1. I happened not long since, dear Serapion, on certain not unelegant
verses, which Dicaearchus supposes Euripides to have spoken to King
Archelaus.
I’m poor, you rich, I’ll therefore nothing give;
Lest me or fool or beggar you believe.
For he who out of his little estate makes small presents to those that
have great possessions does them no pleasure; nay, being not believed
to give even that little for nothing, he incurs the suspicion of being
of a sordid and ungenerous disposition. But since pecuniary presents
are both in bounty and beauty far inferior to such as proceed from
learning and wisdom, it is honorable both to make such presents, and
at our giving them, to desire suitable returns from the receivers. I
therefore, sending to you,—and through you to our friends in those
parts,—as a first-fruit offering, some discourses concerning the
Pythian affairs, confess that I do in requital expect others, both more
and better, from you, as being persons conversant in a great city, and
enjoying more leisure amongst many books and conferences of all sorts.
For indeed our good Apollo seems to cure and solve such difficulties
as occur in the ordinary management of our life, by giving his oracles
to those that resort to him; but as for those which concern learning,
he leaves and proposes them to that faculty of the soul which is
naturally addicted to the study of philosophy, imprinting in it a
desire leading to truth; as is manifest both in many other matters, and
in the consecration of this inscription ΕΙ. For it is not probable,
that it was by chance or by a lottery (as it were) of letters that this
word alone was placed in the principal seat in the God’s temple, and
received the dignity of a sacred donary and spectacle; but it is highly
credible that those who at the beginning philosophized concerning this
God gave it that station, either as seeing it in some peculiar and
extraordinary power, or using it as a symbol to signify some other
thing worthy of our attention.
Having therefore often formerly declined and avoided this discourse,
when proposed in the school, I was lately surprised by my own children
as I was debating with certain strangers, who were on their departure
out of Delphi, so that I could not in civility hold them in suspense
nor yet refuse discoursing with them, since they were exceeding earnest
to hear something. Being therefore set down by the temple, I began
myself to search into some things, and to ask them concerning others,
being by the place and the very talk put in mind of those things we had
heretofore, when Nero passed through these parts, heard Ammonius and
some others discourse; the same difficulty having been then likewise in
this very place propounded.
2. Since therefore this God is no less a philosopher than a prophet,
Ammonius seemed to all of us rightly to apply every one of his names
to this purpose, and to teach that he is Pythius (or a _questionist_)
to those who begin to learn and enquire; Delius and Phanaeus (or a
_manifester_ and _prover_) to those to whom somewhat of the truth is
already manifest and shines forth; Ismenius (or _knowing_) to those
that have acquired knowledge; and Leschenorius (or _discoursing_) when
they practise and enjoy their science, making use of it to discourse
and philosophize with one another. Now, forasmuch as to philosophize
implies to enquire, to wonder, and to doubt, it is probable (he said)
that many of the things that concern God are not unfitly concealed
under enigmas, and require that one should ask the reason why, and seek
to be instructed in the causes,—as, why of all wood fir only is burnt
in the eternal fire, why the laurel only is used in fumigations, why
there are erected but two statues of the Fates, they being everywhere
else thought to be three, why no woman is permitted to have access
to the oracle, what is the reason of the tripod, and other such
like things, which, being proposed to those who are not altogether
irrational and soulless, allure and incite them to consider, hear, and
discourse something about them. And do but behold how many questions
these inscriptions, “Know thyself” and “Nothing too much,” have set
afoot amongst the philosophers, and what a multitude of discourses has
sprung up from each of them, as from a seed; than neither of which, I
think the matter now in question to be less fruitful.
3. Ammonius having spoken thus, Lamprias the Delphian said: The reason
indeed which we have heard of this is plain and very short; for
they say that those Sages, who were by some called Sophisters, were
but five, Chilo, Thales, Solon, Bias, and Pittacus. But after that
Cleobulus the tyrant of the Lindians, and Periander the Corinthian,
though wholly destitute of virtue and wisdom, had by their power,
friends, and courtesy forced a reputation, they usurped the name of
Sages, and set forth and dispersed all over Greece certain sentences
and sayings, not unlike to those which had been spoken by the five
former wise men. The five, however, being discontented at this, would
not reprove their arrogancy, nor openly contest and enter into quarrels
for glory with men of so great power; but assembling here together, and
consulting with one another, they consecrated the letter _Ε_, which is
in the order of the alphabet the fifth, and signifies five in number,
protesting of themselves before the God that they were but five, and
rejecting and abdicating the sixth and seventh as not belonging to
them. Now that these things are not spoken beside the cushion, any
one might understand who should have heard those who have care of the
temple naming the golden _ΕΙ_ the _ΕΙ_ of Livia, the wife of Augustus
Caesar; and the brazen one the _ΕΙ_ of the Athenians; but the first and
ancientest of all, which is the wooden one, they call the _ΕΙ_ of the
Sages, as not being of any one, but the common dedication of them all.
