Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II. · Plutarch
ON THE ‘E’ AT DELPHI
I. A day or two ago, dear Serapion, I met with some [Sidenote: 384 D] rather good lines, addressed, Dicaearchus thinks, to Archelaus by Euripides:[51] _No gifts, my wealthy friend, from humble me; You’ll think me fool, or think I did but beg._ He who out of his narrow store offers trifles to men of great possessions, confers no favour; no one believes that he gives something for nothing, and he gets credit for a jealous and ungenerous temper. Now surely as money presents fall far [Sidenote: E] below those of literature and learning, so there is beauty in giving these, and beauty in claiming a return in kind. At any rate, I am sending to you, and so to my friends down there, some of our Pythian Dialogues, as a sort of first-fruits; and, in doing so, confess that I expect others from you, and more and better ones, since you enjoy a great city and abundant leisure, with many books and discussions of every sort. Well then, our kind Apollo, in the oracles which he gives his consultants, seems to [Sidenote: F] solve the problems of life and to find a remedy, while problems of the intellect he actually suggests and propounds to the born love of wisdom in the soul, thus implanting an appetite which leads to truth. Among many other instances, this is made clear as to the consecration of the letter ‘E’.
We may well guess that it was not by chance, or by lot, that, alone among [Sidenote: 385] the letters, it received pre-eminence in the God’s house, and took rank as a sacred offering and a show object. No, the officials of the God in early times, when they came to speculate, either saw in it a special and extraordinary virtue, or found it a symbol for something else of serious importance, and so adopted it. I had often myself avoided the question and quietly declined it when raised in the school. However, I was lately surprised by my sons in earnest discussion with certain strangers, who were just starting from Delphi; it was not decent to put them off with excuses, they were so anxious to receive some [Sidenote: B] account. We sat down near the temple, and I began to raise questions with myself, and to put others to them; and the place, and what they said, reminded me of a discussion which we heard a long time ago from Ammonius and others, at the time of Nero’s visit, when the same problem had been started here in the same way.
II. That the God is no less philosopher than he is prophet appeared to all to come out directly from the exposition which Ammonius gave us of each of his names. He is ‘Pythian’ (The Inquirer) to those who are beginning to learn and to inquire; ‘Delian’ (The Clear One) and ‘Phanaean’ to those who are already getting something clear and a glimmering of [Sidenote: C] the truth; ‘Ismenian’ (The Knowing) to those who possess the knowledge; ‘Leschenorian’ (God of Discourse) when they are in active enjoyment of dialectical and philosophic intercourse. ‘Now since’, he continued, ‘Philosophy embraces inquiry, wonder, and doubt, it seems natural that most of the things relating to the God should have been hidden away in riddles, and should require some account of their purpose, and an explanation of cause. For instance, in the case of the undying fire, why the only woods used here are pine for burning and laurel for fumigation; again, why two Fates are here installed, whereas their number is everywhere else taken as three; why no woman is allowed to approach the place of the oracles; questions about the tripod, and the rest. These problems, [Sidenote: D] when suggested to persons not altogether wanting in reason and soul, lure them on, and challenge them to inquire, to listen, and to discuss. Look again at those inscriptions, KNOW THYSELF and NOTHING TOO MUCH; how many philosophic inquiries have they provoked! What a multitude of arguments has sprung up out of each, as from a seed! Not one of them I think is more fruitful in this way than the subject of our present inquiry.’
III. When Ammonius had said this, my brother Lamprias spoke: ‘After all, the account which we have heard of the matter is simple enough and quite short. They say that the famous Wise Men, also called by some “Sophists”, were [Sidenote: E] properly only five, Chilon, Thales, Solon, Bias, and Pittacus. But Cleobulus, tyrant of Lindos, and, later on, Periander of Corinth, men with no wisdom or virtue in them, but forcing public opinion by influence, friends, and favours, thrust themselves into the list of the wise, and disseminated through Greece maxims and sayings resembling the utterances of the five. Then the five were vexed, but did not choose to expose the imposture, or to have an open quarrel on the matter of title, and to fight it out with such powerful persons. They met here [Sidenote: F] by themselves; and after discussing the matter, dedicated the letter which is fifth in the alphabet, and also as a numeral signifies five, thus making their own protest before the God, that they were five, discarding and rejecting the seventh and the sixth, as having no part or lot with themselves. That this account is not beside the mark may be recognized by any one who has heard the officials of the temple naming the golden “E” as that of Livia the wife of Caesar, the brazen one as that [Sidenote: 386] of the Athenians, whereas the original and oldest letter, which is of wood, is to this day called that “Of the Wise Men”, as having been the offering of all in common, not of anyone of them.’
