Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
BASILOCLES: You made a long evening of it, Philinus, escorting the stranger around among the votive offerings; I gave up waiting for you and lost hope of your coming. PHILINUS: Yes, Basilocles, we went slowly, sowing words and reaping them at once amid battle—prickly, warlike words, like the Sown Men, sprouting up and springing beneath our feet along the way. So we shall have to call in someone else who was there, unless you would rather do us the favor
of going through who the speakers were and what was said. PHILINUS: That, it seems, Basilocles, is my task, for you would not easily find any of the others still in the city; most of them, I saw, had gone up again to the Corycian cave and Lycoreia with the stranger. BASILOCLES: Is our stranger, then, so fond of sights, and so remarkably fond of listening? PHILINUS: Fond of learning, rather,
and fond of study more than that. Yet this is not the most admirable thing about him, but a gentleness that wins great favor, and a combative, questioning spirit tempered by good sense, neither difficult nor contentious in his replies—so that after only a brief acquaintance one would at once say, "a true son of a good father." For you know Diogenianus, best of men. BASILOCLES: I myself have not seen him, Philinus, but I have met many who
warmly approve both the man's discourse and his character, and others say the same sort of things about the young man. But how did the discussion begin, and on what occasion? PHILINUS: The guides were going through their set speeches, paying no heed to our request that they cut short their recitations and the bulk of the inscriptions. The stranger, for his part, was only moderately drawn in by the appearance and craftsmanship of the statues,
for he had evidently been a spectator of many fine works before; but he marveled at the brightness of the bronze, which did not look like the color of grime or verdigris, but had the sheen of a dark-blue dye—so much so that he made a joke about the admirals (for it was with them that his viewing had begun), saying they stood there looking exactly like sea-colored, deep-sea creatures by their hue. "Was there, then," he asked, "some blending and treatment
practiced by the craftsmen of old upon their bronze," he said, "like the so-called tempering of swords, the loss of which brought a truce to works of war for bronze?" For the Corinthian bronze, he said, got its beauty not by art but by chance of color, when fire spread through a house that contained some gold and silver, and a great quantity of bronze stored up; these having been fused and melted together, the greater mass
gave its name to the bronze. Theon took this up and said, "We have heard another account, a more roguish one: that a bronzesmith in Corinth, having come upon a chest containing a great deal of gold, and afraid of being caught with it, kept cutting off small amounts and quietly mixing them into the bronze, which took on a marvelous blend, and he sold it for a high price, since it was prized for its color and beauty. But this story too, like the other, is a fable; there was, it seems, some
mixture and seasoning, just as even now people who blend gold with silver produce a certain peculiar and, to my mind, sickly greenish tint and an unlovely deterioration." "What cause, then," said Diogenianus, "do you suppose there is for the color of the bronze here?" And Theon said, "Whenever, of the first and most elemental things—those that will be and those that are, fire and earth and air and
water—nothing else comes near or associates with the bronze except air alone, it is clear that the bronze has been affected by air and owes to it whatever distinctive quality it has, since air is always in contact with it and pressing upon it. Or did you know this before Theognis was born, as the comic poet says, and do you wish to learn the nature air has, and by what power, through its constant touching, it has colored the bronze?"
When Diogenianus said he did, Theon said, "So do I, my boy; let us then inquire together, and first, if you like, into the reason why oil, more than any other liquid, becomes filled with verdigris—for surely it is not that the verdigris itself rubs off onto the bronze, seeing that oil comes into contact with it in a pure and unsullied state." "By no means," said the young man; "but the cause of this seems to me to lie elsewhere:
because oil is thin, pure, and transparent, the verdigris that falls into it is very conspicuous, whereas in other liquids it is not noticeable." And Theon said, "Well said, my boy, and rightly. Consider too, if you will, the explanation given by Aristotle." "I do wish to," he said. "He says, then, that in other liquids the verdigris, as it comes on, disperses invisibly and is scattered about, because their pores
are irregular and loose, whereas in oil, because of its density, it is contained and remains gathered together. If we too can put forward some such hypothesis, we shall not be entirely at a loss for a charm and comfort against our difficulty." As we urged him on and agreed, he said that the air at Delphi, being dense and continuous and possessing tension because of its rebound and resistance
from the mountains, is also, further, thin and biting, as is attested by its effects on the digestion of food; entering, then, by reason of its thinness, and cutting into the bronze, it scores out from it a great deal of earthy verdigris, and in turn contains and compresses this, the density not allowing it to disperse, so that what settles beneath it, because of its abundance, blooms out and takes on a sheen and
gleam upon the surface. When we had accepted this, the stranger said that the second hypothesis alone was sufficient for the argument. "Thinness," he said, "will seem to be at odds with the density of the air we spoke of, but this is not a necessary inference; for the bronze, growing old of itself, breathes out and releases the verdigris, which the density, by holding it together and compacting it, makes conspicuous
because of its abundance." Theon then took this up and said, "Why, stranger, should the same thing not be both thin and dense, as with silk and fine linen fabrics, of which Homer too spoke, saying, 'and from the well-timed linen liquid oil drips off,' indicating the fineness and thinness of the weave by the fact that the oil does not stay on it but flows off and slips away, since
thinness and density do not admit it. And indeed one might use the thinness of the air to explain not only the scoring of the verdigris, but also the fact that it seems to make the color itself more pleasant and bluer, mingling light and radiance with the dark-blue." After this a silence fell, and the guides again took up their recitations. When some oracle in verse had been recited, I believe, concerning the
