IX. Such was my answer to Boethus, and to the same effect about the Sibyl and her utterances. For when we stood near the rock by the Council Chamber, on which the first Sibyl is said to have been seated on her arrival from Helicon, where she had been brought up by the Muses (though others say that she came from the Maleans, and was the daughter of Lamia the daughter of Poseidon), Serapion remembered the verses in which she hymned herself; how she will never cease from [Sidenote: D] prophesying, even after death, but will herself go round in the moon, being turned into what we call the ‘bright face’, while her breath is mingled with the air and borne about in rumours and voices for ever and ever; and her body within the earth suffers change, so that from it spring grass and weeds, the pasture of sacred cattle, which have all colour, shapes, and qualities in their inward parts whereby men obtain forecasts of future things. Here Boethus made his derision still more evident. [Sidenote: E] The stranger observed that, although these things have a mythical appearance, yet the prophecies are attested by many overturnings and removals of Greek cities, inroads of barbarian hordes, and upsettings of dynasties. ‘These still recent troubles at Cumae and Dicaearchia[91], were they not chanted long ago in the songs of the Sibyl, so that Time was only discharging his debts in the fires which have burst out of the mountain, the boiling seas, the masses of burning rocks[92] tossed aloft by the winds, the ruin of cities many and great, so that if you visit them in broad daylight you cannot get a clear idea of the site, the ground being covered with confused ruins? It is [Sidenote: F] hard to believe that such things have happened, much harder to predict them without divine power.’
X. ‘My good Sir,’ said Boethus, ‘what does happen in Nature which is not Time paying his debts? Of all the strange unexpected things, by land or sea, among cities and men, is there any which some one might not foretell, and then, after it has happened, find himself right? Yet this is hardly foretelling at all; it is telling, rather it is tossing or scattering words into the infinite, with no principle in them. They wander about, often Fortune meets them and throws in with them, but it is all spontaneous. It is one thing, I think, when what has been foretold happens, quite another when what will happen is foretold. Any statement made about things then non-existent contains intrinsic error, it has no right to await the confirmation [Sidenote: 399] which comes from spontaneous happening; nor is it any true proof of having foretold with knowledge that the thing happened after it was foretold, for Infinity brings all things. No, the “good guesser”, whom the proverb[93] has announced to be the best prophet, is like a man who hunts on the trail of the future, by the help of the plausible. These Sibyls and Bacises threw into the sea, that is, into time, without having any real clue, nouns and verbs about troubles and occurrences of every description. Some of these prophecies came about, but they were lies; and what is now pronounced is a lie like them, even if, later on, it should happen to turn out true.’ [Sidenote: B] XI. When Boethus had finished, Serapion spoke: ‘The case is quite fairly put by Boethus against prophecies so indefinitely worded as those he mentions, with no basis of circumstance: “If victory has been foretold to a general, he has conquered. If the destruction of a city, it is lost.” But where not only the thing which is to happen is stated, but also the how, the when, after what event, with whose help, then it is not a guess at things which will perhaps be, but a clear prediction of things which will certainly be. Here are the lines[94] with reference to the lameness of Agesilaus: [Sidenote: C] _Sure though thy feet, proud Sparta, have a care, A lame king’s reign may see thee trip—Beware!
Troubles unlooked for long shall vex thy shore, And rolling Time his tide of carnage pour._ And then those about the island[95] which the sea cast up off Thera and Therasia, and also about Philip and his war with the Romans: _When Trojan race the victory shall win From Punic foe, lo! wonders shall begin; Unearthly fires from out the sea shall flash, Whirlwinds toss stones aloft, and thunders crash, An isle unnamed, unknown, shall stand upright, The worse shall beat the stronger in the fight._ What happened within a short time—that the Romans mastered the Carthaginians, and brought the war with Philip to a finish, [Sidenote: D] that Philip met the Aetolians and Romans in battle and was defeated, and, lastly, that an island rose out of the depths of the sea, with much fire and boiling waves—could not all be set down to chance and spontaneous occurrence. Why, the order emphasizes the foreknowledge, and so does the time predicted to the Romans, some five hundred years before the event, as that in which they were to be at war with all the races at once, which meant the war with the slaves after their revolt. In all this nothing is unascertainable, the story is not left in dim light to [Sidenote: E] be groped out with reference to Fortune “in Infinity”, it gives many securities, and is open to trial, it points the road which the destined event is to tread. For I do not think that any one will say that the agreement with the details as foretold was accidental.
