirm that Apollo, for having killed the Dragon, was forced to fly to the farthest parts of Greece to be cleansed and purified; and that he there made certain offerings and libations, as men do when they design the appeasing those vindictive spirits whom we call Alastores and Palamnaei, which is to say, the revengers of such crimes as cannot be forgotten but must have punishment. It is true, indeed, that the relation which I have heard touching this flight is very strange and wonderful; but if there be any truth in it, we must not suppose it was an ordinary and common matter which happened then about this oracle. Yet lest I should be thought, as Empedocles says,

Starting new heads, to wander from the text,
And make the theme we have in hand perplext,

I entreat you to let me put a fit conclusion to my discourse (for now the time requires it), and to say what several have said before me, that when the Daemons who are appointed for the government and superintendency of oracles do fail, the oracles must of necessity fail too; and when they depart elsewhere, the divining powers must likewise cease in those places; but when they return again, after a long

time, the places will begin again to speak, like musical instruments handled by those that know how to use them.

Cleombrotus having said thus much, Heracleon took up the discourse, saying: We have never an infidel among us, but are all agreed in our opinions touching the Gods; yet let us have a care, Philippus, lest in the heat and multiplicity of our words we unawares broach some false doctrine that may tend to impiety. Well! but, saith Philippus, I hope Cleombrotus has not said any thing which may occasion this caution. His asserting (says Heracleon) that they be not the Gods who preside over the oracles (because we are to suppose them free from all worldly care), but Daemons, or the Gods’ officers or messengers, does not scandalize me; but to attribute to these Daemons all the calamities, vexations, and plagues which happen to mortal men,—snatching these violently (we may almost say) from the verses of Empedocles,— and in the end to make them to die like them, this, in my mind, savors of bold presumption. Cleombrotus, having asked Philippus who this young man was, and being informed of his name and country, proceeded in this manner: I know very well, Heracleon, that the discourse I used may bear an absurd construction; but there is no speaking of great matters without laying first great foundations for the proof of one’s opinion. But, as for your part, you are not sensible how you contradict even that which you allow; for granting, as you do, that there be Demons, but not allowing them to be vicious and mortal, you cannot prove there are any at all. For wherein do they differ from Gods, supposing they be incorruptible and impassible and not liable to error?