kingship of Aegon the Argive, Diogenianus said he had often marveled at the poor and cheap quality of the verses in which the oracles are reported to have been given. And yet the god is a leader of the Muses, and it is no less fitting for him to excel in what is called eloquence than in tunefulness of melody and song, and to far surpass Hesiod in fine phrasing and Homer as well: "yet we see most of the oracles
filled with faults of meter and diction, and with poor quality." Then Sarapion the poet, who was present from Athens, said, "So then, believing these verses to be the god's, do we in turn dare to say that they fall short in beauty of Homer's and Hesiod's, and shall we not treat them as most excellently and beautifully composed, correcting our own judgment, which has been preoccupied by a poor habit?" Then
Boethus the geometer took this up (for you know the man is now shifting his allegiance to Epicurus), and said, "Have you heard, then, the story about Pauson the painter?" "I have not," said Sarapion. "Well, it is worth hearing. Having been commissioned, it seems, to paint a horse rolling on the ground, he painted one running instead. When the man grew angry, Pauson laughed and turned the panel upside down; and with what was above now below,
the horse now appeared, instead of running, to be rolling. Bion says that some arguments suffer the same fate when they are turned about. That is why some will say the oracles are good and admirable because they are the god's, while others will say they are not the god's because they are of poor quality. The former point is uncertain; but that the verses concerning the oracles are not well composed
is, I should think, evident even to you as judge, dear Sarapion," he said, "for the poems you write are, in their subject matter, philosophical and austere, but in power and grace and the crafting of their diction they resemble those of Homer and Hesiod more than the utterances delivered by the Pythia." And Sarapion said, "We are sick, Boethus—both our ears and our eyes—being accustomed
through luxury and softness to regard the more pleasant as the more beautiful, and to declare it so. Soon, no doubt, we shall find fault with the Pythia because she does not speak more sweetly than Glauce the singer to the lyre, nor does she come down into the inner shrine anointed with myrrh and clad in purple robes, nor does she burn cassia or ladanum or frankincense as incense, but laurel and barley meal. Do you not see," he said, "what charm the songs of Sappho have, enchanting and
bewitching their hearers? Whereas the Sibyl, 'with raving mouth,' as Heraclitus says, 'uttering things mirthless and unadorned and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, because of the god.' And Pindar says that Cadmus 'heard from the god the true music'—not sweet or delicate or broken into fragments in its melodies. For that which is impassive and pure does not admit pleasure, but here, along with Ate,
the greater part of pleasure has been cast down and has, it seems, flowed together into the ears of men." When Sarapion had said this, Theon smiled and said, "Sarapion has given us his usual performance, indulging his own bent when talk of Ate and pleasure came his way. But let us, Boethus, even if these verses are of poorer quality than Homer's, not suppose that the god himself composed them,
but rather that he supplies only the origin of the motion, each of the prophetesses being moved according to her own nature. For indeed, if the oracles had to be written down rather than spoken, we would not, I think, find fault with them as the god's own handwriting, on the ground that it falls short in calligraphy of the writing of kings. For the voice is not the god's, nor the sound, nor the diction, nor the meter, but the woman's; he
supplies only the visions, and creates a light in the soul concerning the future—for that is what inspiration is. And to speak generally, you—the prophets of Epicurus (for you too are plainly being carried along in that direction)—cannot escape the difficulty, but must blame the prophetesses of old as well for using poor verses, and the present-day ones for delivering their oracles in prose and in
everyday words, so that they may not have to answer to you for headless, feeble, and docked meters." And Diogenianus said, "Do not jest, in the gods' name, but resolve this difficulty for us, since it concerns us all. For there is no Greek who does not seek some cause and explanation for how the oracle has ceased to deliver its responses in verse and elaborate language." Theon then took this up
and said, "But even now, my boy, we seem, out of a kind of spite, to be robbing the guides of their proper work. Let us allow them to finish first, and then you may raise whatever difficulties you wish at leisure." We were now going forward and had come to the statue of Hiero the tyrant; and although the stranger already knew everything about the rest, he still, out of good nature, let himself be told. When he
heard that a bronze column of Hiero's, which had stood above, fell of its own accord on that very day on which it happened that Hiero died at Syracuse, he marveled. And I in turn recalled similar cases, such as that of Hiero the Spartan, whose statue's eyes fell out before his death at Leuctra, and the stars that Lysander had dedicated from the naval battle at
Aegospotami disappeared. And Lysander's own stone statue sprouted a wild thicket and so great a mass of grass that it covered the face. And in the Sicilian disasters of the Athenians, the golden dates fell off the palm tree, and crows pecked away the shield of the Palladium. And the Cnidian crown, which Philomelus the tyrant of Phocis had given
as a gift to Pharsalia the dancer, when she had moved from Greece to Italy, destroyed her at Metapontum while she was sporting about the temple of Apollo; for the young men, rushing at the crown and fighting one another over the gold, tore the woman apart. Aristotle, then, said that Homer alone makes words that move, because of his vividness; but I would say that of the votive offerings, those
here especially move together with, and give signs together with, the providence of the god, and that no part of them is empty or without perception, but all are filled with divinity." And Boethus said, "Yes—for it is not enough for you to shut the god up in a mortal body once each month, but you must also blend him together with every stone and every bit of bronze, as if you did not have Fortune, an adequate
craftsman for such coincidences, and automatic chance as well." "So then," I said, "you think that each of these events resembles the work of chance and automatism, and that it is plausible that atoms should slip, be dissolved, and swerve, neither earlier nor later, but at that very time when each of the dedicators was destined either to fare worse or better? And Epicurus, it seems, benefits you now by
what he said or wrote three hundred years ago; but would the god, if he did not involve himself by carrying himself into all things, nor be blended with all of them, not seem to you to provide the origin of motion and the cause of experience for any of the things that are?" Such was my reply to Boethus, and I said similar things about the Sibylline matters. For when we had come to a stop at the rock
