among the heathens, was the answer which the gods were supposed to give to those who consulted them upon any affair of importance. It is also used for the god who was thought to give the answer, and the place where it was given.
The credit of oracles was so great, that in all doubts and disputes their determinations were held sacred and inviolable: whence vast numbers flocked to them for advice about the management of their affairs; and no business of any consequence was undertaken, scarce any peace concluded, any war waged, or any new form of government instituted, without the advice and approbation of some oracle. The answers were usually given by the intervention of the priest or priests of the god who was consulted; and generally expressed in such dark and unintelligible phrases, as might be easily wrested to prove the truth of the oracle, whatever was the event. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that the priests who delivered them were in the highest credit and esteem, and that they improved this reputation greatly to their advantage. They accordingly allowed no man to consult the gods, before he had offered costly sacrifices, and made rich presents to them. And to keep up the veneration for their oracles, and to prevent their being taken unprepared, they admitted persons to consult the gods only at certain stated times; and sometimes they were so cautious, that the greatest personages could obtain no answer at all. Thus Alexander himself was peremptorily denied by the pythia, or priests of Apollo, till she was by downright force obliged to ascend the tripod; when, being unable to resist any longer, she cried out, Thou art invincible: and these words were accepted instead of a farther oracle.
Of the ambiguity of oracles, the following, out of a great many examples, may be mentioned. Croesus having received from the pythoness this answer, That by passing the river Halys, he would destroy a great empire; he understood it to be the empire of his enemy, whereas he destroyed his own.—The oracle consulted by Pyrrhus gave him an answer, which might be equally understood of the victory of Pyrrhus, and the victory of the Romans his enemies:
Ato te, Macedon, Romanos vincere posse.
The equivocation lies in the construction of the Latin tongue, which cannot be rendered in English.—The pythoness advised Croesus to guard against the mule. The king of Lydia understood nothing of the oracle, which denoted Cyrus descended from two different nations; from the Medes, by Mandana his mother, the daughter of Artayges; and from the Persians, by his father Cambyses, whose race was by far less grand and illustrious.—Nero had for answer, from the oracle of Delphos, that seventy-three might prove fatal to him. He believed he was safe from all danger till that age; but, finding himself deserted by every one, and hearing Galba proclaimed emperor, who was 73 years of age, he was sensible of the deceit of the oracle.
When men began to be better instructed by the lights philosophy had introduced into the world, the false oracles insensibly lost their credit. Chrysippus filled an entire volume with false or doubtful oracles. Oenomaus, to be revenged of some oracle that had deceived him, made a compilation of oracles, to shew their ridicule and vanity. Eusebius has preserved some some fragments of this criticism on oracles by Oenomaus. "I might (says Origen) have recourse to the authority of Aristotle and the Peripatetics, to make the Pythones much suspected; I might extract from the writings of Epicurus and his sectators an abundance of things to discredit oracles; and I might shew that the Greeks themselves made no great account of them."
The reputation of oracles was greatly lessened when they became an artifice of politics. Themistocles, with a design of engaging the Athenians to quit Athens, and to embark, in order to be in a better condition to resist Xerxes, made the Pythones deliver an oracle, commanding them to take refuge in wooden walls. Demosthenes said, that the Pythones Philip's pried; to signify that he was gained over by Philip's pretents.
The cessation of oracles is attested by several profane authors; as Strabo, Juvenal, Lucan, and others. Plutarch accounts for the cause of it, either that the benefits of the Gods are not eternal as themselves are; or that the genii, who presided over oracles, are subject to death; or that the exhalations of the earth had been exhausted. It appears that the last reason had been alleged in the time of Cicero, who ridicules it in his second book of Divination, as if the spirit of prophecy, supposed to be excited by subterraneous effluvia, had evaporated by length of time, as wine or pickle by being long kept.
Suidas, Nicephorus, and Cedrenus, relate, that Augustus, having consulted the oracle of Delphi, could obtain no other answer but this: "The Hebrew child whom all the Gods obey, drives me hence, and sends me back to hell; get out of this temple without speaking one word." Suidas adds, that Augustus dedicated an altar in the Capitol with this inscription, "To the eldest Son of God." Notwithstanding these testimonies, the answer of the oracle of Delphi to Augustus seems very suspicious. Cedrenus cites Eusebius for this oracle, which is not now found in his works; and Augustus's peregrination into Greece was 18 years before the birth of Christ.
Suidas and Cedrenus give an account also of an ancient oracle delivered to Thulis, a king of Egypt, which they say is well authenticated. The king having consulted the oracle of Serapis, to know if there ever was, or would be, one so great as himself, received this answer: "First, God, next the Word, and the Spirit with them. They are equally eternal, and make but one, whose power will never end. But thou, mortal, go hence, and think that the end of the life of man is uncertain."
