ON THE CESSATION OF THE ORACLES
I. There is a story, Terentius Priscus, that certain eagles |409| or swans, in flight from the extremities of earth to its middle |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. |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 |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 |C| than its predecessor. Of course, the shorter the period the less the consumption.
III. All present found this wonderful, and Demetrius observed that it was quite absurd to hunt out such great results from trifles; not, as Alcaeus puts it, to take the claw and paint the lion from it, but with a wick and a lamp to shift the whole order of the heavens, and make a clean sweep of Mathematics. ‘Nothing of that sort will disturb those gentlemen;’ said Cleombrotus, ‘they will never give in to the mathematicians on the point of accuracy; they would think it easier for them to be wrong in their time about movements and periods so |D| very remote, than for themselves to be wrong in measuring the oil, when they had their attention jealously fixed all the time on so strange a phenomenon. Besides, Demetrius, not to allow small things as indications of great ones would be to stop the way against many arts; many proofs will be put out of account, and many predictions. Yet you grammarians prove a fact of no less importance than that the heroes of old shaved with the razor, because you meet with the word “razor” in Homer,[[129]] and again, that they lent money at interest, because he has
Since of a debt there owing I have need,
Long-standing and not small,[[130]]
where the word for “to owe” imports increase! Again, when |E| he calls night “swift”,[[131]] you fasten lovingly on the word, and actually say that it implies that the shadow is conical, as thrown by a spherical body. Then Medicine tells us that an abundance of spiders prognosticates a summer of pestilence, and so does a crow’s-foot on the fig leaves in spring. Who is going to allow this, unless he grants that small things may be indications of great ones? Who will endure that the magnitude of the sun should be measured by “half-gallon or half-pint”, or that the acute angle made on the sundial here by the gnomon with the surface should be a measure of the elevation of the |F| visible poles above the horizon? Such, at any rate, were the accounts to be heard from the prophets down there, so that we must have some other answer to give if we wish to keep for the sun his constitutional order without deviation.’
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 |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 |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 |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 |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.’
|E| V. When Ammonius had done, ‘Rather’, said I, ‘tell us all about the oracle, Cleombrotus; for the old reputation of the divine power there was great, nowadays it seems to be somewhat dwindling.’ As Cleombrotus was silent, and cast his eyes downwards, Demetrius said: ‘There is no need to raise questions about what is happening there, when we see the growing enfeeblement of the oracles nearer home, I might rather say the cessation of all save one or two; the question is from what cause has their power thus passed away? Why mention others, when Boeotia, in old times full of voices with her oracles, has now been quite deserted, as though by sources of |F| water, and a great drought of prophecy has possessed the land? Nowhere, except round Lebadeia, has Boeotia anything to give to those who wish to draw water from prophetic art; for the rest, silence or utter desertion is the order. Yet in the times of the Persian wars it was in no less repute than that of |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 |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 |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 |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 |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”, |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!’
VII. We mingled our companies and sate down in and out |413| of each other, and Demetrius had propounded the subject, when up sprang the Cynic Didymus, by nickname Planetiades, struck the ground two or three times and shouted out: ‘Oho! Oho! a mighty difficult subject, which needs much inquiry, you have brought us! A wonder indeed that, with so much wickedness poured over the earth, not only “Modesty and Sense of Justice”, to quote Hesiod,[[134]] have deserted human life, but Divine Providence, too, has packed up its oracles and is gone from everywhere. I throw out the opposite problem for you to discuss. Why have they not ceased long ago? Why has not Hercules or some other God withdrawn the tripod, |B| filled every day with foul ungodly questions, propounded to the God by some as if he were a sophist whom they were to catch out, by others to ask about treasures or inheritances or marriages which law forbids. The result is that Pythagoras is proved mighty wrong when he said that men are always at their best when they approach the Gods.[[135]] Accordingly, things which it were decent to cloak and deny in the presence of an older man, diseases and affections of the soul, these they lay bare and open before the God!’ He wanted to go on, but Heracleon plucked at his cloak, and I, almost his greatest |C| intimate present, said: ‘Dear Planetiades, leave off provoking the God. He is easy to be entreated and gentle:
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 |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 |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 |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 |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 |B| wilderness invited the beast, the beast did not make the wilderness. But when, in the good pleasure of the God, Hellas revived in her cities, and the place had men in plenty, two prophetesses were employed, who were lowered in turn, and a third was appointed to relieve. Now there is only one, and we do not complain, for she is enough for those who need her. So we have no cause to blame the God; the prophetic establishment now subsisting suffices for all, and sends away all with what they want. Agamemnon used to employ seven heralds, yet |C| scarcely could control the numerous assembly, whereas in a few days you will see in the theatre here that a single voice reaches all present, and even so it is with prophecy; then it used more voices to reach more persons, now we should fairly wonder at the God if he allowed his prophecy to flow to waste like water, or like the rocks to find an echo for the voices of shepherds and their flocks.’
IX. When Ammonius had said this, and I remained silent, Cleombrotus addressed me: ‘Have you now granted’, he said, |D| ‘that the God makes and also destroys the oracles?’ ‘By no means’, I said. ‘I maintain that no prophetic shrine or oracle is destroyed by the God’s agency. It is as with many other things which he makes or provides; Nature brings in destruction and negation; or rather Matter, which is negation, unweaves and breaks up that which is brought into being by the more powerful cause. Even so I think there are times of obscuration and withdrawal of prophetic forces. The God gives many fair things to men, but gives nothing immortal, so that, in the words of Sophocles:[[138]]
The works of Gods may die, but not the Gods.
I say that their essence and their power must be sought in |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 |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 |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 |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 |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.
XI. ‘Hesiod thinks that in certain periods of time the daemons die. Speaking in the person of the Naïd he darkly indicates the time:
Full ages nine of men that live their prime
Lives the hoarse crow, four crows the stag outlives,
Three stags the ancient raven, ravens nine
The phoenix, but the phoenix, ten times told,
We fair-haired nymphs, daughters of Zeus most dread.[[140]]
|D| Those who take the word “age” wrong bring this to a very large total; it means a year, so that the sum comes out nine thousand seven hundred and twenty for the years of life of the daemons. Most mathematicians think it to be less; not even Pindar[[141]] has called it greater, when he tells us that the nymphs live
Their term appointed even as the trees,
and therefore names them Hamadryads.’ He was still |E| speaking when Demetrius broke in: ‘What was that, Cleombrotus? The year called an “age of man”? Human life, whether “at its prime” or, as some[[142]] read “in its old age” is not of that length. Those who read “at its prime”, follow Heraclitus[[143]] in taking “an age” to be thirty years, the time in which the parent sees his offspring a parent. Those who read “in its old age” instead of “at its prime” give a hundred and eight years to the “age”, taking the middle term of human life to be fifty-four, the number made up of unity, the two first surfaces, the two first squares and the two |F| first cubes,[[144]] the number taken by Plato[[145]] in his “Generation of the Soul”. Hesiod’s whole story seems to have been framed with a veiled reference to the “Conflagration”, when all things moist will probably disappear and with them the Nymphs,
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 |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, |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 |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 |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: |E|
In all his bloom, like to a falling star
His light was quenched, his spirit passed, to air.
But there is a being which is mixed, and really an imitation of the daemons, the moon. Men, seeing her circumference so much in accord with that order of beings, the manifest wanings and waxings and phases which she undergoes, have called her, some an earthlike star, others an Olympian earth, others “the portion of Hecate”, who belongs at once to heaven and earth. As, then, if one were to remove the lower air, withdrawing all |F| between earth and moon, an empty unconnected space would be left, and the unity and continuity of the whole dissolved, even so those who refuse to leave us the daemons break off all intercourse and mutual dealing between Gods and men, by removing that order in Nature which could “interpret”, in Plato’s[[151]] words, and “minister”, or else they compel us to mingle all things into one mass, forcing the God into human passions and business, and drawing him down to our needs, |417| as Thessalian witches are said to draw the moon. Only their imposture found credit with women, when Aglaonice the daughter of Hegetor, who knew her astronomy, chose an eclipse of the moon, and then pretended to do magic and draw her down. But as for us, let us never listen when we are told that there are prophecies with no divine agency, or rites and orgiastic services which the Gods do not heed; nor on the other hand suppose that the God is in and out and present there, taking part in the business. Let us leave all this to those |B| rightful ministers of the Gods, their ushers or clerks. Let us hold that there are daemons who watch the performance of rites, and inspire the mysteries, while others go about to avenge crimes of insolence and pride, and to others Hesiod[[152]] has given a venerable name,
of wealth
The saintly givers; such their kingly trust.
