Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II. · Plutarch
ON THE CESSATION OF THE ORACLES
I. There is a story, Terentius Priscus, that certain eagles [Sidenote: 409] or swans, in flight from the extremities of earth to its middle [Sidenote: F] point, met at Delphi near the Navel, as we call it; that later on Epimenides of Phaestus came to examine into the story in the God’s house, and, receiving an indistinct and ambiguous response, wrote _No central boss there is of land or sea, The Gods may know one, but from man ’tis hid._ As for the inquirer, he was properly punished by the God for putting an old story to the proof as though fingering a picture. [Sidenote: 410] II. However, shortly before the Pythian games of Callistratus’ year, it happened that two holy men, travelling from opposite ends of the inhabited globe, met at Delphi; Demetrius the grammarian, on his homeward voyage from Britain to Tarsus, and Cleombrotus the Lacedaemonian, who had wandered much in Egypt and about the land of the Troglodytes, and had sailed far up the Red Sea, not for commerce, but because he loved sights and information. Possessing a competence, and being indifferent to having more, he would use his leisure [Sidenote: B] in such ways, putting together facts as material for a Philosophy which was to end in what he himself called Theology. Having lately been at the temple of Ammon, he made it clear that he was far from admiring its general arrangements, but he told us a story worthy of serious interest as related by the priests, about the lamp which is never extinguished. They say that it consumes less oil each successive year, and claim this as a proof of an inequality in the years which makes each less in duration [Sidenote: C] than its predecessor. Of course, the shorter the period the less the consumption.
IV. ‘Not for the sun only,’ cried Ammonius the philosopher, who was present, ‘but for the whole heavens! For his passage from solstice to solstice must of necessity be curtailed and not [Sidenote: 411] cover so large a portion of the firmament as mathematicians say, its southern parts constantly shrinking towards the more northerly. Our summer, too, must become shorter, and its temperature colder, as his course curves inwards, and he covers wider parallels among the tropical constellations. Again, the gnomons at Syene must cease to throw no shadow at the summer solstice; many fixed stars would be found to have closed in, some of them touching others and being mingled with them as the interval disappeared. If, on the other hand, they shall [Sidenote: B] assert that the other bodies remain as they are, the sun alone being irregular in his movements, they will be unable to state the cause which accelerates him alone out of so many bodies, and will throw most of the phenomena into confusion, those of the moon entirely, so that there will be no need of measures of oil to prove the difference; eclipses will prove it, when the sun comes into contact with the moon more frequently, and the moon with the earth’s shadow.
The rest is clear, and there is no need to unravel any further the imposture of the theory.’ ‘For all that,’ said Cleombrotus, ‘I saw the measures with my own eyes, for they showed me several; that of the current year [Sidenote: C] fell considerably short of the oldest.’ Ammonius rejoined: ‘Then it has escaped all the others who keep up unextinguished fires, and preserve them for a number of years which we may call infinite. Assume, however, that what is said is true; is it not better to take the cause to be atmospheric chills or moisture, which might probably weaken the fire so that it would not consume or need so much fuel; on the other hand, times of dryness or heat? Before now I have heard it said of fire that it burns better and with more strength in winter, being [Sidenote: D] contracted and condensed by the cold, whereas in hot times it loses power, and becomes attenuated and feeble; again, that in sunlight it is less efficient, attacking the fuel sluggishly and consuming it more slowly. Most likely of all, the true cause may be in the oil. There is no improbability in thinking that it was in old days unsubstantial and watery, being produced from a young plant, but afterwards, when well matured and condensed, it had more force and better nutritive power in an equal quantity. I am supposing that we are bound to save this hypothesis for the servants of Ammon, absurd and unnatural as it is.’
