Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Some say, Terentius Priscus, that two eagles—or, as others tell it, two swans—flying from the outer limits of the earth toward the center, met each other at Pytho, at the place called the navel of the earth; and that later Epimenides of Phaestus, testing the myth before the god and receiving an obscure and ambiguous oracle, reported it thus: "For there was no navel of the earth, nor of the sea; and if there is one, it is manifest to the gods but invisible to mortals." The god, then, fittingly punished that man for trying to test, by touch, as it were, an old myth like a painted image.
Shortly before the Pythian games held under Callistratus, two holy men happened to come together at Delphi from opposite ends of the inhabited world: Demetrius the grammarian, on his way home from Britain to Tarsus, and Cleombrotus of Lacedaemon, who had wandered widely in Egypt and around the Trogodyte country, and had sailed far up the Red Sea—not for trade, but as a man fond of seeing and learning things. He had a sufficient fortune, and did not think it worth much to have more than sufficient, so he devoted his leisure to such pursuits, and was gathering material for a work he called theology, as though it were the raw material of philosophy brought to its completion.
Having recently been to the shrine of Ammon, he showed that he was not greatly impressed by most things there, but he related, as worthy of serious attention, an account told by the priests concerning the inextinguishable lamp: that it consumed less oil each year, and that the priests took this as proof of an irregularity in the length of years, each successive year being shorter in time than the one before—for it stood to reason that in a shorter time the amount consumed would be less. Those present were amazed, and Demetrius said it was ridiculous to hunt after such great conclusions from such small facts—not, in Alcaeus's phrase, judging "the lion from its claw," but from a wick and a lamp overturning virtually the whole heavens and utterly destroying the science of mathematics.
Cleombrotus replied, "None of this will trouble the men in question; they will not yield in precision to the mathematicians. Indeed, it is more likely that time would elude the mathematicians in movements and cycles so vastly extended than that these priests, who continually attend to the measure of the oil because of the strangeness of the phenomenon, would be deceived by paying such close attention to it. To deny, Demetrius, that small signs can indicate great things is an obstacle to many arts. For this would mean depriving many proofs, and many predictions, of their validity. And yet you yourselves demonstrate no small thing when, having come across Homer naming a razor, you conclude that heroes shaved their bodies with a razor; or that they lent money at interest, because he says somewhere that a debt was owed, "not new nor small," taking "owed" to indicate "increased." Again, when he calls the night "swift," you eagerly seize upon the word and claim this very thing shows that he understood the earth's shadow to be conical, being cast by a spherical body.
As for medicine, does it not foretell a plague-ridden summer by an abundance of spiders' webs, and by fig leaves in spring when they become like a crow's foot? Who among those who insist that small signs cannot indicate great things will allow this? And who will tolerate the sun's magnitude being measured against a jug and a pint of water, or that the little wedge here, which forms an acute angle inclined to the plane, is said to be the measure of the elevation—that is, how far the ever-visible pole is raised above the horizon? For these were the things one could hear from the prophets there. So we should say something different to them, if we wish to keep the customary order fixed for the sun according to ancestral tradition."
At this point Ammonius the philosopher, who was present, exclaimed, "One should say this not only of the sun, but of the whole heaven. For its passage from solstice to solstice must necessarily contract, and not remain as great a portion of the horizon as the mathematicians say, but grow smaller, since the northern points are always drawing closer together with the southern; and our summer becomes shorter and the climate colder, as the sun bends inward and touches larger parallel circles at the tropical points. Moreover, the sundials at Syene no longer appear shadowless around the summer solstice, and many of the fixed stars have sunk below the horizon, while some now touch and merge with one another, the space between them having disappeared. And if, on the other hand, they should claim that, all else being equal, the sun alone is irregular in its movements, they will not be able to state a single cause for its acceleration out of so many phenomena, and they will throw the majority of observed facts into confusion—and this holds especially with respect to the moon, so that there is no need for measures of oil to establish the discrepancy. For the eclipses will prove it, both when the sun encroaches on the moon more often, and when the moon encroaches on the earth's shadow; the rest is clear, and there is no need to unwind further the pretentiousness of this argument."
"But indeed," said Cleombrotus, "I myself saw the measurement: for they showed many instances, and the yearly measure fell short of the oldest ones by no small amount." Ammonius took this up again and said, "Then has it escaped the notice of other people, among whom undying fires are tended and preserved for a span of years that is, so to speak, unlimited? But even if one were to suppose that what is said is true, is it not better to attribute the cause to certain coldnesses and dampnesses of the air, under whose influence the fire, being weakened, presumably cannot master much fuel nor need much nourishment—or, conversely, to dryness and heat? For I have already heard some people say, concerning fire, that in winter it burns better, being drawn together and condensed by the cold through its own strength, but in droughts it grows weak and becomes loose and slack, and even if it burns in sunlight it works worse, taking hold of its fuel feebly and consuming it more slowly. And one might especially trace the cause back to the oil itself: for it is not unreasonable that it was once unnourishing and watery, being produced from a young plant, but later, as it ripened in mature trees and was composed from an equal quantity, it became stronger and more nourishing. This is a better explanation, if we must salvage the story told by the priests of Ammon, even though the hypothesis is strange and out of the ordinary."
When Ammonius had finished, I said, "Rather, Cleombrotus, tell us about the oracle; for great was the ancient reputation of the divinity there, but now it seems to be fading." Cleombrotus fell silent and looked down, and Demetrius said, "There is no need to inquire about matters there and puzzle over the dimming of the oracles here, when we see the eclipse of virtually all of them except one or two. Rather we should consider the reason why they have grown so weak. For why should I mention the rest, when Boeotia, which in former times was rich in oracular voices because of its shrines, has now utterly failed, like dried-up streams, and a great drought of divination has overtaken the land? Nowhere else now, except around Lebadeia, does Boeotia offer those in need a source of prophecy to draw upon; of the rest, some have fallen into silence, others into complete desolation.
"And yet, at the time of the Persian Wars it was no less renowned than the oracle of Amphiaraus, and Mys, it seems, tested both. The prophet of the oracle of Ptous, using the Aeolic tongue, delivered the oracle in the language of the barbarians, before he had ever done so previously, so that none of the sacred officials present understood him—showing that it is not possible, nor granted, for the barbarians to receive any share of divine inspiration by taking on a Greek voice to serve what is commanded. And the slave sent to the oracle of Amphiaraus dreamed that a servant of the god appeared to him, and first tried to drive him away by voice, since the god would not admit him, then pushed him back with his hands; and when he persisted, the servant took up a large stone and struck him on the head. This was, as it were, an answering sign of what was to come: for Mardonius was defeated—he who led the Greeks not as king but as steward and servant of the king—and he fell, struck by a stone, just as the Lydian dreamed he had been struck.
"At that time the oracle at Tegyra was also at its height, where they say the god himself was born, and where two streams flow nearby, one called Phoenix and the other Elaea, as some still say to this day. In the Persian Wars, when Echecrates was prophesying, the god foretold victory and mastery in war for the Greeks; and in the Peloponnesian War, they say, when the Delians were driven from their island, an oracle came from Delphi instructing them to find the place where Apollo was born and to perform certain sacrifices there. When they wondered and were at a loss, since they did not think the god had been born among them but elsewhere, the Pythia gave a further response, that a crow would show them the place. So as they were leaving, they came to Chaeronea, and there they heard the innkeeper speaking to some strangers on their way to Tegyra about the oracle. And when the strangers, as they were departing, greeted and addressed the woman by her name—which happened to be Corone, meaning "Crow"—they understood the oracle, and after sacrificing at Tegyra they obtained the return home they sought within a short time.
"There have been more recent manifestations at these oracles as well, but now they have failed, so that it is worth inquiring of Apollo the Pythian himself the cause of the change." By now, as we were walking from the temple, we had come to the doors of the clubhouse of the Cnidians. Going inside, we saw the friends to whom we were going seated and waiting for us; the rest of the place was quiet because of the hour, people being anointed or watching the athletes. Demetrius, smiling, said, ""Shall I speak falsehood, or the truth?"" You seem to me to have no worthy problem in hand: for I see you sitting very much at ease, your faces relaxed."
Heracleon of Megara took this up and said, "We are not investigating whether the verb ballō loses its lambda in the future tense, nor from what simple words the comparative, the worse, the better, the worst, and the best are formed. These questions, and others like them, perhaps do knit the brow and set the face; but as for the rest, one may keep one's eyebrows in their proper place and still philosophize and inquire, without looking fierce or being harsh toward those present." "Then receive us," said Demetrius, "and our discussion along with us—one that has fallen to us as fitting for this place, and, because of the god, a concern belonging to everyone. See that you do not knit your brows in the attempt."
So we mingled together and sat down among them, and Demetrius put the topic forward for discussion. At once Didymus the Cynic, surnamed Planetiades, leapt up, and striking the ground two or three times with his staff, cried out, "Alas, alas, what a hard matter to judge and requiring much inquiry you have brought us! For it is a marvel, if with so much wickedness poured out upon it, not only, as Hesiod foretold, have Shame and Retribution abandoned human life, but even the providence of the gods has packed up and departed from the oracles everywhere. On the contrary, I put forward for you to consider this problem instead: why is it that Heracles, or some other god, has not by now snatched away the tripod, filled as it is with shameful and godless questions, which people put to the god—some testing him as though he were a sophist, others inquiring about treasures, inheritances, or unlawful marriages—so that Pythagoras stands utterly refuted for saying that men become their best selves when they approach the gods; for in this way, what would properly be denied and hidden as diseases and afflictions of the soul in the presence of an older man, these things people bring naked and exposed before the god."
While he still wished to speak, Heracleon took hold of his cloak, and I, being about as close a friend to him as anyone, said, "Stop, dear Planetiades, provoking the god: for he is even-tempered and gentle, and has been judged by mortals to be the most gracious of all, as Pindar says. And whether he is the sun, or lord of the sun and father of it and beyond all that is visible, it is not likely that he would deem the men of today unworthy of his voice, he who is the cause of their birth, nourishment, existence, and thought—nor that Providence, like a kind and good mother who does everything for us and watches over us, would alone bear a grudge in the matter of divination, and take this away after having given it from the beginning—as if there were not, back then too, when oracles were established in many places throughout the inhabited world, just as many, or more, wicked men among a greater number of people. Come now, sit back down, and having made a Pythian truce with the vice which you are always accustomed to chastise in your speeches, seek along with us some other cause for this so-called eclipse of the oracles. And keep the god gracious and free from wrath."
