Crœsus Halym superans magnam pervertet opum vim.”
[If Crœsus cross the Halys he will overthrow a great empire.]
Thus, if the Lydian monarch had conquered Cyrus, he overthrew the Assyrian empire; if he himself was routed, he overturned his own. That delivered to Pyrrhus, which is comprised in this Latin verse,
Credo equidem Æacidas Romanos vincere posse,”
[I believe indeed that the sons of Æacus the Romans will conquer,]
had the same advantage; for, according to the rules of syntax, either of the two accusatives may be governed by the verb, and the verse be explained, either by saying the Romans shall conquer the Æacidæ, of whom Pyrrhus was descended, or those shall conquer the Romans. When Alexander fell sick at Babylon, some of his courtiers who happened to be in Egypt, or who went thither on purpose, passed the night in the temple of Serapis, to inquire if it would not be proper to bring Alexander to be cured by him. The god answered, it was better that Alexander should remain where he was. This in all events was a very prudent and safe answer. If the king recovered his health, what glory must Serapis have gained by saving him the fatigue of the journey! If he died, it was but saying he died in a favourable juncture after so many conquests; which, had he lived, he could neither have enlarged nor preserved. This is actually the construction they put upon the response; whereas had Alexander undertaken the journey, and died in the temple, or by the way, nothing could have been said in favour of Serapis. When Trajan had formed the design of his expedition against the Parthians, he was advised to consult the oracle of Heliopolis, to which he had no more to do but send a note under a seal. That prince, who had no great faith in oracles, sent thither a blank note; and they returned him another of the same kind. By this Trajan was convinced of the divinity of the oracle. He sent back a second note to the god, in which he inquired whether he should return to Rome after finishing the war he had in view. The god, as Macrobius tells the story, ordered a vine, which was among the offerings of his temple, to be divided into pieces, and brought to Trajan. The event justified the oracle; for the emperor dying in that war, his bones were carried to Rome, which had been represented by that broken vine. As the priests of that oracle knew Trajan’s design, which was no secret, they happily devised that response, which, in all events, was capable of a favourable interpretation, whether he routed and cut the Parthians in pieces, or if his army met with the same fate. Sometimes the responses of the oracles were mere banter, as in the case of the man who wished to know by what means he might become rich, and who received for answer from the god, that he had only to make himself master of all that lay between Sicyon and Corinth. Another, wanting a cure for the gout, was answered by the oracle, that he was to drink nothing but cold water.
There are two points in dispute on the subject of oracles; namely, whether they were human, or diabolical machines; and whether or not they ceased upon the publication or preaching of the Gospel. Most of the fathers of the church supposed that the devil issued oracles; and looked on it as a pleasure he took to give dubious and equivocal answers, in order to have a handle to laugh at them. Vossius allows that it was the devil who spoke in oracles; but thinks that the obscurity of his answers was owing to his ignorance as to the precise circumstances of events. That artful and studied obscurity in which the answers were couched, says he, showed the embarrassment the devil was under; as those double meanings they usually bore provided for their accomplishment. Where the thing foretold did not happen accordingly, the oracle, forsooth, was misunderstood. Eusebius has preserved some fragments of a philosopher, called Œnomaus; who, out of resentment for his having been so often fooled by the oracles, wrote an ample confutation of all their impertinencies: When we come to consult thee,” says he to Apollo, “if thou seest what is in futurity, why dost thou use expressions that will not be understood? Dost thou not know, that they will not be understood? If thou dost, thou takest pleasure in abusing us; if thou dost not, be informed of us, and learn to speak more clearly. I tell thee, that if thou intendest an equivoque, the Greek word whereby thou affirmedst that Crœsus should overthrow a great empire was ill chosen; and that it could signify nothing but Crœsus’s conquering Cyrus. If things must necessarily come to pass, why dost thou amuse us with thy ambiguities? What doest thou, wretch as thou art, at Delphi? employed in muttering idle prophecies!” But Œnomaus is still more out of humour with the oracle, for the answer which Apollo gave the Athenians, when Xerxes was about to attack Greece with all the strength of Asia. The Pythian declared, that Minerva, the protectress of Athens, had endeavoured in vain to appease the wrath of Jupiter; yet that Jupiter, in complaisance to his daughter, was willing the Athenians should save themselves within wooden walls; and that Salamis should behold the loss of a great many children, dear to their mothers, either when Ceres was spread abroad, or gathered together. Here Œnomaus loses all patience with the god of Delphi. This contest,” says he, “between father and daughter is very becoming the deities! It is excellent, that there should be contrary inclinations and interests in heaven. Poor wizard, thou art ignorant whose the children are that Salamis shall see perish; whether Greeks or Persians. It is certain they must be either one or the other; but thou needest not to have told so openly, that thou knewest not which. Thou concealest the time of the battle under those fine poetical expressions, ‘either when Ceres is spread abroad, or gathered together;’ and wouldest thou cajole us with such pompous language? Who knows not, that if there be a sea fight, it must either be in seed time or harvest? It is certain it cannot be in winter. Let things go how they will, thou wilt secure thyself by this Jupiter, whom Minerva is endeavouring to appease. If the Greeks lose the battle, Jupiter proved inexorable to the last; if they gain it, why then Minerva at length prevailed.”