Yet in the times of the Persian wars it was in no less repute than that of [Sidenote: 412] Amphiaraus, and Mys, as it would seem, tried both.[132] So the prophet of the Ptoan Oracle, in former times accustomed to use Aeolian, uttered a response in the tongue of the Barbarians, which none of the local persons present understood, but Mys alone; however, the Barbarian caught the inspiration, and the injunction did not need to be translated into Greek. As to the slave sent to the shrine of Amphiaraus, he seemed to see in his sleep a minister of the God, who first spoke to turn him out telling him that the God was not present, then used his hands to push him, and, when he persisted, took a great stone and smote him on the head. This was all a [Sidenote: B] prediction in act of what was to come about; for Mardonius was defeated by the Greeks under no king but a regent and a lieutenant of a king, and he fell struck by a stone,[133] just as the Lydian appeared in his sleep to be struck.
At that time the oracle at Tegyrae was flourishing; there they say that the God was born, and of the streams which flow past it one, as some tell, is called the “Palm”, the other the “Olive” to this day. Again, in the Persian wars, when Echecrates was prophet, the God promised victory and might in war to [Sidenote: C] the Greeks. Then in the Peloponnesian war, when the Delians had been turned out of their island, it is said that an oracle was brought from Delphi, ordering them to discover the place where Apollo was born, and to perform certain sacrifices there. When they were in wonder and perplexity at the idea that the God had not been born among them but elsewhere, the Pythia added that a crow should reveal to them the spot. They went away and reached Chaeroneia, where they heard the landlord of the inn conversing with certain strangers on their way to Tegyrae about the oracle. These strangers, on leaving, addressed the woman in saying farewell as Corone (Crow). Then they [Sidenote: D] understood the oracle, and having sacrificed at Tegyrae, managed shortly to effect their return. There have been more recent manifestations at these prophetic shrines, but now they have failed; so that it may well be worth while here, in the home of the Pythian, to discuss the cause of the change.’
VI. By this time we were away from the temple, and had reached the doors of the Hall of the Cnidians. Passing inside, we saw the friends for whom we were making, seated and waiting for us. There was a general stillness because of the hour; people were anointing themselves or watching the athletes. Then Demetrius, with a quiet smile, said: ‘Shall [Sidenote: E] I tell a story, or shall I speak the truth? My belief is that you have no problem in hand worth a thought; I see you seated much at your ease, with relaxation on your faces.‘ ‘Oh yes;’ broke in the Megarian Heracleon, ‘we are not inquiring whether the verb “to throw” loses a lambda in the future, nor as to the positive forms of “worse”, “better”, “worst”, [Sidenote: F] “best”. Those are the questions, those and others like them, which bring frowns and wrinkles! All others we may examine like philosophers, with brows steady, and quietly, not looking death and daggers at the company.’ ‘Then take us as we are,’ said Demetrius, ‘and with us the subject upon which we have actually fallen, one which is proper to the place, and concerns us all for the God’s sake. And mind! no wrinkled eyebrows when you attack it!’
_Mildest to mortal men pronounced to be_, as Pindar[136] says. And whether he be sun, or lord and father of the sun, lord and father beyond all that is visible, it is not likely that he should deem us modern men unworthy of a voice from himself, being to them the cause of birth and nurture and being and thinking. It is not seemly, either, that Providence, our thoughtful kindly mother, who produces and maintains all things for us, should remember our misdeeds in one matter only—prophecy, and should take away what she [Sidenote: D] originally gave. As if in those old days there were not more bad men because men were more, when oracles were set up in so many parts of the inhabited world! Come here, and sit down again! Swear a Pythian truce with wickedness, whom you are chastising in word every day; join us in seeking some other cause for the alleged failure of the oracles.’ My words had some effect; Planetiades went away by the doors and in silence.