Otherwise, what prevents some one else from saying that Epicurus did not write his _Leading Principles_ for our use, Boethus, but that the letters fell together by chance and just spontaneously, and so the book was finished off?’
XII. While we were talking thus, we were moving forward. [Sidenote: F] In the store-house of the Corinthians we were looking at the golden palm tree, the only remnant of their offerings, when the frogs and water-snakes embossed round the roots caused much surprise to Diogenianus, and, for the matter of that, to us. For the palm tree is not, like many others, a marshy or water-loving plant, nor have frogs anything specially to do with the Corinthians. Thus they must be a symbolical or canting device of that city, just as the men of Selinus are said to have dedicated a golden plant of parsley (selinon), and those of Tenedos the axe, because of the crabs found round the place which they [Sidenote: 400] call Asterium, the only ones, it appears, with the brand of an axe on the shell. Yet the God himself is supposed to have a partiality for crows and swans and wolves and hawks, for anything rather than beasts like crabs. Serapion observed that the artist intended a veiled hint at the sun drawing his aliment and origin from exhalations out of moist places, whether he had it from Homer, _Leaving the beauteous lake, the great sun scaled The brazen sky_,[96] or whether he had seen the sun painted by the Egyptians as a newly-born child seated on a lotus. I laughed: ‘Where have you got to again, my good Sir,’ I said, ‘thrusting the [Sidenote: B] Porch in here, and quietly slipping into our discussion their “Conflagrations” and “Exhalations”? Thessalian women fetch the sun and the moon down to us, but you are assuming that they are first born and then watered out of earth and its waters. Plato[97] dubbed man “a heavenly plant”, rearing himself up from a root on high, namely, his head; but you laugh down Empedocles when he tells us how the sun, having been brought into being by reflection of heavenly light around the earth _Beams back upon Olympus undismayed!_ Yet, on your own showing, the sun is a creature or plant of the marshes, naturalized by you in the country of frogs or [Sidenote: C] water-snakes. However, all this may be reserved for the Stoics and their tragedies; here we have the incidental works of the artists, and let us examine them incidentally. In many respects they are clever people, but they have not in all cases avoided coldness and elaboration. Just as the man who designed Apollo with the cock in his hand meant to suggest the early morning hour when dawn is coming, so here the frogs may be taken for a symbol of the spring season when the sun begins to have power over the air and to break up winter; always supposing [Sidenote: D] that, with you, we are to reckon Apollo and the sun one God, not two.’ ‘What?’
said Serapion, ‘do you not agree? Do you hold the sun to be different from Apollo?’ ‘As different as the moon from the sun;’ I replied, ‘only she does not hide the sun often or from all the world,[98] whereas the sun has made, we may almost say, all the world ignorant of Apollo, diverting thought by sensation, to the apparent from the real.’
XIII. Next Serapion asked the guides the real reason why they call the chamber not after Cypselus, the Dedicator, but [Sidenote: E] after the Corinthians. When they were silent, being, as I privately believe, at a loss for a reason, I laughed, and said: ‘What can these men possibly know or remember, utterly dazed as they must be by our high celestial talk? Why, it was only just now that we heard them saying that, after the tyranny was overthrown, the Corinthians wished to inscribe the golden statue at Pisa, and also this treasure-house, with the name of the city. So the Delphians granted it as a right, and agreed; but the Corinthians passed a vote to exclude the Eleians, who had shown jealousy of them, from the Isthmian meetings, and from that time to [Sidenote: F] this there has been no competitor from Elis. The murder of the Molionidae by Hercules near Cleonae has nothing to do with the exclusion of the Eleians, though some think that it has. On the contrary, it would have been for them to exclude the Corinthians if that had been the cause of collision.’ Such were my remarks.