on which it is said the first Sibyl sat, the one who came from Helicon and was raised by the Muses (though some say she came from the Malians, being the daughter of Lamia, daughter of Poseidon), Sarapion recalled the verses in which she sang of herself, saying that not even after death would she cease from prophecy; but she herself goes about in the moon, having become what is called the visible face of it, while
her breath, mingled with the air, will always be carried about in rumors and omens; and from her body, changed as it decays in the earth, and grass and vegetation springing up from it, sacred flocks will graze upon it, taking on all manner of colors, shapes, and qualities in their entrails, from which come the foretokens to men of the future. Boethus was now even more openly laughing at
...of the stranger, who said that even if these things resemble myths, yet many overthrows and relocations of Greek cities, and many appearances of barbarian armies and destructions of dynasties, bear witness to the prophecies: "and these disasters, recent and new, around Cumae and Dicaearchia, not celebrated and sung of old through the Sibylline verses — time, as though it owed a debt, has now paid: eruptions of mountain fire,
and boilings of the sea, and hurlings-up of rocks and blazing masses by the force of wind, and destructions of so many and so great cities all at once, so that to those who came upon the region afterward, by daylight, there was ignorance and confusion as to where they had once dwelt, the land itself thrown into such disorder. For that these things happened is hard to believe, let alone that they were foretold without some divine power." And Boethus said, "What sort of
"disturbance does time not owe to nature? What is there among strange and unexpected things concerning earth or sea or cities or men, that a man who foretold it would not chance to see happen? And indeed this can hardly even be called foretelling but rather uttering — or rather flinging and scattering words that have no fixed starting point into the infinite; and to these, wandering at random, fortune has often come to meet and
coincided with by chance. For I think it makes a difference whether the thing said comes to pass, or the thing that is going to happen is said beforehand. For the one who says what does not exist has, in himself, the very error of the statement, and does not justly wait for confirmation from chance, nor does he use a true proof of foreknowledge, since he understands only, after the saying, what happened to occur, while infinity carries everything along. Rather, the man 'who guesses well' is the one whom the proverb has proclaimed the
"best diviner' — he resembles one who tracks and follows a trail through likelihoods to the future. But these Sibyls and Bacides, as if into the sea, cast down time without any mark and scattered at random names and words of all sorts of sufferings and mishaps: and since some of these do occur by chance, what is now said is equally false, even if it later happens to come true."
When Boethus had gone through such things, Sarapion said, "The claim is fair concerning things spoken so indefinitely and without qualification, as Boethus says: if victory is foretold for a general, he has won; if the destruction of a city, it has perished. But where it is said not merely what will happen, but also how, and when, and after what, and with whom, this is no longer guesswork about what will perhaps happen, but a foretelling of what
is absolutely going to be. And such is this, concerning the lameness of Agesilaus: 'Take heed, Sparta, though you are greatly proud, lest from you a lame kingship harm your sound-footed one; for long and unexpected troubles will hold you fast, and the man-destroying wave of war rolling on' — and also what concerns the island, which the sea off Thera and Therasia sent up; and concerning the war of Philip and the Romans: 'But
when the race of the Trojans shall come to be above that of the Phoenicians in the contest, then there shall be incredible deeds: the sea shall blaze with unspeakable fire, and from thunderbolts fiery whirlwinds shall dart upward through the wave together with rock, and there shall be fixed there an island not to be told by men, and worse men, prevailing by force of hand, shall conquer the better one.' For that in a short time the Romans should prevail over the Carthaginians, defeating
Hannibal, and that Philip, joining battle with the Aetolians and the Romans, should be overcome in war, and finally that an island should rise up from the deep with much fire and a boiling surge — no one could say that all this met and coincided together by chance and automatically; rather the order reveals foreknowledge, and the fact that, about five hundred years beforehand, the time was foretold to the Romans in which
they would war against all nations at once — and this was the war against their revolted slaves. For in these cases the argument does not seek anything untraceable or blind about chance in infinity, but gives many pledges of experience and shows the road along which fate walks. For I do not think anyone will say that these things coincided by chance after being foretold as they were,
since what prevents someone else from saying, in the same way, that Epicurus did not write his Sovereign Maxims for you, Boethus, but that, the letters having fallen together with one another by chance and automatically, the book was completed?" While these things were being said, we walked on. And when, in the house of the Corinthians, we were looking at the bronze palm tree, which is still among the remaining dedications, the frogs and water-snakes
wrought around its root were a source of wonder to Diogenianus, and indeed to us as well. For the palm is not, like other trees, a marsh-loving and water-loving plant, nor do frogs have anything to do with the Corinthians, so as to be a symbol or emblem of the city — just as, to be sure, the Selinuntians are said once to have dedicated a golden parsley leaf, and the Tenedians the axe, on account of the crabs that occur around the place called
Asterion among them: for they alone, it seems, have the shape of an axe on their shell. And indeed we consider ravens and swans and wolves and hawks, and every other animal rather than these, to be dear to the god himself. When Sarapion said that the craftsman had hinted at the sun's nourishment, generation, and exhalation from moist things, whether
having heard Homer say, 'the sun leapt up, leaving the very beautiful lake'; or having seen the Egyptians depicting, at the beginning of sunrise, a newborn child seated upon a lotus — I laughed and said, "Where are you off to again, my good man, pushing the Stoa in here and quietly slipping into the argument these kindlings and exhalations, not, like the Thessalian women, drawing down the moon and the sun, as though from here, out of earth