By saying this I accomplished only this much: that Planetiades left through the doors in silence. When there had been quiet for a little while, Ammonius addressed me and said, "See what we are doing, Lamprias, and pay close attention to the argument, so that we do not make the god blameless of nothing. For whoever supposes that the cessation of oracles has come about through some other cause and not by the will of the god gives grounds for suspecting that they neither come to be nor exist because of the god at all, but are thought to occur in some other way. For there is no other power greater or stronger, such that it could destroy and abolish divination, which is the work of a god.
"Now Planetiades' argument does not please me, both for other reasons and for the inconsistency it creates concerning the god—turning away from and disdaining wickedness on the one hand, but on the other admitting it again, like some king or tyrant who bars the wicked at one door but receives and does business with them through another. But as for the argument that a work fitting for gods above all should be moderate, sufficient, in no way excessive, but in every way self-sufficient—if one were to begin from this premise, saying that of the general scarcity of population which the earlier factional strife and wars produced throughout virtually the whole inhabited world, Greece has had the greatest share, and could now scarcely furnish three thousand hoplites in total, as many as the single city of Megara once sent out to Plataea (so that it was nothing other than exposing the desolation of Greece for the god to have left so many oracles standing), I would grant him precisely this piece of ingenious argument. For what good would it do, if there were still an oracle at Tegyra as there once was, or at Ptous, where nowadays in broad daylight one might encounter a man pasturing his flock? For indeed this too, which is the oldest oracle there, 'in time...'
in time and famous in reputation—was for a long time deserted and unapproachable because of a fierce beast, a serpent, so the story goes: but people who say this get the causation backwards. It was not the desertion of the place that produced the beast; rather it was the desolation that drew the beast there, more than the beast that caused the desolation. But once the god had resolved that Greece should be strengthened with cities and this region grow populous with people, they used two prophetesses serving in rotation, with a third also appointed as reserve. Now, however, there is a single prophetess, and we do not blame the god for it, since she alone suffices for those who need her. So the god should not be blamed either: the prophetic power that exists and continues in operation is adequate for everyone, and sends away all who come to it having gotten what they need. Just as Agamemnon employed nine heralds and could scarcely control the assembly because of its size, whereas within a few days you will see in the theater a single voice reaching everyone—so too, in those days, the prophetic art used more voices for a greater number of people; whereas now, on the contrary, one would have had to be surprised at the god if he had allowed prophecy to go to waste, uselessly flowing away like water, or, like the rocks echoing back the voices of shepherds and flocks in a wilderness.”
When Ammonius had said this and I remained silent, Cleombrotus turned to me and said, “Have you now granted this—that these oracles both come into being and also perish, and that the god is thereby done away with?” “Not I,” I said. “For I do not say that any oracle or shrine perishes by the agency of the god; but just as he, while doing and providing many other things for us, allows nature—or rather matter, since it is a privation—often to escape and to dissolve what has come into being under the influence of the better cause, so too, I think, there are other eclipses and destructions of prophetic powers, since the god gives men many good things but nothing immortal; so that even the things of the gods die, though the gods themselves do not, as Sophocles says. Their essence and power, they say, must be sought in nature and in matter,
since it is proper that the god's rule be preserved. For it is silly and altogether childish to suppose that the god himself, like the ventriloquists once called Eurycles and now called Pythons, enters into the bodies of the prophets and speaks through them, using their mouths and voices as instruments. Whoever mixes the god into human needs in this way does not spare his dignity, nor does he preserve for him the majesty and greatness of his excellence.” And Cleombrotus said, “You are right; but it is difficult to grasp and define how far, and up to what point, providence should be used—some making the god responsible for nothing at all, others making him virtually the cause of everything, and both miss the mean and the fitting. Those are right, then, who say that Plato,
by discovering the substrate element underlying qualities as they come into being—what people now call matter and nature—freed philosophers from many great difficulties. But it seems to me that those who established the race of daemons midway between gods and men, and discovered a kind of bond that draws our community together and connects it, resolved more numerous and greater difficulties still—whether this doctrine belongs to the magi around Zoroaster, or is Thracian and derives from Orpheus, or Egyptian, or Phrygian, as we may conjecture from observing how much that is mortal and mournful is mixed into the rites and sacred acts performed in the initiations on both sides. Among the Greeks, Homer still appears to use both names indifferently, sometimes calling the gods daemons as well; but Hesiod was the first to set out clearly and distinctly four
kinds of rational beings: gods, then daemons, then heroes, and last of all, men; from which he seems to derive the transformation, with the golden race being separated off into many good daemons, and the race of demigods into heroes. Others hold that transformation occurs likewise in bodies and in souls: for just as water is seen to be generated from earth, air from water, and fire from air, as their substance is carried upward, so from men the better souls make their transformation into heroes, and from heroes into daemons. And from daemons a few, over a long time, purified through virtue, come to share fully in divinity; but with some it happens that they do not master themselves, but, giving way and putting on mortal bodies again, they hold a dim and faint life, like
a kind of exhalation.” “Hesiod, moreover, thinks that the deaths of daemons occur after certain cycles of time; for he speaks, in the person of the Naiad, hinting also at the length of time: 'Nine generations of men in their prime does the cawing crow live; the stag lives four crows' lives; the raven grows old through three stags' lives; while the phoenix lives nine ravens' lives; and we, the fair-tressed nymphs, daughters of Zeus who bears the aegis, live ten phoenixes' lives.' Those who do not understand the 'generation' correctly draw this span of time out to a great multitude of number. For the number works out so that the whole life of the daemons comes to nine thousand seven hundred and twenty years. This is less than most of the mathematicians reckon, though Pindar states no more, when he says that the nymphs live to a span
'reaching the term of an age equal to a tree's'—which is also why they call themselves Hamadryads.” While he was still speaking, Demetrius broke in and said, “How do you mean, Cleombrotus, that a 'generation' of a man is said to be a year? For the length of a human life is not what is meant by either 'in their prime' or 'growing old,' as some read it. But those who read 'in their prime' make the generation thirty years, following Heraclitus, the time in which the one who has begotten furnishes
one begotten from himself capable of begetting in turn. Others, however, who write 'growing old' rather than 'in their prime,' assign a hundred and eight years to the generation: for they say fifty-four years is the boundary of the midpoint of human life, being composed of the starting unit and the first two plane numbers, two square numbers, and two cube numbers, which Plato also took as numbers in his account of the generation of the soul. And the
whole account seems to have been put by Hesiod as a riddle pointing toward the conflagration, at the time when it is likely that the Nymphs, who inhabit the beautiful groves and the springs of rivers and the grassy meadows, will perish together with the moisture.” And Cleombrotus said, “I have heard this from many, and I see the Stoic conflagration creeping, as it were, over the verses of Heraclitus and Orpheus, and likewise taking hold of Hesiod's as well, and setting them ablaze too; but
I cannot accept the destruction of the cosmos being spoken of, nor the impossibilities and the things one is reminded of by those words, especially the ones about the crow and the stag being applied to such excessive lengths. A year does not, in itself, encompass both a beginning and an end together of 'all that the seasons bring and earth brings forth,' nor is a generation of men named without reason. And you yourselves surely agree that
Hesiod means by 'generation' a human lifetime, do you not?” Demetrius agreed. “But this too is clear,” said Cleombrotus, “that often the measure and the things measured are called by the same names—a cotyle, a choinix, an amphora, a medimnus. Just as, then, we call the unit, being the smallest measure of the whole number series, both a measure and the beginning-number, so too
he named the year, by which we first measure a man's life, 'generation,' using the same name as the thing measured. And indeed, the numbers those others construct have none of the notable and brilliant properties recognized in mathematics as such; whereas the number nine thousand seven hundred and twenty arises by composition from four fours taken successively from the unit and multiplied by four—for it comes to forty either way—and these,
multiplied five times as a triangular number, yield the number in question. But there is no need for us to quarrel with Demetrius over these matters. For whether the time in which a daemon's soul or a hero's life passes into a change be longer or shorter, ordered or disordered, none the less it will be shown, on the point he wishes to make, with the support of wise and ancient witnesses, that there are certain natures, as it were in the borderland between gods and
men, admitting of mortal experiences and necessary changes—beings whom it is right, following our fathers' custom, to consider and address as daemons and to revere.” “As an illustration for this account, Xenocrates, Plato's companion, used the case of triangles, likening the equilateral to the divine, the scalene to the mortal, and the isosceles to the daemonic; for the equal-sided is equal in every way, the scalene unequal in every way,
while the isosceles is equal in one respect and unequal in another—just as the nature of daemons possesses both the passibility of the mortal and the power of the god. Nature has set forth perceptible images and visible likenesses of this: of the gods, the sun and the stars; of mortals, meteors and comets and shooting flashes, as Euripides likened them when he said, 'and he, but now in the flush of flesh, like a fallen star, was quenched,
breathing out his spirit into the upper air.' And truly the moon is a mixed body and a genuine likeness of the daemonic kind, in that it harmonizes with the revolution proper to that class, undergoing visible wanings and waxings and changes—so that some have called it an earthy star, others an Olympian earth, and others still have assigned it as the portion of Hecate, both chthonic and celestial together. Just as, if one were to remove the air and draw away
what lies between earth and moon, one would, by creating an empty and disconnected region in the middle, dissolve the unity and community of the whole—so too those who do not leave room for the race of daemons make the affairs of gods and men unmixed and incommunicable with one another, doing away with the interpretive and ministering nature, as Plato called it, or else they force us to confound and disturb everything together
by bringing the god down into human passions and affairs and dragging him into our needs—just as the Thessalian women are said to drag down the moon. Now that reputation for wickedness among women found credence in the case of Aglaonice, daughter of Hegetor, an astronomer, as they say, who, at every eclipse of the moon, always pretended to be bewitching it and drawing it down. As for us, let us neither hear it said that any forms of divination are wholly without divine inspiration, or that rites
and orgiastic ceremonies are neglected by the gods, nor, on the other hand, let us suppose that the god himself busies himself among these things, being present and personally managing them; but assigning them, as is just, to ministers of the gods—as it were, servants and secretaries—let us hold that daemons are overseers of sacred rites and celebrants of divine mysteries, while others go about as avengers of arrogant and great acts of injustice. Those whom Hesiod, in a very solemn way, calls 'holy'
and 'givers of wealth,' and says they hold 'this privilege that belongs to kings,' since to do good is a kingly thing. For just as among men, so also among daemons there are differences of virtue, and of the passionate and irrational element: in some it remains a weak and dim residue, like a leftover, while in others it is present in great and hardly-quenchable measure—traces and tokens of which are preserved and kept scattered about in many places by sacrifices and rites and mythologies.” “Concerning
the mystic rites, then, in which one can obtain the greatest illuminations and glimpses of the truth about daemons, 'let my lips be sealed,' as Herodotus says; but as for festivals and sacrifices—like ill-omened and gloomy days, in which there are eatings of raw flesh and tearings-apart, fastings and beatings of breasts, and in many places again shameful language spoken near the sacred rites, and 'frenzies and shrieks with tossing of the neck in wild confusion'—these, I would say, are performed not for the sake of any of the gods, but as propitiations and appeasements meant to turn away evil daemons.
