πταρμὸς ἤ (Ed. Teub.), for ἐφαρμόσει, is attractive, but it seems better not to anticipate the word. Footnote 34: ἐπὶ ῥειτοῖς is K. O. Müller’s reading for ἐπὶ ρητις της of the MSS. See Wordsworth’s _Athens and Attica_, p. 9. Footnote 35: Fr. 284 (the well-known fragment of the _Autolycus_ about Athletes) l. 22. Footnote 36: Cp. _Od._ 1, 170, &c. Footnote 37: _Od._ 1, 27. Footnote 38: See _Life of Nicias_, c. 3. Footnote 39: Aeschylus, _Prometheus_, 545. Footnote 40: Cp. Bacchylides, Fr. 37 (_Life of Numa_, c. 4): ‘Broad is the road’, i. e. ‘there is room for divergent opinions.’ Footnote 41: Compare _Life of Coriolanus_, c. 32, p. 229, with this difficult passage. Footnote 42: Of the participle so translated only the termination remains. Reiske’s μεταλλευόντων well completes this fine image. Footnote 43: This word is not in the Greek text. Footnote 44: See note on the Myths of Plutarch, p. 315. Footnote 45: Lucian (Musc. Encom. c. 7) tells the same story of Hermodorus. Plutarch has probably made a slip, as elsewhere, in names. See p. 99. Footnote 46: _Il._ 7, 44-5. Footnote 47: l. 53. Footnote 48: i. e. in the Wooden Horse, _Od._ 11, 526-32. Footnote 49: Perhaps rather ‘the Laconizing party’, as the Teubner editor suggests. THREE PYTHIAN DIALOGUES INTRODUCTION The three Dialogues of Plutarch entitled: I. On the E at Delphi, II. Why the Pythia does not now give her Oracles in Verse, III. On the cessation of the Oracles, may be conveniently treated as a group, and assumed to be a collection of those ‘Pythian Dialogues’ which the author sent to his friend Serapion. I and II certainly are so, III has a separate dedication. Other Dialogues, e. g. that on _Delays in Divine Punishment_, are also records of conversations which took place at Delphi; but these three are concerned with questions suggested by the temple and prophetic office of Apollo, as to which they give much curious information. If they leave us unsatisfied as to matters of still deeper interest, and tell us nothing about the policy of Delphi in the Persian wars, the counsel given to Orestes, which is fiercely controversial matter, or the popular feeling towards the oracle represented in the _Ion_ of Euripides, this is only what we learn to put up with in reading Greek books. Indeed it is of a piece with the purposes imputed to Apollo himself, who sets us problems but does not supply their solution. ‘The king whose oracle is in Delphi neither tells nor conceals, but signifies.’