‘And yet the school of Aristotle1 would make
it appear that exhalation is the author of all these
changes that have taken place in the earth, and that
things of this nature must of necessity follow with it
in disappearing, changing their locality, and bursting
forth once more in full vigour. Plainly the same sober
opinion is to be held regarding the spirits that inspire
prophecy ; the power that they possess is not everlasting and ageless, but is subject to changes. For
excessive rains most likely extinguish them, and they
probably are dispersed by thunderbolts, and especially, when the earth is shaken beneath by an earthquake and suffers subsidence and ruinous confusion
in its depths, the exhalations shift their site or find
completely blind outlets, as in this place they say
that there are still traces of that great earthquake
which overthrew the city. And in Orchomenos they
relate that a pestilence raged and many persons died
of it, and the oracle of Teiresias become altogether
obsolescent and even to this day remains idle and
mute. And if a like fate has befallen those in Cilicia,
as we have been told, there is nobody, Demetrius,
who could give us more certain information than you.’
[p. 481]
1 Cf. Aristotle, Meteorologica, i. 3 (340 b 29); Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 19 (38); ii. 57 (117).