Observe that to do so is kingly. For there are, as among men, so among daemons, degrees of excellence, and in some subsists still some slight, faint, almost excremental remnant of passion and absence of reason; in others this is strong and hard to do away, its traces and symbols being in many places preserved and sporadically found in sacrifices and rites and tales of wonder. |C|
XIV. ‘Now as to the mystic rites, in which the most evident and transparent indication may be had of the truth about daemons, “peace be upon my lips”, as Herodotus[[153]] says. Feasts and sacrifices, days sinister and gloomy, so to call them, when are meals of raw flesh, and rendings and fastings and beaten breasts, and in many places unholy spells over the sacrifices:
Whoopings wild, and cries of frenzy, necks together tossed in air,[[154]]
all these, I would say, belong to no God, but are modes of appeasement and soothing to avert bad daemons. The human sacrifices which used to be performed were neither asked for nor accepted by Gods, we cannot believe it; yet kings and |D| captains would not have endured to give up their own children by way of initiating the rites, or to cut their throats, without a purpose; it was to soothe and satisfy the heavy displeasure of beings cruel and hard to be moved, or in some cases their frantic low passions, worthy of tyrants, when bodily approach was impossible or not desired. As Hercules besieged the town of Oechalia for the sake of a maiden, so strong and violent daemons, requiring in vain a human soul still enveloped in the body, bring pestilences to cities and sterility of land, and stir up wars and seditions, until they succeed in getting that on which their affection is set. Some have fared otherwise; |E| thus in a long stay in Crete I came to know of an absurd festival observed there: the headless form of a man is shown, and you are told that this was Molus, father of Meriones, who assaulted a maiden and was found without a head.
XV. ‘Now all the crimes of violence, all the wanderings of Gods, all tales of hiding, banishment, servitude, which are |F| said or sung in myth or hymn, are adventures which happened not to Gods but to daemons, and are recorded to show their excellence or power; Aeschylus[[155]] was wrong when he wrote
Apollo pure, the God exil’d from heav’n,
and so was the Admetus in Sophocles[[156]] wrong:
Mine was the cock who called him to the mill.
Widest of the truth of all are the theologians of Delphi, who, thinking that a battle once took place here between the God and a serpent for the possession of the oracle, allow poets and speech-writers contending in the theatres to tell these stories, |418| expressly belying their own most sacred rites.’ Philippus, the historian, who chanced to be present, here expressed surprise, and asked: ‘What rites such competitors belied?’ ‘Those relating to the oracle,’ was the reply, ‘whereby the city, admitting to initiation those from here to Tempe has now banished all Greeks dwelling beyond Thermopylae.[[157]] For the booth set up afresh every nine years near the court of the temple is not like any den or serpent’s haunt, but is an imitation of the dwelling of a tyrant or king. And the assault made upon it in silence through what they call “Dolon’s Way”, by |B| which the Aeolidae bring the boy, both of whose parents are living, with lighted torches, put fire to the booth, overturn the table, and then flee through the gates of the temple without turning back; and lastly the wanderings of the boy and his servile offices, and the purification rites at Tempe, all convey a suspicion of some great crime of shocking audacity. For it is quite absurd, my friend, that Apollo, after killing a beast, should flee to the extremities of Greece in quest of purification, and then should pour libations there and do all which men do to |C| appease and soften the wrath of daemons (fiends and avengers as they are called, because they pursue the memories of old unforgotten stains). The story which I once heard about that flight and removal is strangely absurd and surprising; but if there be any truth in it, let us never believe that what passed about the oracle in these old times was any trifling or ordinary matter. However, fearing to seem to do what Empedocles describes:
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 |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 |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 |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 |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 |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. |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, |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 |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 |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 |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 |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 |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.’
XX. When these views had been stated, Ammonius spoke: ‘I think’, he said, ‘the dictum of Theophrastus was right. For what prevents our accepting a view which is dignified and highly philosophical? To disallow it is to reject many things possible but incapable of positive proof; to allow it is not[[161]] necessarily to import many which are impossible and |D| baseless. However, the only argument which I have heard the Epicureans employ against the daemons as introduced by Empedocles, that, if they are faulty and liable to sins, they cannot be blessed beings and long-lived, because vice implies much blindness and a liability to destructive accidents, is a foolish one. For, on this showing, Epicurus will be a worse man than Gorgias the sophist, and Metrodorus than Alexis the writer of comedies. For Alexis lived twice as long as Metrodorus, and Gorgias more than a third as long again as Epicurus. It is in another sense that we call virtue strong and |E| vice weak, not with regard to the duration or dissolution of body. Look at the lower animals: many which are sluggish in limb and dull in spirit, loose or disorderly in habits, live longer terms than the sensible and ingenious. Hence the Epicureans do wrong in ascribing the immortality of God to the caution and resistance which he opposes to destructive forces. No, the immunity from suffering and death should be laid in the nature of the blessed being, and should imply no trouble on his part. Perhaps, however, it is inconsiderate to argue against persons not present. It is now for Cleombrotus to resume his |F| argument lately interrupted, about the migration and exile of the daemons.’
XXI. Then Cleombrotus: ‘Very well; I shall be surprised, however, if it does not appear to you much stranger than what we have already said. Yet its basis lies in Nature, and Plato struck the note, not stating his view in plain terms, but as an obscure theory, cautiously throwing out a hint in enigmatical form; for all which even he has been met with a great outcry |421| from the other philosophers. Now since we are here with a bowl in our midst of mingled myths and theories—and where should a man meet with kinder listeners before whom to try theories as foreign coins are tried?—I do not hesitate to give you the benefit of the story of a certain outlandish man. It was after many wanderings and after paying heavy search fees, that I found him at last with difficulty, and enjoyed his conversation and kindly welcome. It was near the Red Sea, where once every year he associated with men, spending the rest of his time, as he used to say, with nomad nymphs and deities. He was the handsomest man I ever saw, and kept free from sickness |B| of any sort, treating himself once a month with the medicinal and bitter fruit of a grass. He was practised in the use of many tongues; to me he would mostly use a Doric, which was very nearly a song. While he was speaking, there was a fragrance in all the place from the sweet breath passing out of his mouth. His general learning and information were with him all the time; but one day in every year he was inspired with prophecy, and would then go down to the sea and foretell the future; potentates and secretaries of kings would come to visit him and then go away. He used to refer prophecy to daemons; |C| he paid the greatest attention to Delphi, and there were none of the stories told of Dionysus, or of the rites performed here, of which he had not heard. But he would say that all those stories belonged to mighty sufferings of daemons, and among them this of the Python; only that his slayer was not exiled for nine years nor to Tempe, but was turned out into another universe, returning thence after nine revolutions of the Great Year, purified and “Phoebus” indeed, to resume possession of the oracle, which had been guarded in the meanwhile by Themis. That the stories of the Typhons and Titans were |D| similar; there had been battles of daemons against daemons, followed by banishment of the defeated or expiation of offenders by a God, for instance, Typhon is said to have sinned against Osiris, and Cronus against Uranus; deities whose honours have become dim or been altogether forgotten since they were removed to another universe. Thus I hear that the Solymi, who dwell near the Lycians, hold Cronus in special honour; but when he had slain their princes, Arsalus, Dryus, and Trosobius, he was banished and removed (whither they cannot say). So he passed out of account, but Arsalus and his fellows are called “stern Gods”, and the Lycians publicly |E| and in private make execrations in their names. Many stories like these may be had out of theological collections.’ ‘But if we call certain daemons by the recognized names of Gods,’ the stranger said, ‘it should be no wonder, for to whatever God each has been assigned, to share his power and honour, after him he likes to be called; even as among ourselves one is “of Zeus”, one “of Athena”, one “of Apollo,” one “of Dionysus”, one “of Hermes”; only some have by accident been rightly called, most have received names quite inappropriate, |F| misapplied names of Gods.’