XIV. When we passed the chamber of the Acanthians and Brasidas, the guide showed us a place where iron obelisks to Rhodopis the courtesan once used to stand. Diogenianus showed annoyance: ‘So it was left for the same state’, he said, [Sidenote: 401] ‘to find a place for Rhodopis to deposit the tithes of her earnings, and to put Aesop, her fellow servant, to death!’ ‘Bless you, friend,’ said Serapion, ‘why so vexed at that? Carry your eyes upwards, and behold among the generals and kings the golden Mnesarete, which Crates called a standing trophy of the lewdness of the Greeks.’ The young man looked: ‘Was it then about Phryne that Crates said that?’ ‘Yes, it was,’ said Serapion, ‘her name was Mnesarete, but she took on that of Phryne (toad) as a nickname because of her yellow skin. Many names, it would seem, are concealed by these nicknames. There was Polyxena, mother of Alexander, afterwards said to have been called Myrtale and Olympias and Stratonice. Then Eumetis [Sidenote: B] of Rhodes is to this day called by most people Cleobuline, after her father; and Herophile of Erythrae, when she showed a prophetic gift, was addressed as Sibylla. You will hear the grammarians telling us that Leda has been named Mnesinoe, and Orestes Achaeus. But how do you propose’, he went on, looking hard at Theon, ‘to get rid of the charge as to Phryne?’
XV. Theon smiled quietly: ‘In this way:’ he said, ‘by a cross charge against you for raking up the pettiest of the [Sidenote: C] Greek misdoings. For as Socrates,[99] when entertained in the house of Callias, makes war upon the ointment only, but looks on at all the dancing and tumbling and kisses and buffoonery, and holds his tongue, so you, it seems to me, want to exclude from the temple a poor woman who made an unworthy use of her charms; but when you see the God encompassed by first-fruits and tithes of murders, wars, and raids, and his temple loaded with Greek spoils and booty, you show no disgust; you have no pity for the Greeks when you read on the beautiful offerings such deeply disgraceful inscriptions as “Brasidas and the Acanthians from the So Praxiteles, it seems, was the one person who offended Crates by finding[100] room for his mistress to stand here, whereas Crates ought to have commended him for placing beside those golden kings a golden courtesan, a strong rebuke to wealth as having nothing wonderful or worshipful about it. It would be good if kings [Sidenote: E] and rulers were to set up in the God’s house offerings to Justice Temperance, Magnanimity, not to golden and delicate Abundance, in which the very foulest lives have their share.’
XVI. ‘You are forgetting to mention’, said one or other of the guides, ‘how Croesus had a golden figure of the baker-woman made, and dedicated it here.’ ‘Yes,’ said Theon, ‘but that was not to flout the temple with his luxury of wealth, but for a good and righteous cause. The story is[101] that Alyattes, father of Croesus, married a second wife, and brought up a fresh family. This woman made a plot against Croesus; she gave poison to the baker and told her to knead a loaf with it and serve [Sidenote: F] to Croesus. The baker told Croesus secretly, and set the loaf before the wife’s children. And so, when Croesus became king, he requited the baker-woman’s service in a way which made the God a witness, and moreover did a good turn to him. Hence’, he said, ‘it is quite proper to honour and love any such offering from cities as that of the Opuntians. When the Phocian tyrants had melted up many of the gold and silver offerings and struck coined money, which they distributed among the cities, the Opuntians collected all the silver they could find, and sent a large jar to be consecrated here to the God. I commend the [Sidenote: 402] Myrinaeans also, and the Apollonians, who sent hither sheaves of gold, and even more highly the Eretrians and Magnesians, who endowed the God with firstfruits of men, as being the giver of crops and also ancestral, racial, humane. Whereas I blame the Megarians, because they were almost alone in setting up the God holding a lance; this was after the battle in which they defeated and expelled the Athenians when holding their city, after the Persian wars. Later on, however, they offered to him a golden harp-quill, attaching it, as it appears, to Scythinus, [Sidenote: B] who says of the lyre: _which the son of Zeus Wears, the comely God Apollo, gathering first and last in one, And he holds a golden harp-quill flashing as the very sun._’ XVII. Serapion wanted to put In some further remark on this, when the stranger said: ‘It is delightful to listen to such speeches as we have heard, but I feel myself obliged to claim fulfilment of the original promise, that we should hear the cause which has made the Pythia cease to prophesy in epic or other verse. So, if it be your pleasure, let us leave to another time the remainder of the sights, sit down where we are, and hear about that. For it is this more than anything else which militates against the credibility of the oracle; it must be one of two things, either the Pythia does not get near the spot where the Divinity is, or the current is altogether exhausted, and [Sidenote: C] the power has failed.’ Accordingly, we went round and seated ourselves on the southern plinth of the temple, in view of the temple of Earth and the fountain, which made Boethus at once observe that the very place where the problem was raised lent itself to the stranger’s case. For here was a temple of the Muses where the exhalation rises from the fountain; from which they drew the water used for the lustrations, as Simonides[102] has it: _Whence is drawn for holy washings Water of the Muses bright._ And again, in a rather more elaborate strain, the same poet [Sidenote: D] addressing Clio: _Holy patron of our washings, Goddess sought with many a vow, By no golden robe encumbered, hear thy servants drawing now Water, fragrant and delightful, from ambrosial depths below._ So Eudoxus was wrong in believing those who have made out that this was called ‘Water of Styx’. But they installed the Muses as assessors in prophecy and guardians of the place, by the fountain and the temple of Earth where the oracle used to be, because the responses were given in metre and in lyric strains. And some say further that the heroic metre was heard for the [Sidenote: E] first time here: _Bring in your feathers, ye birds, ye bees, bring wax at his bidding._ The God was in need, and dignity was waived![103] XVIII. ‘More reasonable, that, Boethus,’ said Serapion, ‘and more in tune with the Muses. For we ought not to fight against the God, nor to remove, along with his prophecy, his Providence and Godhead also, but rather to seek fresh solutions for apparent contradictions, and never to surrender the reverent belief of our fathers.’ ‘Excellent Serapion!’ I said, ‘you are right. We were not abandoning Philosophy, as cleared out of the way and done for, because once upon a time philosophers [Sidenote: F] put out their dogmas and theories in verse, as Orpheus, Hesiod, Parmenides, Empedocles, Thales, whereas later on they gave it up, and have now all given it up—except you! In your hands Poetry is returning home to Philosophy, and clear and noble is the strain in which she rallies our young people. Astronomy again: she was not lowered in the hands of Aristarchus, Timocharis, Aristyllus, Hipparchus, all writing in prose, whereas Eudoxus, [Sidenote: 403] Hesiod, and Thales used metre, if we assume that Thales really wrote the _Astronomy_ attributed to him. Pindar actually expresses surprise at the neglect, in his own day, of a mode of melody...[104] There is nothing out of the way or absurd in seeking out the causes of such changes; but to remove arts and faculties altogether, whenever there is disturbance or variation in their details, is not fair.’
XIX. ‘And yet’, interposed Theon, ‘those instances have involved really great variations and novelties, whereas of the [Sidenote: B] oracles given here we know of many in prose even in old days, and those on no trifling matters. When the Lacedaemonians, as Thucydides[105] has told us in his history, consulted the God about their war with the Athenians, he promised them victory and mastery, and that “he himself will help them, invited or uninvited.” And again, that, if they did not restore Pleistoanax[106], they shall plough with a silver share.[107] When the Athenians consulted him about their expedition in Sicily, he directed them to bring the priestess of Erythrae to Athens; now the woman’s name was Peace. When Deinomenes the Siceliot inquired about his sons, the answer was that all three should [Sidenote: C] reign as tyrants. “And the worse for them, O Master Apollo”, rejoined Deinomenes. “That too”, added the God, “to form part of the answer.” You know that Gelo had the dropsy and Hiero the stone, while they reigned; Thrasybulus, the third, was involved in revolutions and wars and soon lost his throne. Then Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus, after putting many others to death in cruel and unlawful ways, at last killed Timarchus, who had come to him from Athens with money, after receiving him with hospitality and kindness; he thrust his body into a crate and flung it out to sea. This he did by the hands of Cleander of Aegina, no one else knew. Afterwards, when [Sidenote: D] himself in trouble, he sent his brother Cleotimus, to consult the oracle secretly about his own exile and retirement. The God answered that he granted exile to Procles, and retirement either to the place where he had ordered his Aeginetan friend to lodge the crate, or where the stag sheds his horn. The tyrant understood the God to bid him fling himself into the sea, or bury himself underground (for the stag buries his horn deep out of sight, when it falls off). He waited a short time, then, when his affairs became desperate, went into exile. But the friends of Timarchus caught and slew him, and cast out the corpse into the sea. [Sidenote: E] Now comes the strongest instance: the statutes by which Lycurgus regulated the Lacedaemonian constitution were given to him in prose. So Alyrius, Herodotus, Philochorus, and Ister, the men who most zealously set about collecting metrical prophecies, have written down oracular responses which were not in metre, and Theopompus, who was exceptionally interested [Sidenote: F] about the oracle, has administered a vigorous rebuke to those who do not hold that the Pythia prophesied in metre in those days; yet, when he wanted to prove the point, he has found an exceedingly small number of such answers, which shows that the others, even at that early time, were put forth in prose.