And it is not plausible that the human sacrifices once performed were demanded or accepted by the gods; nor would kings and generals have submitted to them in vain, giving up and consecrating and slaying their own children, unless they were thereby averting the wrath and heavy displeasure of harsh and intractable beings—avenging spirits, and, in some cases, appeasing frenzied and tyrannical
lusts on the part of beings who were neither able nor willing to have intercourse with bodies, or through bodies. But just as Heracles besieged Oechalia for the sake of a girl, so strong and violent daemons, demanding in return a human soul still bound up in a body, bring plagues upon cities and barrenness upon the land, and stir up wars and civil strife, until they obtain and gain what they desire. Some, on the other hand, have had the opposite experience—as I learned during a long stay in Crete,
where I came to know of a strange festival being celebrated, in which they display a headless image of a man and say that this was Molus, the father of Meriones, who, having forced himself upon a nymph, was found to be headless.” “And indeed, as for all the things told and sung of in myths and hymns—abductions, wanderings, concealments and flights and periods of servitude on the part of gods—these are not sufferings and misfortunes of gods, remembered because of their virtue and power, but of daemons, and neither what
Aeschylus said of Apollo, 'pure god, exiled from heaven,' nor what Sophocles' Admetus says, 'my own cock led him to the mill,' are true of a god. Those who go most astray from the truth are the theologians of Delphi, who believe that here, once, there occurred a battle between the god and a serpent over the oracle, and who
allow poets and prose writers, competing in theaters, to say these things—as though deliberately bearing false witness against the very rites they themselves perform, the most sacred of all. When Philip expressed astonishment at this (for the writer was present) and asked what divine matters he thought the competitors were bearing false witness against, he said, 'Against these here, concerning the oracle, matters with which the city, having just now consecrated all the Greeks outside the Gates in her sacred rites, has driven her procession as far as Tempe. For
the hut that is set up here beside the threshing-floor every nine years is not a den or lair belonging to the serpent, but a representation of a tyrant's or king's dwelling; and the approach made upon it in silence, by way of what is called the Dolonia, in which they lead the boy who still has both parents living—not idly—with torches lit, and, after setting fire to the hut and overturning the table, flee without looking back through
the doors of the sanctuary; and finally, the boy's wanderings and servitude, and the purifications that take place around Tempe, give rise to a suspicion of some great pollution and daring deed. For it is altogether ridiculous, my friend, that Apollo, after killing the beast, should flee to the ends of Greece in need of purification, and there pour libations of some sort and do the things that men do
when they are propitiating and appeasing the resentment of daemons whom they call avenging and blood-guilty spirits, as if visiting upon someone the memory of certain unforgettable and ancient pollutions. As for the account I have heard concerning this flight and this removal, it is exceedingly strange and paradoxical; but if it has any share of truth in it, let us not suppose that what was done at the oracle in those times was a small or ordinary matter."
But so that I not seem to be doing what Empedocles did, attaching one set of summits to another and telling no single connected tale, allow me to put upon my earlier remarks the conclusion that befits them, since we have now arrived at it: let it be ventured, after so many others, that we too may say that when the spirits appointed over oracles and divinations fail entirely, such powers fail along with them, and when the spirits have fled or removed elsewhere they lose their force; then, when those same spirits are present again after a long interval, the oracles speak once more, like instruments, when those who use them stand by and are present."
When Cleombrotus had gone through all this, Heracleon said, "None of the uninitiated and profane, and none holding beliefs about the gods that clash with ours, is present here; but let us ourselves be on our guard, Philip, lest without noticing it we grant our argument premises that are strange and extravagant." "Well said," replied Philip, "but what exactly is it in Cleombrotus's claims that troubles you most?" And Heracleon said, "That gods themselves — beings for whom it is fitting to be free from earthly concerns — should be set in charge of the oracles, rather than spirits who are servants of the gods, does not seem to me an unreasonable claim; but to take, virtually by the handful, from the verses of Empedocles the sins and follies and god-driven wanderings that he ascribes to spirits, and in the end to suppose that they even die as men do, I regard as rather too bold and altogether too barbarous a notion." Cleombrotus then asked Philip who this young man was and where he came from; and on learning his name and city, he said, "We ourselves have not gone unnoticed either, Heracleon, in holding strange views; but it is not possible, in dealing with great matters, to advance to a plausible opinion without employing great starting-points. You, however, without realizing it, are taking back with one hand what you grant with the other: you agree that spirits exist, but by refusing to allow that they can be base or mortal you no longer keep them as spirits at all — for in what do they then differ from the gods, if they possess indestructibility in their being and freedom from passion and from wrongdoing in their character?"
To this Heracleon made no reply, being lost in some thought of his own, and Cleombrotus went on: "But it was not Empedocles alone, Heracleon, who allowed for base spirits — Plato did too, and Xenocrates, and Chrysippus; and Democritus as well, in praying to meet with 'well-omened images,' plainly recognized that there exist other images, ill-tempered and vicious, possessing certain purposes and impulses of their own. As for the death of such beings, I have heard an account from a man neither foolish nor a charlatan. Aemilianus the orator — whose father Epitherses some of you have also heard, my own fellow-citizen and a teacher of grammar — used to tell how once, sailing to Italy, he boarded a ship carrying merchandise and a good many passengers. Toward evening, near the Echinades islands, the wind died down, and the ship, drifting, came close to Paxi; most of the passengers were awake, and many were still drinking after their meal, when suddenly a voice was heard from the island of Paxi, someone calling loudly for Thamus, so that they were astonished. This Thamus was an Egyptian pilot, not even known by name to many on board. Twice he was called and kept silent, but the third time he answered the one calling; and that voice, raising itself still louder, said, 'When you come opposite Palodes, announce that the great Pan is dead.'
On hearing this, Epitherses said, all were astounded, and debated among themselves whether it would be better to carry out the order or rather not to meddle but let it be; and Thamus resolved that if there were wind he would sail past in silence, but if there were a calm and stillness about the place he would proclaim what he had heard. So when they came opposite Palodes, with neither wind nor wave, Thamus, looking from the stern toward the land, said, just as he had heard it, that 'the great Pan is dead.' He had scarcely finished speaking when a great cry went up, not of one voice but of many, mingled with astonishment. And since many people were present, the story quickly spread throughout Rome, and Thamus was sent for by Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius came to believe the account so firmly that he made inquiry and investigation about Pan; and the scholars around him, of whom there were many, conjectured that this was the Pan born of Hermes and Penelope." Philip, then, had this account, and could also call as witnesses some of those present who had heard it from the aged Aemilianus himself.
Demetrius said that among the islands lying off Britain there are many lying scattered and deserted, some of which are named after spirits and heroes; and that he himself, sailing for the sake of inquiry and observation, at the king's bidding, to the nearest of the deserted islands, found it having not many inhabitants, but these all held sacred and inviolable by the Britons. Soon after his arrival there occurred a great disturbance in the atmosphere, with many portents from the sky, winds bursting forth, and thunderbolts falling; and when this had subsided, the islanders said that some one of the mightier beings had passed away. "For just as a lamp," he said, "causes no distress while it is burning, but its going out is grievous to many, so the great souls, in their kindlings, bring benefit and cause no pain, but their extinguishings and destructions often, as now, breed storms and squalls, and often infect the air with pestilential afflictions." There, moreover, he said, there is one island in which Cronus is confined, kept guarded in sleep by Briareus — for sleep has been contrived as a bond for him — and around him are many spirits as his attendants and servants.
Taking this up, Cleombrotus said, "I too could tell such tales, but it suffices for our present purpose that there is nothing to contradict or prevent things being so. And yet we know that the Stoics hold not only the view I have expressed about spirits, but also that, of the many gods there are, they make use of one that is eternal and indestructible, while regarding all the others as having come into being and being destined to perish. As for the mockery and laughter of the Epicureans, we need not fear it at all, since they dare to use it even against providence itself, calling it a mere myth. We, for our part, say that it is a myth to suppose that, among so many worlds, not one is governed by a divine reasoning power, but that all have come to be and hold together purely by chance. And if one must laugh in philosophy, it is rather the mute, blind, and soulless images that deserve laughter — the ones that certain people herd through boundless cycles of years, appearing and wandering everywhere, some given off from the still-living, others long since burnt or rotted away — dragging in idle chatter and shadows to explain natural phenomena; and yet if someone says that spirits exist, not merely by nature but by reason too, and that they preserve and endure for a long time, these same people grow indignant."
When this had been said, Ammonius remarked, "Theophrastus seems to me to have declared the matter rightly. For what prevents us from accepting a solemn and most philosophical account? Indeed, a doctrine, when rejected, destroys many things that are possible but cannot be proven, and when accepted, it drags along with it many things impossible and non-existent. As for the one point I have heard the Epicureans make against those spirits introduced by Empedocles — that it is not possible for beings who are base and prone to error to be blessed and long-lived, since wickedness is bound up with great blindness and liability to destruction — this is a foolish argument. For by this reasoning Epicurus himself would prove inferior to Gorgias the sophist, and Metrodorus to Alexis the comic poet — since the latter lived twice as long as Metrodorus, and Gorgias more than a third longer than Epicurus. But we use the words 'strong' and 'weak' of virtue and vice in another sense, not with reference to the persistence or dissolution of the body — since among animals too, many that are sluggish and dull of soul, and many that are unruly and undisciplined, live longer than the intelligent and clever ones.
