"I might," says Origen, "have recourse to the authority of
Aristotle, and the Peripatetics, to make the Pythoness much suspected. I
might extract from the writings of Epicurus and his sectators an
abundance of things to discredit oracles; and I might shew that the
Greeks themselves made no great account of them."
The reputation of oracles was greatly lessened when they became an
artifice of politics. Themistocles, with a design of engaging the
Athenians to quit Athens, in order to be in a better condition to resist
Xerxes, made the Pythoness deliver an oracle, commanding them to take
refuge in wooden walls. Demosthenes said, that the Pythoness
philippised, to signify that she was gained over by Philip's presents.
CESSATION OF ORACLES.
The cessation of oracles is attested by several prophane authors, as
Strabo, Juvenal, Lucien.
Lucan, and others, Plutarch accounts for the cause of it, either that
the benefits of the gods are not eternal, as themselves are; or that the
genii who presided over oracles, are subject to death; or that the
exhalations of the earth had been exhausted.
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