gave occasion to remark that, it was very
surprising that Apollo, who presided over the choir of the muses, should
inspire his priestess no better. But Plutarch informs us, that it was not
the god who composed the verses of the oracle. He inflamed the Pythia's
imagination, and kindled in her soul that living light, which unveiled all
futurity to her. The words she uttered in the heat of her enthusiasm,
having neither method nor connection, and coming only by starts, if that
expression may be used, from the bottom of her stomach, or rather(94) from
her belly, were collected with care by the prophets, who gave them
afterwards to the poets to be turned into verse. These Apollo left to
their own genius and natural talents; as we may suppose he did the Pythia
when she herself composed verses, which, though not often, happened
sometimes. The substance of the oracle was inspired by Apollo, the manner
of expressing it was the priestess's own: the oracles were however often
given in prose.

The general characteristics of oracles were ambiguity,(95) obscurity, and
convertibility, (if I may use that expression,) so that one answer would
agree with several various, and sometimes directly opposite, events. By
the help of this artifice, the daemons, who of themselves are not capable
of knowing futurity, concealed their ignorance, and amused the credulity
of the Pagan world. When Croesus was upon the point of invading the Medes,
he consulted the oracle of Delphi upon the success of that war, and was
answered, that by passing the river Halys, he would ruin a great empire.
What empire, his own, or that of his enemies? He was to guess that; but
whatever the event might be, the oracle could not fail of being in the
right. As much may be said upon the same god's answer to Pyrrhus:

Aio te, AEacida, Romanos vincere posse.

I repeat it in Latin, because the equivocality, which equally implies,
that Pyrrhus could conquer the Romans, and the Romans Pyrrhus, will not
subsist in a translation. Under the cover of such ambiguities, the god
eluded all difficulties, and was never in the wrong.

It must, however, be confessed, that sometimes the answer of the oracle
was clear and circumstantial. I have related, in the history of Croesus,
the stratagem he made use of to assure himself of the veracity of the
oracle, which was, to demand of it, by his ambassador, what he was doing
at a certain time prefixed. The oracle of Delphi replied, in ve