Hence it is not right to base the eternity of God on his mere immunity and defense against destructive forces. Rather, freedom from passion and indestructibility ought to belong to the very nature of the blessed being, requiring no effort to maintain it. But perhaps it seems ungracious to argue against those not present. Let Cleombrotus, then, take up again the account he was giving us a moment ago about the departure and flight of the spirits, and finish it — that is only just." And Cleombrotus said, "I should be surprised if it does not appear far stranger than what has already been said. And yet it does seem to touch on natural philosophy, and Plato gave the starting-point for it, not stating it outright but casting, through an obscure opinion, an enigmatic and cautiously guarded suggestion; nevertheless a great outcry against him too has arisen from other philosophers. But since a bowl of myths and reasoned accounts mingled together stands set before us in our midst — and where might one find more sympathetic hearers before whom to test these tales, as one tests foreign coin? — I do not hesitate to indulge you with the narrative of a barbarian man, whom, after much wandering and after paying great fees for the information, I finally managed to track down, a man who, near the Red Sea, met with human beings once each year, but for the rest of his time consorted, as he claimed, with wandering nymphs and spirits.
I had the good fortune to obtain conversation and friendship with him. He was the handsomest of all men I have ever seen, and remained free of every illness throughout, eating only once each month a certain bitter, medicinal fruit of an herb; he had trained himself to speak many languages, but with me he spoke mostly in Doric, not far removed in its rhythms from song. Whenever he spoke, a fragrance filled the place, his mouth breathing out the sweetest scent. His learning and knowledge in general were with him at all times, but for prophecy he was inspired only on one day of each year, and would deliver his oracles as he went down to the sea; and rulers and royal secretaries would also come to visit him, and then depart. He, then, traced the art of prophecy back to spirits; and he had a great deal to say about Delphi, and was not unacquainted with anything said or performed there in the sacred rites concerning Dionysus, but declared that these too were great sufferings of spirits, including the events concerning Python.
As for the one who killed the serpent, his exile, he said, lasted neither nine years nor did it take him to Tempe, but rather, cast out, he went to another world; and later, after nine cycles of great years had passed, having become pure and having truly returned as Phoebus, he took over the oracle, which until then had been guarded by Themis. And so it was, he said, with the battles of the Titans and of Typhon as well: there had been wars of spirits against spirits, and then the flight of the defeated, or punishments inflicted by a god upon those who had done wrong — such as Typhon is said to have done wrong against Osiris, and Cronus against Uranus — whose honors have grown dim, or have vanished altogether, now that they have removed to another world. For I hear that the Solymi too, neighbors of the Lycians, honor Cronus above all others; but that after he killed their rulers, Arsalus and Dryus and Trosobius, he fled and moved off to some place or other (for they are unable to say where), and that he himself thereafter fell into neglect, while those around Arsalus came to be called harsh gods, and the Lycians, both publicly and privately, direct their curses against them. Many similar examples can be drawn from what is told about the gods.
"And if," said the stranger, "we call certain spirits by the customary names of the gods, that need not surprise us. For each spirit likes to be called after the particular god to whom it is assigned, and from whom it has received its power and honor. Even among us, one man is called 'of Zeus,' another 'Athenian,' another 'Apollonian' or 'Dionysian' or 'Hermaean'; and while some of us are named rightly, by chance, most acquire epithets from the gods that do not properly belong to them, having been misapplied." When Cleombrotus fell silent, this account seemed marvelous to all present. But when Heracleon asked in what way this had anything to do with Plato, and how Plato had furnished the starting-point for this account, Cleombrotus said, "You remember rightly that Plato from the outset rejected an infinite number of worlds, but was in doubt about a fixed plurality, and while conceding the plausibility, up to the number five, of those who posit a single world corresponding to each of the elements, he himself held firmly to the position of a single world. And this seems to be peculiar to Plato, since the others were greatly afraid of plurality, on the ground that those who do not confine matter within a single unity, but at once step outside it, fall prey to a boundless and intractable infinity."
"But did the stranger," I asked, "define the number of worlds — or, when you were in his company, did you not press him on this?" "I could hardly fail," said Cleombrotus, "if nothing else, to be an eager and attentive listener on these matters, since he offered himself so graciously and so willingly. He said there were neither infinite worlds, nor one, nor five, but a hundred and eighty-three, arranged in the shape of a triangle, each side of the triangle having sixty worlds; of the three that remained, each was stationed at one of the corners, and the worlds next to one another touch, moving gently round as if in a dance. The plane within the triangle is the common hearth of them all, and is called the Plain of Truth, in which the accounts and forms and patterns of all things that have come to be and all that will come to be lie unmoved; and around these, time, as it were an outflow of eternity, is carried along toward the worlds. A sight and vision of these things is granted to human souls only once in ten thousand years, provided they have lived well; and the best of the initiations performed here are but a dream of that vision and that initiation there; and philosophical discourses have as their purpose to recall those beautiful things yonder, or else they are carried on in vain. These things," he said, "I heard him relating as myth, exactly as in an initiation and a mystery-rite, without bringing forward any proof or evidence for what he said."
And I, turning to Demetrius, said, "How does that verse about the suitors go, the one about their marveling at Odysseus as he handled the bow?" And when Demetrius had recalled it for me, I said, "This too occurs to me to say about the stranger: 'surely he was some connoisseur and thief of doctrines and discourses of every kind, and much-traveled' in written learning, and no barbarian but a Greek by birth, brimful of much Greek culture." What refutes him is the very number of the worlds, which is not Egyptian nor Indian but Dorian, from Sicily, belonging to a man of Himera named Petron. I have not myself read any little book of his, nor do I know that one survives, but Hippys of Rhegium, whom Phanias of Eresus mentions, records that this was Petron's own opinion and account — that there are a hundred and eighty-three worlds, touching one another 'according to element'; but what exactly this touching 'according to element' means, he does not further clarify, nor does he attach any other plausible explanation." Taking this up, Demetrius said, "What plausibility could there be in such matters, when even Plato, though he said nothing that was reasonable or likely, nevertheless cast down the..."
And Heracleon said, "But surely we hear from you grammarians, who trace back to Homer the opinion that he distributed the universe into five worlds — heaven, water, air, earth, and Olympus. Of these he leaves two in common: earth belongs to the whole realm below, Olympus to the whole realm above; and the three in between are assigned to the three gods. In the same way Plato too, it seems, distributing the finest and primary forms and shapes of bodies among the differences of the whole, calls them five worlds: that of earth, that of water, that of air, that of fire; and last, the one that encompasses these, that of the dodecahedron — the most fluid and versatile figure — which he assigned as the shape most fitting and suited to the soul's revolutions and motions."
And Demetrius said, "Why do we bring in Homer at present? We have had enough of myths. Plato is far from calling the five differentiations of the world 'five worlds'; indeed, where he argues against those who posit infinite worlds, he says that in his own view this world is one, only-begotten, and beloved of god, having come to be whole, complete, and self-sufficient out of the entirety of corporeal being. Hence one might well wonder that, having stated the truth himself, he furnished others with the starting point for an implausible and unreasoned opinion. For not keeping to a single world had at least some basis in the infinity of the universe as a whole; but to fix the number definitely at just so many, neither more nor fewer than five, is utterly irrational and detached from all plausibility — unless you have something to say," he said, looking at me.
And I said, "It does seem so — that having already let go the discussion about oracles as finished, we should take up another topic just as large." "Not letting go of that one," said Demetrius, "but not passing by this one either, since it lays claim to our attention. We will not linger over it, but only touch on it enough to examine its plausibility, and then return to our original subject."
"Well then, first," I said, "the things that prevent one from positing infinite worlds do not prevent one from making more than one. For it is quite possible for there to be both divination and providence in a plurality of worlds, and for only the smallest role to fall to chance, while the largest and most numerous events take on order with respect to coming-into-being and change — none of which infinity is by nature able to admit. Moreover, it follows more readily from reason that god should not be only-begotten, nor be without company, and that the world should not be solitary. For being perfectly good, he lacks no virtue, least of all those concerned with justice and friendship; for these are the finest and most fitting for gods. And it is not the nature of god to possess anything in vain or useless. There are, then, outside it other gods and worlds, toward whom he exercises the social virtues; for there is no exercise of justice or grace or kindness toward oneself or one's own part, but only toward others.
"So it is not likely that this world drifts about in infinite void without a friend, without a neighbor, without any mingling with others; since we observe that nature, too, encloses each individual generation within kinds, as though within vessels or seed-pods. For nothing among existing things belongs to a number of which there exists no common account, nor does anything attain such a designation unless it is qualified, either generically or specifically. Now the world is not said to be qualified generically; it is, then, qualified specifically, having become such through its difference from other things akin and of the same kind. For if nature has produced neither one man, nor one horse, nor one star, nor one god, nor one daimon, what prevents nature from having not one world either, but rather more than one? For the one who says that the world has one earth and one sea overlooks something obvious about things composed of like parts: we divide earth into parts bearing the same name, and sea likewise; but a part of the world is no longer a world, since it is composed of different natures."
Moreover, that which some fear most, and for the sake of which they use up all matter on this one world, leaving nothing outside to disturb this world's composition with collisions or blows, they feared wrongly. For if there are several worlds, and each has been separately allotted a substance and matter having a fixed measure and limit, nothing disorderly or unarranged will be left over, like some residue falling upon it from outside. For the rational principle governing each world, holding sway over the matter apportioned to it, will allow nothing to stray or wander out and fall in from another world, nor into itself from another, since its multitude has a nature neither undefined nor infinite, nor its motion irrational and disorderly. But if some effluence does travel from some worlds to others, it is akin and gentle, mingling mildly with all, like the rays and blendings of the stars; and the worlds themselves take delight in beholding one another benevolently, granting to the many good gods present in each one occasions for intermingling and friendly association.
None of this is impossible, mythical, or irrational — unless, by Zeus, someone suspects that Aristotle's arguments carry physical force here. For since each of the bodies has its own proper place, as he says, earth must necessarily move from every direction toward the center, and water settle upon it because of its weight, settling beneath the lighter elements. If, then, there are several worlds, it will follow that earth will in many places lie above fire and air, and in many places below them; and air and water likewise will in some places be in their natural regions, in others in regions contrary to nature. Since these things are impossible, as he supposes, there cannot be either two worlds or more, but only this one, composed of the whole of substance, situated in accordance with nature, as befits the differences among the bodies.
