The Oracle at Delphi no Longer Given in Verse (15-19)

Theon, with a quiet smile, said, In such a way as to lodge complaint against you as well for bringing up the most trifling of the peccadilloes of the Greeks. For just as Socrates, while being entertained at Gallias’s house, shows hostility toward perfume only,[*] but looks on with tolerance at children’s dancing, and at tumbling,[*] kissing,[*] and buffoons[*]; so you also seem to me, in a similar way, to be excluding from this shrine a poor weak woman who put the beauty of her person to a base use, but when you see the god completely surrounded by choice offerings and tithes from murders, wars, and plunderings, and his temple crowded with spoils and booty from the Greeks, you show no indignation, nor do you feel any pity for the Greeks when upon the beautiful votive offerings you read the most disgraceful inscriptions: Brasidas and the Acanthians from the Athenians, and The Athenians from the Corinthians, and The Phocians from the Thessalians, and The Orneatans from the Sicyonians, and The Amphictyons from the Phocians. But Praxiteles, apparently, was the only one that caused annoyance to Crates by gaining for his beloved the privilege of a dedication here, whereas Crates ought to have commended him because beside these golden kings he placed a golden courtesan, thus rebuking wealth for possessing nothing to be admired or revered. For it would be well for kings and rulers to dedicate votive offerings to commemorate justice, self-control, and magnanimity, not golden and luxurious affluence, which is shared also by men who have led the most disgraceful lives.

There is one thing that you omit to mention, said one of the guides, that Croesus had a golden statue made of the woman who baked his bread, and dedicated it here.

Yes, said Theon, only he did it not in mockery of the holy shrine, but because he found an honourable and righteous cause for so doing.[*] For it is said that Alyattes, the father of Croesus, married a second wife, and was rearing a second group of children. So the woman, in a plot against Croesus, gave poison to the baker and bade her knead it into the bread and serve it to Croesus. But the baker secretly told Croesus and served the bread to the stepmother’s children; in return for this action Croesus, when he became king, as it were in the sight of the god as a witness, requited the favour done by the woman and also conferred a benefit upon the god. Wherefore, he continued, it is right and proper, if there is any similar votive offering from States, to honour and respect it, as, for example, that of the Opuntians. For, when the despots of the Phocians melted up many of the votive offerings made of gold or silver,[*] and minted coins and put them into circulation among the various States, the Opuntians, collecting what money they could find, sent back here a water-jar for the god, and consecrated it to him. For my part, I commend also the inhabitants of Myrina and of Apollonia for sending to this place fruits of the harvest fashioned of gold; and still more the inhabitants of Eretria and Magnesia who presented the god with the first-fruits of their people, in the belief that he is the giver of crops, the god of their fathers, the author of their being, and the friend of man. And I blame the Megarians because they are almost the only people who erected here a statue of the god with spear in hand to commemorate the battle in which they defeated and drove out the Athenians, who were in possession of their city in the period following the Persian Wars. Later, however, they dedicated to the god a golden plectrum,[*] calling attention, apparently, to Scythinus,[*] who says regarding the lyre,

Which the son of Zeus,

Fair Apollo, who embraces origin and end in one,

Sets in tune, and for his plectrum has the bright rays of the sun.

As Sarapion was beginning to say something about these matters, the foreign visitor said, It is very pleasant to listen to such conversation as this, but I am constrained to claim the fulfilment of your first promise regarding the cause which has made the prophetic priestess cease to give her oracles in epic verse or in other metres. So, if it be agreeable, let us postpone to another time what remains of our sightseeing, and sit down here and hear about it. For it is the recital of this fact which above all else militates against confidence in the oracle, since people assume one of two things: either that the prophetic priestess does not come near to the region in which is the godhead, or else that the spirit has been completely quenched and her powers have forsaken her.

Accordingly we went round and seated ourselves upon the southern steps of the temple, looking towards the shrine of Earth and the stream of water, with the result that Boethus immediately remarked that the place itself proffered assistance to the visitor in the solution of the question. For, said he, there used to be a shrine of the Muses near the place where the water of the stream wells up; wherefore they used to use this water for libations and lustrations, as Simonides[*] says:

Where from depths below, for pure lustration

Is drawn the fair-haired Muses’ fount of holy water.