XXII. Here Cleombrotus paused. All present found his story a marvellous one, but Heracleon asked how it bore upon Plato, and in what sense he had given the note. ‘You perfectly remember’, said Cleombrotus, ‘that he rejected, on the face of it, an infinity of worlds, but felt a difficulty as to |422| a limited number, and was ready to go up to five,[[162]] thus conceding probability to those who assume one world for each element, but himself keeping to one. This appears to be peculiar to Plato, the other philosophers[[163]] regarding with horror any plurality, because, if you do not limit matter to one world, when you pass outside unity you arrive at once at an unlimited and perplexing infinity.’ ‘But did your stranger’, I asked, ‘limit the number of worlds as Plato does, or did you neglect to find this out when you were with him?’ ‘Was it |B| likely,’ said Cleombrotus, ‘when he graciously put himself at my disposal? On these points, if on nothing else, I was, of course, an attentive and eager listener. What he said was that there is not an infinite number of worlds, nor yet one, nor yet five, but one hundred and eighty-three, arranged in a triangle with sixty worlds in each side. Of the three left over, each is placed at one angle. Each world keeps a light touch on its neighbours while they revolve as in a dance. The area inside the triangle is the common hearth of all, and is called the “Plain of Truth”, and within it the formulae, and ideas, and patterns, |C| of things which have been and things which are, lie undisturbed. Eternity is around them, and from it, like a stream drawn off from it, Time passes to the worlds. Once in ten thousand years human souls, if they have lived good lives, are allowed to see and inspect this sight; and the best of the initiations performed here are a dream of that review and that initiation. In our philosophical discourses we are working on the memory of the fair things which are seen there, or else our discourse is vain. This’, he said, ‘is the tale I heard from him; he spoke as a man does in the mystery of an initiation, and offered no demonstration or evidence.’
XXIII. I turned to Demetrius: ‘How’, I said, ‘do the |D| lines about the Suitors run, where they wondered to see Ulysses handling the bow?’ When he had remembered them, ‘Just’, I said, ‘what it comes into my head to say about your stranger:
Surely the rogue some pilfering expert is[[164]]
in doctrines and theories from everywhere. He had travelled widely in letters, and he was no Barbarian, but a Greek steeped deeply in Greek learning. The number of his worlds proves it against him, for it is not Egyptian nor yet Indian, but Dorian of Sicily, and comes from a man of Himera named Petron. |E| His own pamphlet I never read and I do not know whether it is extant; but Hippys of Rhegium, mentioned by Phanias of Eresus, records it as his view or theory that there are one hundred and eighty-three worlds all in touch with one another “by elements”, whatever that may mean; he gives no further explanation or proof of any sort.’ ‘What proof could there be’, broke in Demetrius, ‘in matters of that sort, where Plato, without a word to make it reasonable or likely, simply laid down his theory?’ ‘And yet’, said Heracleon, |F| ‘we hear you grammarians referring the view to Homer,[[165]] on the ground that he distributes the whole into five worlds, Heaven, Water, Air, Earth, Olympus. Two of these he leaves “common”, namely, Earth with all the lower portion of the whole, Olympus with all the upper. The three in the middle have been allotted to the three Gods. So also Plato,[[166]] apparently assigning to the different aspects of the whole the bodily forms |423| and figures which are the most beautiful and the first, spoke of five worlds, one each for earth, water, air, fire, but kept for last that which includes the others, the world of the Dodecahedron, an expansible and versatile body, and assigned to it the figure which suits the psychical periods and movements.’ Demetrius said: ‘Why not let sleeping Homers lie for the present? We have had enough of myths. But as to Plato, he is very far from calling the five different aspects of the world five worlds; and, where he is combating those who assume an infinite number, states his own opinion that this is the only one, and is the sole creation of God and beloved by him, brought into being |B| out of the corporeal whole, entire, complete, and self-sufficing. Hence it may appear strange that he should himself state the truth, yet supply to others the fundamental principle of a view which is improbable and irrational. To give up the defence of a single world was in a sort to grant the assumption of the infinity of the whole. To make the definite number of worlds five, neither more nor less, was quite against reason and removed from all probability. Unless’, he added, turning to me, ‘you have anything to say?’ ‘It seems to me’, I said, ‘to come to this, that you have now dropped our discussion about oracles, as concluded, and are taking up a fresh one of equal |C| importance.’ ‘We have not dropped the old one,’ said Demetrius, ‘only we do not decline the new when it fastens on us. For we do not mean to linger upon it, only to touch on it sufficiently to ask how far it is probable; then we will return to the original subject.’
XXIV. ‘In the first place then,’ I said, ‘the reasons which prevent the making of an infinite number of worlds do not prevent the making of more worlds than one. It is possible that both prophecy and a Providence may find place in several worlds, and that the intrusion of Chance may be very small, while most things, and those the greatest, observe order in |D| their origin and their transition, none of which suppositions is consistent with Infinity. In the next place, it is most consonant with reason that God should not have made the world a sole creation and left it to itself. For, being perfectly good, he is lacking in no virtue, least of all in the virtues of Justice and Friendliness, for these are most beautiful and becoming Gods. Now it is the nature of God to have nothing which is idle or without use. Therefore there are other Gods and worlds outside, towards which he exercises the social virtues; for Justice, or Gratitude, or Benevolence, cannot be exercised towards himself or any part of himself, it must be towards |E| others. So it is not likely that this world should toss about in the infinite void without friends, without neighbours, without communication; since we see Nature herself wrapping up individuals in classes and species, as though in jars or seed-vessels. There is nothing in the whole list of things which has not some common formula, nor can anything be called by a distinctive name which does not possess, generically or individually, certain qualities.[[167]] But the world is not spoken of as possessing generic qualities; it has qualities then as an individual, which distinguish it from others akin to and resembling itself. For |F| if there is not in the world such a thing as one man, one horse, one star, one God, one daemon, what is to prevent there being in Nature not one world, but several? If any one says that Nature has one earth and one sea, he fails to see the obvious fact of similar parts. For we divide earth into parts, all with one common name, and sea likewise. But a part of the world is no longer a world; it is composed of parts naturally different.
XXV. ‘Again, the chief fear which has led some to use |424| up the whole of matter on our world, that nothing may be left outside to disturb its coherence by resistance or thrusts, is a needless one. For suppose several worlds, to each of which is apportioned its own being, and matter definitely measured and limited, then nothing will be left outside without place or formation, like an extruded remnant, to put pressure from without. For the law which has control of the matter allotted to each world will not allow anything to be thrust out and wander to strike upon another world, or anything from another to strike its own, because Nature admits neither quantity without limit, nor movement without law and arrangement. |B| Or, even if any stream be drawn off and pass from worlds to other worlds, it must needs be homogeneous and kindly, mingling itself mildly with all, as the stars when they blend their rays. And the worlds themselves must have delight, as they gaze on one another in friendliness, and must also provide for the Gods in each, who are many and good, times of intercourse and common cheerfulness. There is nothing impossible in all this, no fairy tale and no paradox; unless, mark me, the views of Aristotle[[168]] are to bring it into suspicion on physical grounds. For if each body has its own place, as he says it has, earth must necessarily move towards the centre |C| from every side, and the water rest upon it, underlying the lighter elements because of its weight. If, then, there are many worlds, the result will be that earth is in many places above fire and air, and in many below them; and the same with air and water too, which will be here in natural places, there in unnatural. Which being impossible, as he thinks, there must neither be two worlds nor more than two, but this one only, composed of all matter, and established according to Nature and to the several qualities of matter.
