Part 7

may be conveniently treated as a group, and assumed to be a collection of those ‘Pythian Dialogues’ which the author sent to his friend Serapion. I and II certainly are so, III has a separate dedication. Other Dialogues, e. g. that on _Delays in Divine Punishment_, are also records of conversations which took place at Delphi; but these three are concerned with questions suggested by the temple and prophetic office of Apollo, as to which they give much curious information. If they leave us unsatisfied as to matters of still deeper interest, and tell us nothing about the policy of Delphi in the Persian wars, the counsel given to Orestes, which is fiercely controversial matter, or the popular feeling towards the oracle represented in the _Ion_ of Euripides, this is only what we learn to put up with in reading Greek books. Indeed it is of a piece with the purposes imputed to Apollo himself, who sets us problems but does not supply their solution. ‘The king whose oracle is in Delphi neither tells nor conceals, but signifies.’

We have few indications of date, or of mutual relations between the three Dialogues. I is based upon the author’s recollection of a conversation which took place ‘a long time ago’, about A. D. 66, the date of Nero’s visit to Greece. A principal speaker is Ammonius the Peripatetic philosopher of Lamprae, Plutarch’s instructor, who also speaks, with the same authority, in III. In II, Serapion, the Athenian poet, to whom the collection is dedicated in I, takes a leading part. Theon, a literary friend, who appears frequently in the _Symposiacs_ and in the _Face in the Moon_ comes into I and II. An interesting person is Demetrius of Tarsus, another literary friend, who, in III, has just returned from Britain, and who has been probably identified with ‘Demetrius the Scribe’, named on two bronze tablets found at York, and now in the York Museum (see _Hermes_, vol. 46, p. 156). The year of Callistratus at Delphi, which marks the date of III, is conjecturally fixed as A. D. 83-4 (see Pontow in _Philologus_ for 1895, and cp. _Sympos._ vii. 5). As Agricola’s term of office ended in A. D. 84 or 85, Demetrius may have served under him. The general tranquillity of the world depicted in III hardly gives us much to build upon.

In I Plutarch and his brother Lamprias are both speakers. Lamprias appears in his usual character, a good companion, light-hearted and reckless; Plutarch speaks gravely and at length, and the debate is closed by Ammonius. In III Lamprias, Plutarch not being named, speaks gravely throughout, and, on the suggestion of Ammonius, closes the debate. In II, neither brother is named, and the last speaker is Theon.

In the Symposiac Dialogues one or other brother is usually present, sometimes both. In the _Face in the Moon_ Lamprias alone takes part, and he acts as moderator.

It is not easy to interpret these facts. M. Gréard concludes that Lamprias died early. If so, was the name, which was borne by the grandfather and by one of the sons, transferred, for literary purposes, to Plutarch himself? M. Chenevière, in his pleasant essay on Plutarch’s friends (a Latin prize dissertation) suggests that, under whatever name, the leading speaker always conveys Plutarch’s own views.

Certain topics recur in this series of Dialogues. Thus the problem as to the meaning of the E at Delphi, which is the main subject of I, is glanced at, with some impatience, by Philippus the historian in III.

The identification of Apollo with the sun, dismissed at the end of I as a mere beautiful fancy, is questioned again in III and allowed to stand over as unsettled. It is touched upon in II, c. 12.

The hypothesis of a plurality of worlds, brought forward by Plutarch in I. c. 11, with special reference to the views of Plato in the _Timaeus_, reappears, again in connexion with the five regular solids, in III.

It may be noticed that Plutarch was not, at the date of the conversation narrated in I, a priest of the temple (see c. 16).

Much of the matter of III reappears, with little variety of substance, in the _Face in the Moon_, the attack on Aristotle’s theory of the distribution of matter in the one corresponding to that upon the Stoics in the other, and the accounts of the imprisonment of Cronus by his son (or Briareus) being almost identical. It is probable that in both Plutarch has drawn immediately upon Posidonius, and through him from Xenocrates and others. The question is discussed with great thoroughness by Dr. Max Adler (_Dissertationes Vindobonenses_, 1910).