And in another passage[*] he addresses Clio in a somewhat affected way as the

Holy guardian of lustration,

and goes on to say that

She, invoked in many a prayer,

In robes unwrought with gold,

For those that came to draw

Raised from the ambrosial grot

The fragrant beauteous water.

Eudoxus, therefore, was wrong in believing those who declared that this is called the water of the Styx. But they established the cult of the Muses as associates and guardians of the prophetic art in this very place beside the stream and the shrine of Earth, to whom it is said that the oracle used to belong because of the responses being given in poetic and musical measures. And some assert that it was here that the heroic verse was heard for the first time:

Birds, contribute your feathers, and bees, bring wax as your portion.

Later Earth became inferior to the god and lost her august position.

That, Boëthus, said Sarapion, is more reasonable and harmonious. For we must not show hostility towards the god, nor do away with his providence and divine powers together with his prophetic gifts; but we must seek for explanations of such matters as seem to stand in the way, and not relinquish the reverent faith of our fathers.

What you say, my esteemed Sarapion, said I, is quite right. We have not been surrendering hope for philosophy either, as if it had been completely done away with and destroyed, just because formerly the philosophers used to publish their doctrines and discourses in the form of poems, as Orpheus, Hesiod, Parmenides, Xenophanes, Empedocles, and Thales. Later they ceased to do this, and now all have ceased using metrical form, all except you. At your hands the poetic art returns to philosophy from its banishment, and sounds a clear and noble challenge to the young.

Nor did Aristarchus, Timocharis, Aristyllus, and Hipparchus, and their followers make astronomy less notable by writing in prose, although in earlier days Eudoxus, Hesiod, and Thales wrote in verse, if indeed Thales, in all truth, composed the Astronomy which is attributed to him. Pindar also confesses that he is puzzled by the neglect of a mode of music and is astonished that⋯[*] The fact is that there is nothing dreadful nor abnormal in seeking the causes of such changes; but to do away with these arts and faculties themselves because something about them has been disturbed or changed is not right.

Theon, taking up the subject, said, But these matters have actually undergone great changes and innovations, whereas you know that many of the oracles here have been given out in prose, and those that concerned no unimportant matters. For, as Thucydides[*] has recorded, when the Spartans consulted the god about their war against the Athenians, his answer was a promise of victory and power and that he himself would come to their aid, bidden or unbidden; and in another oracle that if they would not allow Pleistoanax to return from exile, they should plough with a silver ploughshare.[*]

When the Athenians sought advice about their campaign in Sicily, he directed them to get the priestess of Athena at Erythrae; the name which the woman bore was Quiet.[*]

When Deinomenes of Sicily asked advice about his sons, the answer was that all three should rule as despots; and when Deinomenes rejoined, To their sorrow, then, O Lord Apollo, the god said that he granted this also to Deinomenes, and added it to the response. You all know, of course, that Gelo, while he was despot, suffered from dropsy; and likewise Hiero from gall-stones; and the third, Thrasybulus, became involved in seditions and wars, and it was no long time before he was dethroned.

Then there was Procles, the despot of Epidaurus, who did away with many men in a cruel and lawless manner, and finally put to death Timarchus, who had come to him from Athens with money, after receiving him and entertaining him with much show of hospitality. The body he thrust into a basket and sank in the sea. All this he accomplished through Cleander of Aegina, and nobody else knew anything about it. But later, when his affairs were in sad confusion, he sent here his brother Cleotimus to ask advice in secret concerning his flight and withdrawal to another country. The god therefore made answer that he granted Procles flight and withdrawal to the place in which he had bidden his friend from Aegina deposit the basket, or where the stag sheds his horns. The despot at once understood that the god ordered him to sink himself in the sea or to bury himself in the earth (for stags, whenever their horns fall off, bury them out of sight underground[*]); but he waited for a short time, and then, when the state of his aflairs became altogether desperate, he had to leave the country. And the friends of Timarchus seized him, slew him, and cast forth his dead body into the sea.

Most important of all is the fact that the decrees through which Lycurgus gave form and order to the Spartan constitution were given to him in prose.

Now Herodotus and Philochorus and Ister, men who were most assiduous in collecting prophecies in verse, have quoted countless oracles not in verse; but Theopompus, who has given more diligent study to the oracle than any one man, has strongly rebuked those who do not believe that in his time the prophetic priestess used verse in her oracular responses. Afterwards, wishing to prove this, he has found to support his contention an altogether meagre number of such oracles, indicating that the others were given out in prose even as early as that time.