with a view to this or that undertaking, or to consult the oracle with the same view, are familiar expressions[404] embodied in the language. Nor could any man set about a scheme with comfort, until he had satisfied himself in some manner or other that the gods were favorable to it. [403] See the argument of Cicero in favor of divination, in the first book of his valuable treatise De Divinatione. Chrysippus, and the ablest of the stoic philosophers, both set forth a plausible theory demonstrating, _a priori_, the probability of prophetic warnings deduced from the existence and attributes of the gods: if you deny altogether the occurrence of such warnings, so essential to the welfare of man, you must deny either the existence, or the foreknowledge, or the beneficence, of the gods (c. 38). Then the veracity of the Delphian oracle had been demonstrated in innumerable instances, of which Chrysippus had made a large collection: and upon what other supposition could the immense credit of the oracle be explained (c. 19)? “Collegit innumerabilia oracula Chrysippus, et nullum sine locuplete teste et auctore: quæ quia nota tibi sunt, relinquo. Defendo unum hoc: nunquam illud oraculum Delphis tam celebre clarumque fuisset, neque tantis donis refertum omnium populorum et regum, nisi omnis ætas oraculorum illorum veritatem esset experta.... Maneat id, quod negari non potest, nisi omnem historiam perverterimus, multis sæculis verax fuisse id oraculum.” Cicero admits that it had become less trustworthy in his time, and tries to explain this decline of prophetic power: compare Plutarch, De Defect. Oracul. [404] Xenophon, Anabas. vii. 8, 20: Ὁ δὲ Ἀσιδάτης ἀκούσας, ὅτι πάλιν ~ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν~ τεθυμένος εἴη ὁ Ξενοφὼν, ἐξαυλίζεται, etc. Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 2, 22: μὴ χρηστηριάζεσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐφ᾽ Ἑλλήνων πολέμῳ,—compare Iliad, vii. 450. The disposition here adverted to is one of those mental analogies pervading the whole Hellenic nation, which Herodotus indicates. And the common habit among all Greeks, of respectfully listening to the oracle of Delphi, will be found on many occasions useful in maintaining unanimity among men not accustomed to obey the same political superior. In the numerous colonies especially, founded by mixed multitudes from distant parts of Greece, the minds of the emigrants were greatly determined towards cordial coöperation by their knowledge that the expedition had been directed, the œkist indicated, and the spot either chosen or approved, by Apollo of Delphi. Such in most cases was the fact: that god, according to the conception of the Greeks, “takes delight always in the foundation of new cities, and himself in person lays the first stone.”[405] [405] Callimach. Hymn. Apoll. 55, with Spanheim’s note; Cicero, De Divinat. i. 1.