The situation of Delphi is one of extraordinary beauty, as well as interest:

Some few miles north-east of the ancient site of Cirrha the mountainous range of Parnassus shoots out two little spurs towards the sea, thus locking on three sides an inclined valley, as the tiers of an ancient circus embrace the arena below. Upon the fourth side a small river runs, by name the Pleistus, which has forced its way between the eastern spur and Mount Cirphius, directly south and opposite; crosses laterally at the foot of the glen; then, sweeping round in a shining curve, before many leagues unites its waters to the bay. The descending slope that forms the amphitheatre is broken by ridges into three terraces, such as the traveller is wont to see in hilly countries. On the highest rose the sanctuary; below was the town and the cultivated hollow which poets called the Vale of Delphi; above all towered the ridges of Parnassus itself,[50] sheer walls of rock, rising inland towards the summit of the chain, desolate, grand, and picturesque. Those who stood above the level of the temple, and turned their gaze toward the south-west, might perhaps have looked far over to the smiling gulf of Corinth, an unbroken prospect of well-watered fields. Upon their left was the famous plane-tree, and the spring of Castalia, whose stream, leaping down between two rocks, out of a huge cleft that divided them, lost itself in a dell below, till it fell finally into the Pleistus; and mounting the rough ascent, just beyond the little torrent, might be seen the sacred way, which, issuing from the same gorge as the Pleistus, rounded the flank of the promontory of rock and climbed up its warm side. Few are the shadows that pass over the valley; through the long day the southern sun beats down on it, and the brilliancy of the sky is immortalized in the name which the inhabitants conferred upon the hills about, of Phaedriades, or shining cliffs.

But the property of the temple was not bounded by the extent of the _view_. Above, on the heights, as far as Ligorea and Tithorea, both Doric villages—towards the west, beyond the Stadium, and the hill on which it nestled, to Amphissa and the pasturages along its stream—all was part of the Ager Apollinis, sacred to the god and to his priests for ever.

From the Arnold Prize Essay for 1859, by Charles (afterwards Lord) Bowen.

The topographical and archaeological facts to be gathered from authorities prior to modern excavations are collected by Dr. J. H. Middleton in the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_ for 1888. The results of the subsequent work of the French excavators, directed by M. Homolle, may conveniently be studied in Dr. J. G. Frazer’s Commentary on Pausanias, Book 10, where the history of the successive temples is followed out. The dimensions of the temple itself, which stood on a rocky plateau or terrace, were about 197 feet by 72 feet. The Sacred Way ran round the temple, and close to it on its northern and western sides, and was followed by the party described by Plutarch in the second of the three Dialogues (c. 17) in order to reach the southern steps.

Footnote 50:

8,000 feet above the sea. The Phaedriades rose to about 800 feet.

I ON THE ‘E’ AT DELPHI

(In the Pronaos of the temple at Delphi the visitor was confronted by certain inscriptions (γράμματα): ‘Know thyself’—‘Nothing too much’—‘Go bail and woe is at hand’—all exhortations to wisdom or prudence (Plato, _Charmides_, 163-4). To these is to be added, on the sole authority of Plutarch’s Dialogue, the letter E, pronounced EI.)

THE SPEAKERS

AMMONIUS, the Platonist philosopher, Plutarch’s teacher. LAMPRIAS, Plutarch’s brother. PLUTARCH. THEON, a literary friend. EUSTROPHUS, an Athenian. NICANDER, a priest of the temple.

Chap. 1. Dedication to Serapion at Athens. I am sending you, as an instalment, some of my Pythian Dialogues. What is the problem put before us by Apollo under the form of the letter E? I had always avoided the question, but here is a report of a conversation with some visitors, of whom Ammonius was one, in, or soon after, the year A. D. 66, when Nero came to Greece.

2. AMMONIUS was arguing that Apollo propounds subjects for philosophical inquiry in the ordinances and emblems of his temple, not least in this letter E.

3. LAMPRIAS quoted the traditional account, that the Wise Men, who were properly five, not seven, met here, and, after discussion, set up the letter E, as a numeral, for a protest against the intrusion of a sixth and seventh into their company. The ancient wooden E is still called that of the Wise Men.

