The Oracle at Delphi no Longer Given in Verse (10-14)

Thereupon Boëthus said, My good sir, what kind of an occurrence can there be that is not a debt owed by Time to Nature? What is there strange and unexpected round about land or sea or cities or men which one might foretell and not find it come to pass? Yet this is not precisely foretelling, but telling; or rather it is a throwing and scattering of words without foundation into the infinite; and oftentimes Chance encounters them in their wanderings and accidentally falls into accord with them. As a matter of fact, the coming to pass of something that has been told is a different matter, I think, from the telling of something that will come to pass. For the pronouncement, telling of things non-existent, contains error in itself, and it is not equitable for it to await the confirmation that comes through accidental circumstances; nor can it use as a true proof of having foretold with knowledge the fact that the thing came about after the telling thereof, since Infinity brings all things to pass. Much more - is it true that the good guesser, whom the proverb has proclaimed the best prophet,[*] is like unto a man who searches the ground over, and tries to track the future by means of reasonable probabilities.

These prophets of the type of the Sibyl and Bacis toss forth and scatter into the gulf of time, as into the ocean depths with no chart to guide them, words and phrases at haphazard, which deal with events and occurrences of all sorts; and although some come to pass for them as the result of chance, what is said at the present time is equally a lie, even if later it becomes true in the event that such a thing does happen.

When Boëthus had expounded these views, Sarapion said, That is setting a fair valuation on things which are predicated, as Boëthus affirms, so indefinitely and groundlessly. Granted that victory was foretold for a general: he is victorious; or the destruction of a city: it is now overthrown. But where there is stated not only what shall come to pass, but also how and when and after what and attended by what, that is not a guess about what may perhaps come to pass, but a prognostication of things that shall surely be. These, for example, are the lines referring to the lameness of Agesilaüs:[*]

Sparta, take thought as thou must, although thou art haughty and boastful,

Lest from thee, who art sturdy of foot, shall spring a lame kingship,

Since for a long time to come shall troubles unlocked for engage thee.

Likewise the onrushing billow of war, bringing death to thy people.

And then again these lines about the island which the sea cast up in front of Thera and Therasia,[*] and also about the war of Philip and the Romans;

But when the offspring of Trojans shall come to be in ascendant

Over Phoenicians in conflict, events shall be then beyond credence;

Ocean shall blaze with an infinite fire, and with rattling of thunder

Scorching blasts through the turbulent waters shall upward be driven;

With them a rock, and the rock shall remain firm fixed in the ocean,

Making an island by mortals unnamed; and men who are weaker

Shall by the might of their arms be able to vanquish the stronger.

The fact is that these events, all occurring within a short space of time — the Romans’ prevailing over the Carthaginians by overcoming Hannibal in war, Philip’s coming into conflict with the Aetolians and being overpowered by the Romans in battle, and finally an island’s rising out of the deep accompanied by much fire and boiling surge — no one could say that they all met together at the same time and coincided by chance in an accidental way; no, their order makes manifest their prognostication, and so also does the foretelling to the Romans, some five hundred years beforehand, of the time when they should be at war with all the nations of the world at once: this was their war with their slaves, who had rebelled. In all this, then, there is nothing unindicated or blind which is helplessly seeking to meet chance in infinity[*]; and reason gives many other trustworthy assurances regarding experience, and indicates the road along which a destined event travels. Eor I do not think that anybody will say that by chance it coincides in time with those things with which it was foretold that it should be attended. If that were so, what is to hinder someone else from declaring that Epicurus did not write his Leading Principles [*] for us, Boëthus, but that, by chance and accidentally, the letters fell in with one another as they now stand, and the book was completed?

During this conversation we were moving forward. While we were looking at the bronze palm-tree in the treasure-house of the Corinthians, the only one of their votive offerings that is still left, the frogs[*] and water-snakes, wrought in metal about its base, caused much wonder to Diogenianus, and naturally to ourselves as well. For the palm does not, like many other trees, grow in marshes, or love water; nor do frogs bear any relation to the people of Corinth so as to be a symbol or emblem of their city, even as, you know, the people of Selinus are said to have dedicated a golden celery plant,[*] and the people of Tenedos the axe, derived from the crabs which are found on the island in the neighbourhood of Asterium, as the place is called. For these, apparently, are the only crabs that have the figure of an axe on the shell. Yet, in fact, wre believe that to the god himself ravens and swans and wolves and hawks, or anything else rather than these creatures, are pleasing.

