[Sidenote: 394 D] _Basilocles._ The shades of evening, Philinus, while
you are conducting the stranger round the votive gifts! Here am I,
[Sidenote: E] fairly tired out in waiting for you.
_Philinus._ Yes, Basilocles, we made slow progress, sowing arguments as
we went and reaping them too; battle and war were beneath them, as they
sprang and sprouted in our faces, like the ‘sown men’ of old.
_Basilocles._ Then shall I have to call in some one else of your
[Sidenote: F] company, or will you oblige us with the whole story? What
were the arguments, and who were the speakers?
_Philinus._ I shall have to do that myself, Basilocles, it seems, for
you will not easily meet with any of the others in the town; I saw most
of them going back to the Corycium and the Lycuria with the stranger.
_Basilocles._ A good sight-seer this stranger, and a mighty good
listener!
_Philinus._ Say rather a good scholar and a good learner. Not that these
are his most admirable points; there is a gentleness [Sidenote: 395]
which is full of charm; and then his readiness to do battle and to raise
sensible points: nothing captious or hard in his way of taking the
answers. After a very short time in his company you would have to say
‘good father, good child’, for you know that Diogenianus was one of the
very best.
_Basilocles._ I never saw him myself, but I have met many who spoke with
warm approval of his talk and his character, and in just the same terms
about this young man. But how did the argument begin, and what started
it?
II. _Philinus._ The guides were going through their lectures, as
prepared, showing no regard for our entreaties that they would cut short
their periods and skip most of the inscriptions. The stranger was but
moderately interested in the form and workmanship of the different
statues; it appears that he has [Sidenote: B] seen many beautiful
objects of art. What he did admire was the lustre on the bronze, unlike
rust or deposit, but rather resembling a coat of deep shining blue, so
much so, that it rather well became the sea-captains, with whom the
round had begun, standing up out of the deep so naively with the true
sea tint. ‘Now was there’, he asked, ‘some receipt of pharmacy known to
the old artists in brass like that method of tempering swords of which
we read? It was forgotten in time, and then bronze had a truce from
works of war. As to the Corinthian bronze, that came by its beautiful
colour accidentally, not through art. A fire spread over a house in
which were stored some gold and silver and a large quantity of bronze.
The whole was fused into one stream of metal, which took its name
[Sidenote: C] from the bronze, as the largest ingredient.’ Theon broke
in: ‘We have heard a different story, with a spice of mischief in it. A
Corinthian bronze-worker found a chest containing much gold. Fearing
discovery, he chipped it off little by little, and quietly mixed the
bits with the bronze; the result was a marvellous blend, which he sold
at a high price, as people were delighted with the beauty of the colour.
However, the one story is as mythical as the other; what we may suppose
is that some method was known of mixing and preparing, much as now they
mix gold with silver, and get a peculiar and rare effect, [Sidenote: D]
which to me appears a sickly pallor and a loss of colour with no beauty
in it.’
III. ‘What has been the cause, then,’ said Diogenianus, ‘do you think,
of the colour of the bronze here?’ ‘Here is a case’, said Theon, ‘in
which, of the first and most natural elements which are or ever will be,
fire, earth, air, water, none approaches or touches the bronze, save air
only: clearly then, air is the agent; from its constant presence and
contact the bronze gets its exceptional quality, or perhaps
_Thus much you knew before Theognis was_,[84]
as the comic poet has it; but what you want to learn is the [Sidenote:
E] nature of air, and the property in virtue of which its repeated
contact has coloured the bronze.’ Diogenianus said that it was. ‘And I
too,’ Theon continued, ‘my young friend, let us follow the quest
together; and first, if you will agree, ask why olive oil produces a
more copious rust on the metal than other liquids; it does not, of
course, actually make the deposit, being pure and uncontaminated when it
is applied.’ ‘Certainly not;’ said the young man, ‘the real cause
appears to me to be something different; the oil is fine, pure, and
transparent, so the rust when it meets it is specially evident, whereas
with other liquids it becomes invisible.’ ‘Excellent,’ said Theon, ‘my
[Sidenote: F] young friend, that is prettily put. But consider also, if
you please, the cause given by Aristotle.’ ‘I do please’, he said.