4. AMMONIUS smiled, knowing Lamprias to be capable of improvising a ‘traditional view’. One of the company mentioned a Chaldaean visitor, who had lately talked much nonsense about the number seven. The officials of the temple know no view except that the letter is significant as a word (‘if’ or ‘whether’).

5. NICANDER confirmed this. ‘If’ is used with us in the formula of questions put to the god, or, as ‘if only’, in prayers.

6. THEON puts in a plea for ‘Dialectic’, i.e. Logic. ‘If’ is the conjunction which holds together the conjunctive proposition or syllogism, the special prerogative of _human_ intellect. Hercules, in his early days, mocked at Logic and the E, and then removed the tripod by force.

7. EUSTROPHUS: ‘Bravo, Theon, a Hercules, all but the lion’s skin!’ He appeals to the devotees of Mathematics to say a word for the arithmetical virtues of the number five (a thrust at Plutarch himself, who had yet to learn Academic moderation in his zeal for Mathematics).

8-16. PLUTARCH _loq._:

8. Yes, five has virtues: 5 = 2 + 3, the first even added to the first odd. It is called ‘Marriage’. After multiplication it reproduces itself, and so symbolizes the ‘Conflagration’ and ‘Renovation’ of Heraclitus (and the Stoics),

9. Which relate to the legends of Apollo and also of Dionysus.

10. Five, when multiplied, gives alternately five itself and the perfect ten. It is also essential in harmonies.

11. Plato holds that, _if_ there are more worlds than one, there _may_ be five, and no more. Aristotle that there is one world composed of five elements, the five regular solids.

12. The five senses are related to the five elements and the five solids.

13. We must not forget Homer, and his five-fold division of the universe. But, going back: Four dimensions (point, line, plane, solid) are all very well. But animate being requires a fifth.

14. The true derivation is not 2 + 3 = 5 but 1 + 4 i.e., unity (which is itself really a square) _plus_ the first square.

15. There are five modes of being (see the _Sophist_, and _Philebus_ of Plato). Some early inquirer saw this, and set up _two_ E’s.

16. I ask the initiated whether five has not a special virtue in their mysteries. (‘Yes,’ from NICANDER, ‘but it is a secret.’) Well I must wait till I become a priest myself.

17. AMMONIUS, though in sympathy with Mathematics, deprecates too much exactness. There is much to be said for the number seven. But the ‘E’ is really something different from all the suggestions. The God greets his visitors with ‘Know Thyself.’ They answer, THOU ART.

18. _We_ ‘are’ not at all, but always change from state to state, and so (says Heraclitus) does all Nature.

19. In true being is no past, present, or future; our common speech confesses to our not being.

20. But God IS, and is rightly addressed as ‘Thou Art’ or ‘Thou Art One’.

21. The identification of Apollo with the sun is a beautiful attempt to grasp the spiritual through the sensible. Not so the stories of his change into fire, and the like, which are better ascribed to some daemon than to the God. ‘Know Thyself’ calls us back from these lofty speculations: ‘Man, know thy nature and its limitations!’

ON THE ‘E’ AT DELPHI

I. A day or two ago, dear Serapion, I met with some [Sidenote: 384 D] rather good lines, addressed, Dicaearchus thinks, to Archelaus by Euripides:[51]

_No gifts, my wealthy friend, from humble me; You’ll think me fool, or think I did but beg._

He who out of his narrow store offers trifles to men of great possessions, confers no favour; no one believes that he gives something for nothing, and he gets credit for a jealous and ungenerous temper. Now surely as money presents fall far [Sidenote: E] below those of literature and learning, so there is beauty in giving these, and beauty in claiming a return in kind. At any rate, I am sending to you, and so to my friends down there, some of our Pythian Dialogues, as a sort of first-fruits; and, in doing so, confess that I expect others from you, and more and better ones, since you enjoy a great city and abundant leisure, with many books and discussions of every sort. Well then, our kind Apollo, in the oracles which he gives his consultants, seems to [Sidenote: F] solve the problems of life and to find a remedy, while problems of the intellect he actually suggests and propounds to the born love of wisdom in the soul, thus implanting an appetite which leads to truth. Among many other instances, this is made clear as to the consecration of the letter ‘E’. We may well guess that it was not by chance, or by lot, that, alone among [Sidenote: 385] the letters, it received pre-eminence in the God’s house, and took rank as a sacred offering and a show object. No, the officials of the God in early times, when they came to speculate, either saw in it a special and extraordinary virtue, or found it a symbol for something else of serious importance, and so adopted it. I had often myself avoided the question and quietly declined it when raised in the school. However, I was lately surprised by my sons in earnest discussion with certain strangers, who were just starting from Delphi; it was not decent to put them off with excuses, they were so anxious to receive some [Sidenote: B] account. We sat down near the temple, and I began to raise questions with myself, and to put others to them; and the place, and what they said, reminded me of a discussion which we heard a long time ago from Ammonius and others, at the time of Nero’s visit, when the same problem had been started here in the same way.