"But this too has been stated plausibly rather than truly. Consider it this way," I said, "my dear Demetrius. When he says that some bodies move toward the center and downward, others away from the center and upward, and others around the center and in a circle — with reference to what does he take 'the center'? Surely not with reference to the void; for on his view there is no void. And for those who do admit it, the void has no center, just as it has no first point or last point; for these are limits, while the void is infinite and unlimited. And even if one forced oneself, by sheer violence of argument, to conceive of some center of an infinite void, what would be the difference in the motions of bodies produced with respect to it? For neither is there any power belonging to bodies in the void, nor do bodies have choice and impulse, longing for the center and straining toward it from every direction. Rather it is equally impossible to conceive, with respect to soulless bodies and an incorporeal, undifferentiated region, either a motion originating from the bodies themselves or an attraction exerted by that region upon them.
"It remains, then, that 'the center' is spoken of not spatially but corporeally. For since this world of ours possesses a single unity and arrangement composed of several dissimilar bodies, the differences among them necessarily produce differing motions for different things relative to one another; and this is clear from the fact that, as each substance is transformed, it changes its region along with it. For separations lift matter up away from the center and distribute it in a circle, while combinations and condensations press it down toward the center and drive it together."
On these matters it is not necessary here to use many more words. For whatever cause one supposes to be the creative agent of these affections and changes, this same cause will hold each of the several worlds together within itself. For each world has its own earth and sea; for each also has its own center of its own, and its own affections of bodies, changes, nature, and power, which preserves and keeps each thing in its proper region. For that which lies outside — whether it is nothing, or an infinite void — provides no center, as has been said; but since there are several worlds, each has its own particular center, so that the motion is particular too: for some bodies toward it, for others away from it, and for others around it, just as the Peripatetics themselves distinguish.
But whoever insists that, though there are many centers, heavy bodies must be pushed from everywhere toward one alone, differs in no way from someone who, since there are many people, insists that blood must flow together from everywhere into a single vein, and that everyone's brains must be contained within a single membrane, thinking it monstrous if, among natural bodies, all solid matter does not occupy one region and all rarefied matter another single region. For such a person would be as absurd, being indignant that wholes make use of their own parts, each part having its natural position and order within it. That would indeed be absurd — if someone said that a world was one that had the moon in it the way a man might carry his brain in his heels and his heart in his temples. But making several worlds separate from one another, and together with the wholes bounding off and distributing their parts as well, is not absurd; for in each world the earth, sea, and heaven will be positioned according to nature as is fitting, and each of the worlds has its 'above,' 'below,' 'around,' and 'center' not with reference to another world, nor outside itself, but within itself and with reference to itself.
"For as to the stone that some suppose to lie outside the world, it does not readily admit of a conception either of remaining at rest or of moving. For how could it, having weight, either remain still or move toward our world like the rest of heavy bodies, being neither a part of it nor incorporated into its substance? But as for earth contained and bound together within another world, there is no need to raise the puzzle of why it does not, breaking off through its weight, migrate over into this one, once we observe the nature of the whole and the tension by which each of its parts is held together. For if we take 'below' and 'above' not with reference to the world but outside it, we shall fall into the same difficulties as Epicurus, who moves all the atoms toward the regions 'beneath the feet,' as though the void had feet, or as though infinity allowed one to conceive within itself of 'below' and 'above.'
"For this reason one may well wonder at Chrysippus — or rather be utterly at a loss — as to what possessed him to say that the world is established in the middle, and that its substance, having eternally occupied the central place, is held together thereby not least for the sake of its permanence and, so to speak, its indestructibility. For he says these things in the fourth book of his work On Possibles, though he is not correctly dreaming up 'a center for the infinite,' and is positing as the cause of the world's permanence something more absurd than the permanence itself — a nonexistent center; and this though he has often said elsewhere that substance is governed and held together by motions toward its own center and motions away from its own center."
"And indeed, as for the rest of the Stoics' objections, who would be afraid of them — of those who ask how a single fate and providence could hold, and why there will not be many Dises and Zeuses, if there are several worlds? For in the first place, if it is absurd for there to be many Dises and Zeuses, then surely their own view will be far more absurd; for in their infinite cycles of worlds they make an infinite number of suns and moons, Apollos and Artemises and Poseidons. And in the second place, what necessity is there for there to be many Zeuses if there are several worlds, and not, in each one, a first ruling and governing god possessing mind and reason, such as he who among us is called lord of all and father? Or what will prevent all the worlds from being subject to the fate and providence of a single Zeus, who oversees and directs each in turn, implanting in all of them the beginnings, seeds, and principles of the things that come to pass?
"For it is not the case here that a single body is often composed of separate bodies — as an assembly, an army, or a chorus — each of which, as Chrysippus supposes, happens to live, think, and learn as a unit; while in the universe as a whole it is impossible for ten, fifty, or a hundred worlds to make use of a single reason and to be arranged under a single governing principle. On the contrary, such an arrangement is altogether fitting for gods; for one ought not to make the gods rulers confined without exit, like the leaders of a swarm, guarding by shutting themselves in — or rather sealing themselves up — within matter, as these thinkers do, who make the gods into mere states of air and blended powers of water and fire, holding that they are born together with the world and again burned up together with it, not free and independent, like charioteers or helmsmen, but, just as statues are riveted and fused to their pedestals, so shut up within the corporeal and bolted fast to it, sharing in its fate all the way to its destruction, its total dissolution, and its change."
"That other account, I think, is more dignified and more magnificent: that the gods, being without master and self-ruling, come to the aid of those caught in storms just as the sons of Tyndareus do — approaching and by their power calming the sea and the swift blasts of the winds, not themselves sailing along and sharing the danger, but appearing from above and bringing deliverance; in just this way they visit now one, now another of the worlds, drawn by the pleasure of the spectacle and guiding each in accordance with its nature. For Homer's Zeus shifted his gaze no great distance, from Troy to Thrace and the nomads around the Ister; but the true Zeus enjoys fine and fitting changes of scene among a plurality of worlds, gazing not out upon an empty infinity, nor upon nothing at all else (as some have supposed), but contemplating the many works of gods and men, and the movements and courses of the stars in their revolutions. For the divine does not shun change but delights in it greatly, if we are to judge from visible things by the successive changes and revolutions in the heavens.
"Infinity, then, is altogether senseless and irrational, admitting god nowhere at all, but treating everything according to chance and automatically; whereas care and providence exercised over a definite multitude and number of worlds seems to me to have nothing more undignified or more burdensome about it than care and providence sunk into a single body, attached to that one thing, endlessly reshaping and remolding it."
Having said this much, then, I stopped. Philip, after not pausing long, said, "As to whether the truth about these matters stands this way or otherwise, I myself would not insist. But if we remove god from a single world, I think I should be glad to learn why we make him the craftsman of five worlds only and not more, and what the relation of this number to the totality is — gladder, indeed, than to learn the meaning of the dedication of the E here. For neither is a triangle...
"is neither triangular nor square, nor perfect, nor cubic, nor does it appear to offer any other elegance to those who delight in and admire such things. As for the approach from the elements, which he himself hinted at, it is altogether hard to grasp, and shows nothing of the plausibility that drew him on to say that, given five bodies with equal angles and equal sides contained by equal planes, once they have come to be present in matter, that many worlds are immediately produced from them."
"And indeed," I said, "Theodorus of Soli seems to me to pursue the argument not badly, in expounding Plato's mathematics. He proceeds as follows. The pyramid, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the dodecahedron, which Plato ranks first, are all beautiful in the proportions and equalities of their ratios, and it is impossible to compose anything better than they are, or anything similar, for nature to fit together. Yet they do not all belong to a single class of construction, nor do they have a similar origin; rather, the pyramid is the finest and smallest, while the dodecahedron is the largest and made of the most parts. Of the remaining two, the icosahedron is greater than the octahedron, or more than double it, in the number of its triangles; hence it is impossible for all of them to come into being from matter at the same time.
For the fine and small bodies, being simpler in construction, must be the first to submit to and be shaped by that which moves and fashions matter, and must be completed and pre-exist before the coarser bodies made of many parts, whose composition is more laborious — bodies such as the dodecahedron is composed of. It follows from this that the pyramid alone is the first body to exist, while none of the others exist yet, since nature is still short of producing them.
There is, then, a remedy also for this absurdity: the division and separation of matter into five worlds. In one place the pyramid arose (for it came to be first), in another the octahedron, in another the icosahedron. And from the body that pre-existed in each, the rest will have their origin, since change occurs in all things for all things through the combination and separation of parts, as Plato himself indicates,
going through the matter in nearly full detail, though for us a brief account will suffice. Since air arises when fire is extinguished, and, becoming rarefied again, in turn gives off fire from itself, one must observe the affections and changes in the seeds of each. Now the seeds of fire are the pyramid, composed of twenty-four primary triangles; the octahedron, that of air, is composed of forty-eight
of the same triangles. So one element of air comes to be from two elements of fire combined and united together; and conversely, the element of air, when broken up, separates into two bodies of fire, but when it is compressed upon itself again and collapses, it passes into the form of water. Thus everywhere the body that pre-exists always readily provides, through change, the origin of all the others; and it is not the case that there is only one
first body, while another body, having in a different system the initiating and anticipatory motion toward generation, keeps the same name in all cases." And Ammonius said, "These points have been worked out by Theodorus manfully and with great ambition; but I would be surprised if he does not seem to be using premises that destroy one another. For he claims that the constitution does not occur in all five bodies at once, but that the finest, the one formed with the
least effort, is always the first to emerge into being. Then, as though it followed rather than conflicted with this, he lays down that not all matter first brings in the finest and simplest body, but that in some places the heavy, many-parted bodies anticipate and arise before the others out of matter. And apart from this, given that there are five primary bodies underlying things, and that for this reason there are said to be that many worlds, he applies his plausible argument to only
four of them, while he has spirited away the cube as though in a game of counters — as if it were not naturally suited to change into the others, nor to provide them a change into itself, since its triangles are not of the same kind as theirs. For those four bodies have as their common basis the half-triangle, whereas in the cube the isosceles triangle alone is proper to it, which does not converge with the other kind, nor admit of any unifying mixture with it. If, then, there really are
five bodies and five worlds, and in each one body holds the leading role in generation — namely, wherever the cube came into being first — none of the others will exist there, since the cube is not by nature able to change into any of them. And I pass over the fact that they also make the element of the so-called dodecahedron something different, not that scalene triangle out of which Plato constitutes the pyramid, the octahedron, and the icosahedron."