‘Aristotle says that the rust, when it comes over other liquids, passes
invisibly through and is dispersed, because the particles are irregular
and fine, whereas in the density of oil it is held up and permanently
condensed. If, then, we can frame some such hypothesis for ourselves, we
shall not be wholly at a loss for a spell to charm away this
difficulty.’
IV. We encouraged him and agreed, so he (Theon) went [Sidenote: 396] on
to say that the air of Delphi is thick and close of texture, with a
tenseness caused by reflection from the hills and their resistance, but
is also fine and biting, as seems to be proved by the facts of digestion
of food. The tenuity allows it to enter the bronze, and to scrape up
from it much solid rust, which rust again is held up and compressed,
because the density of the air does not allow it a passage through; but
the deposit breaks out, because it is so copious, and takes on a rich
bright colour on the surface. We applauded this, but the stranger
remarked that either hypothesis alone was sufficient for the argument.
‘The fineness’, [Sidenote: B] he went on, ‘will be found to be in
contradiction to the density of which you speak, but there is no
necessity to assume it. The bronze, as it ages, exhales or throws off
the rust by its own inherent action; the density holds together and
solidifies the rust, and makes it apparent because of its quantity.’
Theon broke in: ‘What is to prevent, Sir, the same thing being both fine
and dense, as silks or fine linen stuffs, of which Homer says
_And from the close-spun weft the trickling oil will fall_,[85]
where he indicates the minute and delicate workmanship of the fabric by
the fact that the oil would not remain, but trickled [Sidenote: C] or
glided off, the fineness at once and the density refusing it a passage.
And, again, the scraping up of the rust is not the only purpose served
by the tenuity of the air; it also makes the colour itself pleasanter to
the eye and brighter, it mingles light and lustre with the blue.’
V. Here there was an interval of silence; the guides were again getting
their speeches in hand. A certain oracle given in verse was mentioned—I
think it was one about the reign of Aegon the Argive—when Diogenianus
observed that he had often been surprised at the badness and common
quality of the verses in which the oracles are delivered. Yet the God is
Choirmaster of the Muses, and eloquent language is no less [Sidenote: D]
his function than beauty of ode or tune, and he should have a voice far
above that of Homer and Hesiod in verse. Here we have most of the
oracles saturated with bad taste and poverty of metre and diction. Then
Serapion, the poet, who was with us from Athens, said: ‘Then do we
really believe that these verses are the God’s, yet venture to say that
they fall behind Homer and Hesiod in beauty? Shall we not rather take
them for all that is best and most beautiful in poetry, and revise our
judgement of them prejudiced by familiarity with a bad standard?’
Boethus, the geometer—you know the man, [Sidenote: E] already on his way
to the camp of Epicurus—broke in: ‘Have you ever heard the story of
Pauson the painter?’ ‘Not I’, said Serapion. ‘Well, it is worth hearing.
It appears that he had contracted to paint a horse rolling, and painted
him galloping. The owner was indignant; so Pauson laughed and turned the
canvas upside down, with the result that the lower parts became the
upper, and there was the horse rolling, not galloping. So [Sidenote: F]
it is, Bion tells us, with certain syllogisms when converted. Thus some
will tell us not that the oracles are quite beautiful because they are
the God’s, but that they are not the God’s because they are bad! That
point may be left unsettled. But that the verses used in the oracles are
bad poetry,’ he went on, ‘is made clear also in your judgement, my dear
Serapion, is it not so? For you write poems which are philosophical and
severe as to matter, but in force and grace and diction more like the
work of Homer and Hesiod than the utterances of the Pythia.’