and waters, they sprouted and were watered? For Plato indeed called man too a heavenly plant, as though set upright, from a root, upward from the head; but you people mock Empedocles for saying that the sun, formed around the earth by the reflection of heavenly light, shines back again toward Olympus with fearless face — while you yourselves declare the sun to be an earth-born creature or a marsh plant, enrolling it in the
homeland of frogs or water-snakes. But let us dedicate these matters to the Stoic tragedy, and examine, as a mere side issue, the side issues of the craftsmen. For in many things they are clever, but they have not everywhere escaped the frigid and the overwrought. Just as the man who made the cock on the hand of Apollo signified the early morning hour and the moment of approaching sunrise, so here too one might say the frogs have become a symbol of the season
of spring, in which the sun begins to gain mastery of the air and to dissolve the winter — if indeed, according to you, one must not regard Apollo and the sun as two gods but as one." And Sarapion said, "Do you yourself not think so, but suppose that the sun is different from Apollo?" "I do," I said, "just as the
moon is different from the sun — except that the moon does not often, nor for everyone, hide the sun, while the sun has made almost everyone ignorant of Apollo, turning the mind's perception away from what truly is toward what merely appears." After this Sarapion asked the guides why they name the treasury-house not after Cypselus, who dedicated it, but after the Corinthians. Since they were at a loss for the reason and, it seemed to me,
kept silent, I laughed and said, "Why do we still suppose these men to know or remember anything, utterly dumbfounded as they are while we go on chattering about high matters? For earlier we heard them saying that, after the tyranny was overthrown, the Corinthians wanted to inscribe both the golden statue at Pisa and this treasury here as belonging to the city. The Delphians, then, granted this, thinking it just, and agreed; but the Eleans, out of envy,
voted that no Elean should take part in the Isthmian games — hence no Elean has since become a contestant at the Isthmian games. The killing of the Moliones by Heracles near Cleonae has nothing at all to do, as some suppose, with the Eleans' exclusion; on the contrary, it would have been fitting for them to exclude the Corinthians, if it was on this account that they had quarreled with them." So I said these things. And when the guide, after we had passed the treasury of the Acanthians and of Brasidas, showed us
a place where the iron spits of Rhodopis the courtesan once lay, Diogenianus, displeased, said, "So it belonged to the same city, to grant a place to Rhodopis, where she might set down the tithes of her wages, and yet to destroy Aesop, her fellow-slave." And Sarapion said, "Why, my good friend, are you displeased at this? Look up there and behold, among the
generals and kings, the golden statue of Mnesarete, whom Crates said was set up as a trophy of Greek incontinence." And when the young man saw it, he said, "Was that then not said by Crates about Phryne?" "Yes," said Sarapion, "for she was called Mnesarete, but she got the surname Phryne on account of her sallow complexion. Nicknames, it seems, hide many people's real names. At any rate, Alexander's
mother, they say, was called Polyxena, then Myrtale, and Olympias, and Stratonice; and the Rhodian Eumetis most people still call Cleobuline after her father; and Herophile of Erythrae, who became a prophetic Sibyl, was given that name. And from the grammarians you will hear that Leda too was called Mnesinoe, and that Orestes was named Achaeus." "But how," he said, looking toward Theon, "do you intend
to resolve this charge concerning Phryne?" And he, smiling quietly, said, "In such a way that I will also bring a countercharge against you, for finding fault with the smallest of the Greeks' offenses. For just as Socrates, when feasting at Callias's house, makes war only on the perfume, but endures watching the dances of boys and their tumbling and kisses and jesters, so you too, it seems to me, are similarly excluding a poor woman from the sanctuary for having made ungenerous use of her bodily prime,
while you see the god surrounded on every side by first-fruits and tithes of murders and wars and plunderings, and the temple full of Greek spoils and booty, and you are not displeased, nor do you pity the Greeks when you read the most shameful inscriptions upon beautiful dedications: 'Brasidas and the Acanthians, from the Athenians,' and 'the Athenians, from the Corinthians,' and 'the Phocians, from the Thessalians,' 'the Orneatans, from the Sicyonians,' 'the Amphictyons,
from the Phocians.' But Praxiteles alone, it seems, vexed Crates, by winning a gift there for his mistress — whom Crates ought rather to have praised, because he set up, beside these golden kings, a golden courtesan, reproaching wealth as having nothing wonderful or solemn about it. For it is well that kings and rulers should set up, beside the god, dedications of justice and moderation and greatness of mind, not of golden
and luxurious abundance, in which even those who have lived most shamefully have a share." "But you do not mention," said the other of the guides, "that Croesus also made and dedicated here a golden statue of the baking-woman — though not out of indulgence toward the shrine, but for a good and just reason. For it is said that Alyattes, the father of Croesus, took a second wife and was raising other children by her; and this woman, plotting
against Croesus, gave poison to the baking-woman, and ordered her, kneading it into bread, to set it before Croesus; but the baking-woman secretly told Croesus, and instead set the bread before that woman's own children. In return for this, when Croesus became king, as though the god were witness, he repaid the woman's kindness, doing well by her. Hence, he said, it is worth honoring and cherishing such a dedication, whenever any city has one, as
that of the Opuntians. For when the tyrants of Phocis melted down many of the gold and silver dedications and struck coin from them and scattered it among the cities, the Opuntians, gathering together what silver they could, sent a water-jar here to the god and consecrated it. I for my part also praise the Myrinaeans and the Apolloniates for sending golden harvests here; and even
more the Eretrians and Magnesians, for honoring the god with first-fruits of human labor, as giver of crops, ancestral, patron of birth, and friend of man. But I blame the Megarians, because they are almost the only ones who set up here a statue of the god holding a spear, taken from the battle in which they defeated the Athenians, who held their city after the Persian Wars, and drove them out. Later, however, it seems, they dedicated a golden plectrum to the god, applying to it
