e gods will not declare themselves more willingly for
any one than Cato. You have always been befriended by the gods, and may
therefore have the confidence to converse with Jupiter. Inform
yourselves of the destiny of the tyrant and the fate of our country;
whether we are to preserve our liberty, or to lose the fruit of the war;
and you may learn too what that virtue is to which you have been
elevated, and what its reward."

Cato, full of the divinity that was within him, returned to Labrenus an
answer worthy of an oracle: "On what account, Labrenus, would you have
me consult Jupiter? Shall I ask him whether it be better to lose life
than liberty? Whether life be a real good? We have within us, Labrenus,
an oracle that can answer all these questions. Nothing happens but by
the order of God. Let us not require of him to repeat to us what he has
sufficiently engraved in our hearts. Truth has not withdrawn into those
deserts; it is not graved on those sands. The abode of God is in heaven,
in the earth, in the sea, and in virtuous hearts. God speaks to us by
all that we see, by all that surrounds us. Let the inconstant and those
that are subject to waver, according to events, have recourse to
oracles. For my part, I find in nature every thing that can inspire the
most constant resolution. The dastard, as well as the brave, cannot
avoid death. Jupiter cannot tell us more." Cato thus spoke, and quitted
the country without consulting the oracle.

THE ORACLE OF DELPHOS, OR PYTHIAN APOLLO.

Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, and several other authors relate, that a
herd of goats discovered the oracle of Delphos, or of the Pythian
Apollo. When a goat happened to come near enough the cavern to breathe
air that passed out of it, she returned skipping and bounding about, and
her voice articulated some extraordinary sounds; which having been
observed by the keepers, they went to look in, and were seized with a
fury which made them jump about, and foretel future events. Coretas, as
Plutarch tells, was the name of the goat-herd who discovered the oracle.
One of the guardians of Demetrius, coming too near the mouth of the
cavern, was suffocated by the force of the exhalations, and died
suddenly. The orifice or vent-hole of the cave was covered with a tripod
consecrated to Apollo, on which the priestesses, called Pythonesses,[16]
sat, to fill themselves with the prophetic vapour, and to conceive the
spirit of divination, with the fervor tha