Oracles at Delphi no longer Given in Verse

​Therefore, I should not wonder if the ancients occasionally had need of some double-meaning, circumlocution, and obscurity. For, by Zeus, it was not just any ordinary person who came down to consult the oracle about the purchase of a slave, nor anyone about business, but powerful cities, and kings and tyrants with no modest ambitions, who consulted the god about major affairs. To offend and provoke such people by making them hear many unwelcome truths, when they already felt hostility, was not advantageous for those around the oracle. For the god does not obey Euripides as though he were a lawgiver, when he says, “Phoebus alone should prophesy to men.” Rather, employing mortal servants and prophets, whom it is fitting to care for and protect so that they do not perish at the hands of wicked men while serving the god, he does not wish to hide the truth, but by turning aside its manifestation through poetry, like light receiving many reflections and being shattered in many directions, he removed its harshness and stiffness. And indeed, it was necessary for tyrants to remain ignorant and for enemies not to perceive things beforehand. For these, then, he wrapped the responses in hints and ambiguities, which, while hiding what was being said from others, did not escape or deceive those who asked and paid attention. Therefore, he is most foolish who, now that affairs have changed, and when the god thinks it necessary to help us in a different way and no longer in the same manner, brings charges and slanders him.

​Furthermore, there is nothing more useful for speech from poetry than that what is said, being bound by meters and woven together, is better remembered and retained. For those of that time had need of a vast memory, since many things were declared, such as landmarks of places, the opportune moments for actions, the sacred rites of gods across the sea, and the secret, hard-to-find graves of heroes embarking far from Greece. For you know of the Chian, and Cretinus, and Nesichus, and Phalanthus, and many other leaders of expeditions, who had to find by signs the allotted and fitting settlement for each; some of whom even erred completely, like Battus. For he seemed to have wandered off, not reaching the place to which he had been sent; and then he came a second time with laments. The god, therefore, suggesting: “If you, who have not gone, know Libya, the nurse of sheep, better than I who have gone, I marvel greatly at your wisdom,” thus sent him out again. And Lysander, being completely ignorant of the Orchalides hill, also called Alopeco (the Fox), and the river Hoplites, and “the crafty son of the earth, a dragon coming behind,” was defeated in battle and fell in those places, slain by Neochorus of Haliartus, a man bearing a shield with a serpent as his emblem. It is not necessary to relate to you who already know many other such things of the ancients, which are hard to retain and hard to remember.

​But I, for my part, welcome and love the present state of affairs, about which they now consult the god; for there is great peace and quiet, war has ceased, and there are no wanderings, factions, or tyrannies, nor other diseases and evils of Greece requiring powerful and extraordinary remedies. Where there is nothing complex, secret, or terrible, but only inquiries about small, common matters like propositions in school, such as: whether to marry whether to sail whether to lend money and the greatest prophecies of cities are about the yield of crops, the increase of cattle, and the health of bodies; in such cases, to wrap the responses in meters, to forge circumlocutions, and to introduce obsolete words to inquiries that require a simple and brief answer, is the work of a vainglorious sophist who beautifies the oracle for the sake of reputation. But the Pythia is noble in character even by herself; and when she goes down there and is in the presence of the god, she cares more for truth than for reputation, and for the praise or blame of men.