XX. ‘Some oracles, however, still run into metres, one of which has made “necessary business”[108] a household word. There is in Phocis a temple of “Hercules Woman-Hater”, where the practice is for the consecrated priest not to associate with a woman during his year. So they appoint comparatively old men to the priesthood. However, not very long ago, a young man of good character, but ambitious, who was in love with [Sidenote: 404] a girl, accepted the office. At first he put constraint on himself and avoided her; but one day, when he was resting after wine and dancing, she burst in, and he yielded. Then, in his fear and confusion, he fled to the oracle, and proceeded to ask the God about his offence, and whether it admitted of excuse or expiation. He received this reply: _All needful business doth the God allow._ All the same, if it be granted that nothing is prophesied in our own day, otherwise than in metre, the difficulty will be so much greater about the ancients, who sometimes employed metre for the responses, sometimes not. There is nothing strange, my [Sidenote: B] young friend, in either one or the other, so long as we hold sound, pure views about the God, and do not suppose that it is himself who formerly used to compose the verses, or who now suggests the answers to the Pythia, speaking as it were from under a mask.
XXI. ‘However, it is worth our while to pursue this inquiry at greater length another time. For the present, let us remember our results, which are briefly these: Body uses many instruments, soul uses body and its parts, soul has been brought into being as the instrument of God. The excellence of an instrument is to imitate most closely the power which uses it, with all its [Sidenote: C] own natural power, and to reproduce the effect of his essential thought, but to exhibit it, not pure and passionless and free from error, as it was in the creative artist, but with a large admixture of foreign element. For in itself it is invisible to us, but appearing “other” and through another medium it is saturated with the nature of that medium. I pass over wax and gold and silver and copper, and all other varieties of moulded substance, which take on one common form of impressed likeness, but add to the copy, each its own distinct speciality. I pass over the myriad distortions of images and reflections from a single form in [Sidenote: D] mirrors, plane, hollow, or convex. For nothing seems better to reproduce the type, no instrument more obediently to use its own nature, than the moon. Yet taking from the sun his bright and fiery rays, she does not transmit them so to us; mingled with herself they change colour and also take on a different power; the heat has wholly disappeared, and the light fails from weakness before it reaches us. I think you know the saying found in Heraclitus, that “The King whose seat is at [Sidenote: E] Delphi, speaks not, nor conceals, but signifies.”[109] Take and add then to what is here so well said, the conception that the God of this place employs the Pythia for the hearing as the sun employs the moon for the seeing. He shows and reveals his own thoughts, but shows them mingled in their passage through a mortal body, and a soul which cannot remain at rest or present itself to the exciting power unexcited and inwardly composed, but which boils and surges and is involved in the stirrings and troublesome passions from within. As whirlpools do not keep [Sidenote: F] a steady hold on bodies borne round and round and also downwards, since an outer force carries them round, but they sink down of their own nature, so that there is a compound spiral movement, of a confused and distorted kind, even so what we call inspiration seems to be a mixture of two impulses, and the soul is stirred by two forces, one of which it is a passive recipient, one from its own nature. We see that inanimate and stationary bodies cannot be used or forced contrary to their own nature, that a cylinder cannot be moved as if it were a sphere or a cube, that a lyre cannot be played like a flute or a trumpet like a harp, but that the artistic use of a thing is no other than the natural use. Is it possible then that the animate and self-moving, which has both impulse and reason, can be treated in any other way than is agreeable to the habit, force, or natural condition which [Sidenote: 405] is already existent within it? Can an unmusical mind be excited like a musical, an unlettered mind by literature, a mind untrained in reasoning, whether speculative or disciplinary, by logic? It is not to be spoken of.
