Note 271 — Chapter VII

It would be otiose to illustrate by examples the universal and splendid fame of the Delphic oracle. One may perhaps be given which is not commonly quoted. Pliny the elder, who in one passage sneeringly includes the oraculorum præscita among the fulgurum monitus, auruspicum prædicta, atque etiam parva dictu, in auguriis sternutamenta et offensiones pedum, by means of which men have endeavoured to discover hints of divine guidance, nevertheless, in another passage, quotes two wise oracles as having been “velut ad castigandam hominum vanitatem a Deo emissa.” (Lib. ii. cap. 5, and vii. cap. 47.)—The political, religious, and moral influence of the Delphic oracle has been exhaustively dealt with by Wilhelm Götte in the work already cited (see p. 127, note), and by Bouché-Leclerq in the third volume of his “Histoire de la Divination dans l’Antiquité.” On the general question of divination it would, perhaps, be superfluous to consult anything beyond this monumental work, with its exhaustive references and its philosophic style of criticism.