XXVI. ‘However, all this is more plausible than true. Look at it in this way,’ I went on, ‘dear Demetrius: when |D| he says that some bodies move downward towards the middle, others upwards from the middle, others around the middle, with reference to what does he take the middle? Not to the void surely, for on his view there is none. But in the view of those who allow a void, it has no middle, just as it has no first or last, for these are limits, but the infinite has no limits. Or if a man were to force himself, by sheer thinking, to conceive any middle point in an infinite void, what is the resulting difference in the movements of the different bodies towards it? Bodies have no force in the void, nor yet have bodies any choice or impulse to make them aim at the middle and tend towards it from all sides. Besides, where there are bodies with |E| no soul, and a place which is incorporeal and without difference of parts, it is as impossible to conceive of any movement towards it arising out of themselves, as of any attraction upon them arising out of it. It remains that the middle is spoken of not in a local sense but in a corporeal. For granted that this world has unity of structure with many dissimilar elements, the different parts have necessarily different movements towards different objects. This is clear from the consideration |F| that different elements, where their substance is transferred, change their places at the same time; rarefaction distributes in a circular movement the matter raised upwards from the middle; consolidation and condensation press matter downward towards the middle and force it together.
XXVII. ‘On this subject more words are needless here. Whatever you assume to be the effective cause of these vicissitudes and changes, it will hold each world together within itself. Each world has earth and sea, each has a middle point |425| of its own, its own vicissitudes and changes of the bodies upon it, and a nature and a force which preserve everything and keep it in its place. As for what is outside, whether it be nothing or an infinite void, it presents no middle point, as we have said; while, if there be many worlds, each has a middle point of its own, and therefore a special movement of bodies to or from or about that middle (to follow the distinction made by these thinkers). To insist that, where there are many middle points, weights press from all sides to one, is as though we should insist that, whereas there are many men, the blood from all should flow together into a single vein, and the brains of all be enveloped in a single pia mater; and to make it a grievance |B| that all hard bodies in nature should not be together in one place, and all rarefied bodies in another. That would be preposterous, and equally so to complain that wholes should have their parts disposed in their natural order within each of them. It might be absurd to call that a world which has a moon low down[[169]] within it, like a man with his brain lodged in his ankles or his heart in his temples. But to make several independent worlds, and then to differentiate the parts in sets to follow their wholes, and so divide them, is not absurd. Earth, |C| sea, and heaven will be in their natural and proper arrangement within each. Above, below, around, middle have no relation to another world or to the outside, each world has them all in and for itself.
XXVIII. ‘As to the “stone” which some assume to be outside the world, it is not easy to form a conception of it, either as at rest or in motion. For how is it either to remain at rest, being weighty, or to move towards the world, like other heavy bodies, being no part of it nor reckoned in with its substance? Earth embraced in another world, and attached to it, need cause |D| no difficulty, when it does not part from the whole because of its weight, and shift hitherwards, since we see the natural strain by which each of the parts is held in its place. For if we look, not to the world but outside it, to get our conception of “below” and “above”, we shall find ourselves in the same difficulties as Epicurus, who made all his atoms move to places under our feet, as though either the void had feet, or infinite space permitted us to conceive of “above” or “below” within itself! Hence, again, we must feel surprise at Chrysippus, or indeed be quite at a loss as to what possessed him to say that the world has been settled “in the middle”, and that its substance, having occupied this middle place from all eternity, |E| works therewith for permanence and in fact for indestructibility. These are his words in the Fourth Book of his work on “Things Possible”, where he falsely dreams of a middle of the infinite, and assigns, still more preposterously, to that non-existent middle the cause of the stability of the world; and yet he had often said in other works, that substance is controlled and maintained by the movements towards and away from its own middle point.
XXIX. ‘Then as to the other arguments of the Stoics, who can find them alarming? They ask how we are to keep one Destiny and one Providence if there are many worlds, and whether we shall not have many “Diès” and many “Zenès”. |F| In the first place, if it is absurd that we should have Zeus in the plural number, surely their scheme will be far more absurd; for they make, in the revolutions of infinite worlds, sun, moon, Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, all multiplied to infinity. Then, what makes it necessary that there should be many “Diès”, if there are more worlds than one, rather than one principal God the emperor of the whole, possessing intelligence and reason, sovereign in each world, such a one as he who is called with us lord and father of all? Or what is to prevent all worlds |426| from being subject to the Destiny and Providence of Zeus, and that he should overlook and control each in turn, supplying to each the principles, the seeds, the formulae of all which is brought about? It cannot be that here we often have a single body composed of diverse bodies, as an assembly, an army, a choir, each of whose component bodies has life, thought, apprehension (and this is the view of Chrysippus), and yet that it should be impossible that in the Whole there should be ten worlds or fifty, or a hundred, all based on a common |B| formula, and ranged under a single principle. Nay, such a disposition is altogether worthy of Gods. We have not to make them sovereigns of a hive out of which they never pass; to guard, nor to enclose or imprison them in matter, which is what the Stoics do when they make the Gods atmospheric phases, or powers of the waters or the fire, infused therein, brought into being with their world and again burnt up with it, not leaving them unattached or free, as charioteers or steersmen might be; but rather, as statues are nailed or soldered to their bases, shut into the corporeal and clamped thereto, to share with it till there come destruction and general dissolution and change.
XXX. ‘Yet the other theory is loftier and more magnificent, |C| that the Gods are masterless and self-controlled, as the Tyndaridae when they help sailors in storm.
They visit them, the waves they bind
By soothing pow’r, and tame the wind,
not going on board themselves to share the peril, but appearing from above and delivering men; even so the Gods visit the worlds, now one and now another; drawn on by joy as they contemplate, and steering each in its natural course. |D| For the Zeus of Homer[[170]] had not very far to carry his eye from Troy to the parts of Thrace, and the wandering tribes about the Ister; but the real Zeus has beautiful passages and becoming to himself among worlds more than one, not looking out upon an infinite void, nor having his mind intent upon himself and nothing else (as was the view of some), but surveying many works of Gods and men, and movements and periodic orbits of stars. The divine nature is no foe to changes, but takes much delight in them, if we may judge from the bodies which |E| appear in the heavens, their changes and periods. Now Infinity is altogether without feeling or reason; it has no room to admit a God, all goes by chance and spontaneously. But the Providence which cares for worlds defined and limited in number appears to me to involve nothing less dignified or more laborious than that which has entered a single body, and attached itself thereto, to refashion or shape it anew in infinite particulars.’
XXXI. Having said so much, I paused. Philippus, after a short interval, went on: ‘Whether the truth about these |F| things be so, or not, I could not, for my own part, assert with confidence. But if we are to force the God outside one world, why make him the artificer of five worlds and no more; and what is the bearing of that number on the plurality of worlds? I would rather be informed on this point than as to the inner meaning of the consecration of the letter “E” in this place. That letter is neither triangle, nor square, nor “perfect”, nor cubic, nor has it any other apparent elegance for those who love and admire such things. The process out of the elements, at which the Master obscurely hinted, is hard to grasp |427| in every respect, and shows none of that probability which must have drawn him on to say that it is likely that out of five solid bodies having equal angles and equal faces and enclosed by figures of equal area, when set into matter, the same number of perfect worlds was at once produced.’