IV. Ammonius gave a quiet smile; he had a suspicion that Lamprias had been giving us a view of his own, making up history and legend at discretion. Some one else said that it was like the nonsense which they had heard from the Chaldaean stranger a day or so before; that there were seven letters which were vowels, seven stars that have an independent motion and [Sidenote: B] are unattached to the heavens; moreover that ‘E’ is the second vowel from the beginning, and the sun the second planet, after the moon, and that all Greeks, or nearly all, identify Apollo with the sun. ‘But all that’, he said, ‘is pernicious nonsense. Lamprias, however, has, probably without knowing it, made a move[52] which stirs up all who have to do with the temple against his view. What he told us was unknown to any of the Delphians; they used to give the regular guides’ account, that neither the appearance nor the sound of the letter has any significance, but only the name.’
VI. When Nicander had finished, our friend Theon, whom I am sure you know, asked Ammonius whether Dialectic might [Sidenote: E] speak freely, after the insulting remarks to which she had been treated. Ammonius told him to speak out on her behalf. ‘That the God is a master of Dialectic,’ Theon said, ‘is shown clearly by most of his oracles; for you will grant that the solution of puzzles belongs to the same person as their invention. Again, as Plato used to say, when a response was given that the altar at Delos should be doubled,[55] a matter requiring the most advanced geometry, the God was not merely enjoining this, but was also putting his strong command upon the Greeks to practise geometry. Just so, when the God puts out ambiguous [Sidenote: F] oracles, he is exalting and establishing Dialectic, as essential to the right understanding of himself. You will grant again, that in Dialectic this conjunctive particle has great force, because it formulates the most logical of all sentences. This is certainly the “conjunctive”, seeing that the other animals know the existence of things, but man alone has been gifted by nature with the power of observing and discerning their sequence.
That “it is day” and “it is light” we may take it that wolves and dogs and birds perceive. But “if it is day it is light”, is [Sidenote: 387] intelligible only to man; he alone can apprehend antecedent and consequent, the enunciation of each and their connexion, their mutual relation and difference, and it is in these that all demonstration has its first and governing principle. Since then Philosophy is concerned with truth, and the light of truth is demonstration, and the principle of demonstration is the conjunctive proposition, the faculty which includes and produces this was rightly consecrated by the wise men to that [Sidenote: B] God who is above all things a lover of truth. Also, the God is a prophet, and prophetic art deals with that future which is to come out of things present or things past. Nothing comes into being without a cause, nothing is known beforehand without a reason. Things which come into being follow things which have been, things which are to be follow things which now are coming into being, all bound in one continuous chain of evolution. Therefore he who knows how to link causes together into one, and combine them into a natural process, can also declare beforehand things _Which are, which shall be, and which were of old._[56]
Homer did well in putting the present first, the future next, and the past last. Inference starts with the present, and works [Sidenote: C] by the force of the conjunction: “If this is, that was its antecedent”, “If this is, that will be.” As we have said, the technical and logical requirement is knowledge of consequence; sense supplies the minor premiss. Hence, though it may perhaps seem a petty thing to say, I will not shrink from it; the real tripod of truth is the logical process which assumes the relation of consequent to antecedent, then introduces the fact, and so establishes the conclusion. If the Pythian God really finds pleasure in music, and in the voices of swans, and the [Sidenote: D] tones of the lyre, what wonder is it that as a friend to Dialectic, he should welcome and love that part of speech which he sees philosophers use more, and more often, than any other. So Hercules, when he had not yet loosed Prometheus, nor yet conversed with the sophists Chiron and Atlas, but was young and just a Boeotian, first abolished Dialectic, made a mock at the “_If the first then the second_”[57], and bethought him to remove the tripod by force, and to try conclusions with the God for his art. At any rate, as time went on, he also appears to [Sidenote: E] have become a great prophet and a great dialectician.’
VII. When Theon had done, I think it was Eustrophus of Athens who addressed us: ‘Do you see with what a will Theon backs Dialectic? He has only to put on the lion’s skin! Now then for you who put down under number all things in one mass, all natures and principles divine as well as human, and take it to be leader and lord in all that is beautiful and honourable! It is no time for you to keep quiet; offer to the God a first-fruits of your dear Mathematics, if you think that “E” rises above [Sidenote: F] the other letters, not in its own right by power or shape, or by its meaning as a word, but as the honoured symbol of an absolutely great and sovereign number, the “Pempad”, from which the Wise Men took their verb “to count”.’ Eustrophus was not jesting when he said this to us; he said it because I was at the time passionately devoted to Mathematics, though soon to find the value of the maxim, ‘NOTHING TOO MUCH‘, having joined the Academy.