XXII. ‘Again, Homer is my witness: he assumes[110] that nothing, so to speak, is brought about without a God; he does not, however, describe the God as using all things for all ends, but according to the art or faculty which each possesses. For do you not see, dear Diogenianus, that Athena, when she wants to persuade the Achaeans, calls in Odysseus;[111] when to wreck the truce, she looks for Pandarus;[112] when to rout the Trojans, she [Sidenote: B] approaches Diomede?[113] Why? because Diomede is a sturdy man and a fighter, Pandarus an archer and a fool, Odysseus a clever speaker and a sensible man. For Homer was not of the same mind as Pindar[114], if Pindar it was who wrote _Sail on a crate, if God so choose ‘twill swim._ He knew that different faculties and natural gifts are appointed for different ends; each is moved in its own way, even if the moving force be one for all. As then the force cannot move that which walks so as to make it fly, nor that which lisps to speak clearly, nor the thin voice to be melodious—why, Battus himself was sent as colonist of Libya to get his voice, because he was a lisper, with a thin voice, but withal a kingly, statesman-like, [Sidenote: C] prudent man—, even so it is impossible for one who has no letters and knows no verse to talk like a poet. And so she who now serves the God has been born as respectably as any man here, and has lived as good and orderly a life; but having been reared in the house of small farmer folk, she brings nothing with her from art or from any practice or faculty whatsoever, as she goes down into the sanctuary. As Xenophon[115] thinks that the bride should step into her husband’s home having seen as little as may be, and heard as little, so she, ignorant and untried in almost all things, and a true virgin in soul, is associated with [Sidenote: D] the God. Yet we, who think that the God, when he “signifies”, uses the cries of herons and wrens and ravens, and never ask that they, as the messengers and heralds of the God, should put things into clear rational phrases, do nevertheless ask that the Pythia should use a voice and style as though from the Thymele, not unembellished and plain, but with metre and elevation, and trills, and verbal metaphors, and a flute accompaniment!
XXIII. ‘What shall we say then about her older predecessors? Not one thing, I think, but several. In the first place, [Sidenote: E] as has been already said, they, too, for the most part, used to give the responses in prose. In the second place, those times produced temperaments and natural conditions which offered an easy and convenient channel for the stream of poetry, to which were at once superadded, in one and another, an eagerness, an impulse, a preparation of soul, all resulting in a readiness which needed but a slight initial movement from without to give the imagination a turn. So it was that not only were astronomers and philosophers drawn, as Philinus says, in their several directions, but also, when men were mellow with wine and sentiment, some undercurrent of pity or joy would come, and they would [Sidenote: F] glide into a song-like voice; drinking parties were filled with amorous strains and songs, books with poems in writing. When Euripides wrote:[116] _Love can teach, he makes A poet of a stranger to the Muse_, he did not mean that Love implants a faculty for poetry or music; the faculty is there already, but Love stirs and warms what was latent and idle. Or are we to say, Sir Stranger, that no one now loves, that Love has gone by the heels, because there is none who, to quote Pindar,[117] _Scatters with easy grace The vocal shafts of love and joy._ [Sidenote: 406] That is absurd. Loves there are and many of them, and they master men; but when they associate with souls which have no natural turn for music, they drop the flute and the lyre, yet are vocal still and fiery through and through, as much as of old. It is an unhallowed thing to say, and an unfair, that the Academy was loveless, or the choir of Socrates and Plato; yet, while we have their love dialogues to read, they have left no poems. Why not declare at once that Sappho was the only woman who [Sidenote: B] ever loved, if you are to say that Sibylla alone had the gift of prophecy, or Aristonica, and the others who delivered themselves in verse? Wine, as Chaeremon[118] used to say, _Is mingled with the moods of them that drink_, and the prophetic inspiration, like that of love, uses the faculty which is subjected to it, and stirs its recipients according to the nature of each.
