As to those oracles themselves, with the registries of which antiquity is so replete, I will here articulate my individual belief. No one who knows me can suppose that I am superstitious; and, for those who know me not, the sentiments herein delivered will scarcely foster the imputation. Yet am I as thoroughly persuaded as I am of my personal consciousness, that some prescience they did possess, conducted partly by human fraud, and partly by spiritual co-operation.
There is no question but that there must have been some supernatural agency in the business; for human skill and human sagacity could never penetrate the deep intricacies of doubt, and the important pregnancies of time which they have foreshown.[533]
Porphyry, in his book De Dæmonibus, and Iamblichus in his De Mysteriis, expressly mention that demons were in every case the authors of oracles. Without going all this length, we may readily allow that they had perhaps a great share in them; neither will the ambiguity in which their answers were sometimes couched detract anything from this admission, because the spirits themselves, when ignorant of any contingency, would, of course, try to screen their defect by the vagueness of conjectures, in order that if the issue did not correspond with their advice, it may be supposed owing to misinterpretation. The instance of Crœsus and the Delphian oracle was an interesting event. He sent to all the oracles on the same day this question for solution, viz. “What is Crœsus, the son of Alyattes, King of Lydia, now doing?” That of Delphi answered thus: “I know the number of the sand of Libya, the measure of the ocean—the secrets of the silent and dumb lie open to me—I smell the odour of a lamb and tortoise boiling together in a brazen cauldron; brass is under and brass above the flesh.”
Having heard this reply, Crœsus adored the god of Delphi, and owned the oracle had spoken truth; for he was on that day employed in boiling together a lamb and a tortoise in a cauldron of brass, which had a cover of the same metal. He next sent, enjoining his ambassadors to inquire whether he should undertake a war against the Persians? The oracle returned answer, “If Crœsus passes the Halys, he will put an end to a vast empire.”
Not failing to interpret this as favourable to his project, he again sent to inquire, “If he should long enjoy the kingdom?” The answer was, “That he should till a mule reigned over the Medes.” Deeming this impossible, he concluded that he and his posterity should hold the kingdom for ever. But the oracle afterwards declared that by “a mule” was meant Cyrus, whose parents were of different nations—his father a Persian, and mother a Mede. By which mule, says a facetious writer, the good man Crœsus was thus made an ass!
That the priests, however, used much deception in the business, and that this deception did not escape the notice of the learned men of the time, is evident from the charge which Demosthenes had brought against the Pythia, of her being accustomed to Philippise, or conform her notes to the tune of the Macedonian emperor. The knowledge of this circumstance made the prudent at all times distrust their suggestions, whilst the rabble, without gainsay, acquiesced as blindly in the belief of their infallibility.
But it was not only as to the meaning of the word Pheelea that the Greeks were unapprised, they knew not the import of their own name Pelargi![534] It is compounded of this same term pheelea, an augur or a diviner; and argh, the symbolic boat, or yoni! And, mind you, that this was the great difference between the Pelargi—which is but another name for Pish-de-danaans—and the Tuath-de-danaans, that the latter venerated the male organ of energy, and the former the female; therefore in no country occupied by the former do you meet with Round Towers, though you invariably encounter those traces of art, which prove their descent from one common origin.
As presiding over the diviners of the symbolical boat, Jupiter was called Pelargicus.[535]
Agyeus was another term in their religious vocabulary, as applied to Apollo, of which the Greeks knew not the source. They could not, indeed, well mistake, that it was derived immediately from αγυια, via; but that did not expound the fact, and they were still in ignorance of its proper import. It is merely a translation of our Rudh-a-vohir, that is, Apollo-of-the high-roads, not, what the Greeks understood it, as stationary thereon, but, on the contrary, as itinerant; and to whom Venus the stranger corresponded on the other side; the especial province of both being to ensure the comforts of hospitality, of protection, and of love, to all emigrants and all travellers.
Grunie was another epithet applied to Apollo, as we may read in a hymn composed by Orpheus, which they could not comprehend. It is derived from Grian, one of our names for the Sun.