VIII. There was a short interval of quiet, then Ammonius [Sidenote: E] addressed me. ‘Lamprias,’ he said, ‘take care what we are doing, and give your mind to the discussion, lest we find ourselves making out that the God is no true cause. He who thinks that the cessation of the oracles is due to something other than the will of a God, suggests the thought that they come into being and exist, not because of the God, but in some other way. For if prophecy be the work of a God, there is no greater or stronger power to remove and abolish it. Now the argument of Planetiades displeased me in many points, especially as to the inconsistency which he makes out in the God, at one time [Sidenote: F] turning away from vice and disowning it, at another admitting it; as though a king or tyrant were to shut out bad men at one door, and admit them to interviews by another.
Start with the operation most proper to the Gods, which is great, yet never excessive, always sufficient in itself; and tell me that [Sidenote: 414] Hellas has had the largest share in the general depopulation caused by former revolutions and wars over the whole perhaps of the inhabited globe, and could now scarcely provide all round three thousand hoplites, the number which the single state of Megara sent out to Plataea.[137] Why, for the God to have left many places of his oracle would be merely to expose the desolation of Greece. Then I will put myself in your hands for ingenuity. For who would get the good if there were an oracle at Tegyrae as there formerly was, or near Ptoum, where it is a day’s work to meet one man minding his flocks. This very spot, most venerable of all and most renowned “for time and fame”, was for a long time made desert and unapproachable by a savage beast, a female dragon as the story goes; but this is to invert the facts of its lying idle; the [Sidenote: B] wilderness invited the beast, the beast did not make the wilderness.
_The works of Gods may die, but not the Gods._ I say that their essence and their power must be sought in [Sidenote: E] Nature and in Matter, the origin being rightly reserved to the God. It would be simple and childish to suppose that the God himself creeps into the bodies of the prophets and speaks from there, using as instruments their mouths and voices, like those ventriloquists once called “Eurycleis”, now “Pythones”. He who mixes up the God with mortal needs does not spare [Sidenote: F] his majesty nor preserve the dignity and the greatness of his excellence.’ X. Then Cleombrotus: ‘You are right. Yet it is hard to grasp and to define how, and up to what point, we may make use of Providence; and therefore those who make the God the cause of nothing at all, and also those who make him the common cause of all, go wide of moderation and decency. It is well said, on the one hand, that Plato, in discovering the element which underlies created qualities, now called “Matter” or “Nature”, relieved philosophers from perplexities [Sidenote: 415] many and great. It seems to me, on the other, that those who have inserted the class of daemons between Gods and men, to draw and knit together the fellowship of the two orders after a fashion, have cleared away more perplexities and greater; whether the view belongs to Zoroaster and the Magi, or comes from Thrace and Orpheus, or from Egypt, or from Phrygia, as we conjecture from seeing in both those countries many elements of death and mourning in the rites celebrated there, mingled with those of initiation. Among the Greeks, Homer appears still to use both names indifferently, and sometimes [Sidenote: B] to call the Gods daemons. Hesiod first clearly and distinctly laid down four classes of reasonable beings, Gods, then daemons, then heroes, last of all men; and here he appears to admit transition, the golden race of men passing into daemons many and great, the demigods at last into heroes.[139] Others make out a change for bodies and souls alike. As water is seen to be produced out of earth, air from water, and fire from air, and the substance is borne upwards, even so the better souls receive their change from men into heroes, from heroes into daemons. From the daemons again, a few in a long course of time, upborne [Sidenote: C] through virtue, become full partakers of divine nature. To some it happens not to have control of themselves; so they subside and again enter mortal bodies, and endure a life as dim and unillumined as an exhalation.