what Scythinus says about the lyre, which the fair-formed Apollo of Zeus tunes, embracing every beginning and end; and he holds a bright plectrum, the light of the sun." When Sarapion was about to say something on these matters, the stranger said, "It is pleasant indeed to listen to such talk, but I must ask for the first thing promised, concerning the cause that has stopped the Pythia from prophesying in
epic verses and other meters; so, if you agree, let us set aside what remains of the sightseeing and, sitting down here, hear about these matters. For this is the argument that most opposes trust in the oracle: that of two things one must be true — either the Pythia does not draw near the place where the divine power is, or the spirit has been utterly extinguished and its power has failed." So we went around and
sat down on the southern steps of the temple, looking toward the shrine of Earth and the water, so that Boethus immediately said that even the place lent support to the stranger's difficulty. For there was a shrine of the Muses here, near the source of the spring, from which they used to draw water for libations, as Simonides says: 'there, with lustral water, is guarded the sacred water beneath the fair-haired
Muses.' And Simonides, again, somewhat more elaborately, addressing Clio as 'guardian of the holy lustral waters,' calls it 'much-invoked, delicate, ungolden-robed, sweet-smelling water, taken as a gift from ambrosial recesses.' Eudoxus, then, was not right in believing that this water is called the water of Styx, as some hold. And they established the Muses as assessors and guardians of the prophetic power beside the spring
and the shrine of Earth, whose oracle is said to have arisen because of prophecy delivered in meter and song. Some say that the heroic meter was first heard here: 'Gather wings, O birds, and wax, O bees' — when, being in need before the god, she lost her dignity." Sarapion said, "These things are more reasonable, Boethus, and more musical; for one must not fight against the
god, nor, along with the prophetic art, do away also with providence and the divine, but rather seek solutions for what seems contradictory, and not abandon the pious and ancestral faith." "You speak rightly," I said, "excellent Sarapion; for indeed we did not use to give up philosophy as though it had been utterly destroyed and corrupted, because formerly the philosophers used to express their doctrines and arguments in poems,
as Orpheus and Hesiod and Parmenides and Xenophanes and Empedocles and Thales did; but later they stopped, and have long since stopped, using verse — all except you; and through you poetry comes back down once more into philosophy, urging the young on nobly and loftily. Nor did the followers of Aristarchus, Timocharis, Aristyllus, and Hipparchus make astronomy less respectable by writing in prose, though earlier Eudoxus, Hesiod, and Thales wrote in verse — if indeed Thales really composed, to speak truly, the Astronomy attributed to him. Pindar, too, confesses that on his own he is at a loss over the neglect of a certain style of song, and expresses his wonder — for there is nothing strange or absurd in seeking the causes of such changes, but it is not right to condemn the arts and their powers themselves merely because something in their outward form shifts and varies.
Theon then took this up and said: "Well, these things," he said, "have indeed undergone great changes and innovations. But as for the oracles given here, we know of many that even in that period were delivered in prose, and on matters of no small importance. To the Lacedaemonians, for instance, as Thucydides has recorded, when they consulted about the war against the Athenians, the god foretold victory and mastery, and declared that he himself would come to their aid, whether called upon or not; and, concerning Pausanias, that if they did not bring him back they would 'plow with a silver plowshare.' To the Athenians, when they inquired about the expedition to Sicily, he directed them to bring the priestess of Athena from Erythrae — the little woman was called Hesychia, 'Quiet.' And when Deinomenes the Sicilian inquired about his sons, the god answered that the three of them would become tyrants; and when Deinomenes replied, 'Woe to them then, lord Apollo,' the god said that he granted that too, and added it to the oracle besides.
You know, then, that Gelon reigned while suffering from dropsy, Hieron while suffering from the stone, and the third, Thrasybulus, after being caught up in factions and wars, was driven from power within a short time. Procles, again, the tyrant of Epidaurus, killed many others cruelly and unlawfully, and also Timarchus, who had come to him from Athens with money; he received him hospitably and treated him kindly, and then killed him, and sank his body by putting it into a wicker hamper. He carried this out through Cleander the Aeginetan, the others being unaware. Later, when his affairs fell into disorder, he sent his brother Cleotimus here secretly to inquire about his own flight and change of fortune. The god replied that he would grant Procles flight and a change of place — at the spot where he had ordered the Aeginetan stranger to set down the hamper, or wherever the stag sheds its horn.
The tyrant, understanding that the god was bidding him drown himself or bury himself (for stags do bury and hide their shed horns in the ground when the horn falls off), held back for a while; but then, when his affairs became altogether desperate, he fled the city. The friends of Timarchus, however, caught him, killed him, and threw his corpse into the sea. And, what is most telling of all: the rhetrai by which Lycurgus ordered the constitution of the Lacedaemonians were given to him in prose. Furthermore, although Alyrius, Herodotus, Philochorus, and Ister — men especially eager to collect the oracles given in verse — nevertheless wrote down oracles without meter, Theopompus, who was as devoted as anyone to the shrine, has sharply rebuked those who do not believe that the Pythia used to prophesy in verse at that period; and then, wishing to prove this point, he managed to find only very few oracles to cite, since the rest even then were already being delivered in prose."
"Some people even now run headlong after verse, and on that account a notorious affair has actually occurred. There is a shrine of the woman-hating Heracles in Phocis, and it is customary that whoever holds the priesthood should not have relations with a woman during the year of his office; for this reason they generally appoint fairly old men as priests — except that once, before this, a young man, not a bad sort, but ambitious, and in love with a young girl, took the priesthood. At first he mastered himself and avoided the woman; but once, as he lay resting after drinking and dancing, she fell upon him and had her way. Frightened and troubled, he fled to the oracle and asked the god about his transgression, whether there was any pardon or release for it.