VI. Then Serapion: ‘Yes, we are sick, Boethus, sick in ears and in eyes;
luxury and softness have accustomed us to think things beautiful as they
are more sweet, and to call them so. Soon we shall actually be finding
fault with the Pythia because [Sidenote: 397] she does not speak with a
more thrilling voice than Glauce the singing-girl, or use costly
ointments, or put on purple robes to go down into the sanctuary, or burn
on her censer cassia, mastic, and frankincense, but only bay leaves and
barley meal. Do you not see’, he went on, ‘what grace the songs of
Sappho have, how they charm and soothe the hearers, while the Sibyl
“with raving mouth”, as Heraclitus says, “utters words with no laughter,
no adornment, no spices”,[86] yet makes her voice carry to ten thousand
years, because of the God. And Pindar[87] tells us that Cadmus heard
from the God “right music”, not [Sidenote: B] sweet music, or delicate
music, or twittering music. What is passionless and pure gives no
admission to pleasure; she was cast out in this very place, together
with pain,[88] and the most of her has dribbled away, it seems, into the
ears of men.’
VII. When Serapion had done, Theon smiled. ‘Serapion’, he said, ‘has
paid his usual tribute to his own proclivities, making capital out of
the turn which the conversation had taken about pain and pleasure! But
for us, Boethus, even if these verses are inferior to Homer, let us
never suppose that the God has composed them; he only gives the initial
impulse according to the capacity of each prophetess. Why, suppose the
answers had [Sidenote: C] to be written, not spoken. I do not think we
should suppose that the letters were made by the God, and find fault
with the calligraphy as below royal standard. The strain is not the
God’s, but the woman’s, and so with the voice and the phrasing and the
metre; he only provides the fantasies, and puts light into her soul to
illuminate the future; for that is what inspiration is. To put it
plainly, there is no escaping you prophets of Epicurus—yes, you too,
Boethus, are drifting that way—you blame those old prophetesses because
they used bad poetry, and you also blame those of to-day because they
speak their answers in [Sidenote: D] prose, and use the first words
which come, that they may not be overhauled by you for headless, hollow,
crop-tailed lines.’ Then Diogenianus: ‘Do not jest, in Heaven’s name,
no! but help us to solve the problem which is common to us all. There is
not a Greek[89] living who is not in search of a rational account of the
fact that the oracle has ceased to use verse, epic or other.’ Theon
interrupted: ‘At the present moment, my young friend, we seem to be
doing a shabby turn by the guides, taking the bread out of their mouths.
Suffer them first to do [Sidenote: E] their office, afterwards you shall
discuss in peace whatever you wish.’
VIII. Our round had now brought us in front of the statue of Hiero, the
tyrant. Most of the stories the stranger knew well, but he
good-naturedly lent his ear to them. At last, when he heard that a
certain bronze pillar given by Hiero, which had been standing upright,
fell of its own accord on the very day when Hiero died at Syracuse, he
showed surprise. I set myself to remember similar instances, such as the
notable one of Hiero the Spartan, how before his death at Leuctra the
eyes fell out [Sidenote: F] of his statue, and the gold stars
disappeared which Lysander had dedicated after the naval battle of
Aegospotami. Then the stone statue of Lysander himself broke out into
such a growth of weeds and grass that the face was hidden. At the time
of the Athenian disaster at Syracuse, the golden berries kept dropping
off from the palm trees, and crows chipped the shield on the figure of
Pallas. Again, the crown of the Cnidians, which Philomelus, tyrant of
Phocis, had given to Pharsalia the dancing [Sidenote: 398] girl, caused
her death, as she was playing near the temple of Apollo in Metapontum,
after she had removed from Greece into Italy. The young men made a rush
at the crown, and in their struggle to get it from one another, tore the
woman to pieces. Now Aristotle used to say that no one but Homer made
‘words which stir, because of their energy’.[90] But I would say that
there have been votive offerings sent here which have movement in a high
degree, and help the God’s foreknowledge to signify things; that none of
them is void or without feeling, but all are full of Divinity. ‘Very
good!’ said Boethus; ‘so it is not enough to shut the God into a mortal
body once every month. We will also knead him into every morsel of stone
and brass, to [Sidenote: B] show that we do not choose to hold Fortune,
or Spontaneity, a sufficient author of such occurrences.’ ‘Then in your
opinion’, I said, ‘each of the occurrences looks like Fortune or
Spontaneity; and it seems probable to you that the atoms glided forth,
and were dispersed, and swerved, not sooner and not later, but at the
precise moment when each of the dedicators was to fare worse or better.
