Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
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Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
by the doctor ripe for dying, it became a question whether the prophet
were a false prophet, or the doctor a false doctor. However, in such a
case, it is something to have a collision of opinions--a prophet against
a doctor. But, behold, it soon transpired that there was no collision at
all. It was the Jerusalem chamber, occupied by the king as a bed-room,
to which the prophet had alluded. Upon which his majesty reconciled
himself at once to the ugly necessity at hand
"In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."
The last case--that of oracular establishments turning out to be
accomplices of thieves--is one which occurred in Egypt on a scale of
some extent; and is noticed by Herodotus. This degradation argued great
poverty in the particular temples: and it is not at all improbable that,
amongst a hundred Grecian Oracles, some, under a similar temptation,
would fall into a similar disgrace. But now, as regards even this
lowest extremity of infamy, much more as regards the qualified sort of
disrepute attending the three minor cases, one single distinction puts
all to rights. The Greeks never confounded the temple, and household of
officers attached to the temple service, with the dark functions of the
presiding god. In Delphi, besides the Pythia and priests, with their
train of subordinate ministers directly billeted on the temple, there
were two orders of men outside, Delphic citizens, one styled _Arizeis_,
the other styled _Hosioi_,--a sort of honorary members, whose duty was
probably _inter alia_, to attach themselves to persons of corresponding
rank in the retinues of the envoys or consulting clients, and doubtless
to collect from them, in convivial moments, all the secrets or general
information which the temple required for satisfactory answers. If they
personally went too far in their intrigues or stratagems of decoy, the
disgrace no more recoiled on the god, than, in modern times, the vices
or crimes of a priest can affect the pure religion at whose altars he
officiates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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