Theon, taking up the subject, said, “But these
matters have actually undergone great changes and
innovations, whereas you know that many of the
oracles here have been given out in prose, and those
that concerned no unimportant matters. For, as
Thucydides1 has recorded, when the Spartans consulted the god about their war against the Athenians,
his answer was a promise of victory and power and
that he himself would come to their aid, bidden or
unbidden ; and in another oracle that if they would
not allow Pleistoanax to return from exile, they should
plough with a silver ploughshare.2
“When the Athenians sought advice about their
campaign in Sicily, he directed them to get the
priestess of Athena at Erythrae ; the name which
the woman bore was ‘Quiet.’3
[p. 309]
“When Deinomenes of Sicily asked advice about
his sons, the answer was that all three should rule as
despots ; and when Deinomenes rejoined, ‘To their
sorrow, then, O Lord Apollo,’ the god said that he
granted this also to Deinomenes, and added it to the
response. You all know, of course, that Gelo, while
he was despot, suffered from dropsy ; and likewise
Hiero from gall-stones ; and the third, Thrasybulus,
became involved in seditions and wars, and it was no
long time before he was dethroned.
“Then there was Procles, the despot of Epidaurus,
who did away with many men in a cruel and lawless
manner, and finally put to death Timarchus, who had
come to him from Athens with money, after receiving him and entertaining him with much show of
hospitality. The body he thrust into a basket and sank
in the sea. All this he accomplished through Cleander
of Aegina, and nobody else knew anything about it.
But later, when his affairs were in sad confusion, he
sent here his brother Cleotimus to ask advice in
secret concerning his flight and withdrawal to another
country. The god therefore made answer that he
granted Procles flight and withdrawal to the place in
which he had bidden his friend from Aegina deposit
the basket, or where the stag sheds his horns. The
despot at once understood that the god ordered him
to sink himself in the sea or to bury himself in the
earth (for stags, whenever their horns fall off, bury
them out of sight underground4) ; but he waited for
a short time, and then, when the state of his aflairs
became altogether desperate, he had to leave the
country. And the friends of Timarchus seized him,
slew him, and cast forth his dead body into the sea.
[p. 311]
“Most important of all is the fact that the
decrees through which Lycurgus gave form and
order to the Spartan constitution were given to him
in prose.
“Now Herodotus and Philochorus and Ister, men
who were most assiduous in collecting prophecies in
verse, have quoted countless oracles not in verse ; but
Theopompus, who has given more diligent study to
the oracle than any one man, has strongly rebuked
those who do not believe that in his time the prophetic
priestess used verse in her oracular responses. Afterwards, wishing to prove this, he has found to support
his contention an altogether meagre number of such
oracles, indicating that the others were given out in
prose even as early as that time.