"So then," said Ammonius, laughing, "either you must resolve these difficulties for yourself, or you must say something of your own about our common puzzle." And I said, "I have nothing more plausible to say at present; but perhaps it is better to be answerable for one's own opinion than for another's. Let me then say again, from the beginning, that since there are two underlying natures — one perceptible, subject to generation and destruction
changeable and borne now this way, now that; the other intelligible in its being, always remaining the same in the same way — it would be strange, my friend, if the intelligible nature has been marked off and possesses difference within itself, while the bodily and passible nature, unless one leaves it as a single thing, grown together with itself and converging, but instead one divides and separates it, this should provoke vexation and displeasure. For surely things stable and divine
ought rather to hold fast to themselves and to flee, so far as possible, all cutting and separation. But even in their case the power of otherness, when it touches them, has wrought among the intelligibles differences and dissimilarities in reasoned account and form greater than the spatial separations found among perceptible things. Hence, in opposing those who declare the universe to be one, Plato says that being exists, and the same, and the other,
and, over and above all these, motion and rest. Since, then, these are five, it would not be strange if each of those five bodily elements is, by its nature, an imitation and image that has come to be of each of these — not unmixed nor pure, but by each element chiefly partaking of each power. The cube, plainly, is a body suited to rest, on account of the stability and
firmness of its planes; while in the pyramid anyone might discern the fiery and mobile quality in the thinness of its sides and the sharpness of its angles. The nature of the dodecahedron, being all-embracing of the other figures, would seem to have come to be an image of being in relation to everything bodily; and of the remaining two, the icosahedron has partaken most of the nature of the other, and the octahedron
has partaken most of the character of the same. Hence the latter furnished air, which relates to all substance in a single form, while the former furnished water, which through mixture turns into very many kinds of qualities. If, then, nature demands equality among all things, it is likely that the worlds have come to be neither more nor fewer than the models, so that each may have, in each world, a leading rank and power,
just as it has in the constitutions of the bodies." "Still, let this stand as a consolation for one's wonder, if we divide the nature that is in generation and change into so many kinds. But consider now, all together, this further point: of the highest principles — I mean the One and the indefinite dyad — the one, being the element of all shapelessness and disorder, is called unlimitedness,
while the nature of the One, by delimiting and taking hold of the void, the irrational, and the indeterminate belonging to unlimitedness, renders it shaped, and will show that the resulting predication concerning perceptible things somehow submits to and receives this. These are the first principles that appear in connection with number — or rather, plurality is not number at all unless, like a form imposed on matter, the One, having come to be,
cuts off from the unlimitedness of the indeterminate now a greater, now a lesser portion. For then each of the pluralities becomes a number, being delimited by the One; but if the One is removed, the indefinite dyad again throws everything into confusion and renders it rhythmless, unlimited, and immeasurable. And since form is not a removal of matter but the shape and order of what underlies it, it is necessary
that both principles inhere in number as well; whence the first and greatest difference and dissimilarity has arisen. For the indeterminate principle is the maker of the even, while the better principle is maker of the odd; and the first of the even numbers is two, the first of the odd numbers is three, from which five arises — a number that in its composition is common to both, but in its power
has become odd. For it was necessary that, since the perceptible and bodily is divided into more parts because of the innate necessity of otherness, neither the first even number nor the first odd number should come to be, but rather the third number composed from these, so that it might arise from both principles — both the one that fashions the even and the one that fashions the odd; for it was not possible for the one
to be rid of the other, since each has the nature and power of a principle. So, with both combined, the better principle prevailed over the indeterminacy of the dividing principle and took its stand in the bodily realm; and since matter is set apart in both, it placed the monad in the middle and did not allow the whole to be divided in two, but rather a plurality of worlds came to be through the otherness and difference of the indeterminate, while an odd plurality was wrought by the power of sameness
and of the determinate; and it is odd in this sense, that it did not allow nature to proceed further than what is better. For if the One had been unmixed and pure, matter would not have had any separation at all; but since it is mixed with the divisive character of the dyad, it received cutting and division, yet came to rest at this point, the odd having mastered the even." "For this reason too,
the ancients were accustomed to call counting 'pempazein' [to five-count]. And I think that the word 'all' (panta) has also come to be, reasonably, a derivative of 'five' (pente), inasmuch as the pentad is composed of the first numbers. For other numbers, when multiplied by others, pass over into a number different from themselves, whereas the pentad, if it is taken an even number of times, produces ten, a perfect number; but if taken an odd number of times,
it renders itself again. And I pass over the fact that the pentad is the first number composed of the first two squares, that of the monad and that of the tetrad; and that it is the first number equal in power to the two numbers before it that constitutes the most beautiful of right-angled triangles; and that it is the first to produce the ratio of one and a half. For perhaps these facts are not properly relevant to the matters before us; but rather this, that it is by nature divisive
of number, and that nature distributes very many things according to it. For nature has allotted to us ourselves five senses and five parts of the soul — the nutritive, the perceptive, the appetitive, the spirited, and the rational; and just as many fingers on each hand; and the most generative seed is divided fivefold. For no woman has ever been recorded to have borne more than five children at a single birth. And the Egyptians tell in myth that Rhea bore five gods,
hinting thereby at the generation of the five worlds from a single matter. And in the universe, the region around the earth is marked off by five zones, and the heaven is divided by five circles — two arctic, two tropic, and the equinoctial in the middle; and there have come to be five circuits of the wandering stars, since the sun, the Morning Star, and Mercury move together on the same course. The arrangement of the cosmos is also harmonious,
just as, to be sure, our own music is seen to be tuned according to five positions of the tetrachords — the lowest, the middle, the conjunct, the disjunct, and the highest — and the melodic intervals are five: the quarter-tone, the semitone, the tone, the tone-and-a-half, and the ditone. Thus nature seems to delight in making all things by means of the number five rather than by means of the spherical, as Aristotle used to say." "Why then,
someone might ask, did Plato refer the number of the five worlds to the five figures, saying that with the fifth construction 'god made use of it for the whole, decorating that'? And then, having proposed the difficulty about the plurality of worlds — whether it is fitting to say that they are by nature one or five in truth — he clearly shows that he supposes this suspicion to have started from that very point. If, then,
we must bring what is likely to bear upon his meaning, let us consider that, by the differences among those bodies and figures, differences of motion must immediately follow as well, just as he himself teaches, declaring that whatever is separated out or combined together changes its place at the same time as its substance undergoes alteration. For if fire arises from air, the octahedron being dissolved and broken up into pyramids,
or again air arises from fire, the pyramids being pressed together and compressed into an octahedron, it is not possible for it to remain where it was before, but it flees and is carried off to another region, being forced out and contending against the things that resist and press upon it. What happens is shown still more clearly by an image: he compares it to the way "things shaken and winnowed by sieves and instruments used for the cleansing of grain," saying likewise that the
elements, shaking matter and being shaken by it in turn, always draw the like ever nearer to the like, and that different things occupy different places before the whole was brought, out of them, into order. Since, then, matter was disposed as is likely for the whole to be disposed where god is absent, at once the first five qualities, each having its own proper inclination, were carried apart from one another, not entirely nor purely separated out, because
since all things were mixed together, the elements that were mastered always followed, contrary to their own nature, those that had the mastery. For this reason, then, as the different kinds of bodies were carried off in different directions, they produced portions and divisions equal in number to them: one not of pure fire but fire-like; another not of unmixed aether but aether-like; another not of earth itself by itself but earth-like; and above all, the commingling of air with
water, because, as has been said, they departed still filled with many of the other kinds. For god did not separate or settle the substance apart; rather, having taken it over already separated by itself and being carried apart in such great disorder, he ordered and fitted it together by means of proportion and mean terms; and then, having established in each a ratio to act as its governor and guardian, he made as many worlds as there
were kinds of the primary bodies." "Let this, then, be dedicated to the grace of Plato, through Ammonius. As for myself, I would never insist that the number of worlds is exactly that many; but I regard the opinion that holds there to be more than one, yet not infinite but limited in number, to be no less reasonable than either of the other two views, since I observe that the scattered and divisible nature of matter is neither confined to one thing nor
...to proceed under the guidance of reason. And if here, as elsewhere, we remind ourselves of the Academy and strip away excessive confidence, preserving only our safety, as though in a treacherous place, by means of the argument from infinity.” When I had said this, Demetrius said, “Lamprias is right to urge caution. For it is not by ‘the many shapes of sophistries,’ as Euripides says, but by the shapes of facts that the gods ‘confound us,’ whenever we venture to pronounce on matters so great as though we understood them. But the argument,” he went on, quoting the same poet, “must be brought back to its original starting point. For to say that when the daemons withdraw and abandon the oracles, these lie idle and voiceless like the instruments of craftsmen, raises a further and greater question — the question of the cause and power by which the daemons, when present, make prophets and priestesses possessed and susceptible to visions. For it is not possible to blame the failure of the oracles on an eclipse unless we have first been persuaded in what manner the daemons, by standing over the oracles and being present at them, make them active and articulate.”
Ammonius then took up the argument: “Do you suppose,” he said, “that the daemons are anything other than souls that wander about ‘clad in air,’ as Hesiod says? To my mind, the difference a soul that has been fitted out with a body suited to the present life has from another soul is like the difference a man has from another man who is acting a tragedy or a comedy. There is nothing unreasonable, then, nor astonishing, if souls in contact with souls produce impressions of the future, just as we ourselves communicate much to one another, and give signs of things past and foretokens of things to come, not only by speech but by writing, and merely by touch and by a glance — unless, Lamprias, you have something different to say. Indeed a report recently reached us that you had discussed these very matters at length with some visitors at Lebadeia, though the man who told us of it could not recall any of it accurately.”
