parent helped much toward the solution of
this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle,
when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the
affecting story of Solon and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with
an acute domestic affliction because he thought himself the happiest of
mankind--the gods not suffering any one to be arrogant except
themselves; and the warning of Solon is made to recur to Croesus after
he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative of Herodotus. To
the same vein of thought belongs the story, just recounted, of the
relations of Croesus with the Delphian oracle. An account is provided,
satisfactory to the religious feelings of the Greeks, how and why he was
ruined--but nothing less than the overruling and omnipotent Moerae
could be invoked to explain so stupendous a result. It is rarely that
these supreme goddesses--or hyper-goddesses, since the gods themselves
must submit to them--are brought into such distinct light and action.
Usually they are kept in the dark, or are left to be understood as the
unseen stumbling block in cases of extreme incomprehensibility; and it
is difficult clearly to determine (as in the case of some complicated
political constitutions) where the Greeks conceived sovereign power to
reside, in respect to the government of the world. But here the
sovereignity of the Moerae, and the subordinate agency of the gods, are
unequivocally set forth. The gods are still extremely powerful, because
the Moerae comply with their requests up to a certain point, not
thinking it proper to be wholly inexorable; but their compliance is
carried no farther than they themselves choose; nor would they, even in
deference to Apollo, alter the original sentence of punishment for the
sin of Gyges in the person of his fifth descendant--sentence, moreover,
which Apollo himself had formerly prophesied shortly after the sin was
committed, so that, if the Moerae had listened to his intercession on
behalf of Croesus, his own prophetic credit would have been
endangered. Their unalterable resolution has predetermined the ruin of
Croesus, and the grandeur of the event is manifested by the
circumstance that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upon them to alter
it, or to grant more than a three years' respite. The religious element
must here be viewed as giving the form, the historical element as giving
the matter only, and not the whole matter, of the story. These t