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At this Ammonius gently smiled, supposing Lamprias
to have delivered an opinion of his own, but to have
feigned that he had heard the story from others, lest he
might be obliged to give an account of it. But another
of those that were present said that this had some affinity
with what a certain Chaldean stranger had lately babbled,
to wit, that there are in the alphabet seven letters rendering a perfect sound of themselves, and in the heavens
seven stars moved by their own proper motion, not bound
or linked to that of the others; that E is from the beginning the second in order of the vowels, and the sun the
second of the planets, or next to the moon, and that the
Greeks do unanimously (so to speak) repute Apollo to be
the same with the sun. But these things, said he, wholly
savor of his counting-table and his trifling. But Lamprias,
it seems, was not sensible of his having stirred up all
those of the temple against his discourse. For there was
not a man of the Delphians who knew any thing of what
he said; but they all alleged the common and current
opinion, holding that neither the sight nor the sound of
this writing, but the word alone as it was written, contained some symbol or secret signification.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
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