“Do not be surprised,” I said. “Many activities and preoccupations, occurring together because of the oracle and the sacrifice, scattered our conversation and broke it into pieces.” “But now,” said Ammonius, “you have listeners who are at leisure and eager, some to inquire, others to learn, since strife is out of the way and all contentiousness, and, as you see, license and freedom of speech are granted to every argument.” When the others joined in urging me as well, I paused a little and said, “Well, Ammonius, it was by a kind of chance that you yourself gave a certain starting point and opening to what was said then. For if souls that have been separated from the body, or have never had any part in it at all, are daemons, as you and the divine Hesiod hold — ‘holy beings dwelling on earth, guardians of mortal men’ — why do we deprive the souls that are in bodies of that power by which daemons are naturally able to foreknow the future and reveal it beforehand?
It is not reasonable that souls, when they leave the body, should acquire some power or faculty they did not possess before; rather they always possess it, but possess it in a weaker form while mixed with the body — in some cases wholly obscure and hidden, in others feeble and dim, comparable to people seeing through a mist or moving in water, sluggish and slow to act, and greatly in need of care and recovery of what is proper to it, and of the removal and purging of what covers it. For just as the sun does not become bright only when it escapes the clouds, but is always bright, though it appears to us dim and obscured when veiled in mist — so the soul does not acquire the power of divination by leaving the body as though escaping a cloud, but possesses it even now, though it is blinded by its admixture and confusion with what is mortal.
One should not be surprised, nor disbelieve, when one observes — if nothing else — how great an achievement the soul’s power that is the counterpart to divination, which we call memory, shows itself to be, in preserving and guarding things past, or rather things that no longer even exist at all. For of things that have happened, nothing exists or subsists; all things come into being and perish together — actions, words, and experiences — as time carries each of them along like a stream. Yet this power of the soul, in some way I cannot explain, lays hold of things not present and clothes them with appearance and being. The oracle given to the Thessalians about Arne bade them ‘tell the hearing of the deaf and the sight of the blind’; and memory is for us both the hearing of deaf things and the sight of blind things.
Hence, as I said, it is not surprising if a soul that has mastery over things that no longer exist should anticipate many things that have not yet come to be; for these belong to it all the more, and it is in sympathy with them, since it reaches out and directs itself toward the future, and is released from things past and finished, except insofar as it remembers them.” “Souls, then, possessing this power as something innate but faint and hard to bring into vivid image, nevertheless often burst into bloom and recover it, both in dreams and, in some cases, near the end of life, either because the body becomes pure, or takes on some mixture suited to this purpose, or because the reasoning and calculating faculty is relaxed and released from present concerns, turning instead, by its irrational and image-forming part, toward the future. For it is not true, as Euripides says, that ‘the best seer is he who guesses well’; rather, that man is sensible who, following the part of the soul that has understanding and reasons from probability, walks along the right path.
The faculty of divination, on the other hand, is like a writing tablet that is blank, without reason, and undetermined in itself, but receptive to impressions through affections and presentiments, and it grasps the future without reasoning, most of all when it stands furthest outside the present. It is put into this state by a certain temperament and condition of the body, occurring in a process of change which we call enthusiasm, or inspiration. Now the body of itself often falls into such a condition on its own account; but the earth also sends up to men springs of many other powers, some causing derangement, disease, and death, others beneficial, gentle, and helpful, as becomes clear to those who encounter them by experience. The prophetic current and vapor is most divine and most holy, whether it rises up by itself through the air or is carried along with a stream of moisture.
For when it mingles into the body it produces in souls a temperament that is unusual and strange, the particular nature of which it is hard to state clearly, though reason allows many ways of conjecturing about it. It is likely that by heat and diffusion it opens certain passages that give images of the future, just as wine, when it rises as vapor, reveals many other movements and words that lie stored away and hidden. For the Bacchic and the frenzied condition, according to Euripides, has much prophetic power in it, whenever the soul, becoming heated and fiery, casts off the caution which mortal prudence, by intruding, often turns aside and quenches — the very state of enthusiasm.
At the same time one might not unreasonably say that a certain dryness, arising together with the heat, thins the breath and makes it ethereal and pure; for ‘a dry soul,’ according to Heraclitus, [is best]. Moisture not only dulls sight and hearing, but also, when it touches mirrors and mixes with the air surrounding them, takes away their brightness and their gleam. Conversely again, by a certain chilling and condensation of the breath, it is not impossible that the prophetic part of the soul should be tempered and given an edge, as iron is by tempering. Indeed, just as tin, melted into bronze that is porous and full of gaps, both tightens and condenses it and at the same time renders it brighter and purer, so there is nothing to prevent the prophetic vapor, having some affinity and kinship with souls, from filling up their gaps and holding them together by fitting into them.
For different things are suited and appropriate to different substances, just as the bean is what carries the dye for purple, and natron for saffron, when mixed in; and to grey-white linen, kermes-dye is mixed, as Empedocles has said. As for the Cydnus river and the sacred knife of Apollo at Tarsus, my dear Demetrius, we heard you tell how the Cydnus alone cleanses that iron, and no water but that river can cleanse the knife — just as at Olympia they mold the ash onto the altar and make it set firm by pouring water from the Alpheus over it, whereas when they try other rivers they cannot get the ash to bind or stick together in the same way.”
“It is not to be wondered at, then, that although the earth sends up many streams, only these particular ones dispose souls to enthusiasm and to visionary impressions of the future. Indeed, the traditions about the fame of this place agree with our account; for they relate that the power connected with this spot first became manifest here when a certain goatherd fell in by some chance, and then uttered inspired cries, of which those present at first took no notice, but later, when what the man had foretold came to pass, they were astonished. The most learned of the Delphians, remembering also the man’s name, say he was called Coretas.
It seems to me that the soul takes on such a blending and combination with the prophetic breath as the faculty of sight, made receptive, takes on with light. For although the eye possesses the power of seeing, it can do nothing without light; and likewise the prophetic faculty of the soul, like an eye, needs something proper to it that kindles and sharpens it further. Hence most of the ancients held that Apollo and the sun were one and the same god; but those who understood and honored the fine and wise analogy — that body is to soul, sight to mind, and light to truth, what the sun’s power is to the nature of Apollo — represented the sun as truly the offspring and ever-continuing progeny of Apollo, always coming into being. For the sun kindles, advances, and stirs up together the visual power of sense, just as Apollo does the prophetic power of the soul.”
“Those, however, who hold the view that god is one and the same reasonably assigned the oracle jointly to Apollo and to Earth, supposing that the sun produces in the Earth the disposition and temperament from which the prophetic vapors are given off. As for the Earth itself, just as Hesiod, thinking better than some philosophers, called it ‘the secure seat of all things,’ so we too consider it both everlasting and imperishable; but as for the powers connected with it, it is likely that in some places there occur failings, in others new beginnings, and elsewhere shiftings and changes of flow from other quarters, and that such cycles recur repeatedly around it through all time, as one may infer from what is observed.
For there have been failures of lakes and rivers, and even more of hot springs, in some places complete disappearances and destructions, in others what amounts to a fleeing away and sinking underground; then again after intervals of time they come back, appearing in the same places or flowing nearby underground. We also know that new obscurings of mines have occurred, as with the silver mines around Attica, and the copper ore in Euboea from which cold-forged swords used to be made, as Aeschylus says — ‘taking a self-sharpened Euboean sword’; and at the rock in Carystus it is not long since the soft, thread-like coils of stone it used to yield ceased to be produced. Indeed I think some of you have seen hand-towels and nets and hairnets from there, which are not at all burned by fire; rather, whatever soiling they take on in use is removed by throwing them into a bright, clear flame, and they come out again — but now that material has vanished, and scarcely any fibers or sparse threads run through the mines any longer.”
“And yet the followers of Aristotle declare that in all these cases the earth’s exhalation is the productive agent, and it is necessarily this same exhalation that must fail together with them, shift together with them, and blossom forth again together with them, when such phenomena occur. The same must be thought concerning the prophetic vapors — that they do not possess an everlasting or unaging power, but one subject to change. For it is likely that excessive rains quench them, and that they are dispersed when thunderbolts strike, and especially when the earth undergoes a subsidence and takes on silting and a filling-in at depth, that the exhalations shift elsewhere or are altogether blinded — just as they say the effects of the great earthquake that overturned the city itself still persist here.
And at Orchomenus they say that when a plague occurred, many people perished, and the oracle of Tiresias failed altogether, and remains to this day idle and voiceless. And if something similar has happened in the region of Cilicia, as we hear, no one could tell us more clearly than you, Demetrius.” And Demetrius said, “I myself do not know, at least not now, for as you know I have been away from home for a very long time now; but while I was still there, the oracles of both Mopsus and Amphilochus were flourishing. And I can tell of a most remarkable thing that happened to me when I visited the oracle of Mopsus.
The governor of Cilicia, himself still of divided mind about matters divine — out of a weakness of unbelief, I think, for in other respects he was an insolent and worthless man — having about him certain Epicureans, men of the fine sort who pride themselves on natural philosophy and who, as they themselves say, mock such things, sent in a freedman, disguising him as though he were a spy sent among enemies, carrying a sealed tablet in which the question was written, known to no one. The man, then, having spent the night, as is the custom, in the shrine, and having fallen asleep, reported the next day such a dream as this: it seemed to him that a handsome man stood over him and spoke only this one word, ‘black,’ and nothing more, and then straightway vanished.
This seemed strange to us and caused much perplexity; but that governor was astonished and did obeisance, and opening the tablet showed us the question written in it: ‘Shall I sacrifice to you a white bull or a black one?’ — so that even the Epicureans were confounded, and the man himself both carried out the sacrifice and continued ever after to reverence Mopsus.” When Demetrius had said this, he fell silent; and I, wishing to set a kind of capstone upon the discussion, looked again toward Philip and Ammonius, who were sitting together. It seemed to me they wished to say something, and I checked myself again.
But Ammonius said, “Philip too, Lamprias, has something to say about what has been said; for he, like most people, supposes that Apollo is not a separate god but the same as the sun. My own perplexity is greater, and concerns greater matters. For just now, I do not know how, in the course of our argument, we surrendered the art of divination from the gods to the daemons, virtually banishing it from among the gods altogether; and now it seems to me we are again thrusting those very daemons out and driving them away from the oracle and the tripod, resolving the origin — or rather the very substance and power — of divination into currents and vapors and exhalations. For these blendings and heatings that have been mentioned, and...