XXXII. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘yet Theodorus of Soli seems to treat the argument very fairly, in expounding the Mathematics of Plato. This is his method: the Pyramid, the Octahedron, the Eicosahedron and the Dodecahedron, the solid figures which Plato ranks first, are all beautiful because of the symmetry and equality of their formulae; nothing better than these or equal to them has been left over for Nature to compose |B| or to frame. They have not, however, all been constructed on a single plan, nor have all a similar origin. The Pyramid is the finest and smallest, the largest and the one of most parts is the Dodecahedron; of the remaining two the Eicosahedron is more than double the Octahedron in number of triangles.[[171]] It follows that it is impossible for all to take their origin at once from one and the same matter. For those which are fine and small, and more simple in their structures, must be the first to obey him who stirs and fashions the mass; they must sooner cohere and be completed than those whose parts are abundant, and the figures complex, and their construction more laborious, |C| as the Dodecahedron. It follows that the Pyramid is the only primal body, and that none of the others is so; they are left behind by Nature in the becoming. For this strange result there is, however, a remedy, the division and distribution of matter into five worlds. Here the Pyramid (for it first formed substance), there the Octahedron, in a third world the Eicosahedron. But from the figure which first took substance in each the rest will take their origin, all change arising by concretion or dissolution of parts, as Plato himself shows.[[172]] He goes thoroughly into nearly all the cases, but for us a brief survey will suffice. Since air is formed when fire is extinguished, and when rarefied |D| again yields fire out of itself, we must observe what happens to the seeds of either element, and the changes. The seeds of fire[[173]] are the Pyramid with its twenty-four primary triangles; the seeds of air are the Octahedron with its forty-eight. Therefore one element of air is formed by the commixture and coherence of two of fire; and one of air is exchanged into two of |E| fire, or by close pressure into itself passes away into the form of water. Thus, universally, that which is first formed readily allows the others to come into being by transmutation. It is not the case that one is first; different elements in different structures give the initial and prerogative movement into being, yet the common name is kept throughout.’
XXXIII. ‘Bravo, Theodorus!’ said Ammonius; ‘he has worked out his task with spirit. Yet I shall be surprised if he is not found to be using assumptions which are mutually destructive. He wants to have it that all five solids do not attain their structure together, the finest and easiest of |F| composition always breaking first into being. Then, as though following upon this, and not conflicting with it, he lays it down that it is not all matter which admits the finest and simplest element first, but that sometimes the heavy and complex objects are the first to emerge out of matter. But to pass over this, whereas it is assumed that there are five primal bodies, and therefore an equal number of worlds, he makes out probability for four only; he has discarded the Cube as if playing at |428| counters, since Nature does not adapt it to pass into the others or them into itself, because the triangles are not of the same kind. In the other cases the basis of formation is the semi-(equilateral) triangle; to the Cube the right-angled isosceles is peculiar, which is incapable of converging towards the others or joining with them to form one solid angle. If then, there are five bodies and five worlds, and in each the primary belongs to some one, then where the Cube has been the first to come into being, the rest will be nowhere, for it is unable to change into any of them. I pass by the fact that they make the element of the Dodecahedron also a different thing from that scalene |B| out of which Plato constructs the Pyramid, the Octahedron, and the Eicosahedron. And so’, added Ammonius, with a laugh, ‘you must either resolve these difficulties, or give us something of your own about the common problem.’
XXXIV. ‘I have nothing more probable to offer, at least at the moment;’ I said, ‘yet perhaps it is better to show cause for one’s own view than for that of others. I say then, going back to the beginning, that if we assume two natures, one sensible, liable to changes of becoming and perishing, and to various movements at different times, the other essential, intellectual, always behaving alike under the same conditions, it is strange, friend, that the intellectual should admit of distinction and division within itself, while with regard to that which is bodily, and subject to affections, there should be trouble and |C| dissatisfaction if we refuse to leave it one, self-coherent and self-convergent, but separate and part it. Surely it is rather the permanent and divine which should hold together and shrink, as far as may be, from all dissection and analysis. Yet the force of “the Other” has gripped them, and has worked greater divergences than those of place in things intellectual, I mean those made by Reason and Idea. Hence Plato,[[174]] opposing those who make out the Whole to be one, tells us of Being, and the |D| Same, and the Different, and, besides all these, of Movement and Rest. Given then these five, it would not be wonderful if these five corporeal elements have been made by Nature copies and images of them severally, none free from admixture or transparent, but each element so far as it could best participate in each principle. Thus the Cube is clearly a body congenial to Rest, because of the stability and firmness of its surfaces. No one can fail to detect the fire-like, active character of the Pyramid in the fineness of its sides and the sharpness of its angles. The nature of the Dodecahedron, which embraces |E| the other figures, might well be taken for an image of Being in relation to all that is corporeal. Of the remaining two, the Eicosahedron is found most to partake of the idea of the Different, the Octahedron of that of the Same. Therefore the latter represented air, which holds all being in one constant form, the former water, which when mixed assumes new qualities the most numerous. If then Nature requires throughout equality before the law, it is probable that worlds have been created neither more nor less in number than the patterns, in order that each pattern in each world may hold that primacy and power which it has had in the composition of the elementary bodies.
|F| XXXV. ‘So much for that! May it reassure any one who is surprised at our dividing the natural processes of becoming and mutation into so many classes! Now comes another point, which I will ask you all to consider with me. Of the ultimate first principles, by which I mean unity and the undelimited two, the latter, as the element of all shapelessness and disorder, has been called Infinity; but unity by its nature limits and arrests what is void and irrational and undetermined in |429| Infinity, and imparts shape, and fits it to receive and endure that definition of things apprehended by the senses which is implied in counting. These principles appear first in connexion with number; but I would rather say, universally, that plurality is not number until unity supervenes, as form upon matter, and cuts off from undetermined Infinity, more on this side, less on that. For plurality in each case only becomes number when it is determined by unity. Again, if unity be struck off, the undetermined two throws all into a confusion without balance or limit or measure. Now since form is not a withdrawal |B| of underlying matter but is shape and order thereof, both principles must necessarily be found in number, and hence arises the first and greatest difference or dissimilarity. The undetermined principle is the constructive cause of the even, the better one of the odd. Two is the first of the even numbers, three of the odd; out of them comes five, in its composition common to both lists, in its effect, odd. For when the sensible and corporeal was to be divided into several parts, in virtue of the inherent cogency of the Other, their number must not be the first even nor yet the first odd, but the third, that formed out of these, so that it may take its origin from both |C| principles, that which constructs the even and that which constructs the odd; for neither could possibly be separated from the other; each possesses the nature and power of a principle. Both principles then being paired, the better one checked the indeterminate when it was dividing up the corporeal; and prevailed; when matter was being distributed between the two it set unity in the middle, and did not allow an equal division of the whole. So a plurality of worlds has been brought into being by the “Other” quality in the undetermined, and by difference; but that plurality is odd, made so by the operation of “the Same” and “the Determinate”, and odd in such a sense that Nature was not allowed to advance beyond what was best. For if the unity had been without admixture |D| and pure, matter would have been exempt from any breaking up whatever; but as it has been mingled with the discriminative power of the two, separation and division were so far accepted; but there it stopped, the even overcome by the odd.
XXXVI. ‘Hence again the ancients were accustomed to use the words “to take fives” for to count. I think, too, that the word for “all” (panta) has been logically formed as though from “five” (pente) because the number five is composed of the first numbers. For the others when multiplied by other numbers come out to a product different from themselves; but five if taken an even number of times gives a perfect ten, if an odd, it reproduces itself. I pass over the facts |E| that five is composed of the first two squares, one and four, and that its own square is equal to the sum of the two before it, forming with them the most beautiful of right-angled triangles, and that it is the first number to give sesquiplicate ratio. For perhaps they are not germane to the subject before us. This, however, is more germane, that the number five has a divisory virtue, and Nature divides most things by five. In |F| ourselves are five senses, and there are five parts of the soul, those of growth, sense, appetite, passion, reason. We have five fingers on each hand; seed is most fertile when it parts into five (no instance has been recorded of a woman bearing more than five at a birth); Rhea is said in Egyptian mythology to have given birth to five Gods,[[175]] a veiled reference to the production of the five worlds out of one matter. Turning to the universe, the surface of earth is divided into five zones, and the Heavens are divided by five circles, two Arctic, two |430| Tropic, one in the middle, the Equinoctial. Five are the orbits of the planets, if we take those of the sun and Venus and Mercury as one. Lastly, the universe has been composed in the Enharmonic Scale, just as our melody is made up of the arrangement of five Tetrachords, lowest, middle, conjunct, disjunct, highest. And the intervals are five: diesis, semitone, tone, tone and a half, double tone. Thus it seems that Nature loves to make all things on the principle of five, rather than, as Aristotle[[176]] used to say, of the Sphere.
