396 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"4 S. VII. Mat 14, '59. 



gods, in modern times to the wiles of the devil. 

 The predictions of this sort are so numerous as to 

 form a well-characterised class : the following ex- 

 amples may be added to those formerly adduced 

 from antiquity : — 



1. An oracle from Dodona advised the Athe- 

 nians to colonise Sicily. The allusion was to a 

 hill near Athens ; but the Athenians understood 

 the advice to refer to the island, and undertook 

 the fatal expedition to Syracuse. This statement 

 occurs in Paus. viii. 11. 6., from whom it is re- 

 peated by Suidas in 'Avvifias ; but no mention of 

 the circumstance occurs in Thucydides, or other 

 historian of the period ; and it may be safely re- 

 garded as fabulous, or at least as insignificant. 



2. A prophecy had warned Lysander to beware 

 of the resounding Hoplite and the deceitful ser- 

 pent. He was killed at Haliartus, near a stream 

 called the Hoplites, and by a man who bore a 

 serpent as an emblem on his shield. (Piut. Lys, 

 29. ; JDe Pyth. Orac. 27.) 



3. A Delphic oracle had cautioned Epaminondas 

 to beware of the pelagos, which he understood in 

 its obvious sense, and he accordingly abstained 

 from embarking in any ship ; but he met his 

 death in a grove so called, to which, and not to 

 the sea, the god alluded. (Paus. viii. 11. 6.) 



4. The oracle of Trophonius warned Philip to 

 beware of the harma ; whence he tools* care never 

 to mount a chariot. There is a double story re- 

 specting the fulfilment of this prediction. Some 

 said that a chariot was engraved in ivory upon 

 the handle of the sword with which he was mur- 

 dered by Pausanias : others that he was slain 

 near a Theban lake named Harma. (See ^lian, 

 V. H. iii. 45. ; Cic. De Fat. 3. ; Val. Max. i. 8. 

 ext. 9.) The assassination of Philip at JEgae in 

 Macedonia is one of the best authenticated facts 

 in Greek history ; the explanation, therefore, 

 which supposes him to have been killed near a 

 lake in Boeotia, is inadmissible. 



5. Selenus Nicator was informed by an oracle 

 that if he approached Argos he would meet his 

 death. He avoided all the known towns of that 

 name ; but in going' from the Hellespont to Lysi- 

 machia, in 280 b.c, he passed by a conspicuous 

 altar, and learned that, either from the Argonauts 

 or from the Greeks sailing to Troy, it was called 

 Argos. N'ear this altar he was assassinated by 

 Ptolemy. (Appian, Syr. 63. ; Droysen, Nachfol- 

 ger Alexanders, p. 642.) 



6. Eumelus and Satyrus were sons of Pary- 

 sades, King of the Bosporus, Satyrus was warned 

 to beware of a /uDs, lest it should kill him. He 

 allowed none of his slaves or attendants to bear 

 that name ; he was even afraid of mice, and gave 

 orders for their destruction. He died of a spear- 

 wound in the arm ; and the prediction was inter- 

 preted of fivs in the sense of muscle. Eumelus 

 was warned to beware of a portable house. He 



caused the foundation and roof of every house to 

 be examined by his slaves before he entered it ; 

 but he was overturned in a covered waggon, and 

 died of the injuries which he received in the fall 

 (311 B.C.). Diodorus speaks of these prophecies 

 with contempt, but says that they were believed by 

 the natives, (xx. 26.) 



7. A grammarian named Daphnitas, Daphitas, 

 or Daphidas, in order to deceive the Delphic ora- 

 cle, inquired whether he should find his horse ; 

 the fact being that he had never possessed one. 

 The oracle answered that he would find the horse, 

 but that he would fall from it and die. Having 

 lampooned King Attalus, he was, by the royal 

 command, thrown from a rock of that name. (See 

 Val. Max. i. 8. ext. 8. ; Cic. De Fat. 3. ; Suid. in 

 Aa(f>lTas.) Strabo, xiv. 1. 39., varies the story by 

 representing him as having been warned against 

 a thorax, and having been crucified on a moun- 

 tain so called. The story does not specify which 

 Attalus is meant ; the three kings of Pergamus 

 who bore that name reigned from 241 to 133 b.c. 



8. Antigonus, the brother of Aristobulus, was 

 killed by the royal body-guards, through a strata- 

 gem of the queen, in a dark passage near the 

 tower of Strato, adjoining the temple of Jeru- 

 salem, in 106 B.C. Judas, an Essene, had pre- 

 dicted that Antigonus would die on that day at 

 the tower of Strato, conceiving that the town of 

 that name on the coast of Palestine, afterwards 

 called Caesarea, was meant ; and was surprised at 

 hearing that the place of his death bore the same 

 name. (See Joseph. Ant. xiii. 11. 2.; Bell. Jud. 

 i. 3. 5. ; Smith's Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Geog., art. 

 C^SAREA, No. 4.) 



9. Julian the Emperor saw at Antioch in a 

 dream a young man with auburn hair, who told 

 him that he was fated to die in Phrygia. When 

 he was mortally wounded on his retreat from 

 Assyria, he inquired the name of the place, and 

 being informed that it was called Phrygia, he ex- 

 claimed, " O Sun, thou hast killed Julian." (See 

 Ammian. Marcellin. xxv. 3. 9. ; Zonar. xiii. 3. ; 

 and compare the barbarous version of this story 

 in Joannes Malalas, p. 332., ed. Bonn, and the 

 Paschal Chronicle, vol. i. p. 550., ed. Bonn, where 

 the vision is said to have been at Ctesiphon, and 

 the place of Julian's death Rhasia or Asia.) The 

 date of Julian's death is 363 a.b. 



10. The Emperor Valens was warned in a dream 

 that he would die at Mimas. Upon inquiry he 

 learnt that Mimas was a mountain in Asia Minor, 

 mentioned in the Odyssey (iii. 172.) ; and he 

 treated the warning with contempt, as a deceitful 

 vision. But in a campaign with the Scythians 

 he was defeated, and took refuge in a magazine 

 filled with straw : the building was set on fire by 

 the enemy, and all the inmates perished. When 

 search was afterwards 'made for his body, an in- 

 scription was found in memory of Mimas, a Mace- 



