The Oracle at Delphi no Longer Given in Verse (11)

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?