Epicurus helps you now by what he said or wrote three hundred years ago;
but the God, unless [Sidenote: C] he take and shut himself up in all
things, and be mingled with all, could not, you think, initiate
movement, or cause change of condition in anything which is!’
IX. Such was my answer to Boethus, and to the same effect about the
Sibyl and her utterances. For when we stood near the rock by the Council
Chamber, on which the first Sibyl is said to have been seated on her
arrival from Helicon, where she had been brought up by the Muses (though
others say that she came from the Maleans, and was the daughter of Lamia
the daughter of Poseidon), Serapion remembered the verses in which she
hymned herself; how she will never cease from [Sidenote: D] prophesying,
even after death, but will herself go round in the moon, being turned
into what we call the ‘bright face’, while her breath is mingled with
the air and borne about in rumours and voices for ever and ever; and her
body within the earth suffers change, so that from it spring grass and
weeds, the pasture of sacred cattle, which have all colour, shapes, and
qualities in their inward parts whereby men obtain forecasts of future
things. Here Boethus made his derision still more evident. [Sidenote: E]
The stranger observed that, although these things have a mythical
appearance, yet the prophecies are attested by many overturnings and
removals of Greek cities, inroads of barbarian hordes, and upsettings of
dynasties. ‘These still recent troubles at Cumae and Dicaearchia[91],
were they not chanted long ago in the songs of the Sibyl, so that Time
was only discharging his debts in the fires which have burst out of the
mountain, the boiling seas, the masses of burning rocks[92] tossed aloft
by the winds, the ruin of cities many and great, so that if you visit
them in broad daylight you cannot get a clear idea of the site, the
ground being covered with confused ruins? It is [Sidenote: F] hard to
believe that such things have happened, much harder to predict them
without divine power.’
X. ‘My good Sir,’ said Boethus, ‘what does happen in Nature which is not
Time paying his debts? Of all the strange unexpected things, by land or
sea, among cities and men, is there any which some one might not
foretell, and then, after it has happened, find himself right? Yet this
is hardly foretelling at all; it is telling, rather it is tossing or
scattering words into the infinite, with no principle in them. They
wander about, often Fortune meets them and throws in with them, but it
is all spontaneous. It is one thing, I think, when what has been
foretold happens, quite another when what will happen is foretold. Any
statement made about things then non-existent contains intrinsic error,
it has no right to await the confirmation [Sidenote: 399] which comes
from spontaneous happening; nor is it any true proof of having foretold
with knowledge that the thing happened after it was foretold, for
Infinity brings all things. No, the “good guesser”, whom the proverb[93]
has announced to be the best prophet, is like a man who hunts on the
trail of the future, by the help of the plausible. These Sibyls and
Bacises threw into the sea, that is, into time, without having any real
clue, nouns and verbs about troubles and occurrences of every
description. Some of these prophecies came about, but they were lies;
and what is now pronounced is a lie like them, even if, later on, it
should happen to turn out true.’ [Sidenote: B]
XI. When Boethus had finished, Serapion spoke: ‘The case is quite fairly
put by Boethus against prophecies so indefinitely worded as those he
mentions, with no basis of circumstance: “If victory has been foretold
to a general, he has conquered. If the destruction of a city, it is
lost.” But where not only the thing which is to happen is stated, but
also the how, the when, after what event, with whose help, then it is
not a guess at things which will perhaps be, but a clear prediction of
things which will certainly be. Here are the lines[94] with reference to
the lameness of Agesilaus: [Sidenote: C]
_Sure though thy feet, proud Sparta, have a care,
A lame king’s reign may see thee trip—Beware!
