Mistress of Truth[1]. At other times, again, he declares with equal emphasis that no forecast of the future is possible. "Never yet has any mortal man won from the gods a sure token (σύμβολον πιστόν) of an event to come, but forecasts of the future have been doomed to blindness"; τῶν δὲ μελλόντων τετύφλωνται φραδαί[2]. Again: "the sign from Zeus attends not on men with clearness[3]." If Pindar had been asked to explain the apparent contradiction, the answer would probably have been that, when the gods give omens which they intend men to understand, these omens are infallible; but that often such divine tokens are altogether withheld; and that in many instances, when some sign is vouchsafed, but not of a clear kind,—as if to try the spiritual insight of men,—men interpret such a sign amiss. Such a view of divination would have been just such as it was the policy of an oracular priesthood to propagate. Those who worked the machinery of the great oracles were concerned to hold the balance between the doctrine that there is a sacred science of divination, that the gods do inspire their chosen ministers, and the plain lesson of experience, that inferences drawn from oracles or omens were often fallacious[4] Pindar well re-
- ↑ Ol. viii. ad init.
- ↑ Ol. xii. 7.
- ↑ Nem. xi. 43.
- ↑ A suggestive example is the story which Herodotus tells with such delightful, though unconscious, humour. After his fall, Croesus sent to ask at Delphi whether it was the god's usual practice to deceive and ruin generous votaries. The reply was (1) that Apollo had, in fact, done his best; he had persuaded the Moirae to delay the doom of Croesus for some years; (2) that Croesus had misunderstood the oracle which had emboldened him to engage in war with Cyrus.