_Who in fair glades their habitation have By river sources and in grassy meads._‘[146] XII. Then Cleombrotus: ‘I hear of this from many, and now I see the Stoic “Conflagration”, which already spreads over the verses of Heraclitus and Orpheus, catching those of Hesiod [Sidenote: 416] too! I have no patience with this “World-Conflagration”, and then the impossibility of the thing! When one can remember the periods, as it is easiest to do with the crow and the hind, one sees how exaggeration passes in. The year has within itself the beginning and the end _Of all things which the circling seasons bear, And parent earth_,[147] so there is nothing against usage in calling it an “age of man”. You allow yourselves, I believe, that Hesiod means human life by “the age”. Is it not so?’ Demetrius agreed. ‘Well, [Sidenote: B] but this is also clear,’ said Cleombrotus, ‘that the same words are often used for the measure and the things measured, as pint, quart, gallon, bushel. As then we call unity a number, being the smallest measure of number and its origin, so he has called our first measure of human life by the same word as the thing measured—“an age”. The numbers which the others invent have none of the clarity or distinctness usual in numbers. As to the nine thousand seven hundred and twenty, it has come about by taking the sum of the first four numbers, starting with [Sidenote: C] unity, and multiplying it by four, or four by ten.[148] Thus we get forty in either way, which, when five times multiplied [triangle-wise][149] by three, gave the number proposed. But about these matters there need be no difference between us and Demetrius. Whether the time be longer or shorter, determinate or not, in which the soul of a daemon shifts and the life of a demigod, the point will have been proved, before any judge he chooses, on the evidence of wise and ancient witnesses, that there are certain natures on the borderland between Gods and men, subject to mortal affections and enforced changes, who may rightly receive our worship according to the custom of our fathers, and be thought of as daemons and called so.
XIII. ‘Xenocrates, the companion of Plato, used triangles [Sidenote: D] in illustration of the doctrine; he compared the equilateral to a divine nature, the scalene to a mortal, and the isosceles to a daemonic; the first equal in all relations, the second unequal in all, the third equal in some, unequal in others, like the daemonic nature with its mortal passions and divine power. Nature has put forward images, which our sense can perceive, visible likenesses; the sun and the stars standing for Gods, flashes and comets and meteors for mortal men, an image which Euripides[150] drew in the lines: [Sidenote: E] _In all his bloom, like to a falling star His light was quenched, his spirit passed, to air._
_Stringing sundry myths, nor ever keeping to a single path_, I will ask you to allow me to affix the proper conclusion to my first tale, for we have just reached it. Many have said it before [Sidenote: D] us; let us dare to say it now. When the daemons who have to do with oracles and prophecies fail, all such things fail too, and lose their force if the daemons flee or shift their place; then, if they return after an interval, the things speak aloud, like instruments of music when those who can play them are present to play.’ XVI. When Cleombrotus had finished, Heracleon spoke: ‘There is no profane or uninitiated person present, no one who holds views about the Gods discordant with our own; but let us keep jealous watch on ourselves, Philippus, lest without our own knowledge we assume strange and even monstrous [Sidenote: E] hypotheses.’ ‘Well said,’ answered Philippus, ‘but what shocks you specially in what Cleombrotus is advancing?’ ‘That the oracles should be administered,’ said Heracleon, ‘not by Gods, who may well be quit of earthly concerns, but by daemons, assistants of the God, seems to me a not unfair assumption; but then to pluck, I had almost said by the handful, out of the verses of Empedocles, sins, infatuations, and God-inflicted wanderings, and to fasten them upon these daemons, and to suppose that in the end they die like men, this I do think a somewhat bold and barbarian view.’ Here Cleombrotus [Sidenote: F] asked Philippus who and whence the young man was, and, after learning his name and city, said: ‘No, Heracleon, it is by no means “without our own knowledge” that we have reached strange propositions; but in discussing great matters it is not possible to attain what is probable in opinion without starting from great premisses. But you, though you do not know it yourself, are taking back what you grant. You allow that there are daemons; but when you require that they should not be faulty [Sidenote: 419] nor yet mortal, it is no longer daemons that you retain. For in what do they differ from Gods if as to their being they are immortal, and as to virtue are passionless and impeccable?’