Van Dale, in his treatise of oracles, does not believe that they ceased at the coming of Christ. He relates several examples of oracles consulted till the death of Theodosius the Great. He quotes the laws of the emperors Theodosius, Gratian, and Valentinian, against those who consulted oracles, as a certain proof that the superstition of oracles still subsisted in the time of those emperors.
According to others, the opinion of those who believe that the demons had no share in the oracles, and that the coming of Messiah made no change in them, and the contrary opinion of those who pretend that the incarnation of the Word imposed a general silence on all oracles, should be equally rejected. They allege, that two sorts of oracles ought to be distinguished: the one dictated by the spirits of darkness, who deceived men by their obscure and doubtful answers; the other, the pure artifice and cheat of the priests of false divinities. As to the oracles given out by demons, the reign of Satan was destroyed by the coming of the Saviour; truth shut the mouth of lies; but Satan continued his old craft among idolaters. All the devils were not forced to silence at the same time by the coming of the Messiah; it was on particular occasions that the truth of Christianity, and the virtue of Christians, imposed silence on the devils. St Athanasius tells the Pagans, that they have been witnesses themselves that the sign of the cross puts the devils to flight, silences oracles, and dissipates enchantments. This power of silencing oracles, and putting the devils to flight, is also attested by Arnobius, Lactantius, Prudentius, Minutius Felix, and several others. Their testimony is a certain proof that the coming of the Messiah had not imposed a general silence on oracles.
Plutarch relates, that the pilot Thamus heard a voice in the air, crying out, "The great Pan is dead;" whereupon Eusebius observes, that the accounts of the death of the demons were frequent in the reign of Tiberius, when Christ drove out the wicked spirits.
The same judgment, it is said, may be passed on oracles as on possessions. It was on particular occasions, by the divine permission, that the Christians cast out devils, or silenced oracles, in the presence, and even by the confession, of the Pagans themselves. And thus it is we should, it seems, understand the passages of St Jerom, Eusebius, Cyril, Theodoret, Prudentius, and other authors, who said that the coming of Christ had imposed silence on the oracles.
As to the second sort of oracles, which were pure artifices and cheats of the priests of false divinities, and which probably exceeded the number of those that immediately proceeded from demons, they did not cease till idolatry was abolished, though they had lost their credit for a considerable time before the coming of Christ. It was concerning this more common and general sort of oracles that Minutius Felix said, they began to discontinue their responses, according as men began to be more polite. But, however decried oracles were, impostors always found dupes, the grossest cheats having never failed.
Daniel discovered the imposture of the priests of Bel, who had a private way of getting into the temple to take away the offered meats, and who made the king believe that the idol consumed them.—Mundus, being in love with Paulina, the eldest of the priestesses of Isis, went and told her, that the god Anubis, being passionately fond of her, commanded her to give him a meeting. She was afterwards shut up in a dark room, where her lover Mundus, whom she believed to be the god Anubis, was concealed. This imposture having been discovered, Tiberius ordered those detestable priests and priestesses to be crucified, and with them Idea, Mundus's free-woman, who had conducted the whole intrigue. He also commanded the temple of Isis to be levelled with the ground, and her statue to be thrown into the Tiber; and, as to Mundus, Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, not only destroyed the temples of the false gods, but discovered the cheats of the priests, by shewing that the statues, some of which were of brafs, and others of wood, were hollow within, and led into dark passages made in the wall.
Lucian, in discovering the impostures of the false prophet Alexander, says, that the oracles were chiefly afraid of the subtleties of the Epicureans and Christians. The false prophet Alexander sometimes feigned himself feized with a divine fury, and by means of the herb fopewort, which he chewed, frothed at the mouth in so extraordinary a manner, that the ignorant people attributed it to the strength of the god he was professed by. He had long before prepared a head of a dragon made of linen, which opened and shut its mouth by means of a horse-hair. He went by night to a place where the foundations of a temple were digging; and, having found water, either of a spring, or rain that had settled there, he hid in it a goose-egg, in which he had inclosed a little serpent that had been just hatched. The next day, very early in the morning, he came quite naked into the street, having only a scarf about his middle, holding in his hand a scythe, and tossing about his hair as the priests of Cybele; then getting a-top of a high altar, he said that the place was happy to be honoured by the birth of a god.—Afterwards, running down to the place where he had hid the goose-eggs, and going into the water, he began to sing the praises of Apollo and Æsculapius, and to invite the latter to come and shew himself to men. With these words, he dips a bowl into the water, and takes out a mysterious egg, which had a god inclosed in it; and when he had it in his hand, he began to say that he held Æsculapine. Whilst all were eager to have a sight of this fine mystery, he broke the egg, and the little serpent starting out, twisted itself about his fingers.
These examples shew clearly, that both Christians and Pagans were so far agreed as to treat the greater number of oracles as purely human impostures.—That, in fact, all of them were so, will be concluded by those who give equal credit to demoniacal inspiration, and demoniacal possession. See the article Possession (Demoniacal).