The Essays of Francis Bacon/XXXV Of Prophecies

by Francis Bacon

XXXV. Of Prophecies.^[1]

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^[2] 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 naseentur ab illis.^[3]

A prophecy, as it seems, of the Roman empire. Seneca the tragedian hath these verses:

———Venient annis
Sæcula seris, quibus Oceanus
Vineula rerum laxet, et ingens
Pateat Tellus, Tiphysque^[4] novos
Detegat orbes; nec sit terris
Ultima Thule.^[5]

A prophecy of the discovery of America. The daughter of Polycrates^[6] 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 did expound it, that his wife should be barren; but Aristander^[7] the soothsayer told him his wife was with child, because men do not use to seal vessels that are empty.^[8] A phantasm that appeared to M. Brutus^[9] in his tent, said to him, Philippis iterum me videbis.^[10] Tiberius said to Galba, Tu quoque, Galba, degustabis imperium.^[11] In Vespasian's time, there went a prophecy in the East, that those that should come forth of Judea should reign over the world: which though it may be was meant of our Saviour, yet Tacitus expounds it of Vespasian.^[12] Domitian dreamed, the night before he was slain, that a golden head was growing out of the nape of his neck: and indeed the succession that followed him, for many years, made golden times.^[13] Henry the Sixth^[14] of England said of Henry the Seventh, when he was a lad, and gave him water, This is the lad that shall enjoy the crown for which we strive. When I was in France^[15] I heard from one Dr. Pena, that the Queen Mother, who was given to curious arts, caused the King her husband's nativity to be calculated, under a false name; and the astrologer gave a judgment, that he should be killed in a duel; at which the Queen laughed, thinking her husband to be above challenges and duels: but he was slain upon a course of tilt, the splinters of the staff of Montgomery going in at his beaver.^[16] The trivial prophecy, which I heard when I was a child, and queen Elizabeth was in the flower of her years, was,

When hempe is sponne
England's done:

whereby it was generally conceived, that after the princes had reigned which had the principal letters of that word hempe (which were Henry, Edward,^[17] Mary,^[18] Philip,^[19] and Elizabeth), England should come to utter confusion; which, thanks be to God, is verified only in the change of the name; for that the King's style is now no more of England, but of Britain. There was also another prophecy, before the year of eighty-eight, which I do not well understand.

There shall be seen upon a day,
Between the Baugh and the May,^[20]
The black fleet of Norway.
When that that is come and gone,
England build houses of lime and stone,
For after wars shall you have none.

It was generally conceived to be meant of the Spanish fleet^[21] that came in eighty-eight: for that the king of Spain's surname, as they say, is Norway. The prediction of Regiomontanus,^[22]

Octogesimus octavus mirabilis annus,^[23]

was thought likewise accomplished in the sending of that great fleet, being the greatest in strength, though not in number, of all that ever swam upon the sea. As for Cleon's^[24] dream, I think it was a jest. It was, that he was devoured of^[25] a long dragon; and it was expounded of a maker of sausages, that troubled him exceedingly. There are numbers of the like kind; especially if you include dreams, and predictions of astrology. But I have set down these few only of certain credit, for example. My judgment is, that they ought all to be despised; and ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside. Though when I say despised, I mean it as for belief; for otherwise, the spreading or publishing of them is in no sort to be despised. For they have done much mischief; and I see many severe laws made to suppress them. That that hath given them grace, and some credit, consisteth in three things. First, that men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss; as they do generally also of dreams. The second is, that probable conjectures, or obscure traditions, many times turn themselves into prophecies; while the nature of man, which coveteth divination, thinks it no peril to foretell that which indeed they do but collect. As that of Seneca's verse. For so much was then subject to demonstration, that the globe of the earth had great parts beyond the Atlantic, which mought be probably conceived not to be all sea: and adding thereto the tradition in Plato's Timæus,^[26] and his Atlanticus, it mought encourage one to turn it to a prediction. The third and last (which is the great one) is, that almost all of them, being infinite in number, have been impostures, and by idle and crafty brains merely contrived and feigned after the event past.

1. There is no Latin translation of this Essay. S.
2. Pythonissa. Pythoness. Apollo slew the python, the serpent or dragon, whence he was called Pythia. A pythoness was the priestess of Apollo at his temple at Delphi, who gave oracular answers; hence, any woman supposed to have the gift of divination. Saul consulted the witch of En-dor, who said to him: "Moreover, the Lord will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines: and to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me: the Lord also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines." I. Samuel xxviii. 19.
3. The house of Aeneas shall rule over all shores, and his children's children, and those who shall be born of them. Not Homer, but Vergil. Aeneidos Liber III. 97–98.
4. Tiphys was the pilot of the Argo. Thule was an island in the extreme north of Europe, according to some authorities, Iceland, according to others, Mainland, the largest of the Shetland Islands.
5. There shall come an age in ripe years when Ocean shall loose his chains, and a vast continent shall be laid open, and Tiphys shall discover new worlds, and Thule shall not be earth's bound. Seneca. Medea, last words of the Chorus at end of Act ii.
6. Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, 536 (or 532) to 522 B.C., when he was put to death. The story of Polycrates is told by Herodotus. III. Thalia. 39 seq. to 124–125, for the daughter's dream and its interpretation.
7. Aristander of Telmessus was a favorite soothsayer of Alexander the Great, who consulted him on all occasions.
8. Plutarch. Life of Alexander.
9. Marcus Junius Brutus, 85 to 42 B.C., Roman politician and scholar.
10. Thou shalt see me again at Philippi, Plutarch twice tells the story of the phantasm that is said to have appeared to Brutus before the battle of Philippi, once, with remarkable details in the Life of Marcus Brutus, and again, more briefly, in the Life of Caesar. It is well told in English, in Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men. Translated from the Greek by John Dryden and Others. Marcus Brutus. Vol. III. pp. 411–412.
    
