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,The reference is to a much quoted line of Euripides which will be found in 432 c, infra: bene qui coniciet, vatem hunc perhibeto optimum, as Cicero translates it, ii. 5 (12). See Nauck, , Euripides, no. 973; and Kock, iii. 65, Menander, no. 225. 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.