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Barring these cases, I must adhere to my resolution of telling no fibs. And I repeat, therefore, but not to be rude, I repeat in Latin Excudent alii meliús spirantia signa, Credo equidem vivos ducent de marmore vultus: Altius ascendent: at tu caput, Eva, memento Sandalo ut infringas referenti oracula tanta.
As Xanthos the Lydian, who is said to have lived before Herodotos, had mentioned Zoroastrianism, there came to light, in those later times, scores of oracles, styled "Oracula Chaldaïca sive Magica," the work of Neo-Platonists who were but very remote disciples of the Median sage.
Edict of Frederick I., 1165: "Vestigia praedecessorum suorum, divorum imperatorum, magni Constantini scilicet et Justiniani et Valentini,... sacras eorum leges,... divina oracula.... Quodcumque imperator constituerit, vel cognoscens decreverit, vel edicto praeceperit, legem esse constat." Frederick II.: "Princeps legibus solutus est."
In one of the grandest hymns of the Roman Catholic Church, composed by Tommaso di Celano at the beginning of the fourteenth century, there is an allusion to her, taken from the well-known acrostic in the last judgment scene in the eighth book of the Oracula Sibyllina "Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sibylla."
For what concerns oracles, it is certain that a good while before the coming of Jesus Christ they had begun to lose their credit; for we see that Cicero troubled to find out the cause of their decay, and he has these words: "Cur isto modo jam oracula Delphis non eduntur, non modo nostro aetate, sed jam diu; ut nihil possit esse contemptius?"
The best edition of all the extant books is that which M. Alexandre issued in Paris, under the name of Oracula Sibyllina. This editor exaggerates the extent of the Christian element in the Sibylline prophecies; but his dissertation on the origin and value of the several portions of the books is exceedingly interesting.
If we were to quote from Juvenal "Delphis et Oracula cessant," in that case, the fathers challenge it as an argument on their side, for that Juvenal described a state of things immediately posterior to Christianity; yet even here the word cessant points to a distinction of cases which already in itself is fatal to their doctrine.
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