The Oracle at Delphi no Longer Given in Verse (29)

We also, perhaps, ought to have this frame of mind. But as it is, we act as if we were anxious and fearful lest the place here lose the repute of its three thousand years, and some few persons should cease to come here, contemning the oracle as if it were the lecturing of some popular speaker; and we offer a plea in defence and invent reasons and arguments for matters which we do not understand, and which it is not fitting that we should understand. We try to appease and win over the man who complains, instead of bidding him take his leave for all time,

Since for himself first of all it will prove to be more distressing,[*]

if the opinion which he holds about the god is such that he can accept and admire the maxims[*] of the Wise Men inscribed here, Know thyself and Avoid extremes, because of their conciseness especially, since this very conciseness contains in small compass a compact and firmlyforged sentiment, and yet he can impeach the oracles because they give nearly all their communications in brief, simple, and straightforward language. Now such sayings as these of the Wise Men are in the same case with streams forced into a narrow channel, for they do not keep the transparency or translucence of the sentiment, but if you will investigate what has been written and said about them by men desirous of learning fully the why and wherefore of each, you will not easily find more extensive writings on any other subject. And as for the language of the prophetic priestess, just as the mathematicians call the shortest of lines between two points a straight line, so her language makes no bend nor curve nor doubling nor equivocation, but is straight in relation to the truth; yet, in relation to men’s confidence in it, it is insecure and subject to scrutiny, but as yet it has afforded no proof of its being wrong. On the contrary, it has filled the oracular shrine with votive offerings and gifts from barbarians and Greeks, and has adorned it with beautiful buildings and embellishments provided by the Amphictyonic Council. You yourselves, of course, see many additions in the form of buildings not here before and many restored that were dilapidated and in ruins. As beside flourishing trees others spring up, so also does Pylaea[*] grow in vigour along with Delphi and derives its sustenance from the same source; because of the affluence here it is acquiring a pattern and form and an adornment of shrines and meeting-places and supplies of water such as it has not acquired in the last thousand years.

They that lived in the neighbourhood of Galaxium in Boeotia became aware of the manifest presence of the god by reason of the copious and overabundant flow of milk[*]:

From all the flocks and all the kine

Like purest water from the springs

Milk in abundance welling down

Made music in the milking-pails.

And all the folk in eager haste

Filled every household vessel full;

Wineskin and jar were put to use,

Each wooden pail and earthen tun.

But for us the god grants clearer, stronger, and plainer evidence than this by bringing about after a drought, so to speak, of earlier desolation and poverty, affluence, splendour, and honour. It is true that I feel kindly toward myself in so far as my zeal or services may have furthered these matters with the co-operation of Polycrates and Petraeus[*]; and I feel kindly toward the man who has been the leader in our administration and has planned and carried out practically all that has been done.[*] But it is not possible that a change of such sort and of such magnitude could ever have been brought about in a short time through human diligence if a god were not present here to lend divine inspiration to his oracle.