4. At this Ammonius gently smiled, supposing Lamprias to have delivered
an opinion of his own, but to have feigned that he had heard the story
from others, lest he might be obliged to give an account of it. But
another of those that were present said that this had some affinity
with what a certain Chaldean stranger had lately babbled, to wit, that
there are in the alphabet seven letters rendering a perfect sound of
themselves, and in the heavens seven stars moved by their own proper
motion, not bound or linked to that of the others; that _Ε_ is from the
beginning the second in order of the vowels, and the sun the second of
the planets, or next to the moon, and that the Greeks do unanimously
(so to speak) repute Apollo to be the same with the sun. But these
things, said he, wholly savor of his counting-table and his trifling.
But Lamprias, it seems, was not sensible of his having stirred up all
those of the temple against his discourse. For there was not a man of
the Delphians who knew any thing of what he said; but they all alleged
the common and current opinion, holding that neither the sight nor the
sound of this writing, but the word alone as it was written, contained
some symbol or secret signification.
5. For the syllable _ΕΙ_ (if) is, as the Delphians conceive it, and as
Nicander the priest (who was then present) also said, a conveyance and
form of prayer to the God, and has the leading place in the questions
of those who at every turn use it, asking _if_ they shall overcome,
_if_ they shall marry, _if_ it is convenient to go to sea, _if_ to till
the ground, _if_ to travel. And the wise God, bidding adieu to the
logicians, who think nothing at all can be made of this particle _ΕΙ_
and any clause following it, understands and admits all interrogations
annexed to it, as real things. Now, because it is proper for us to
consult him as a prophet, and common to pray to him as a God, they
suppose that this word has no less a precatory than an interrogatory
power. For every one who prays or wishes says, εἰ γὰρ ὤφελον, _O if I
were_, &c. And Archilochus has also this expression:
If I might be so happy as to touch
My Neobule’s hand.
And they say that the second syllable in the word εἴθε is redundant
like θήν in this of Sophron, Ἃμα τέκνων θὴν δευομένα, _desiring also
children_; and in this of Homer, Ὡς θὴν καὶ σὸν ἐγὼ λύσω μένος,
_as I will also foil thy strength_; but in the word _ΕΙ_ there is
sufficiently declared an optative power.
6. Nicander having delivered these words, our friend Theon, whom you
know, asked Ammonius if he might have liberty to plead for logic, which
was so highly injured. And Ammonius bidding him speak and defend it, he
said: Now that this God is a most expert logician many of his oracles
show; for it is, to wit, the part of the same artist to dissolve and
frame ambiguities. Moreover, as Plato said, when an oracle was given to
the Greeks that they should double the altar in Delos, which is a work
of the utmost perfection in geometry, that the God did not order the
doing of that very thing, but commanded the Greeks to apply themselves
to geometry; so the same God, by giving ambiguous oracles, honors and
recommends logic, as necessary to those who desire to understand him
aright. Now this conjunction _ΕΙ_, or _if_, has a very great efficacy
in logic, as forming the most rational proposition; for how can it
be otherwise, since the very brutes have indeed the knowledge of the
substance of things, but to man only has Nature given the consideration
and judgment of consequence? For that there is both day and light,
wolves and dogs and birds are sensible. But that if it is day there
must be light, no other animal understands but man, who only has the
conception of antecedent and consequent, of the significance and
connection of these things with one another, and of their habitude and
difference, from which demonstrations take their principal beginnings.
Now since philosophy is conversant about truth, since the light of
truth is demonstration, and the beginning of demonstration this
connection of propositions; the faculty which contains and effects this
was by wise men, with good reason, consecrated to the God who most
of all loves truth. Now the God indeed is a prophet, and the art of
prophesying is a divination concerning the future from things that are
present and past. For neither is the original of any thing without a
cause, nor the foreknowledge of any thing without reason. But since all
things that are done follow and are connected to those that have been
done, and those that shall be done to those that are done, according to
the progress proceeding from the beginning to the end; he who knows how
to look into the causes of this together, and naturally connect them
one with another, knows also and divines