II. That the God is no less philosopher than he is prophet appeared to all to come out directly from the exposition which Ammonius gave us of each of his names. He is ‘Pythian’ (The Inquirer) to those who are beginning to learn and to inquire; ‘Delian’ (The Clear One) and ‘Phanaean’ to those who are already getting something clear and a glimmering of [Sidenote: C] the truth; ‘Ismenian’ (The Knowing) to those who possess the knowledge; ‘Leschenorian’ (God of Discourse) when they are in active enjoyment of dialectical and philosophic intercourse. ‘Now since’, he continued, ‘Philosophy embraces inquiry, wonder, and doubt, it seems natural that most of the things relating to the God should have been hidden away in riddles, and should require some account of their purpose, and an explanation of cause. For instance, in the case of the undying fire, why the only woods used here are pine for burning and laurel for fumigation; again, why two Fates are here installed, whereas their number is everywhere else taken as three; why no woman is allowed to approach the place of the oracles; questions about the tripod, and the rest. These problems, [Sidenote: D] when suggested to persons not altogether wanting in reason and soul, lure them on, and challenge them to inquire, to listen, and to discuss. Look again at those inscriptions, KNOW THYSELF and NOTHING TOO MUCH; how many philosophic inquiries have they provoked! What a multitude of arguments has sprung up out of each, as from a seed! Not one of them I think is more fruitful in this way than the subject of our present inquiry.’

III. When Ammonius had said this, my brother Lamprias spoke: ‘After all, the account which we have heard of the matter is simple enough and quite short. They say that the famous Wise Men, also called by some “Sophists”, were [Sidenote: E] properly only five, Chilon, Thales, Solon, Bias, and Pittacus. But Cleobulus, tyrant of Lindos, and, later on, Periander of Corinth, men with no wisdom or virtue in them, but forcing public opinion by influence, friends, and favours, thrust themselves into the list of the wise, and disseminated through Greece maxims and sayings resembling the utterances of the five. Then the five were vexed, but did not choose to expose the imposture, or to have an open quarrel on the matter of title, and to fight it out with such powerful persons. They met here [Sidenote: F] by themselves; and after discussing the matter, dedicated the letter which is fifth in the alphabet, and also as a numeral signifies five, thus making their own protest before the God, that they were five, discarding and rejecting the seventh and the sixth, as having no part or lot with themselves. That this account is not beside the mark may be recognized by any one who has heard the officials of the temple naming the golden “E” as that of Livia the wife of Caesar, the brazen one as that [Sidenote: 386] of the Athenians, whereas the original and oldest letter, which is of wood, is to this day called that “Of the Wise Men”, as having been the offering of all in common, not of anyone of them.’

IV. Ammonius gave a quiet smile; he had a suspicion that Lamprias had been giving us a view of his own, making up history and legend at discretion. Some one else said that it was like the nonsense which they had heard from the Chaldaean stranger a day or so before; that there were seven letters which were vowels, seven stars that have an independent motion and [Sidenote: B] are unattached to the heavens; moreover that ‘E’ is the second vowel from the beginning, and the sun the second planet, after the moon, and that all Greeks, or nearly all, identify Apollo with the sun.

‘But all that’, he said, ‘is pernicious nonsense. Lamprias, however, has, probably without knowing it, made a move[52] which stirs up all who have to do with the temple against his view. What he told us was unknown to any of the Delphians; they used to give the regular guides’ account, that neither the appearance nor the sound of the letter has any significance, but only the name.’

