Note 295 — Chapter VII

The cessation of the oracles was only comparative. Wolff, in his De Novissima Oraculorum Ætate, examines the history of each oracle separately, and comes to a conclusion that the oracles were not silent even in the age of Porphyry (born A.D. 232): “Nondum obmutuisse numina fatidica Porphyrii tempore. Vera enim ille deorum responsa censuit; quæ Christianis opposuit, ne soli doctrinam divinitus accepisse viderentur.” Strabo alludes to the failure of the oracle at Dodona, and adds that the rest were silent too (Strabo: vii. 6, 9). Cicero alludes with great contempt to the silence of the Delphic oracles in his own times: “Sed, quod caput est, cur isto modo jam oracula Delphis non eduntur, non modo nostrâ ætate, sed jamdiu; ut modo nihil possit esse contemtius? Hoc loco quum urgentur evanuisse aiunt vetustate vim loci ejus, unde anhelitus ille terræ fieret, quo Pythia, mente incitata, oracula ederet.... Quando autem ista vis evanuit? An postquam homines minus creduli esse cœperunt” (De Div., ii. 57). When Cicero wrote this passage he had probably forgotten the excellent advice which the oracle had once given him when he went to Delphi to consult it (Plut.: Cicero, cap. 5).