Sarapion remarked that the artisan had represented allegorically the nurture and birth and exhalation of the sun from moisture, whether he had read what Homer[*] says, Swiftly away moved the Sun, forsaking the beautiful waters, or whether he had observed that the Egyptians, to show the beginning of sunrise, paint a very young baby sitting on a lotus flower.[*] I laughed and said, Where now, my good friend? Are you again slyly thrusting in your Stoicism here and unostentatiously slipping into the discussion their kindlings and exhalations,[*] not indeed bringing down the moon and the sun, as the Thessalian women do,[*] but assuming that they spring up here from earth and water and derive their origin from here? For Plato[*] called man also a celestial plant, as though he were held upright from his head above as from a root. But you Stoics ridicule Empedocles[*] for his assertion that the sun, created by the reflection of celestial light, about the earth,

Back to the heavens again sends his beams with countenance fearless.

And you yourselves declare the sun to be an earth-born creature or a water-plant, assigning him to the kingdom of the frogs or water-snakes. But let us refer all this to the heroics of the Stoic school, and let us make a cursory examination of the cursory work of the artisans. In many instances they indeed show elegance and refinement, but they have not in all eases avoided frigidity and over-elaboration. Just as the man who constructed the cock upon the hand of Apollo’s statue showed by suggestion the early morning and the hour of approaching sunrise, so here, one might aver, has been produced in the frogs a token of springtime when the sun begins to dominate the atmosphere and to break up the winter; that is, if, as you say, we must think of Apollo and the Sun, not as two gods, but as one.

Really, said Sarapion, do you not think so, and do you imagine that the sun is diiferent from Apollo? [*]

Yes, said I, as different as the moon from the sun; but the moon does not often conceal the sun, nor conceal it from the eyes of all,[*] but the sun has caused all to be quite ignorant of Apollo by diverting the faculty of thought through the faculty of perception from what is to what appears to be.

Following this, Sarapion asked the guides why it is that they call the treasure-house, not the house of Cypselus the donor, but the house of the Corinthians. When they were silent, as I think, for lack of any reason to give, I laughed and said, What knowledge or memory do we imagine these men have still remaining, when they are utterly dumbfounded by your high-flown talk? As a matter of fact, we heard them say earlier that when the despotism wras overthrown, the Corinthians wished to inscribe both the golden statue at Olympia and the treasure-house here with the name of their city, and the people of Delphi accordingly granted this as being a fair request, and gave their consent; but the Eleans refused out of ill-will, and the Corinthians voted that the Eleans should not be allowed to take part in the Isthmian Games. Consequently, from that time on there has been no competition from Elis at these games. The slaying of the Molionidae by Heracles near Cleonae[*] is not, as some think, a cause contributing in any way to the exclusion of the Eleans. On the contrary, it would have been appropriate for them to exclude the Corinthians, if they had taken offence against them for this reason. That was all I said.

When we had passed the house of the Acanthians and Brasidas, the guide pointed out to us the site where iron spits of Rhodopis the courtesan were once placed,[*] at which Diogenianus indignantly said, So, then, it was the province of the same State to provide Rhodopis with a place where she might bring and deposit the tithes of her earnings, and also to put to death Aesop,[*] her fellow-slave.

Why, said Sarapion, are you indignant over this, my good sir? Look up there and behold among the generals and kings Mnesaretê wrought in gold, who, as Crates said, stands as a trophy to the licentiousness of the Greeks. [*]

The young man accordingly looked at it and remarked, Then it was about Phrynê that this statement was made by Crates?

Yes, said Sarapion, she was called Mnesaretê, but she got the nickname of Phrynê[*] because of her sallow complexion. In many instances, apparently, nicknames cause the real names to be obscured. For example, Polyxena, the mother of Alexander, they say was later called Myrtalê and Olympias and Stratonicê. Eumetis of Rhodes most people call, even to this day, Cleobulina[*] from her father; and Herophilê of Erythrae, who had the gift of prophecy, they addressed as Sibyl. You will hear the grammarians assert that Leda was named Mnesinoë and Orestes Achaeus⋯ But how, said he, with a look at Theon, do you think to demolish this charge of guilt against Phrynê?