in the Temple of Ammon, a discussion involving abstract consideration of Mathematics and Astronomy. In this conversation, Plutarch's three favourite characters, doubtlessly representing three common types of the day, are again depicted in the pious belief of Cleombrotus, the scepticism of Demetrius, and the judicial pose of the Academic Ammonius. The mention of the Temple of Ammon naturally leads Plutarch to raise the question of the present silence of that famous oracle.[1] Demetrius diverts this particular topic into a general inquiry respecting the comparative failure of oracles all the world over.[2] Bœotia, for example, once so renowned in this respect, suffers from an almost total drought of oracular inspiration. While Demetrius is speaking, the party—Demetrius, Cleombrotus, Ammonius, and Plutarch—had walked from the shrine
- ↑ 411 E.
- ↑ 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).
