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Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers (15-16)

urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg092.perseus-eng4:15-16
Refs {'start': {'reference': '15', 'human_reference': 'Section 15'}, 'end': {'reference': '16', 'human_reference': 'Section 16'}}
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The rapes committed on boys or girls, the long voyages, flights, banishments, and voluntary services of the Gods, which are sung by the poets, are passions fitting to be attributed not to Gods, but to Daemons, whose fortunes were recorded in memorial of their virtue and power. Neither is Aeschylus in the right, when he says,

Divine Apollo banished from the sky;
nor Admetus in Sophocles, saying of a God,
My cock by crowing led him to the mill.

The divines of Delphi were far from the truth when they asserted that there was a combat between Apollo and a Dragon about the possession of this oracle. No less are they to blame who suffer the poets or orators in the open theatres to act or speak of such matters; whereby they seem to condemn those things which themselves perform in their sacred solemnities. Philippus (for this man was an historian, and then present in the company), wondering at what was last said, enquired what divine solemnities they contradicted and condemned who contended one against another in the theatres. Even those, quoth Cleombrotus, which concern the oracle of Delphi, by which this city has lately admitted into these ceremonies and sacrifices all the Greeks without Thermopylae, including those

that dwell as far as the vale of Tempe. For the tabernacle or hut, which is set up every ninth year within the court-yard of this temple, is not a representation of the Dragon’s den, but of some king or tyrant; as likewise the assaulting of it in great silence, by the way termed Dolonia, in which they lead hither a youth whose father and mother are still living, with torches burning; and having set this tabernacle on fire and overthrown the table, they run away as fast as they are able through the doors of the temple, never looking behind them. In fine, this boy’s wanderings, together with his servile offices, and all the expiatory sacrifices about Tempe, seem to declare the commission of some horrid crime in this place. For it looks silly to affirm that Apollo, for having killed the Dragon, was forced to fly to the farthest parts of Greece to be cleansed and purified; and that he there made certain offerings and libations, as men do when they design the appeasing those vindictive spirits whom we call Alastores and Palamnaei, which is to say, the revengers of such crimes as cannot be forgotten but must have punishment. It is true, indeed, that the relation which I have heard touching this flight is very strange and wonderful; but if there be any truth in it, we must not suppose it was an ordinary and common matter which happened then about this oracle. Yet lest I should be thought, as Empedocles says,
Starting new heads, to wander from the text,
And make the theme we have in hand perplext,
I entreat you to let me put a fit conclusion to my discourse (for now the time requires it), and to say what several have said before me, that when the Daemons who are appointed for the government and superintendency of oracles do fail, the oracles must of necessity fail too; and when they depart elsewhere, the divining powers must likewise cease in those places; but when they return again, after a long
time, the places will begin again to speak, like musical instruments handled by those that know how to use them.

Cleombrotus having said thus much, Heracleon took up the discourse, saying: We have never an infidel among us, but are all agreed in our opinions touching the Gods; yet let us have a care, Philippus, lest in the heat and multiplicity of our words we unawares broach some false doctrine that may tend to impiety. Well! but, saith Philippus, I hope Cleombrotus has not said any thing which may occasion this caution. His asserting (says Heracleon) that they be not the Gods who preside over the oracles (because we are to suppose them free from all worldly care), but Daemons, or the Gods’ officers or messengers, does not scandalize me; but to attribute to these Daemons all the calamities, vexations, and plagues which happen to mortal men,—snatching these violently (we may almost say) from the verses of Empedocles,— and in the end to make them to die like them, this, in my mind, savors of bold presumption. Cleombrotus, having asked Philippus who this young man was, and being informed of his name and country, proceeded in this manner: I know very well, Heracleon, that the discourse I used may bear an absurd construction; but there is no speaking of great matters without laying first great foundations for the proof of one’s opinion. But, as for your part, you are not sensible how you contradict even that which you allow; for granting, as you do, that there be Demons, but not allowing them to be vicious and mortal, you cannot prove there are any at all. For wherein do they differ from Gods, supposing they be incorruptible and impassible and not liable to error?

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