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nowned oracle: "I say, Pyrrhus, that you the Romans can conquer. This might mean, "You, Pyrrhus, can overthrow the Romans," or, "Pyrrhus, the Romans can overthrow you.'

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To another prince, the oracle replied: "You shall go, shall return, never, you shall perish, by war." Where should the comma be placed? It may be "You shall return, you shall never perish in the war, or "You shall return never, you shall perish in the war," which latter turned out to be the fact.

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Philip of Macedon sent to ask the oracle of Delphi if his Persian expedition would prove successful, and received for answer:

The ready victim crowned for death

Before the altar stands.

Philip took it for granted that the "ready victim" was the King of Persia but instead, it proved to be Philip himself.

When the Greeks sent to Delphi to know if they would succeed against the Persians they were told:

Seed-time and harvest, weeping sires shall tell
How thousands fought at Salamis and fell.

But whether the Greeks or the Persians were to be "the weeping sires," deponent stateth not, nor whether the thousands "about to fall" were to be Greeks or Persians.

Aside from Greek oracles, the Ancient world teems with forecasts, divinations and interpretations. One out of dozens when Ahab, King of Israel, was about to wage war on the king of Syria, and asked Micaiah if RamothGilead would fall into his hands, the prophet replied, "Go, for the Lord will deliver into the hands of the king' (I Kings 22:15, 35). Ahab thought that he himself was the king referred to, but the city fell into the hands of the King of Syria.

Greek as well as all other ancient oracles tried of course to tell something that in all probability would come to pass. The success of diviners depended on the proven validity of the answers. It was like betting on a horse race. The ancient tipster, himself a victim to all

manner of hocus-pocus, peered earnestly at bubbles in oil, noted wrinkles on stones, watched the flight of birds, gazed at cloud-forms, studied the stars, and as we said a moment ago, did not fail to consult dwarfs and giants.

The Greek professional fortune-teller would not be of special interest were it not that the cult was national in scope and importance, far-reaching and characteristic of the time. At Kassotis, nymphs of the spring were part of the fraud, and a priestess sat in a cleft in the rock and uttered weird cries. Dodona was supposed to be the home of Zeus, whose spirit spoke to a priestess hidden in an oak. In the soothsayer's arts, laurel bushes were indispensable; there was said to be something magical about the laurel bush. Another background in the divining business was a magical tripod; the spook took her seat on top of this tripod, but the observer was permitted to come close. Her replies varied from wild ravings to information given in rhymed sentences.

The oracles of Asklepios specialized in magical medical treatments. At Dodona, the oracle answered by the motion of leaves or the murmuring of the fountain, and the oracle of Ammon responded by the quaking or shaking of the statue of the god. The most famous oracle of the Greeks was at Delphi. Inquirers first gave a liberal fee, next offered sacrifices, then with laurel crowns on their heads, walked around the oracle and finally inscribed their questions on leaden tablets.

Greek superstition introduced the Pythoness, a woman who must be at least fifty (to avoid scandal, it was said), and this Pythoness was expected to lift the veil of the future. When Alexander the Great returned from the East he brought with him many new soothers' cults; these newly imported diviners for a time fascinated the people with extraordinary divinations.

Rich and poor, old and young, the wise and the foolish were patrons of the Greek oracles; fortune-telling under the guise of religion, was a national characteristic. The renowned Marcus Aurelius, the so-termed Golden Philosopher, was not above his age, and we read that he was intensely interested in the divinations of that master

quack Alexander of Abonoteichos, whom the great emperor often consulted about affairs of state.

At Aphaka, Delphi, Abae, Lelos, Patara, Claros, Poseidon, Olympia, Thebes, Alexandria, and Babylon, the Cult of the Oracle was a customary phase of social and religious life. Each ancient temple had a spot or place (adytum) a sort of holy of holies, usually a pit or underground room, and from this dark hole, lighted by a solitary lamp, the high priest matured his profound answers to the riddles of existence. Strabo tells of the secret room (secos) in Egyptian temples, and Herodotus informs us that at a very remote period barbarian kings of Lydia were already sending costly presents to the oracle of Delphi.