[Sidenote: C] V. ‘No, the Delphic Officials’, said Nicander the priest, speaking for them, ‘believe that it is a vehicle, a form assumed by the petition addressed to the God; it has a leading place in the questions of those who consult him, and inquire, _If_ they shall conquer; _If_ they shall marry; _If_ it is advisable to sail; _If_ to farm; _If_ to travel. The God in his wisdom would bow out the dialecticians when they think that nothing practical comes of the “_If_” part with its clause attached; he admits as practical, in his sense of the word, all questions so attached. Then, since it is our personal concern to question him as prophet, but [Sidenote: D] a general concern to pray to him as God, they hold that the letter embraces the virtue of prayer no less than that of inquiry; “O, If I might!” says every one who prays, as Archilochus,[53]

If _it might be mine, prevailing, Neobule’s hand to touch_!

When _If-so-be_ is used, the latter part is dragged in (compare Sophron’s “Bereaved of children, I trow”, or Homer’s “As I will break thy might, I trow”[54]). But _If_ gives the sense of prayer sufficiently.’

VI. When Nicander had finished, our friend Theon, whom I am sure you know, asked Ammonius whether Dialectic might [Sidenote: E] speak freely, after the insulting remarks to which she had been treated. Ammonius told him to speak out on her behalf. ‘That the God is a master of Dialectic,’ Theon said, ‘is shown clearly by most of his oracles; for you will grant that the solution of puzzles belongs to the same person as their invention. Again, as Plato used to say, when a response was given that the altar at Delos should be doubled,[55] a matter requiring the most advanced geometry, the God was not merely enjoining this, but was also putting his strong command upon the Greeks to practise geometry. Just so, when the God puts out ambiguous [Sidenote: F] oracles, he is exalting and establishing Dialectic, as essential to the right understanding of himself. You will grant again, that in Dialectic this conjunctive particle has great force, because it formulates the most logical of all sentences. This is certainly the “conjunctive”, seeing that the other animals know the existence of things, but man alone has been gifted by nature with the power of observing and discerning their sequence. That “it is day” and “it is light” we may take it that wolves and dogs and birds perceive. But “if it is day it is light”, is [Sidenote: 387] intelligible only to man; he alone can apprehend antecedent and consequent, the enunciation of each and their connexion, their mutual relation and difference, and it is in these that all demonstration has its first and governing principle. Since then Philosophy is concerned with truth, and the light of truth is demonstration, and the principle of demonstration is the conjunctive proposition, the faculty which includes and produces this was rightly consecrated by the wise men to that [Sidenote: B] God who is above all things a lover of truth. Also, the God is a prophet, and prophetic art deals with that future which is to come out of things present or things past. Nothing comes into being without a cause, nothing is known beforehand without a reason. Things which come into being follow things which have been, things which are to be follow things which now are coming into being, all bound in one continuous chain of evolution. Therefore he who knows how to link causes together into one, and combine them into a natural process, can also declare beforehand things

_Which are, which shall be, and which were of old._[56]

Homer did well in putting the present first, the future next, and the past last. Inference starts with the present, and works [Sidenote: C] by the force of the conjunction: “If this is, that was its antecedent”, “If this is, that will be.” As we have said, the technical and logical requirement is knowledge of consequence; sense supplies the minor premiss. Hence, though it may perhaps seem a petty thing to say, I will not shrink from it; the real tripod of truth is the logical process which assumes the relation of consequent to antecedent, then introduces the fact, and so establishes the conclusion. If the Pythian God really finds pleasure in music, and in the voices of swans, and the [Sidenote: D] tones of the lyre, what wonder is it that as a friend to Dialectic, he should welcome and love that part of speech which he sees philosophers use more, and more often, than any other. So Hercules, when he had not yet loosed Prometheus, nor yet conversed with the sophists Chiron and Atlas, but was young and just a Boeotian, first abolished Dialectic, made a mock at the “_If the first then the second_”[57], and bethought him to remove the tripod by force, and to try conclusions with the God for his art. At any rate, as time went on, he also appears to [Sidenote: E] have become a great prophet and a great dialectician.’