Wherefore the Pythian Priestess now Ceases to Deliver her Oracles in Verse (11-15)

Boethus having thus discoursed, Serapio replied, that Boethus had rightly and judiciously argued in reference to cursory predictions uttered not determinately and without good ground. One fairly guessed that such a captain should get the victory, and he won the field; another cried that such things portended the subversion of such a city, and it was laid in ashes. But when the person does not only foretell the event, but how and when, by what means, and by whom it shall come to pass, this is no hazardous conjecture, but an absolute demonstration, and pre-inspired discovery of what shall come to pass hereafter, and that too by the determined decree of fate, long before it comes to pass. For example, to instance the halting of Agesilaus,

Sparta, beware, though thou art fierce and proud,

Lest a lame king thy ancient glories cloud;

For then ’twill be thy fate to undergo

Tedious turmoils of war, and sudden woe;

together with what was prophesied concerning the island which the sea threw up right against Thera and Therasia; as also the prediction of the war between King Philip and the Romans,

When Trojan race shall tame Phoenicians bold,

Prodigious wonders shall the world behold;

From burning seas shall flames immense ascend;

Lightning and whirlwinds hideous rocks shall rend

From their foundations, and an island rear,

Dreadful to sight and terrible to hear.

In vain shall greater strength and valor then

Withstand the contemned force of weaker men.

Soon after this island shot up out of the ocean, surrounded with flames and boiling surges; and then it was that Hannibal was overthrown, and the Carthaginians were subdued by the distressed and almost ruined Romans, and that the Aetolians, assisted by the Romans, vanquished Philip King of Macedon. So that it is never to be imagined that these things were the effects of negligent and careless chance; besides, the series and train of events ensuing the prodigy clearly demonstrate the foreknowledge of a prophetic spirit. The same may be said of the prophecy made five hundred years beforehand to the Romans of the time when they should be engaged in war with all the world at once; which happened when their own slaves made war upon their masters. In all this there was nothing of conjecture, nothing of blind uncertainty, nor is there any occasion to grope into the vast obscurity of chance for the reason of these events; but we have many pledges of experience, that plainly demonstrate the beaten path by which destiny proceeds. For certainly there is no man who will believe that ever those events answered accidentally the several circumstances of the prediction; otherwise we may as well say that Epicurus himself never wrote his book of dogmatic precepts, but that the work was perfected by the accidental meeting and interchange of the letters, one among another.

Thus discoursing, we kept on our walk; but when we came into the Corinthian Hall and observed the brazen palm-tree, the only remainder left of all the consecrated donatives, Diogenianus wondered to observe several figures of frogs and water-snakes, all in cast work about the root of the tree. Nor were we less at a stand, well knowing the palm to be no tree that grows by the water or delights in moist or fenny places; neither do frogs at all concern or belong to the Corinthians, either by way of emblem or religious ceremony, or as the city arms; as the Selinuntines formerly offered to their Gods parsley or smallage (selinon) of goldsmith’s work and of the choicest yellow metal: and the inhabitants of Tenedos always kept in their temple a consecrated axe, a fancy taken from their esteem of the crab-fish that breed in that island near the promontory of Asterium, they being the only crabs that carry the figure of an axe upon the upper part of their shells. For as for Apollo, we were of opinion that crows, swans, wolves, sparrow-hawks, or any other sort of creature, would be more acceptable to him than despicable animals. To this Serapio replied, that sure the workman thereby designed to show that the Sun was nourished by moisture and exhalations; whether it was that he thought at that time of that verse in Homer,

The rising Sun then causing day to break,

Quits the cool pleasure of the oozy lake,

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or whether he had seen how the Egyptians, to represent sunrise, paint a little boy sitting upon a lotus. Thereupon, not able to refrain laughing, What, said I, are you going about to obtrude your stoicisms again upon us; or do you think to slide insensibly into our discourse your exhalations and fiery prodigies? What is this but, like the Thessalian women, to call down the Sun and Moon by enchantments from the skies, while you derive their original from the earth and water?

Therefore Plato will have a man to be a heavenly tree, growing with his root, which is his head, upward. But you deride Empedocles for affirming that the Sun, being illumined by the reflection of the celestial light, with an intrepid countenance casts a radiant lustre back upon the convex of heaven; while you yourselves make the Sun to be a mere terrestrial animal or water plant, confining him to ponds, lakes, and such like regions of frogs. But let us refer these things to the tragical monstrosity of Stoical opinions, and now make some particular reflections touching the extravagant pieces of certain artificers, who, as they are ingenious and elegant in some things, so are no less weakly curious and ambitious in others of their inventions; like him who, designing to signify the dawn of day-light or the hours of sunrise, painted a cock upon the hand of Apollo. And thus may these frogs be thought to have been designed by the artist to denote the spring, when the Sun begins to exercise his power in the air and to dissolve the winter congealments; at least, if we may believe, as you yourselves affirm, that Apollo and the Sun are both one God, and not two distinct Deities. Why, said Serapio, do you think the Sun and Apollo differ the one from the other? Yes, said I, as the Moon differs from the Sun. Nay, the difference is somewhat greater. For the Moon neither very often nor from all the world conceals the Sun; but the Sun is the cause that all men are ignorant of Apollo, by sense withdrawing the rational intellect from that which is to that which appears.