In the time of the Philistines, we find the god Beelzebub (Accarad, Ekron) enthroned, within twentyfive miles of Jerusalem. And we read that King Ochozias (Ahaziah) goes to consult the fly-god Beelzebub (Kings 1:2).

Various Christian martyrs won a crown by fighting against the oracles, for example, St. Apollinaris. Finally, Constantine closed up the more notorious of the Greek shrines. Augustus Cæsar, though himself very superstitious, and an out-and-out pagan, yet had the good sense to place Roman diviners under the ban, and to order 2,000 volumes of divination burnt. The angry disputations went on for centuries. A belief that had come out of remote Antiquity was naturally difficult to eradicate, for we read of oracle-priests already in far off Babylonian times; the word was baru, or "He who sees." His office was an early type of hereditary politico-religious graft. In this regard, as we have seen, Greece early fell in line.

Only a few centuries ago-a short period in the history of man-magicians were taken seriously, looked on as supernatural beings.

Science and education rapidly are eliminating men's gullibility, the basis of many forms of slavery.

CHAPTER XVIII

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF ALEXANDER AND HIS CONQUESTS

The passing of Greece; geographical and so-
cial side of Alexander's loot of Asia; his
overlooked heirs, the human herd, other-
wise the masses.

To begin with, now that we are approaching the Greek political downfall, it is well to repeat that Alexander is to be acclaimed certified son of Jupiter Ammon, and on death, Alexander's body is ordered placed in a casket of pure gold. Spectacular end of a life of brutality and conquest you may say, but let us instead consider earnestly the influence of Alexander's amazing career on the march of the masses. Otherwise, his victories mean nothing especially, except a picturesque page torn from an old book.

Turning now our surprised eyes toward the Far East, we find the hordes of Alexander the Great (334 B. C.) slowly making their toilsome way over mountains and deserts, intent on plundering the vast empire of Darius. Alexander, of vivid imagination and restless ambition, began simply enough. His first idea was merely that Greece should be protected from her traditional Persian enemies; Darius must be overcome; or in other words, the death-knell of Darius would mean loot for Alexander. Come, why not? Human nature being what it is, why regild old-time atrocities? But as time went on, Alexander battled so successfully-at Cilicia, at the Pass of Gordium, at Issus-that in a spirit of adventure the Greek captain resolved to continue his tour of force near and far; east and north he made his victorious way, capturing many coast cities; for a moment he turned aside to receive the submission of Egypt; returned north and east; routed Darius at Arbala; marched into the interior; took Babylon and Susa, the latter the great vault of

Darius' treasures; overcame Persepolis, capital of Persia; invaded the remote lands of Scythians, along the Jaxartus; named a town after his favorite war horse, Bucephalus; and heading south over a seemingly interminable route finally set up altars beyond the Indus River; here, weary of the game of war Alexander's troops mutinied and refused to go farther; on which he ordered barges built; part of the army sailed down the Hydaspes to the Indus, thence to the Indian Ocean and back to the Euphrates by way of the Persian Gulf; other troops marching west, kept about fifty miles from the coast-line.

At last, the great Greek captain, after an absence of ten years, found himself once more in Babylon. Fame had preceded him. Embassies from Gaul, Italy, Egypt, even messengers from Ethiopian tribes, as well as from remote Caspian hinterland, together with royal visitors from Spain and from far-off islands in unknown parts of the sea-all hailed Alexander as conqueror of the world.

Alas, time had wrought many changes. Alexander, who had begun his battles in a conditional way, and had thought to return home after a brief campaign or two, had it seems, little by little forgotten all about his petty kingdom of Greece, for the preservation of which he had originally set forth against traditional Persian enemies. Of a sudden he saw that Greece was indeed too small to bother with; the great captain cared little to see his native shores again; for his surprising adventures among dark-skinned tribes of the Far East had made a deep and permanent transformation in his mode of life, and in his ideas as well. On a new raid into Arabia (323 B. C.) Alexander died suddenly-some say of poison—and with him perished his vast scheme for the mastery of the world. The conqueror's body placed in a golden casket was taken by his staff-commander Ptolemy (Sotor) remote leagues across the Arabian desert; and by Egyptian priests Alexander's name was now enrolled among the gods-his memory worshipped as son of Jupiter Ammon. Here once more we behold the singular spectacle, men

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