Troubles unlooked for long shall vex thy shore,
And rolling Time his tide of carnage pour._
And then those about the island[95] which the sea cast up off Thera and
Therasia, and also about Philip and his war with the Romans:
_When Trojan race the victory shall win
From Punic foe, lo! wonders shall begin;
Unearthly fires from out the sea shall flash,
Whirlwinds toss stones aloft, and thunders crash,
An isle unnamed, unknown, shall stand upright,
The worse shall beat the stronger in the fight._
What happened within a short time—that the Romans mastered the
Carthaginians, and brought the war with Philip to a finish, [Sidenote:
D] that Philip met the Aetolians and Romans in battle and was defeated,
and, lastly, that an island rose out of the depths of the sea, with much
fire and boiling waves—could not all be set down to chance and
spontaneous occurrence. Why, the order emphasizes the foreknowledge, and
so does the time predicted to the Romans, some five hundred years before
the event, as that in which they were to be at war with all the races at
once, which meant the war with the slaves after their revolt. In all
this nothing is unascertainable, the story is not left in dim light to
[Sidenote: E] be groped out with reference to Fortune “in Infinity”, it
gives many securities, and is open to trial, it points the road which
the destined event is to tread. For I do not think that any one will say
that the agreement with the details as foretold was accidental.
Otherwise, what prevents some one else from saying that Epicurus did not
write his _Leading Principles_ for our use, Boethus, but that the
letters fell together by chance and just spontaneously, and so the book
was finished off?’
XII. While we were talking thus, we were moving forward. [Sidenote: F]
In the store-house of the Corinthians we were looking at the golden palm
tree, the only remnant of their offerings, when the frogs and
water-snakes embossed round the roots caused much surprise to
Diogenianus, and, for the matter of that, to us. For the palm tree is
not, like many others, a marshy or water-loving plant, nor have frogs
anything specially to do with the Corinthians. Thus they must be a
symbolical or canting device of that city, just as the men of Selinus
are said to have dedicated a golden plant of parsley (selinon), and
those of Tenedos the axe, because of the crabs found round the place
which they [Sidenote: 400] call Asterium, the only ones, it appears,
with the brand of an axe on the shell. Yet the God himself is supposed
to have a partiality for crows and swans and wolves and hawks, for
anything rather than beasts like crabs. Serapion observed that the
artist intended a veiled hint at the sun drawing his aliment and origin
from exhalations out of moist places, whether he had it from Homer,
_Leaving the beauteous lake, the great sun scaled
The brazen sky_,[96]
or whether he had seen the sun painted by the Egyptians as a newly-born
child seated on a lotus. I laughed: ‘Where have you got to again, my
good Sir,’ I said, ‘thrusting the [Sidenote: B] Porch in here, and
quietly slipping into our discussion their “Conflagrations” and
“Exhalations”? Thessalian women fetch the sun and the moon down to us,
but you are assuming that they are first born and then watered out of
earth and its waters. Plato[97] dubbed man “a heavenly plant”, rearing
himself up from a root on high, namely, his head; but you laugh down
Empedocles when he tells us how the sun, having been brought into being
by reflection of heavenly light around the earth
_Beams back upon Olympus undismayed!_
Yet, on your own showing, the sun is a creature or plant of the marshes,
naturalized by you in the country of frogs or [Sidenote: C]
water-snakes. However, all this may be reserved for the Stoics and their
tragedies; here we have the incidental works of the artists, and let us
examine them incidentally. In many respects they are clever people, but
they have not in all cases avoided coldness and elaboration. Just as the
man who designed Apollo with the cock in his hand meant to suggest the
early morning hour when dawn is coming, so here the frogs may be taken
for a symbol of the spring season when the sun begins to have power over
the air and to break up winter; always supposing [Sidenote: D] that,
with you, we are to reckon Apollo and the sun one God, not two.’ ‘What?’