XXIV. ‘Not but that, if we look also into the subject of the God and his foreknowledge, we shall see that the change has taken place for the better. For the use of language is like exchange in coined money. Here also it is familiarity which gives currency, the purchasing power varies with the times. There was a day when metres, tunes, odes were the coins of language in use; all History and Philosophy, in a word, every [Sidenote: C] feeling and action which called for a more solemn utterance, were drawn to poetry and music. It is not only that now but few understand, and they with effort, whereas then all the world were listeners, and all felt pleasure in what was sung, _who fats his flock, Who ploughs the soil, who snares the wingèd game_, as Pindar[119] has it. More than that, there was an aptitude for poetry, most men used the lyre and the ode to rebuke, to encourage, to frame myths and proverbs; also hymns to the Gods, prayers, thanksgivings, were composed in metre and song, as genius or practice enabled them to do.
And so it was with prophecy; the God did not grudge it ornament and grace, or drive from hence into disgrace the honoured Muse of the tripod; [Sidenote: D] he rather led her on, awakening and welcoming poetic natures; he gave them visions from himself, he lent his aid to draw out pomp and eloquence as being fitting and admirable things. Then there was a change in human life, affecting men both in fortune and in genius. Expediency banished what was superfluous, top-knots of gold were dropped, rich robes discarded; probably too clustering curls were shorn off, and the buskin discontinued. It was not a bad training, to set the beauty of [Sidenote: E] frugality against that of profusion, to account what was plain and simple a better ornament than the pompous and elaborate. So it was with language, it changed with the times, and shared the general break-up. History got down from its coach, and dropped metre. Truth was best sifted out from Myth in prose; Philosophy welcomed clearness, and found it better to instruct than to astonish, so she pursued her inquiry in plain language. The God made the Pythia leave off calling her own fellow townsmen “fire-burners”, the Spartans “serpent-eaters”, [Sidenote: F] men “mountaineers”, rivers “mountain-drainers”. He cleared the oracles of epic verses, unusual words, circumlocutions, and vagueness, and so prepared the way to converse with his consultants just as laws converse with states, as kings address subjects, as disciples hear their masters speak, so framing language as to be intelligible and convincing.
XXV. ‘For it should be clearly understood that the God is, in the words of Sophocles,[120] _Unto the wise a riddling prophet aye, To silly souls a teacher plain and brief._ [Sidenote: 407] The same turn of things which brought clearness brought also a new standard of belief; it shared the general change. Whereas of old that which was not familiar or common, but, in plain words, contorted and over-phrased, was ascribed by the many to an implied Divinity, and received with awe and reverence; in later times men were content to learn things clearly and easily with no pomp or artifice; they began to find fault with the poetical setting of the oracles, not only as a hindrance to the perception of truth, because it mingled indistinctness and [Sidenote: B] shadow with the meaning, but also because by this time they were getting to mistrust metaphors, riddles, and ambiguities, as so many holes or hiding-places provided for him who should trip in his prophecy, that he might step into them and secure his retreat. You might have heard it told by many, how certain persons with a turn for poetry still sit about the place of oracles, waiting to catch the utterances, and then weaving verses, metres, rhythms, according to occasion, as a sort of vehicle. As to your Onomacrituses, and Herodotuses, and Cinaethons,[121] and the censures which they brought upon the oracles, by importing tragedy and pomp where they were out of place, I let the charge pass, and do not admit it. Most, [Sidenote: C] however, of the discredit which attached so copiously to poetry came from the gang of soothsayers and scamps who strolled around the ceremonies of the Great Mother and of Serapis, with their mummeries and tricks, turning verses out of their own heads, or taking them at random from handbooks, for servant boys and silly girls, such as are best attracted by metre and a poetic cast of words; from all which causes poetry seemed to put herself at the service of cheats, and jugglers, and lying prophets, and was lost to truth and to the tripod.
XXVI. ‘Thus I should not be surprised to find that the old people sometimes required a certain ambiguity, circumlocution, [Sidenote: D] indistinctness. For it was not then a case of “A” approaching the oracle