VIII. So I said that Eustrophus’ solution of the problem by number was excellent. ‘For since,’ I continued, ‘when all number is divided into even and odd, unity alone is in its effect [Sidenote: 388] common to both, and therefore, if added to an odd number makes it even, and vice versa; and since even numbers start with two, odd numbers with three, and five is produced by combination of these, it has rightly received honour as the product of first principles, and it has further been called “Marriage”, because even resembles the female, odd the male. For when we divide the several numbers into equal segments, the even parts asunder perfectly, and leaves inside a sort of recipient principle or space; if the odd is treated in the same way, a middle part is always left [Sidenote: B] over, which is generative. Hence the odd is the more generative, and when brought into combination invariably prevails; in no combination does it give an even result, but in all cases an odd. Moreover, when each is applied to itself and added, the difference is shown. Even with even never gives odd, or passes out of its proper nature; it wants the strength to produce anything different.
Odd numbers with odd yield even numbers in [Sidenote: C] plenty because of their unfailing fertility. The other powers of numbers and their distinctions cannot be now pursued in detail. However, the Pythagoreans called five “Marriage”, as produced by the union of the first male number and the first female. From another point of view it has been called “Nature”, because when multiplied into itself it ends at last in itself. For as Nature takes a grain of wheat, and in the intermediate stages of growth gives forms and shapes in abundance, through which she brings her work to perfection, and, after them all, shows us again a grain of wheat, thus restoring the beginning in the end of the whole process, so it is with numbers. When other numbers are multiplied into themselves, they end in different numbers after being squared; only those formed [Sidenote: D] of five or of six recover and preserve themselves every time. Thus six times six gives thirty-six, five times five twenty-five. And again, a number formed of six does this only once, in the single case of being squared. Five has the same property in multiplication, and also a special property of its own when added to itself; it produces alternately itself or ten, and that to infinity. For this number mimics the principle which orders all things. As Heraclitus[58] tells us that Nature successively produces the universe out of herself and herself out of the universe, bartering “fire for things and things for fire, as goods for gold [Sidenote: E] and gold for goods”, even so it is with the Pempad. In union with itself, it does not by its nature produce anything imperfect or foreign. All its changes are defined; it either produces itself or the Decad, either the homogeneous or the perfect.
_In mingled cries_ (says Aeschylus)[62] _the dithyramb should ring, With Dionysus revelling, its King._ ‘But Apollo has the Paean, a set and sober music. Apollo is ever ageless and young; Dionysus has many forms and many shapes as represented in paintings and sculpture, which attribute to Apollo smoothness and order and a gravity with no admixture, to Dionysus a blend of sport and sauciness with seriousness and frenzy: _God that sett’st maiden’s blood Dancing in frenzied mood, Blooming with pageantry! Evoe! we cry._ ‘So do they summon him, rightly catching the character of either change. But since the periods of change are not equal, that [Sidenote: C] called “satiety” being longer, that of “stint” shorter, they here preserve a proportion, and use the Paean with their sacrifice for the rest of the year, but at the beginning of winter awake the dithyramb, and stop the Paean, and invoke this God instead of the other, supposing that this ratio of three to one is that of the “Arrangement” to the “Conflagration”.[63] X. ‘But perhaps this has been drawn out at too great length for the present opportunity. This much is clear, that they do associate the Pempad with the God, as it now produces its own [Sidenote: D] self like fire, and again produces the Decad out of itself like the universe. Now take music, which the God favours so highly, are we not to suppose that this number has its share here?
‘Most of the science of harmonies, to put it in a word, is concerned with consonances. That these are five and no more is proved by reason, as against the man who is all for strings and holes, and wants to explore these points irrationally by the senses; they all have their origin in numerical ratios. The ratio of the fourth is four to three, of the fifth three to two, of the octave two to one, of the octave and fifth three to one, of the double octave four to one. The additional consonance which writers of [Sidenote: E] harmony introduce under the name of octave and fourth, does not merit admission, being extra-metrical; to admit it would be to indulge the irrational side of our sense of hearing, and to violate reason, or law. Passing by then five arrangements of tetrachords, and the first five “tones”, or “tropes”, or “harmonies”, whichever name is right, by variations of which, made higher or lower, the remaining scales, high and low, are produced, is it not true that, though intervals are many, indeed infinite, the principles of melody are five only, quarter tone, [Sidenote: F] half tone, tone, tone and a half, double tone? In sounds no other interval of high and low, be it smaller or greater, can be used for melody.