    The story was also told by Appian, a generation after Plutarch. See, The Roman History of Appian of Alexandria. Translated from the Greek by Horace White. (The Civil Wars. IV. xvii. 134.) Vol. II. p. 382.
11. Thou too, Galba, shalt taste of empire. Suetonius relates this prophecy as having been said, in Greek, to Augustus. C. Suetoni Tranquilli De XII Caesaribus Liber VII. Serg. Sulpicius Galba. Caput 4.
12. Cornelii Taciti Historiarum Liber V. 13.
13. C. Suetoni Tranquilli De XII Caesaribus Liber VIII. Titus Flavius Domitianus. Caput 23.
14. Henry VI., 1421–1471, King of England, 1422–1461. The strife he alludes to was the Wars of the Roses, 1455 to 1485, between the house of Lancaster (red rose) and house of York (white rose). At the close of Bacon's History of King Henry VII, he relates this story: "One day when King Henry the Sixth (whose innocency gave him holiness) was washing his hands at a great feast and cast his eye upon King Henry, then a young youth, he said; 'This is the lad that shall possess quietly that that we now strive for." Henry VII. united the warring factions by defeating Richard III. at Bosworth Field, Aug. 22, 1485, and marrying, January 18, 1486, Elizabeth of York, thus establishing his right to the crown, as Bacon says, by "three several titles"—by birth, by conquest, and by marriage.
15. When Bacon was in France as a youth Henry III., 1551–1589, was King. The Queen Mother was Catharine de' Medici, 1519–1589. Henry II., 1519–1559, husband of Catharine de' Medici and father of Henry III., was killed at a tournament held in honor of the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth with Philip II. of Spain. Montgomery was the captain of his Scottish guard.
16. Beaver. The movable part of a helmet which covered the face, and was raised or let down to enable the wearer to eat or drink.
17. Edward VI., 1537–1553, King of England, 1547–1553, son of Henry VIII. by his third queen, Jane Seymour.
18. Mary Tudor, called 'Bloody Mary,' 1516–1558, Queen of England, 1553–1558, daughter of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon.
19. Philip II., 1527–1598, King of Spain, 1556–1598, married Queen Mary in 1554.
20. Other persons besides Bacon "do not well understand" this prophecy. Mr. W. Aldis Wright thinks that "the Baugh and the May" are Bass Rock and the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, where some ships of the Armada were wrecked in 1588.
21. The Invincible Armada.
22. Johann Müller, surnamed Regiomontanus, 1436–1476, German mathematician and astronomer, Archbishop of Ratisbon.
23. Eighty-eight, the wonderful year.
24. The Knights of Aristophanes is a satire on Cleon, an Athenian demagogue. In the comedy Demos, or the State, is represented as an old man who has put himself into the hands of a rascally Paphlagonian steward. Nicias and Demosthenes, slaves of Demos, contrive that the Paphlagonian shall be supplanted by a sausage-seller. No sooner has Demos been thus rescued than his youthfulness and his good sense return together. Cleon, who was a tanner's son, was killed at Amphipolis, Macedon, in 422 B.C.
25. Of in this use introduces the agent after a passive verb, and is now superseded by by, except as a biblical, poetic, or stylistic Archaism.

    "I have been told so of many."
    

    Shakspere. As You Like It. iii. 9.

26. Of the Dialogues of Plato, the Republic, Timaeus, and Critias were meant to form a trilogy. The interlocutors of Timaeus are Socrates, Critias, Timaeus the Pythagorean philosopher, and Hermocrates. Critias begins the main line of thought by recalling some of the myths of ancient Athens, and then proposes to regard the ideal state of Socrates in the Republic as this ancient Athenian state. Timaeus is to carry on the discourse with the history of creation down to the birth of mankind, when Critias will make a further application of the story to the ideal Republic. The third dialogue, Critias, is but a fragment relating the legend of prehistoric Athens and Atlantis. In Timaeus and Critias Atlantis is a mythical island somewhere northwest of Africa, which, with its inhabitants, disappeared in a convulsion of nature. Bacon calls the dialogue Critias, 'Atlanticus.'