XXXVII. ‘What is the real reason, some one will ask, why Plato[[177]] referred the number of five for his worlds to the five solid figures, saying that “God used the fifth formation on the universe to mark it out”? In the sequel, when he raises the |B| problem of plurality of worlds, whether we should properly speak of one or of five as naturally existing, he shows clearly that the suggestion came from the solids. If, then, we are to adjust what is actually probable to his conception, let us consider that difference in movement must in each case follow difference in the solids and their shapes, as Plato[[178]] himself teaches, when he |C| shows that what is rarefied or condensed suffers a change of place simultaneously with alteration of substance. If from air fire be formed, the Octahedron being resolved and broken up into Pyramids, or again if air from fire, when compressed and thrust into an Octahedron, it is impossible that either should remain where it was before; they fly off rapidly to another place, forcing a way out and battling with whatever resists and presses upon them. The result is shown still more clearly by an illustration from grain “tossed and winnowed by the fans and implements used for cleaning corn”; Plato[[179]] says that |D| in like manner the elements toss matter about and are tossed by it; like approaches like, different objects take different places, before the whole comes out finally marshalled. Thus then, matter being what any universe must be from which God is absent, the first five properties, each with its own tendency, at once began to move apart, not being entirely or purely separated, because, when all things were mixed up together, the vanquished particles always followed their conquerors, in despite of Nature. Hence they produced in the kinds of bodies, as they were borne in different directions, parts and divisions as many as themselves: one not of pure fire but |E| resembling fire, one not of unmixed air but resembling air, one not of earth simple and absolute but resembling earth. Most general was the association of air with water, because they passed out saturated with the many other classes. For God did not separate nor disperse being; but taking it up dispersed by its own operation and borne about in so many streams of disorder, he ordered and disposed it in symmetry and proportion. |F| Then he set reason in each to be a governor and guardian, and created as many worlds as there were kinds of primal bodies. Let so much then be inscribed to Plato for Ammonius’ sake. For myself, I could never speak with confidence as to the number of worlds and affirm that there are so many: but I think the view that there are more than one, yet not an indefinite but a limited number, as reasonable as either of the other views, when I see how scattered and divided matter naturally is, that it does not abide in one place, nor yet |431| is suffered by reason to pass into Infinity. Here, if anywhere, let us remember the Academy rule, and clear ourselves of excessive credulity, and treading on this slippery ground when reasoning about Infinity, only make sure that we keep our footing.’
XXXVIII. When I had finished, ‘Lamprias gives us sound advice’, said Demetrius. ‘The Gods by many forms—not “of sophistries”, as it is in Euripides,[[180]] but of things—deceive us, when we dare to pronounce opinions about these |B| great matters as if we knew. But “we must cry back”, to quote the same authority,[[181]] to the assumption from which our argument started. The statement that the oracles, when the daemons move off and desert them, lie idle and speechless, like musical instruments with none to play on them, raises another and a greater question as to the cause and power whereby they make the prophets and prophetesses subject to fits of inspiration and fancy. For it is impossible to allege the desertion as a cause of the silence unless we are first satisfied in what sense they preside and by their presence make the oracle active and vocal.’ ‘What?’ rejoined Ammonius, ‘do you suppose that the daemons are anything but souls which move around, as Hesiod[[182]] says “garmented in mist”? In my view, as man differs from man when he plays tragedy or |C| plays comedy, so soul differs from soul after it has fashioned for itself a body convenient to its present life. It is not then irrational or even wonderful that souls meeting souls should create within them fancies of that which is to be, just as we convey to one another, not only through voice, but often by written signs, by a touch, a glance, many intimations of things past, and forewarnings of things future. Or perhaps you have something different to tell us, Lamprias? For a rumour reached us lately that you had held a long discussion on these subjects with strangers at Lebadeia; but our informant |D| did not clearly remember any of it.’ ‘Do not be surprised at that,’ I said, ‘for there were many interruptions and much was going on, because it was a day of consultation and sacrifice, which made our conversation fragmentary and intermittent.’ ‘But now’, said Ammonius, ‘you have listeners with full leisure, and eager to inquire and to be told. There is no question of rivalry or faction, and you see what a frank full hearing has been accorded to every view.’
XXXIX. The others joined in encouraging me, and after a few minutes of silence I went on: ‘I must begin by saying |E| that it so happens that you, Ammonius, have given me a sort of opening for bringing forward now what I then said. For if the souls which have been separated from the body or have never had commerce with one at all, are daemons as you say, and God-like Hesiod[[183]] also:
Holy visitants of Earth and guardians sure of mortal men,
on what principle do we deprive souls while in their bodies of that faculty whereby the daemons know and declare beforehand things to be? It is not likely that any power or new part accrues to souls when they leave the body, which they did not possess before. Rather, they always have it, but in a weak degree while they are intermingled with the body; it is sometimes quite invisible and veiled, sometimes weak and dim, and, as with those who see through a mist or who try to move in a marshy place, inoperative and dull, demanding much attention to the virtue that is in them, and much pains to raise and remove and purify the obstructing veil. The sun when he chases the clouds away does not then become bright; he is bright always, |432| but to us through the mist his light appears dim and struggling. Even so the soul does not assume the prophetic power when it passes out of the body as out of a cloud; it has it even now, but is blinded by its close admixture with the mortal state. We should not be surprised or incredulous, if only because we see the great energy which Memory, as we call the faculty in the soul which answers to prophecy, exhibits, in preserving and protecting things that are past, or rather things that now are,[[184]] since of things past none is or has substance; all things |B| come into being and at the same time perish, all actions, words, and feelings, as time like a river bears each along. But this faculty of the soul, I know not how, gets a grasp of them, and invests with appearance and being that which is not present. The oracle given to the Thessalians about Arne[[185]] bade them attend to
That which a deaf man hears, a blind man sees.
But Memory is the hearing of things to which the ear is deaf, the seeing of things to which the eye is blind. Wherefore, as I said, it is no marvel that, as it grasps things which no longer are, so it should anticipate things which have not yet come into being. For these touch it more nearly, and with these it has sympathy; it confronts the future and attaches itself |C| thereto, whereas it is quit of things past and finished, saving only to remember them.
XL. ‘Having then this inborn power yet dimmed and hardly appearing, souls nevertheless break out and are uplifted, in dreams some of them or when nearing initiation, as the body becomes pure, and takes on a temperature, so to speak, which is suitable, or whether it be that the rational and intellectual part is relaxed and discharged from the present things, and so with the irrational and imaginative they reach towards futurity. That line of Euripides[[186]] is not true:
The best of prophets he who guesses well.
No, the prophet is the sensible man, he who follows the rational part of his soul in the road where it leads him with probability. Divination, like a scroll with no writing or method, in itself |D| indeterminate, but capable of receiving fancies and presentiments by the feelings, gets touch with the future, yet not by inference, when it passes most completely outside the present. It passes out through such a temperament and disposition of the body as produce a change called by us inspiration. Often the body attains this disposition of itself; but the earth sends up many streams of many potencies, some which bring trances, diseases, or death, others beneficial, mild, and serviceable, as is proved on those who chance upon them. Of all the currents the stream, or breath, of prophecy is most divine and holy, |E| whether it be drawn from the air direct, or come mingled with the moisture of a spring; for when absorbed into the body it produces in souls a temperament unfamiliar and strange, the special quality of which it is hard to state in clear words, though reason suggests many conjectures. Probably, by heat and dispersion, it opens certain passages to admit imaginings of the future, just as the fumes of wine bring many other stirrings, and unveil words and thoughts which were stored away and unheeded, |F|
For in the wine-god’s votary’s mood,
As in the madman’s, lies much prophecy,
says Euripides;[[187]] when the soul, warmed and set on fire, rejects the caution which human prudence brings, to avert inspiration, as it so often does, and to quench it.