It is a very general opinion among the more learned, that oracles were all mere cheats and impostures; either calculated to serve the avaricious ends of the Heathen priests, or the political views of the princes. Bayle says positively, they were mere human artificers, in which the devil had no hand. He was strongly supported by Van Dale and Fontenelle, who have written expressly on the subject. Father Balthus, a Jesuit, wrote a treatise in defence of the fathers with regard to the origin of oracles; but without denying the imposture of the priests, often blended with the oracles. He maintains the intervention of the devil in some predictions, which could not be ascribed to the cheats of the priests alone. The Abbé Banier espouses the same side of the question, and objects that oracles would not have lasted so long, and supported themselves with so much splendour and reputation, if they had been merely owing to the forgeries of the priests. Bishop Sherlock, in his Discourses concerning the Use and Intent of Prophecy,” expresses his opinion, that it is impious to disbelieve the Heathen oracles, and to deny them to have been given out by the devil; to which assertion, Dr. Middleton, in his Examination,” &c, replies, that he is guilty of this impiety, and that he thinks himself warranted to pronounce from the authority of the best and wisest of the Heathens themselves, and the evidence of plain facts, which are recorded of those oracles, as well as from the nature of the thing itself, that they were all mere imposture, wholly invented and supported by human craft, without any supernatural aid or interposition whatsoever. He alleges, that Cicero, speaking of the Delphic oracle, the most revered of any in the Heathen world, declares, that nothing was become more contemptible, not only in his days, but long before him; that Demosthenes, who lived about three hundred years earlier, affirmed of the same oracle, in a public speech to the people of Athens, that it was gained to the interests of King Philip, an enemy to that city; that the Greek historians tell us, how, on several other occasions, it had been corrupted by money, to serve the views of particular persons and parties, and the prophetess sometimes had been deposed for bribery and lewdness; that there were some great sects of philosophers, who, on principle, disavowed the authority of all oracles; agreeably to all which Strabo tells us, that divination in general and oracles had been in high credit among the ancients, but in his days were treated with much contempt; lastly, that Eusebius also, the great historian of the primitive church, declares, that there were six hundred writers among the Heathens themselves who had publicly written against the reality of them. Plutarch has a treatise on the ceasing of some oracles; and Van Dale, a Dutch physician, has a volume to prove they did not cease at the coming of Christ; but that many of them ceased long before, and that others held till the fall of Paganism, under the empire of Theodosius the Great, when Paganism being dissipated, these institutions could no longer subsist. 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;” and showed the weakness of the argument used by many writers in behalf of Christianity, drawn from the ceasing of oracles. Cicero says, the oracles became dumb in proportion as people, growing less credulous, began to suspect them for cheats. Plutarch alleges two reasons 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; namely, the forlorn state of Greece, ruined and desolated by wars; for, hence, the smallness of the gains let the priests sink into a poverty and contempt too bare to cover the fraud. That the oracles were silenced about or soon after the time of our Saviour’s advent, may be proved, says Dr. Leland, in the first volume of his learned work on The Necessity and Advantage of Revelation,” &c, from express testimonies, not only of Christian but of Heathen authors. Lucan, who wrote his Pharsalia” in the reign of Nero, scarcely thirty years after our Lord’s crucifixion, laments it as one of the greatest misfortunes of that age, that the Delphian oracle, which he represents as one of the choicest gifts of the gods, was become silent.
Non ullo sæcula dono
Nostra carent majore Deum, quam Delphica sedes