said Serapion, ‘do you not agree? Do you hold the sun to be different
from Apollo?’ ‘As different as the moon from the sun;’ I replied, ‘only
she does not hide the sun often or from all the world,[98] whereas the
sun has made, we may almost say, all the world ignorant of Apollo,
diverting thought by sensation, to the apparent from the real.’
XIII. Next Serapion asked the guides the real reason why they call the
chamber not after Cypselus, the Dedicator, but [Sidenote: E] after the
Corinthians. When they were silent, being, as I privately believe, at a
loss for a reason, I laughed, and said: ‘What can these men possibly
know or remember, utterly dazed as they must be by our high celestial
talk? Why, it was only just now that we heard them saying that, after
the tyranny was overthrown, the Corinthians wished to inscribe the
golden statue at Pisa, and also this treasure-house, with the name of
the city. So the Delphians granted it as a right, and agreed; but the
Corinthians passed a vote to exclude the Eleians, who had shown jealousy
of them, from the Isthmian meetings, and from that time to [Sidenote: F]
this there has been no competitor from Elis. The murder of the
Molionidae by Hercules near Cleonae has nothing to do with the exclusion
of the Eleians, though some think that it has. On the contrary, it would
have been for them to exclude the Corinthians if that had been the cause
of collision.’ Such were my remarks.
XIV. When we passed the chamber of the Acanthians and Brasidas, the
guide showed us a place where iron obelisks to Rhodopis the courtesan
once used to stand. Diogenianus showed annoyance: ‘So it was left for
the same state’, he said, [Sidenote: 401] ‘to find a place for Rhodopis
to deposit the tithes of her earnings, and to put Aesop, her fellow
servant, to death!’ ‘Bless you, friend,’ said Serapion, ‘why so vexed at
that? Carry your eyes upwards, and behold among the generals and kings
the golden Mnesarete, which Crates called a standing trophy of the
lewdness of the Greeks.’ The young man looked: ‘Was it then about Phryne
that Crates said that?’ ‘Yes, it was,’ said Serapion, ‘her name was
Mnesarete, but she took on that of Phryne (toad) as a nickname because
of her yellow skin. Many names, it would seem, are concealed by these
nicknames. There was Polyxena, mother of Alexander, afterwards said to
have been called Myrtale and Olympias and Stratonice. Then Eumetis
[Sidenote: B] of Rhodes is to this day called by most people Cleobuline,
after her father; and Herophile of Erythrae, when she showed a prophetic
gift, was addressed as Sibylla. You will hear the grammarians telling us
that Leda has been named Mnesinoe, and Orestes Achaeus. But how do you
propose’, he went on, looking hard at Theon, ‘to get rid of the charge
as to Phryne?’
XV. Theon smiled quietly: ‘In this way:’ he said, ‘by a cross charge
against you for raking up the pettiest of the [Sidenote: C] Greek
misdoings. For as Socrates,[99] when entertained in the house of
Callias, makes war upon the ointment only, but looks on at all the
dancing and tumbling and kisses and buffoonery, and holds his tongue, so
you, it seems to me, want to exclude from the temple a poor woman who
made an unworthy use of her charms; but when you see the God encompassed
by first-fruits and tithes of murders, wars, and raids, and his temple
loaded with Greek spoils and booty, you show no disgust; you have no
pity for the Greeks when you read on the beautiful offerings such deeply
disgraceful inscriptions as “Brasidas and the Acanthians from the
Athenians”, “Athenians from [Sidenote: D] Corinthians”, “Phocians from
Thessalians”, “Orneatans from Sicyonians”, “Amphictyones from Phocians”.