XLI. ‘After all, it might be not unreasonably asserted that a dryness introduced with the heat subtilizes the current and makes it ethereal and pure. “Best a dry soul”, says Heraclitus;[[188]] moisture not only dulls sight and hearing, but if it |433| touch a mirror or raises[[189]] a mist upon it, takes away brightness and lustre. As the opposite to this, it is not impossible that, by a sort of chilling and condensation of the breath of air, the organ of prognostication is made tense and keen, like steel out of the bath. Or again, as tin when melted in with copper, itself rarefied and full of apertures, welds it together and condenses it, and yet in the result makes it brighter to the eye and purer, so there is nothing to prevent the prophetic exhalation, |B| wherein is something congenial and akin to souls, from filling up their rarefied places, and inserting itself, and pressing all together. For certain things are congenial and proper to certain other things; thus an infusion of the bean into the dyer’s bath seems to assist its efficacy for purple, of nitre for saffron.
Scarlet is mingled for the pearly weft,
says Empedocles. But about Cydnus, and the sacred sword of Apollo at Tarsus, we used to hear the story from you, dear Demetrius, how Cydnus cleans that steel best, and no other water suits the sword. And again, at Olympia, water from |C| Alpheus is poured on the ashes to make them adhere to the altar in a mass, and the water of no other river which has been found has the power of cementing the ash.
XLII. ‘It is not to be wondered at, then, that of the many streams which the earth sends up, these alone affect souls with inspiration and give them imagination of the future. Certainly legend agrees with reason as to this. In this very place it is related that the prophetic virtue was first made manifest by the accidental falling into it of a shepherd, who thereupon uttered sounds as of one inspired. These passed at first unheeded by those present; but afterwards, when the things which the man foretold had happened, there was astonishment. The most learned of the Delphians even mention |D| the man’s name, which was Coretas. I am, however, myself strongly of opinion that a soul acquires a temperature congruous with the prophetic current, such as the eye has with light sympathetic to it. Though the eye possesses the power of seeing, this cannot act without light; and the prophetic organ of the soul needs, as the eye does, a congenial medium to help in kindling its flame, or whetting its edge. Hence most of the older generations used to think that Apollo and the sun were one and the same God, while those who knew and honoured that beautiful and wise proportion, “as body to soul, so sight |E| to intellect, so light to truth”, would add the conjecture “so the power of the sun to the nature of Apollo”, declaring the sun to be his offspring and scion, the ever becoming of the ever subsisting. For the sun kindles and enhances and helps to excite the visual power of the sense, as the God that of prophecy in the soul.
XLIII. ‘It was natural, however, that those who take the view that they are one and the same God should have dedicated this oracle to Apollo and Earth in common, thinking that the sun produces in the earth the disposition and temperament from which come the prophetic exhalations out of her. We |F| then, like Hesiod,[[190]] who understood the matter better than some philosophers, when he called her
Unshaken base of all,
consider her to be eternal and imperishable. But of the powers which are about her it is to be expected that some should fail here, and others come into being there, and that there should be shiftings from place to place, and cross-currents, and that such cycles should often revolve within her if we take time as a whole; and the phenomena point to such an inference. For in the case of lakes and rivers, and still more frequently in that of hot springs, there have been failure and entire disappearance in some places, in others a retreat so to call it, and an absorption; |434| then they reappear at intervals of time in the same places, or bubble up in their neighbourhood. Again, we hear of mines where the ore has been exhausted and then renewed, as in the silver mines of Attica, and the copper lodes of Euboea, out of which the chilled sword-blades used to be manufactured, as Aeschylus[[191]] has said
Th’ Euboean blade, self-tempered, in his hand.
Then there is the rock at Carystus where it is only lately that the yield of delicate thread-like filaments of mineral has ceased. I think some of you will remember having seen towels, and nets, and caps made of these, which were non-inflammable. |B| Any which were soiled by use were placed in a flame out of which they came bright and clear. Now there has been an entire disappearance of these, and scarcely a few fibres or thin filaments run in streaks about the mines.
XLIV. ‘Yet Aristotle[[192]] holds that exhalation is the operative cause within the earth of all these things, that is, of the natural effects which necessarily fail, shift place, and break out concomitantly. The same view must be taken of prophetic currents; the power which they have is not perennial nor ageless, it is liable to changes. Probably they are extinguished by excessive storms of rain, and dispersed by thunderbolts |C| falling upon them; above all, when the earth is shaken, and subsidence or conglomeration takes place in her depths, the exhalations are shifted or wholly lost to view; thus the effects of the great earthquake which actually overturned the town are said to be permanent here. In Orchomenus they say that there was a pestilence in which many men perished, and that the oracle of Teiresias then wholly failed, and remains to this day idle and voiceless. If the like happened also to those in Cilicia, as we hear it did, there is no one, Demetrius, who could tell us about it more clearly than you.’
XLV. Demetrius said: ‘I cannot say how things are now, for it is a long time since I left home, as you know; the |D| oracle of Mopsus was in full force when I was there, and also that of Amphilochus. I can tell you of a very remarkable thing which happened to that of Mopsus, in my presence. The propraetor of Cilicia was himself still of two minds about religious questions; from the weakness of his scepticism, I imagine, for his general character was violent and bad; but he had about him certain Epicureans, professed mockers at all such things on the strength of their fine physiology. He sent in a freedman, equipping him like a spy going into an enemy’s land, with sealed tablets inside which was written the question, but no one knew what it was. The man spent a night in the |E| sanctuary, as the custom was, and went to sleep. The following day he reported a dream, which was this. He thought that a handsome man stood over him, and said the one word “Black”, nothing more, and went straight away. This appeared to us strange, and caused much perplexity. However, that propraetor was struck with consternation, and worshipped; then he opened the tablets and showed us this question written inside: “Shall I sacrifice a white bull or a black?” Even the Epicureans |F| were confounded at this, and he himself completed his sacrifice, and ever afterwards held Mopsus in reverence.’
XLVI. After saying this, Demetrius was silent. As I wished to bring the discussion to a head, I glanced again at Philippus and Ammonius, who were sitting together. They appeared to me to wish to exchange some remarks, and again paused. Then Ammonius spoke: ‘Philippus has also something to say on our past discussion; his own view, as that of most people, is that Apollo is not a different God from the sun, but the same. |435| My own difficulty is a greater one, and turns on greater matters. Just now we managed to let the argument take its own way with due solemnity, to transfer prophetic art simply from Gods to daemons. But now it seems to me that we are thrusting the latter out in their turn, chasing them hence from oracle and tripod, and resolving the origin—I would rather say the existence and power—of prophecy into winds, and vapours, and exhalations. What we have heard about temperatures, and |B| heatings and sharpenings, withdraws no doubt the credit from the Gods, but thereby suggests the inference as to cause which the Cyclops in Euripides[[193]] draws:
The earth by force, whether it will or no,
Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and hinds.
Only he says that he does not sacrifice to Gods,
but to myself,
And this great belly first of deities,
whereas we sacrifice and pray to get our oracles; and why do we do it, if souls carry within themselves a power of prophecy, which power is stirred up by temperature of some sort in air or breeze? And then the condition of the priestesses, what does |C| that mean, and the refusal to respond unless the whole victim from the hoof-joint up be set quivering when it is sprinkled? For it is not enough, as in other sacrifices, for it to shake the head, the shivering must be in all the parts, and with a tremulous sound; otherwise they tell you that the oracle is not giving responses, and do not bring in the Pythia. Now, if they ascribe the cause mainly to a God or daemon, it is reasonable to do and think thus, but on your view it is not reasonable. For the exhalation, if it be there, will produce the transport whether the sacrifice quiver or not, and will affect the soul, |D| not only of the Pythia, but equally of any chance comer who has physical contact with it. Thus it is mere folly to employ one woman only for the oracles, and to take trouble to keep her chaste and holy all her life. For that Coretas who fell in, as the Delphians tell you, and was the first to make evident the virtue of the place, was in no respect different, as I think, from the other goatherds and shepherds, always supposing that this is not a story and an idle fiction, which I think it is. Then, when I reckon up the great benefits of which this oracle has been the cause to the Greeks, in wars, in the founding of cities, in |E| times of pestilence and of failure of crops, I think it dreadful to ascribe its discovery and origin, not to God and Providence, but to Chance and automatic causes. It is this point’, he added, ‘that I want Lamprias to argue; will you not wait?’ ‘Indeed I will,’ said Philippus, ‘and so will the others, the discussion has stirred us all.’