"...the tempering and hardening," [I said,] "the more they draw opinion away from the gods and introduce some such reckoning of causation as Euripides makes his Cyclops use, when he says: 'The earth, whether she will or no, of necessity brings forth grass and fattens my flocks.' Except that the Cyclops at any rate does not claim to sacrifice to the gods but to himself, and 'to the greatest of the divinities, his own belly'; whereas we both sacrifice and pray at the oracular shrines—for what purpose, if it is only that the souls possess in themselves a mantic power, and the mixture of air or breath that stirs it up is nothing more than some blend of vapor? And what do the libations poured over the victims mean, and the rule that no oracle may be given unless the victim, from the tips of its hooves upward, trembles all over and is shaken as the libation is poured on it? For it is not enough for it to shake its head, as in other sacrifices; every part of the body must be seized at once by a shuddering and pulsation, accompanied by a tremulous sound—and if this does not happen, they say the oracle does not function and they do not bring in the Pythia. And yet, if one attributes the greater share of the cause to a god or a daimon, it is reasonable to do and believe this; but on your account it is not reasonable. For the vapor, whether the victim shudders or not, being present, will produce the inspired state and will affect the soul in like manner, not only of the Pythia but of any body that happens to come near it. Hence it is foolish to make use of a single woman for the oracles, and to burden her with the trouble of keeping herself chaste and pure her whole life through. As for that famous Coretas, whom the Delphians say was the first to fall in with the power belonging to the place and to give evidence of it, I think he was in no way different from other goatherds and shepherds—if indeed this is not a myth and an empty fiction, as I for my part believe. And when I reckon how great the benefits are of which this oracle has been the cause for the Greeks, in wars and in the founding of cities, in plagues and in failures of crops, I think it a terrible thing not to ascribe its discovery and origin to a god and to providence, but to attribute it to chance and to what happens automatically."
"In view of this," he said, "I wish to converse with Lamprias—will you wait?" "By all means," said Philip, "and so will all these others, for the discourse has stirred all of us." And I said to him, "It has not only stirred me, Philip, but has thrown me into confusion, if in the presence of men so numerous and so eminent as you I seem, beyond my years, to be preening myself on the plausibility of my argument and to be doing away with and disturbing beliefs truly and piously held about the divine. I shall defend myself, however, by bringing forward Plato as both witness and advocate at once. For that man found fault with Anaxagoras of old, because, being too bound up with physical causes and always pursuing and tracking down what is brought about by necessity in the affections of bodies, he let go of the better causes and principles—the 'that for the sake of which' and the 'by which'—while Plato himself was the first, or chiefly among the philosophers, to pursue both, assigning to god the principle of things that follow reason, yet not depriving matter of the necessary causes that contribute to what comes to be, but seeing that in this way, too, the whole sensible universe is arranged, not pure nor unmixed, but taking on its coming-to-be through matter interwoven with reason."
"Consider first the case of craftsmen: take, for instance, the famous base and stand of the mixing-bowl here, which Herodotus called the 'stand of the mixing-bowl'—it had material causes, fire and iron and the softening produced through fire and the tempering through water, without which no device could bring the work into being; but the more authoritative principle, the one that set these in motion and worked through them, was supplied to the work by art and reason. And indeed, of these very imitations and images, the maker and craftsman is inscribed: 'Polygnotus, a Thasian by birth, son of Aglaophon, painted the sacked citadel of Ilium, as it is seen painted'; yet without pigments ground and blended together with one another, it would have been impossible for such an arrangement and appearance to come into being. Does the man, then, who wishes to grasp the material principle, seeking and teaching the affections and changes that a red ochre mixed with a pale pigment undergoes, and a dark one mixed with a whitish, thereby take away the credit due to the craftsman? Does the man who explains the tempering and softening of iron—that when relaxed by fire it yields and gives way to those who hammer and beat it, but when plunged again into pure cold water, and by its coldness, on account of the softness and porosity engendered in it by the fire, is compressed and made dense, it acquires that firmness and hardness which Homer called 'the strength of iron'—does such a man any the less preserve for the craftsman the credit for the coming-into-being of the work? I for my part do not think so. Indeed, some medicinal powers, too, have their qualities called into question, without thereby doing away with the medical art itself. Just as, of course, Plato too, while declaring that we see by the light from our eyes blending with the light of the sun, and hear by the impact of the air, did not thereby do away with our having become creatures able to see and hear in accordance with reason and providence."
"For, speaking generally," I said, "since every coming-into-being has a twofold cause, the very ancient theologians and poets chose to attend to the superior one, uttering that common refrain applied to all things: 'Zeus the beginning, Zeus the middle, and from Zeus all things have their being'; but they no longer went on to the necessary and physical causes. The more recent thinkers, however, called the 'natural philosophers,' straying in the opposite direction from that fine and divine principle, place everything in bodies and the affections of bodies, in impacts and changes and mixtures. Hence in both cases the account falls short of what is fitting: the one group is ignorant of, or leaves aside, the 'through which' and 'by which,' the other the 'out of which' and 'through which.' But the man who was the first to lay hold clearly of both, and who, along with the agent that acts and moves in accordance with reason, also took in, as necessary, the underlying subject that is acted upon, frees both himself and us from every suspicion and false charge. For we are not making divination godless or irrational when we assign to it as matter the soul of man, and as instrument or plectrum, so to speak, the inspiring breath and the vapor. For, in the first place, it is the earth that gives birth to the vapors, and the sun that imparts to the earth its whole power of tempering and change—being, by ancestral custom, a god for us; and then there are daimones set over it, going about and guarding it, as it were the harmony of this mixture, at one time relaxing it in due season, at another intensifying it, and removing what is excessively frenzied and disturbing in it, while allowing what is stimulating to be blended in, harmlessly and without hurt, for those who make use of it—we shall not, I think, be considered to be doing anything irrational or impossible."
"Nor, again, in offering sacrifices beforehand and garlanding the victims and pouring libations over them, do we act contrary to this account. For the priests and the sacred officials say that they sacrifice the victim and pour the libation and observe closely its movement and its trembling, taking this as a sign of nothing other than the god's readiness to prophesy; for the thing to be sacrificed must be pure and unharmed and undamaged, in body as well as in soul. Now the signs revealing conditions of the body are not very difficult to detect; but they test the soul by setting barley-groats before the bulls and chickpeas before the boars, for they think that one which does not taste of them is not in good health. And they test the goat by cold water: for they hold that it is not in the nature of a soul that is in its natural state to be unaffected and unmoved at being doused with the libation. As for myself, even if it is well established that shuddering is a sign of the god's readiness to prophesy, and the opposite a sign that he is not ready, I do not see what awkward consequence follows from this for what has been said. For every power, given the right occasion, produces its natural effect better or worse; and since the right occasion escapes us, it is reasonable that the god should give signs of it."
"I think, then, that the vapor does not remain in the same condition invariably at all times, but has certain periods of relaxation and, again, of intensity; and for the evidence I use, I have as witnesses both many strangers and all those who tend the shrine. For the chamber in which they seat those who consult the god is filled, not often nor regularly but as chance has it, at intervals of time, with a fragrance and a breath such as the sweetest and most costly of perfumes might send forth, as though from a spring, the innermost sanctuary being its source; for it is likely to bloom forth on account of heat or some other power that arises in it. And if this does not seem plausible, at least you will agree that the Pythia herself is subject, at different times, to different affections and changes in that part of the soul with which the breath comes into contact, and does not always maintain one and the same tempering, unvarying like a fixed harmony, at every season. For many disturbances and movements, some perceived, but more of them unnoticed, take hold of the body and steal through into the soul; and when she is full of these, it is not better for her to go there, nor to present herself to the god when she is not altogether pure, like an instrument well strung and tuneful, but instead subject to passion and unsettled."
"For neither does wine always affect the drinker in the same way, nor the pipe always produce the same enthusiastic effect; rather, at one time the same people are stirred into Bacchic frenzy less, at another more, since the mixture within them has become different. And it seems that above all the imaginative part of the soul is overmastered and changes along with the body as the body is altered, as is clear from the case of dreams: at times we find ourselves amid many and varied dream-visions, but at other times, again, there is complete calm and quiet from such things. We ourselves know that Cleon of Daulis, over the many years of his life, used to claim that he had never once seen a dream; and the same is said by the older men about Thrasymedes of Heraea. The cause is the tempering of the body—just as, on the other hand, that of melancholic people is full of dreams and full of imaginings, and it seems that they possess the gift of true dreaming; for, since the imaginative faculty turns to different objects at different times, like men throwing many casts, they often hit the mark."
"Whenever, then, the imaginative and mantic faculty is in due accord with the tempering of the breath, as of a drug, inspiration must necessarily arise in those who prophesy; but when it is not so, it either does not arise, or arises distorted and impure and disturbed, as we know happened in the case of the Pythia who died recently. For when envoys had come from abroad, it is said that the victim endured the first libations poured over it unmoved and unaffected; but when the priests, out of eagerness for honor, went to excess and were insistent, it scarcely gave way, and only after being drenched and thoroughly soaked. What, then, happened concerning the Pythia? She went down into the oracular chamber, as they say, unwilling and reluctant; and straightaway, at her first responses, it was evident from the roughness of her voice that something was wrong—she was not, like a ship driving before the wind, bearing up under it, but was full of a voiceless and evil spirit. Finally, thrown into utter turmoil, and rushing with a fearful cry toward the exit, she flung herself down, so that not only the envoys fled but the prophet Nicander as well, and those of the sacred officials who were present. However, going in a little later, they picked her up, still conscious, and she lived on for a few days."
"For these reasons they keep the body of the Pythia chaste from intercourse and her whole life free of mixture with intercourse of any foreign kind, and untouched; and before consulting the oracle they take the signs, believing that it is clear to the god when she has the fitting tempering and disposition to endure the inspiration without harm. For the power of the breath does not affect everyone, nor the same people always, in the same way, but it merely supplies fuel and a starting-point, as has been said, for those disposed by nature to be affected and changed by it. It is indeed truly divine and of a daimon's nature, yet not inexhaustible nor imperishable nor ageless and enduring for infinite time—that time by which all things between earth and moon grow weary, according to our account. There are those, too, who say that even the things above the moon do not persist, but, giving out before the eternal and infinite, undergo swift changes and rebirths."
"These matters," I said, "I urge both you and myself to reconsider often, since I hold many objections and suspicions on the opposite side, which the present occasion does not allow me to pursue through in full; so let these too be set aside, along with what Philip is puzzling over concerning the sun and Apollo."