XVII. As Heracleon remained silent and in deep thought, he went on: ‘Faulty daemons come to us not from Empedocles only, but from Plato and Xenocrates and Chrysippus; yes, and Democritus,[158] when he prays to meet “fair-falling phantoms”, shows that he knew of others which were disagreeable, with definitely vicious intentions and impulses. As to death in such beings, I have heard a story from a man who was no fool or [Sidenote: B] romancer. Some of you have heard Aemilianus the orator; Epitherses was his father, my fellow-townsman and teacher in grammar. He said that he was once on a voyage to Italy, and embarked on board a ship carrying cargo and many passengers. It was already evening when the breeze died down off the Echinades Islands; and the ship drifted till it was near Paxi. Most on board were awake, and many still drinking after supper. Suddenly a voice was heard from the island of Paxi; some one was calling Thamus in a loud voice, so that they all wondered. [Sidenote: C] Thamus was an Egyptian pilot, not even known by name to many of the passengers.
Twice he was called, and remained silent; the third time he paid attention to the caller, who raised his voice and said: “When you reach the Palodes, tell them that Great Pan is dead.” Hearing this, Epitherses said, all were in consternation, and began discussing with one another whether “it were better to do as was ordered, or to refuse to meddle and to let it be. They decided in the end that, if there were a breeze, Thamus should sail past quietly, but if there should be calm about the place, he should hail, and report. When he was off the Palodes, as there was neither wind nor wave, [Sidenote: D] Thamus at the helm looked to land and repeated the words he had heard: “Great Pan is dead.” He had no sooner done this than a great groaning was heard, proceeding not from one but from many, mingled with cries of wonder. As there were many present, the story was soon spread in Rome, and Thamus was sent for by Tiberius Caesar, who so entirely credited the story, that he caused inquiry to be made about Pan. The scholars, of whom there were many round him, conjectured that he was the son born of Hermes and Penelope.’[159] (Philippus [Sidenote: E] was able to produce several witnesses from the company who had heard the old Aemilianus.)
XVIII. Demetrius told us that, among the islands near Britain, many were deserted and lay scattered (Sporades), some of them bearing the names of daemons and demigods. He himself, by the Emperor’s command, made a voyage of inquiry and observation to the nearest of the deserted islands, which had a few inhabitants, all sacred persons and never molested by the Britons. Just after his arrival, there was a great confusion in the atmosphere, many portents from the sky with gusts of wind and fiery blasts. When these calmed [Sidenote: F] down, the islanders said that ‘one of the mightier ones has ceased to be.’ For as a lamp when lighted, so they explained, has no unpleasant effect, but when extinguished is disagreeable to many people, so it is with great souls: their kindling into life is easy and free from pain; their extinction and death often breed winds and tempests, ‘such as you see now’, and infect the air with pestilence and sickness. They added that there is one island in particular where Cronus is a prisoner, being guarded in his sleep by Briareus; for sleep has been devised to be a chain to bind him, and there are many daemons about him as satellites and attendants.[160]
XIX. Cleombrotus spoke next: ‘I have stories of the same [Sidenote: 420] kind which I might tell; but it is enough for our hypothesis that there is nothing which actually contradicts it or makes such things impossible. Yet we know’, he continued, ‘that the Stoics not only hold the view which I am advancing with [Sidenote: B] reference to daemons, but also recognize one out of the great multitude of Gods who is eternal and immortal; the others, they think, have come into being, and will perish. From the flouts and laughter of the Epicureans, which they venture to employ against Providence also, calling it a mere myth, we have nothing to fear. We maintain that their “Infinity” is a myth; so many worlds, not one of which is governed by divine reason, all produced spontaneously, and so subsisting. If it be permissible to laugh in speaking of Philosophy, we may laugh at the dumb, blind, soulless images which they shepherd during countless cycles of years, to reappear and anon return in all directions, some issuing from bodies still living, some [Sidenote: C] from those long ago burned or rotted. Thus they drag into physiology cyphers and shadows; yet if one asserts that daemons exist not in physical nature only, but as matter of theory, able to remain in being for long periods of time, they show irritation.’
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.