Oracle is also used for the Demon who gave the answer, and the place where it was given. (Vide Demon.)
The principal oracles of antiquity are that of Abæ, mentioned by Herodotus; that of Amphiarus; that of the Branchidæ, at Didymus; that of the Camps, at Lacedemon; that of Dodona; that of Jupiter Ammon; that of Nabarca, in the Country of the Anariaci, near the Caspian sea; that of Trophonius, mentioned by Herodotus; that of Chrysopolis; that of Claros, in Ionia; that of Mallos; that of Patarea; that of Pella, in Macedonia; that of Phaselides, in Cilicia; that of Sinope, in Paphlagonia; that of Orpheus’s head, mentioned by Philostratus in his life of Appolonius, &c. But, of all others, the oracle of Apollo Pythius, at Delphi, was the most celebrated; it was, in short, consulted always as a dernier ressort, in cases of emergency, by most of the princes of those ages.—Mr. Bayle observes, that at first, it gave its answers in verse; and that at length it fell to prose, in consequence of the people beginning to laugh at the poorness of its versification.
Among the more learned, it is a pretty general opinion that all the oracles were mere cheats and impostures; calculated either to serve the avaricious ends of the heathen priests, or the political views of the princes. Bayle positively asserts, they were mere human artifices, in which the devil had no hand. In this opinion he is strongly supported by Van Dale, a Dutch physician, and M. Fontenelle, who have expressly written on the subject.
There are two points at issue on the subject of oracles; viz. whether they were human or diabolical machines; and whether or not they ceased upon the publication and preaching of the Gospel?
Plutarch wrote a treatise on the ceasing of some oracles: and Van Dale has a volume to prove that they did not cease at the coming of Christ; but that many of them had ceased long before the coming of that time, and that others held out till the fall of Paganism, under the Empire of Theodosius the Great, and when it was dissipated, these institutions could no longer resist.
Van Dale was answered by a German, one Mœbius, professor of Theology, at Leipsic, in 1685. Fontenelle espoused Van Dale’s system, and improved upon it in his history of oracles; wherein he exposed the weakness of the argument used by many writers in behalf of Christianity, drawn from the ceasing of oracles.
Balthus, a learned Jesuit, answered both Van Dale and Fontenelle. He labours to prove, that there were real oracles, and such as can never be attributed to any artifices of the Priests or Priestesses; and that several of these became silent in the first ages of the Church, either by the coming of Jesus Christ, or by the prayers of the Saints. This doctrine is confirmed by a letter from Father Bouchet, missionary to Father Balthus; wherein it is declared, that what Father Balthus declares of the ancient oracles, is experimented every day in the Indies.
It appears, according to Bouchet, that the devil still delivers oracles in the Indies; and that, not by idols, which would be liable to imposture, but by the mouths of the priests, and sometimes of the bye-standers; it is added that these oracles, too, cease, and the devil becomes mute in proportion as the Gospel is preached among them.
It was Eusebius who first endeavoured to persuade the christians that the coming of Jesus Christ had struck the oracles dumb; though it appears from the laws of Theodosius, Gratian, and Valentinian, that the oracles were still consulted as far back as the year 358. Cicero says the oracles became dumb, in proportion as people, growing less credulous, began to suspect them for cheats.
Two reasons are alleged by Plutarch for the ceasing of oracles: the one was Apollo’s chagrin, who, it seems, “took it in dudgeon,” to be interrogated about so many trifles. The other was, that in proportion as the genii, or demons, who had the management of the oracles, died and became extinct, the oracles must necessarily cease. He adds a third and more natural cause for the ceasing of oracles, viz. the forlorn state of Greece, ruined and desolated by wars. For, in consequence of this calamity, the smallness of the gains suffered the priests to sink into a poverty and contempt too bare to cover the fraud.