He received this oracle: 'The god grants all that is necessary.' Still, one might grant this and yet be all the more puzzled, given that nothing is now delivered without meter among us, about the ancient oracles, which gave their answers sometimes in verse and sometimes without it. Neither practice is at all strange, my boy, so long as we hold correct and pure opinions about the god, and do not suppose him to be the very one who composes the verses and, now as before, feeds the Pythia the oracles, as though speaking through masks." "But it is worth discussing this at greater length another time, and inquiring further into it. For now, let us learn it briefly and keep in mind that the body employs many instruments, and the soul in turn employs the body and the body's parts,
and the soul itself has become an instrument of god; and the virtue of an instrument lies above all in imitating, so far as its natural capacity allows, the one who uses it, and in displaying the work of the very intelligence that is in the user — yet displaying it not as it exists in the craftsman, pure, unaffected, and faultless, but mingled with much that is foreign to it. For in itself that intelligence is unclear to us, and, appearing otherwise and through another medium, it becomes filled with the nature of that other thing. I pass over wax, gold, silver, and bronze, and all the other kinds of material that take on shape: each receives one single form as the likeness is stamped upon it, yet each also contributes, from its own nature, a different variation to the copy — just as mirrors, whether flat, concave, or convex, produce countless distorted reflections and images from a single original form. For indeed there is nothing
that resembles its model more closely, and nothing has by nature become more compliant as an instrument to be used, than the moon: receiving from the sun its brightness and fiery glow, it does not send that same likeness back to us, but, mingled with its own nature, both changes its color and takes on a different power; its heat departs altogether, and its light fails through weakness. I think you know the saying of Heraclitus,
that 'the lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign.' Add to this well-put saying the further thought that the god here uses the Pythia for his voice just as the sun uses the moon for its light: he displays and reveals his own thoughts, but displays them mingled — transmitted through a mortal body and a soul unable to keep still,
unable to offer itself motionless and settled to the one who moves it, but, as if tossed on a swell, sounding out and becoming entangled with the motions and passions within it, which throw it into further turmoil. For just as whirlpools do not hold firm mastery over the bodies swept round together with them in a circle, but, since these bodies are carried in a circle by compulsion while by nature they tend downward, a turbulent
and erratic swirling motion results from the two together — so what is called (divine) possession seems to be a mixture of two kinds of motion: one belonging to the soul as it is acted upon, the other as it moves according to its own nature. For where it is not possible to use lifeless bodies, which remain fixed in the same condition, in ways contrary to their nature by forcing them — one cannot make a cylinder move as if it were a sphere, or a cube, nor make a lyre sound like a pipe, or a trumpet like a lyre — is it not much the same, it seems,
with using each thing skillfully, according to its own nature? Surely a being that is ensouled and self-moving, and partakes of impulse and reason, could not be handled by anyone except in accordance with the disposition, capacity, or nature already present in it — moving an unmusical mind as if it were musical, or an unlettered one as if lettered, or one untrained and unpracticed in speech as if it were eloquent. It cannot be done." "And Homer bears witness for me as well,
for he assumes that almost nothing, so to speak, is accomplished 'without a god'; yet he does not portray the god as employing everyone for every purpose alike, but each person according to the skill or power that person has. Or do you not see, he said, my dear Diogenianus, that Athena, when she wants to persuade the Achaeans, appeals to Odysseus; when she wants to break the truce, seeks out Pandarus; when
she wants to turn the Trojans to flight, goes to Diomedes? For the one is strong and warlike, another skilled with the bow but foolish, another a clever and prudent speaker. Homer, in fact, did not hold the same view as Pindar — if indeed it was Pindar who wrote that, 'by the will of god, you might sail even on a mat of reeds' — but he recognized that different powers and natures had come to be for different purposes, each of which
is moved in its own distinctive way, even though the mover is one and the same for them all. Just as that which moves a walking creature cannot make it fly, nor can it make one who lisps speak clearly, or one with a weak voice sing tunefully — so too, I think, it was for this reason that the god, when Battus came to him about his voice, sent him instead to Libya as a colonist, because, though he was a lisper and weak-voiced, he was kingly, statesmanlike, and prudent. Just so impossible is it
for one who is unlettered and unversed in verse to speak poetically. So it is with the woman who now serves the god: she has become, if any woman ever has, one who has lived here lawfully, honorably, and in good order; but, raised in the house of poor farmers, she brings nothing to the oracle acquired from any craft or other experience or skill. Rather, just as Xenophon thinks a bride ought to come to her husband
having seen as little as possible and heard as little as possible, so this woman, inexperienced and untrained in practically everything, and truly a virgin in soul, keeps company with the god. Yet we suppose that the god employs herons, wrens, and ravens, crying out, to give his signs, and do not require that they, insofar as they are messengers and heralds of the gods, express each thing rationally and clearly — while we demand that the voice and speech of the Pythia,