XI. ‘Passing over many similar points, I will’, I said, ‘produce Plato,[64] who, in discussing the question of a single universe, says that if there are others besides ours, and it is not alone, then the whole number of them is five and no more; not but that, if ours is the only universe in being, as Aristotle[65] also thinks, even this one is in a fashion composite and formed out of five; one of earth, one of water, a third of fire, and a fourth of air, [Sidenote: 390] while the fifth is called heaven or light or air, or by others “fifth substance”, to which alone of all bodies circular motion is natural, not due to force or other accidental cause. Therefore it is that Plato, observing the five perfect figures of Nature—Pyramid, Cube, Octahedron, Eicosahedron, and Dodecahedron—assigned them to the elements, each to each. XII. ‘There are some who appropriate to the same elements our own senses, also five in number. Touch, as they see, is [Sidenote: B] resistent and earthy. Taste takes in properties by moisture in the things tasted. Air when struck becomes audible voice or sound. There remain two: smell, the object of our olfactory sense, is an exhalation engendered by heat, and so resembles fire; sight is akin to air and light, which give it a luminous passage, so there is a commixture of both which is sympathetic. Besides these, the animal has no other sense, and the universe no other substance, which is simple and not blended. A marvellous [Sidenote: C] apportionment of the five to the five!’
XIII. Here, I think, I paused, and after an interval I went on: ‘What has happened to us, Eustrophus? We have almost forgotten Homer,[66] as if he had not been the first to divide the universe into five parts, assigning the three in the middle to the three Gods, while he left common and unapportioned the two extremes, Olympus and earth, one the limit of what is below, the other of what is above. “We must cry back”, as Euripides says.[67] Now those who exalt the number four as the basis of the [Sidenote: D] genesis of every body, make out a fairly good case. For every solid body possesses length, breadth, and depth; but length presupposes a point as an unit; the line is called length without breadth, and is length; the movement of a line in breadth produces a plane surface, and that is three; add depth, and we get to a solid with four factors. Any one can see that the number four carries Nature up to this point, that is, to the formation of a complete body, which may be touched, weighed, or struck; there it has left her, wanting in what is greatest.
_In the sixth order let the strain be stayed!_ XVI. ‘Having said so much’, I went on, ‘to you all, I will sing one short stave to Nicander and “his cunning men”.[71] ‘On the sixth day of the new moon, when the Pythia is introduced into the Prytaneum by one person, the first of your three castings of lot is a single one, namely the five: the three [Sidenote: E] against the two.’ ‘It is so,’ said Nicander, ‘but the reason may not be disclosed to others.’ ‘Then,’ I answered with a smile, ‘until such time as we become priests, and the God allows us to know the truth, this much and no more shall be added to what we have to say about the Pempad.’ Such, so far as I remember, was the end of our account of the arithmetical or mathematical reasons for extolling the letter ‘E’. XVII. Ammonius, as one who himself gave Mathematics no mean place in Philosophy, was pleased at the course the conversation was taking, and said: ‘It is not worth our while to answer our young friends with too absolute accuracy on these points; I will only observe that any one of the numbers will provide not a few points for those who choose to sing its praises. [Sidenote: F] Why speak about the others? Apollo’s holy “Seven” will take up all one day before we have exhausted its powers. Are we then to show the Seven Wise Men at odds with common usage, and “the time which runs”[72], and to suppose that they ousted the “Seven” from its pre-eminence before the God, and consecrated the “Five” as perhaps more appropriate?
‘My own view is that the letter signifies neither number, nor [Sidenote: 392] order, nor conjunction, nor any other omitted part of speech; it is a complete and self-operating mode of addressing the God; the word once spoken brings the speaker into apprehension of his power. The God, as it were, addresses each of us, as he enters, with his “KNOW THYSELF”, which is at least as good as “Hail”. We answer the God back with “EI” (Thou Art), rendering to him the designation which is true and has no lie in it, and alone belongs to him, and to no other, that of BEING. XVIII. ‘For we have, really, no part in real being; all mortal nature is in a middle state between becoming and perishing, and presents but an appearance, a faint unstable image, of itself. If you strain the intellect, and wish to grasp this, it [Sidenote: B] is as with water; compress it too much and force it violently into one space as it tries to flow through, and you destroy the enveloping substance; even so when the reason tries to follow out too closely the clear truth about each particular thing in a world of phase and change, it is foiled, and rests either on the becoming of that thing or on its perishing; it cannot apprehend anything which abides or really is. “It is impossible to go into the same river twice”, said Heraclitus;[73] no more can you grasp mortal being twice, so as to hold it. So sharp and so swift is change; it scatters and brings together again, nay not again, no nor afterwards; even while it is being formed it fails, [Sidenote: C] it approaches, and it is gone. Hence becoming never ends in being, for the process never leaves off, or is stayed.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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