So Praxiteles, it seems, was the one person who offended Crates by
finding[100] room for his mistress to stand here, whereas Crates ought
to have commended him for placing beside those golden kings a golden
courtesan, a strong rebuke to wealth as having nothing wonderful or
worshipful about it. It would be good if kings [Sidenote: E] and rulers
were to set up in the God’s house offerings to Justice Temperance,
Magnanimity, not to golden and delicate Abundance, in which the very
foulest lives have their share.’
XVI. ‘You are forgetting to mention’, said one or other of the guides,
‘how Croesus had a golden figure of the baker-woman made, and dedicated
it here.’ ‘Yes,’ said Theon, ‘but that was not to flout the temple with
his luxury of wealth, but for a good and righteous cause. The story
is[101] that Alyattes, father of Croesus, married a second wife, and
brought up a fresh family. This woman made a plot against Croesus; she
gave poison to the baker and told her to knead a loaf with it and serve
[Sidenote: F] to Croesus. The baker told Croesus secretly, and set the
loaf before the wife’s children. And so, when Croesus became king, he
requited the baker-woman’s service in a way which made the God a
witness, and moreover did a good turn to him. Hence’, he said, ‘it is
quite proper to honour and love any such offering from cities as that of
the Opuntians. When the Phocian tyrants had melted up many of the gold
and silver offerings and struck coined money, which they distributed
among the cities, the Opuntians collected all the silver they could
find, and sent a large jar to be consecrated here to the God. I commend
the [Sidenote: 402] Myrinaeans also, and the Apollonians, who sent
hither sheaves of gold, and even more highly the Eretrians and
Magnesians, who endowed the God with firstfruits of men, as being the
giver of crops and also ancestral, racial, humane. Whereas I blame the
Megarians, because they were almost alone in setting up the God holding
a lance; this was after the battle in which they defeated and expelled
the Athenians when holding their city, after the Persian wars. Later on,
however, they offered to him a golden harp-quill, attaching it, as it
appears, to Scythinus, [Sidenote: B] who says of the lyre:
_which the son of Zeus
Wears, the comely God Apollo, gathering first and last in one,
And he holds a golden harp-quill flashing as the very sun._’
XVII. Serapion wanted to put In some further remark on this, when the
stranger said: ‘It is delightful to listen to such speeches as we have
heard, but I feel myself obliged to claim fulfilment of the original
promise, that we should hear the cause which has made the Pythia cease
to prophesy in epic or other verse. So, if it be your pleasure, let us
leave to another time the remainder of the sights, sit down where we
are, and hear about that. For it is this more than anything else which
militates against the credibility of the oracle; it must be one of two
things, either the Pythia does not get near the spot where the Divinity
is, or the current is altogether exhausted, and [Sidenote: C] the power
has failed.’ Accordingly, we went round and seated ourselves on the
southern plinth of the temple, in view of the temple of Earth and the
fountain, which made Boethus at once observe that the very place where
the problem was raised lent itself to the stranger’s case. For here was
a temple of the Muses where the exhalation rises from the fountain; from
which they drew the water used for the lustrations, as Simonides[102]
has it:
_Whence is drawn for holy washings
Water of the Muses bright._
And again, in a rather more elaborate strain, the same poet [Sidenote:
D] addressing Clio:
_Holy patron of our washings, Goddess sought with many a vow,
By no golden robe encumbered, hear thy servants drawing now
Water, fragrant and delightful, from ambrosial depths below._
So Eudoxus was wrong in believing those who have made out that this was
called ‘Water of Styx’. But they installed the Muses as assessors in
prophecy and guardians of the place, by the fountain and the temple of
Earth where the oracle used to be, because the responses were given in
metre and in lyric strains. And some say further that the heroic metre
was heard for the [Sidenote: E] first time here:
_Bring in your feathers, ye birds, ye bees, bring wax at his
bidding._