as though coming from a stage, be furnished not plainly or without sweetness, but in meter, and grandeur, and artifice, and metaphor of words, and uttered to the accompaniment of a flute." "What, then, shall we say about the ancient oracles? No single explanation, I think, covers most cases. First, as has already been said, most of those too were delivered in prose. Second, that age produced constitutions and natures of bodies
possessing a certain fluency and aptitude for poetry — souls in which eagerness, impulse, and readiness sprang up at once, producing in them a preparedness needing only a slight external prompting and a small turn of the imagination, so that they were drawn immediately toward what suited them alone. This was true, as Philinus says, not only of astronomers and philosophers, but also of people amid much wine and strong feeling, when some wave of pity or joy
came over them: they would slip into 'tuneful utterance,' and symposia and books alike would fill up with love poems, songs, and writings. Euripides, when he said that 'Love teaches a man to be a poet, even if he had no gift for music before,' understood that Love does not implant the power of poetry and music in a person, but stirs and rekindles a power that already exists within, lying hidden and idle. Shall we say, then, my friend, that no one falls in love now,
that love has vanished and gone, simply because no one now, as Pindar said, 'swiftly shoots forth honey-sweet hymns for boys' in verses and songs? That would be absurd: many people are still stirred by love; but, keeping company with souls that are not naturally gifted or ready for music, they remain without flute or lyre, yet are no less talkative and ardent than the ancients. For it is not even pious or fitting to say
that the Academy, and the circle of Socrates and Plato, were without love — men whose erotic writings in prose one can find, though they left behind no poems. And how does this differ from the claim that Sappho alone among women was truly erotic, made by the very person who asserts that only the Sibyl, Aristonica, and the other women who prophesied in verse were truly prophetic? 'For wine,' as Chaeremon used to say, 'is mixed according to the characters of
those who drink it,' and prophetic possession, like erotic possession, makes use of the underlying capacity and moves each of those who receive it according to that person's own nature." "Nevertheless, if we also look to the god and to providence, we shall see that the change has been for the better. For the use of language is like the exchange of currency, and its own accepted and familiar form is what counts as valid,
though it takes on different value at different times. There was, then, a time when people used, as the currency of speech, meters, melodies, and songs, casting all of history and philosophy, and every feeling and matter, so to speak, that called for a more solemn expression, into the mold of poetry and music. For it is not only now that few can barely follow such things — in those days, too, everyone used to listen and delight in songs about 'shepherds and ploughmen
and fowlers,' as Pindar puts it. But because of the general aptitude for poetry, most people, through lyre and song, admonished one another, spoke freely, and exhorted; they told myths and proverbs, and further composed hymns to the gods, prayers, and paeans in meter and melody, some through natural gift, others through habit. So the god, for his part, did not begrudge divination its adornment and grace, nor did he drive away
the Muse, honored here, from the tripod, but rather welcomed her, stirring up and embracing the poetic natures; he himself supplied inspiration and helped rouse the solemn, oracular style as fitting and admired. But when, as life changed along with the fortunes and characters of the times, need drove out excess and did away with golden hair-clasps, and stripped off soft, flowing robes, and
cut back overly luxuriant hair and loosened the high buskin, as people not unreasonably grew accustomed to setting simplicity and economy against extravagance as a rival adornment, and to valuing what is plain and unaffected in their arrangement more than what is showy and elaborate — so, as language changed and was pared down along with everything else, history came down from its verses as though from a chariot, and truth, expressed mainly in prose, was separated from myth; and philosophy,
embracing clarity and instructiveness rather than what merely astonishes, conducted its inquiry through prose discourse. And the god stopped the Pythia from calling her own fellow citizens 'fire-scorched,' the Spartans 'snake-eaters,' men 'mountain-ranging,' and rivers 'mountain-drinking'; and by removing from the oracles epic verses, archaic words, circumlocutions, and obscurity, he made her converse with those who consulted her
just as laws converse with cities, and kings address their peoples, and pupils listen to their teachers, adapting himself to what is intelligible and persuasive." "For one should know well that the god, as Sophocles says, is always to the wise a riddler of oracles, but to the foolish a poor and all-too-brief teacher. And along with this clarity, belief too shifted and changed together with everything else, so that in former times
what is not familiar or common, but downright oblique and wrapped in circumlocution, so as to lead the many into suspecting something divine, and to strike them with awe and reverence; but later, loving to learn each thing clearly and easily, without pomp or artifice, they began to find fault with the poetry that clothed the oracles — not only as working against the understanding, by mixing obscurity and shadow with the plain truth as it was declared,
but they even came to suspect that the metaphors, the riddles, and the ambiguities had been devised as hiding-places and refuges into which the art of prophecy might retreat and take shelter when it stumbled. Indeed one could hear from many people that certain poetical men used to sit about the oracle taking up the utterances and construing them, weaving epic verses and metres and rhythms around the oracles, like vessels fitted from whatever came to hand.
