Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 3.djvu/103

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

dations are like sacrifices ivithout salt; and but the painted sepulchres of ahns, which soon will putrefy and corrupt inwardly. Therefore measure not thine advancements by quantity, but frame them by measure: and defer not charities till death; for, certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's than of his own.


XXXV

OF PROPHECIES

I mean not to speak of divine prophecies; nor of heathen oracles; nor of natural predictions; but only of prophecies that have been of certain memory, and from hidden causes. Saith the Pythonissa[1] to Saul, To-morrow thou and thy son shall be with me. Homer hath these verses:

At domus Æneæ cunctis dominabitur oris,
Et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis.

[But the house of Æneas shall reign in all lands, and his children's children, and their generations.] A prophecy, as it seems, of the Roman empire. Seneca the tragedian hath these verses:

————Venient annis

Sæicula seris, quibus Oceanus

Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens

Pateat Tellus, Tiphysque novos

Detegat orbes; nee sit terris

Ultima Thule

[There shall come a time when the bands of ocean shall be loosened, and the vast earth shall be laid open; another Tiphys shall disclose new worlds, and lands shall be seen beyond Thule]: a prophecy of the discovery of America. The daughter of Polycrates dreamed that Jupiter bathed her father, and Apollo anointed him; and it came to pass that he was crucified in an open place, where the sun made his body run with sweat, and the rain washed it. Philip of Macedon dreamed he sealed up his wife's belly; whereby he

  1. Witch of Endor.