XLVII. I turned to him. ‘Stirred us, Philippus? It has confounded me, to think that before so large and so grave a company I should seem so to forget my years as with a show of plausible rhetoric to upset and disturb any view about religion which is established in truth and holiness. I will |F| defend myself by producing Plato, as witness and advocate in one. Plato[[194]] found fault with old Anaxagoras because he attached himself too much to physical causes, and because, in his constant pursuit of the working of necessary law in all which affects bodies, he dismissed the better causes or principles, the Final and the Efficient. He himself, first of the philosophers or more than any of them, went into both sets, attributing to God the origin of all things which are according to reason, but |436| refusing to deprive matter of the causes necessary for their production; he recognized that in some such way the whole sensible universe is organized, yet is not pure nor free from admixture, but has its origin in matter involved with reason. Now look at this first in the case of the artists. Take, for instance, the famous base or stand, called by Herodotus[[195]] “cup-stand”, of the bowl here; it had its physical causes, iron, steel, fire to soften and water to temper it, without all which the object could not possibly be produced; but the more potent principle |B| which stirred the others and was working through them, was furnished to it by Art and Reason. Now the name of the maker or artificer has been inscribed on these several figures or works of imitation:
Here Polygnotus, son of Aglaophon,
The Thasian, painted towering Ilion’s sack.
You may see it for yourself. But without pigments crushed and compounded it would be impossible to present such a composition to the eye. Does then the man who seeks to grasp the physical principle, investigating and laying down the effects and |C| the changes of a mixture of Sinopic red earth with yellow, or Melian gray with black, rob the painter of his glory? Or he who follows out the processes of tempering or softening steel, how it is weakened by fire and submits itself to be drawn and hammered, then, plunged into fresh water and compressed and densified by the cold, because of the softness and rarefication induced by the fire, acquires temper and consistence—“the iron’s might” Homer[[196]] calls it—does he any the less preserve for the artist his part in the causation? I think not! There |D| are those who criticize the properties of medical appliances; they do not overthrow the art of Medicine. As, for the matter of that, Plato[[197]] in proving that we see by means of the flash of our eyes mingling with that of the sun, and hear by the pulsations of the air, did not rule out the fact that we have received our sight and our hearing in accordance with Reason and Providence.
XLVIII. ‘The whole matter, as I maintain, stands thus. All becoming has two causes, of which the most ancient theologians and poets chose to turn their attention to the stronger only, pronouncing over all things the universal refrain:
Zeus first, Zeus middle, all things are of Zeus,[[198]]
while they never approached the necessary or physical causes. Their successors, called physicists, did the very reverse; they |E| strayed away from that beautiful and divine principle, and refer everything to bodies, and pulsations, and changes, and temperaments. Hence the systems of both are deficient; they have ignored or neglected, the latter the person through whom and the agent by whom, the former the things from which and the means through which. He who first distinctly grasped both, and attached by necessary law the subject affected to the rational Maker and Mover, relieves us as well as himself from any charge of contempt or detraction. We do not make |F| prophecy a godless or irrational thing, when we assign to it for its matter the soul of man, and for its instrument, or harp-quill, the inspiring current and the exhalation. For, in the first place, the earth which breeds the exhalations, and the sun who gives to earth all power of temperature or of change, are reckoned Gods in the traditions of our fathers. Further, in leaving daemons to preside over and guard this temperature, as though it were a melody, to relax the strings in due course |437| or to tighten, to clear away that excess of ecstasy and agitation which it causes in the worshippers, and to leave excitement a painless and harmless compound, we shall not be thought to do what is irrational or impossible.
XLIX. ‘Nor can we allow that in offering the previous sacrifice, or crowning the victim, or pouring on it lustral draughts, we do anything repugnant to this view. For when the priests and holy men sacrifice the victim, and sprinkle it, and watch its movement and its trembling, they do not profess to get from it an intimation of anything but the one fact that the God is giving answers. For the thing offered in sacrifice must be pure both in body and in soul, and free from any injury or taint. As to body, it is not very difficult to make |B| out visible proof; the test of soul is to offer corn to the bulls, pease to the he-goats; an animal which refuses is reckoned out of health. For the she-goat it is cold water; a soul in a normal state cannot be apathetic and motionless under the sprinkling. For my own part, even if it be certain that trembling is a sign that the God is ready to give responses, the contrary that he |C| is not, I see no disastrous consequence. As I said before, every natural force produces its result better or worse according to season; if the right season is escaping us, it is to be expected that the God should signify the fact.
L. ‘I think, further, that the exhalation is not always the same, it has times of relaxation and of intensity. In proof, I can bring forward witnesses, many of them strangers, and all the members of the temple staff. For the room in which they place consultants of the God, is, at intervals, which are not frequent or fixed, but come as it may happen, filled with fragrance and a sweet gale, such as the most costly spices might emit, which are thrown up, as out of a well, from the sanctuary. |D| We may suppose that they burst out by the action of heat or of some other force within. Or, if this does not seem to you convincing, you will at least grant that the Pythia herself appears to show at different times different states and moods of that part of the soul which is in contact with the current, and does not present throughout one temperament, like a melody which never changes. Many conscious troubles and excitements, more which are unnoticed, seize her body and stream on into the soul; and when she is charged with these, it is better for her not to go in, not to present herself to the God when she is not perfectly pure, like an instrument well strung and tuneful, but is passionate and disordered. Wine does not always affect |E| the hard drinker in the same way, nor the flute one susceptible to its music; the same men are stirred to tipsy revelling, now less now more, according to difference of temperament. The imaginative part of the soul seems, more than any other, to be controlled by variations in the body, and to change with it. This is clearly shown by dreams; sometimes we find ourselves among many visions of every sort in our sleep, at others again there is a perfect calm and relief from such illusions. We know |F| ourselves Cleon here of Daulia, who says that in the many years which he has lived he has never once seen a dream-vision. In an older generation the same is recorded of Thrasymedes of Heraea. The cause is bodily temperament, just as, on the other side, there is that of melancholic persons, all dreams and phantoms; although these are supposed to have the gift of dreaming right, for their imagination turns them this way or that, |438| just as those who shoot often, often hit.
LI. ‘When then the imaginative and prophetic faculty of the soul is attempered to the current as to a drug, the inspiration must be brought about in the persons who are to prophesy, when not, not; otherwise the result will be a distortion by no means free from trouble and disturbance, as we know was the case with the Pythia who lately died. A deputation came from abroad to consult the God; the victim remained motionless and impassive under the first sprinkling, then the priests in |B| excess of zeal persisted, and at last it did give in when drenched with their shower-bath. What happened to the Pythia? Unwillingly and with no alacrity, they say, she went down into the vault. In her very first answers she made it clear by the hoarseness of her voice that she could not bear up; she was like a ship driven by the wind, filled with a dumb bad spirit. At last she became all agitation; with a terrible cry she made towards the door of exit, and dashed against it, so that not only the members of the deputation fled, but also the prophet Nicander and the holy persons present. However, after a short |C| time, they went in and recovered her. She was then in her senses, and lived on for a few days. For these reasons, they keep the person of the Pythia free from intercourse, and from any sort of communication or contact with strangers; and they take the signs before proceeding to the oracle, thinking that it is quite clear to the God when she has the temperament and condition which will allow her to undergo the inspiration with impunity. For the force of the exhaled air does not affect all persons, nor the same persons always in the same way; it only provides fuel, a foundation, as has been explained, for |D| those who are fit to be subjected to the change. It is essentially divine and daemonic, not however exempt from failure, or destruction, or age, nor is it capable of enduring through that infinite space of time in which all things between moon and earth are exhausted, according to our theory. Some go on to say that the things also which are above the moon do not endure, but fail in presence of the eternal infinite, and suffer abrupt changes and new births.
LII. ‘These things’, I continued, ‘I commend to your repeated consideration, and my own, as offering many openings for objection and many suggestions of an opposite view, which the present opportunity does not allow us to follow out in their |E| entirety. Let them stand over then, and also the problem raised by Philippus about the sun and Apollo.’