As for those Onomacrituses and Herodicuses and Cinaethons, how much blame they incurred for the oracles — having tricked them out with tragic pomp and grandeur that they had no need of — I let pass and will not entertain the slanders. But it was chiefly that begging, market-place, vagabond tribe, buzzing about the shrines of the Mother of the Gods and of Serapis, that filled poetry with the greatest disrepute, some improvising on the spot, others reciting oracles allotted by lot out of certain little books
to servants and poor women, who are most readily led by metre and by poetical diction. Hence it is not least because poetry seemed to offer herself in common to charlatans, tricksters, and false prophets, that she fell from truth and from the tripod." "I should not be surprised, then, if the ancients sometimes needed a certain duplicity and circumlocution and obscurity. For it was not
So-and-so who came down to consult the god about buying a slave, by Zeus, nor So-and-so about a business venture; but powerful cities, and kings, and tyrants of no moderate temper, would put questions to the god about matters where it did not profit those in charge of the oracle to vex and provoke men who would take much of what they did not wish to hear as an affront. For the god does not obey Euripides, as though he were laying down a law and
saying that Phoebus alone ought to prophesy to men. Since he employs mortal servants and prophets, whom it behooves him to care for and protect — so that they may not be destroyed by wicked men for serving the god — he does not wish to hide the truth, yet by deflecting its disclosure, as a beam of light undergoes many refractions within poetry and is repeatedly split apart, he removes from it what is harsh and resistant. It was necessary, then,
that tyrants too should remain ignorant, and that enemies should not get advance warning. To such people, therefore, he wrapped his answers in hidden meanings and ambiguities which, while concealing what was declared from others, did not escape or deceive those who needed it and paid attention. Hence it is quite foolish, now that circumstances have changed, if someone thinks the god ought no longer to help us in the same way but in a different one, to charge and accuse him of wrongdoing." "Furthermore, nothing
in speech is more useful than poetry for the purpose of being remembered and retained, since what is said, bound up in metre and interwoven, is better fixed in the memory. In those days, then, people needed to have a great deal of memory at their disposal, for many things were declared — signs of places, opportune moments for actions, shrines of gods across the sea, and hidden tombs of heroes hard to discover, for men setting out far from Greece. For you know of the Chian, and Cretinus, and Nesichus,
and Phalanthus, and many other leaders of expeditions, who needed proofs of many kinds in order to find the settlement allotted and fitting to each of them; and some of them went wrong, as Battus did. For he seemed to have failed, not finding the place to which he had been sent; then he came a second time, imploring the god. So the god, adding a rebuke, said: "If you know Libya, nurse of flocks, better than I, though you have not gone there and I have, greatly do I marvel at your wisdom" — and so
sent him out again. And Lysander, too, utterly failed to recognize the hill called Orchalides, also named Alopecus, and the river Hoplites, and "the earth-born son, the deceiver, coming on behind" — and, defeated in battle, he fell in those very places at the hand of Neochorus of Haliartus, a man who carried a shield marked with the device of a serpent. There are many other such things, hard to recall and hard to remember, among the ancient oracles, which it is not necessary for me to recount to you, since you already know them." "As for the present state of affairs, about which people question the god, I for my part am content and welcome it gladly; for there is great peace and quiet, war has ceased,
and there are no wanderings, no factions, no tyrannies, nor any of the other diseases and evils of Greece that would need many powerful remedies and extraordinary ones. Where nothing is intricate, nothing secret, nothing dire, but questions are asked about small, everyday matters — as if propositions set in a school — "whether one should marry," "whether one should set sail," "whether one should lend money"; while the greatest of the oracles given to cities concern the yield of crops, the increase of flocks, and the health of bodies — in such cases, to wrap the answers in metre and to fabricate periphrases and to bring in obscure diction for questions that require a simple and concise answer, is the work of an ambitious sophist decking out an oracle for the sake of reputation. The Pythia
herself, considered in her own character, is noble in disposition; but when she goes down there and comes to be beside the god, she cares more for truth than for reputation, and more for it than for men's praise or blame." "Perhaps we too ought to be so disposed; but as it is, we behave as though anxious and afraid that the place might lose the reputation it has enjoyed for three thousand years, and that, as if the oracle were a sophist's school,
some might leave it in contempt — so we defend ourselves and invent reasons and arguments about matters we neither know nor are entitled to know, consoling and persuading the one who finds fault rather than telling him to go his way; whereas for him it will be, first of all, the more painful thing, to hold such an opinion about the god. So then, do accept these maxims of the wise inscribed here of old, "Know thyself" and "Nothing in excess," and
admire them not least for their brevity, as containing a dense and hammered thought within a small compass; yet you find fault with the oracles because for the most part they express things concisely, simply, and directly. And yet such sayings of the wise have suffered the same fate as streams compressed into a narrow channel: they do not offer a clear or transparent view of their meaning; rather, if you examine what
has been written and said about them by those who wish to learn how each case stands, you will not easily find longer discourses than these. But the Pythia's manner of speech, just as mathematicians call a straight line the shortest of all lines having the same endpoints, likewise makes no bend, no circuit, no duplicity, and no ambiguity, but goes straight toward the truth — though it is unreliable
for winning belief, and, being subject to scrutiny, has to this day yielded no refutation against itself; yet it has filled the oracle with offerings and gifts, both foreign and Greek, and has adorned its buildings with the beauty and the craftsmanship of Amphictyonic works. You yourselves surely see that much has been built anew where nothing stood before, and much restored of what had fallen into ruin and decay. And just as other growths spring up beside flourishing trees, so along with Delphi
the Pylaea too flourishes and grows together with it, taking on, through the prosperity that flows from here, a form and shape and adornment of temples and assembly-halls and waters such as it did not acquire in the thousand years before. Now those who dwell around the Galaxium in Boeotia perceived the god's epiphany through an abundance and superfluity of milk; for it flowed from all the ewes, as the finest water flows from springs,
rich milk; and they, hurrying, kept filling their jars; nor did any skin or jar stand idle in their houses, for all the wooden pails and jars were filled to overflowing. To us the god grants signs brighter and greater and clearer than these, having produced, as it were out of the former drought of desolation and poverty, abundance and splendor and honor. And yet, while I am fond of myself for the eagerness and usefulness I showed toward these
affairs together with Polycrates and Petraeus, I am also fond of the man who became the leader of this policy for us and who thought out and prepared most of these things; but it cannot be otherwise than that so great and so vast a change in so short a time has come about through human diligence alone, without a god being present here and joining in the divine work of the oracle." "But just as in those
times there were people who blamed the oracles for their obliquity and obscurity, so now too there are those who carp at their excessive simplicity. Their feeling is quite childish and silly: for just as children, when they see rainbows and haloes and comets rather than the sun and moon, are delighted and pleased, so these people too, since the riddles, allegories, and metaphors of
prophecy are reflections directed toward what is mortal and imaginative, long for them; and if they do not adequately learn the reason for the change, they go away condemning the god, not us nor themselves, as though it were impossible to attain by reasoning to the god's intention."