With all my heart, answered Cleombrotus; but I
shall now say something which will seem more absurd than
any telling I have heretofore offered, although it seems to
be grounded on natural reason; and Plato himself has
touched upon it, not positively affirming it, but offering it
as a probable opinion, although among other philosophers
it has been much cried out against. And seeing that we
are fallen into a free discourse, and that a man cannot light
into better company and a more favorable auditory to test
the story, as if it were foreign coin, I shall therefore tell
you a story which I heard from a stranger, whose acquaintance has cost me no small sum of money in searching after
him in divers countries, whom at length, after much travel,
I found near the Red Sea. He would converse with men
but once a year, all the rest of his time (as he told me) he
spent among the Nymphs, Nomades, and Daemons. He
was very free with me, and extremely obliging. I never
[p. 27]
saw a more graceful person in all my life; and that which
was very strange in him was, that he was never subject to
any disease; once every month he ate the bitter fruit of a
certain medicinal herb. He spake several languages perfectly well; his discourse to me was in the Doric dialect;
his speech was as charming as the sweetest music, and as
soon as ever he opened his mouth to speak, there issued
out of it so sweet and fragrant a breath, that all the place
was filled with it. Now, as to human learning, such as
history, he retained the knowledge thereof all the year;
but as to the gift of divination, he was inspired therewith
only one day in the year, in which he went down to the
sea-side, and there foretold things to come. And thither
resorted to him the princes and great men of all the
country, or else their secretaries, who there attended his
coming at a prefixed day, and then returned. This person
attributed divination to the Daemons, and was well pleased
to hear what we related concerning Delphi. Whatsoever
we told concerning Bacchus and the sacrifices which are
offered to him, he knew it all, saying that, as these were
great accidents which happened to Daemons, so also was
that which was related of the serpent Python. And he
affirmed, that he who slew him was not banished for nine
years, neither did he fly into the Valley of Tempe, but
was driven out of this world into another, from whence,
after nine revolutions of the great years, being returned,
cleansed, and purified, and become a true Phoebus,—that
is to say, clear and bright,—he had at length recovered
the superintendence of the Delphic oracle, which in the
mean time had been committed to the charge of Themis
He said as much concerning what is related of Typhon
and the Titans. For he affirmed, they were the battles of
Daemons against Daemons, and the flights and banishments
of those that had been vanquished, or the punishments
inflicted by the Gods on those who had committed such
[p. 28]
acts as Typhon is said to have done against Osiris, and
Saturn against Uranus, whose honors are much obscured,
or wholly lost, by being translated into another world.
For I know that the Solymeans, who are borderers to the
Lycians, did greatly honor Saturn; but since he killed
their princes, Arsalus, Dryus, and Trosobius, he fled into
some other country, they knew not where, and he now is
in a manner forgotten. But they called these three—
Arsalus, Dryus, and Trosobius—the severe Gods, and the
Lycians do at this day curse people in their names, as well
in private as in public. Several other such like examples
may a man find in the records of the Gods. And if we
call any of the Daemons by the usual and common names
of the Gods, on whom they do depend, it is no marvel at
all, said the stranger; for they like to be called by the
Gods on whom they do depend, and from whom they have
received their honor and power; even as amongst us men
one is named Diius, another Athenae, another Apollonius,
another Dionysius, and still another Hermaeus. And
there are some who have names imposed on them, as
it were, by chance, which yet do well agree with their
tempers; whereas some carry the names of the Gods
which do not at all suit with their weaknesses.
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