The vocal shafts of love and joy.
|406| That is absurd. Loves there are and many of them, and they master men; but when they associate with souls which have no natural turn for music, they drop the flute and the lyre, yet are vocal still and fiery through and through, as much as of old. It is an unhallowed thing to say, and an unfair, that the Academy was loveless, or the choir of Socrates and Plato; yet, while we have their love dialogues to read, they have left no poems. Why not declare at once that Sappho was the only woman who |B| ever loved, if you are to say that Sibylla alone had the gift of prophecy, or Aristonica, and the others who delivered themselves in verse? Wine, as Chaeremon[[118]] used to say,
Is mingled with the moods of them that drink,
and the prophetic inspiration, like that of love, uses the faculty which is subjected to it, and stirs its recipients according to the nature of each.
XXIV. ‘Not but that, if we look also into the subject of the God and his foreknowledge, we shall see that the change has taken place for the better. For the use of language is like exchange in coined money. Here also it is familiarity which gives currency, the purchasing power varies with the times. There was a day when metres, tunes, odes were the coins of language in use; all History and Philosophy, in a word, every |C| feeling and action which called for a more solemn utterance, were drawn to poetry and music. It is not only that now but few understand, and they with effort, whereas then all the world were listeners, and all felt pleasure in what was sung,
who fats his flock,
Who ploughs the soil, who snares the wingèd game,
as Pindar[[119]] has it. More than that, there was an aptitude for poetry, most men used the lyre and the ode to rebuke, to encourage, to frame myths and proverbs; also hymns to the Gods, prayers, thanksgivings, were composed in metre and song, as genius or practice enabled them to do. And so it was with prophecy; the God did not grudge it ornament and grace, or drive from hence into disgrace the honoured Muse of the tripod; |D| he rather led her on, awakening and welcoming poetic natures; he gave them visions from himself, he lent his aid to draw out pomp and eloquence as being fitting and admirable things. Then there was a change in human life, affecting men both in fortune and in genius. Expediency banished what was superfluous, top-knots of gold were dropped, rich robes discarded; probably too clustering curls were shorn off, and the buskin discontinued. It was not a bad training, to set the beauty of |E| frugality against that of profusion, to account what was plain and simple a better ornament than the pompous and elaborate. So it was with language, it changed with the times, and shared the general break-up. History got down from its coach, and dropped metre. Truth was best sifted out from Myth in prose; Philosophy welcomed clearness, and found it better to instruct than to astonish, so she pursued her inquiry in plain language. The God made the Pythia leave off calling her own fellow townsmen “fire-burners”, the Spartans “serpent-eaters”, |F| men “mountaineers”, rivers “mountain-drainers”. He cleared the oracles of epic verses, unusual words, circumlocutions, and vagueness, and so prepared the way to converse with his consultants just as laws converse with states, as kings address subjects, as disciples hear their masters speak, so framing language as to be intelligible and convincing.
XXV. ‘For it should be clearly understood that the God is, in the words of Sophocles,[[120]]
Unto the wise a riddling prophet aye,