Constantine pulled down but few temples, nor indeed could he venture to pull them down but on a pretext of crimes committed in them. It was on this ground that he ordered the demolition of those of the Aphacian Venus, and of Æsculapius which was at Ægea in Cilicia, both of them temples in which oracles were delivered. But he forbade sacrifices to the gods, and by that edict began to render temples useless.
Many oracles still subsisted when Julian assumed the reins of empire. He re-established some that were in a state of ruin; and he was even desirous of being the prophet of that of Dindymus. Jovian, his successor, began his reign with great zeal for the destruction of paganism; but in the short space of seven months, which comprised the whole time he reigned, he was unable to make any great progress. Theodosius, in order to attain the same object, ordered all the temples of the pagans to be shut up. At last, the exercise of that religion was prohibited under pain of death by an edict of the emperors Valentinian and Marcian, in the year 451 of the vulgar era; and the destruction of paganism necessarily involved that of oracles.
This conclusion has nothing in it surprising or extraordinary: it is the natural consequence of the establishment of a new worship. Miraculous facts, or rather what it is desired should be considered as such, diminish in a false religion, either in proportion as it becomes firmly established and has no longer occasion for them, or in proportion as it gradually becomes weaker and weaker, because they no longer obtain credit. The ardent but useless desire to pry into futurity gave birth to oracles; imposture encouraged and sanctioned them; and fanaticism set the seal; for an infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct. The poverty of the people, who had no longer anything left them to give; the imposture detected in many oracles, and thence naturally concluded to exist in all; and finally the edicts of the Christian emperors; such are the real causes of the establishment, and of the cessation, of this species of imposture. The introduction of an opposite state of circumstances into human affairs made it completely disappear; and oracles thus became involved in the vicissitudes accompanying all human institutions.
Some limit themselves to observing that the birth of Jesus Christ is the first epoch of the cessation of oracles. But why, on such an occasion, should some demons have fled, while others remained? Besides, ancient history proves decidedly that many oracles had been destroyed before this birth. All the distinguished oracles of Greece no longer existed, or scarcely existed, and the oracle was occasionally interrupted by the silence of an honest priest who would not consent to deceive the people. "The oracle of Delphi," says Lucian, "remains dumb since princes have become afraid of futurity; they have prohibited the gods from speaking, and the gods have obeyed them."
ORDEAL.
It might be imagined that all the absurdities which degrade human nature were destined to come to us from Asia, the source at the same time of all the sciences and arts! It was in Asia and in Egypt that mankind first dared to make the life or death of a person accused, dependent on the throw of a die, or something equally unconnected with reason and decided by chance—on cold water or hot water, on red hot iron, or a bit of barley bread. Similar superstition, we are assured by travellers, still exists in the Indies, on the coast of Malabar, and in Japan.
This superstition passed from Egypt into Greece. There was a very celebrated temple at Trezène in which every man who perjured himself died instantly of apoplexy. Hippolytus, in the tragedy of "Phædra," in the first scene of the fifth act, addresses the following lines to his mistress Aricia:
Aux portes de Trezène, et parmi ces tombeaux,
Des princes de ma race antiques sepultures,
Est un temple sacré formidable aux parjures.
C'est là que les mortels n'osent jurer en vain;
Le perfide y reçoit un châtiment soudain;
Et, craignant d'y trouver la mort inévitable,
Le mensonge n'a point de frem plus redoubtable.
At Trezène's gates, amidst the ancient tombs
In which repose the princes of my race,
A sacred temple stands, the perjurer's dread.
No daring mortal there may falsely swear,
For swift the vengeance which pursues his crime,
Inevitable death his instant lot;
Nowhere has falsehood a more awful curb.
The learned commentator of the great Racine makes the following remark on these Trezenian proofs or ordeals: