_O foolish_ Crœsus _who hast made this choice, To know when thou shalt hear thy dumb Son's voice; Better he still were mute, would nothing say, When he first speaks, look for a dismal day._ This, if he contrived not the time and the means of his recovery, was no ordinary divination: yet how to make out the verity of the story some doubt may yet remain. For though the causes of deafness and dumbness were removed, yet since words are attained by hearing, and men speak not without instruction, how he should be able immediately to utter such apt and significant words, as Ἄνθρωπε, μὴ κτεῖνε Κροῖσον,[279] _O Man slay not_ Crœsus, it cannot escape some doubt, since the Story also delivers, that he was deaf and dumb, that he then first began to speak, and spake all his life after. [279] Herod. _l._ 1. 85. Now, if _Crœsus_ had consulted again for a clearer exposition of what was doubtfully delivered, whether the Oracle would have spake out the second time or afforded a clearer answer, some question might be made from the examples of his practice upon the like demands. So when the Spartans had often fought with ill success against the _Tegeates_, they consulted the Oracle what God they should appease, to become victorious over them. The answer was, _that they should remove the Bones of_ Orestes. Though the words were plain, yet the thing was obscure, and like finding out the Body of _Moses_. And therefore they once more demanded in what place they should find the same; unto whom he returned this answer, _When in the Tegean Plains a place thou find'st Where blasts are made by two impetuous Winds, Where that that strikes is struck, blows follow blows, There doth the Earth_ Orestes _Bones enclose._ Which obscure reply the wisest of _Sparta_ could not make out, and was casually unriddled by one talking with a Smith who had found large Bones of a Man buried about his House; the Oracle importing no more than a Smith's Forge, expressed by a Double Bellows, the Hammer and Anvil therein. Now, why the Oracle should place such consideration upon the Bones of _Orestes_ the Son of _Agamemnon_, a mad man and a murtherer, if not to promote the idolatry of the Heathens, and maintain a superstitious veneration of things of no activity, it may leave no small obscurity. Or why, in a business so clear in his knowledge, he should affect so obscure expressions it may also be wondred; if it were not to maintain the wary and evasive method in his answers: for, speaking obscurely in things beyond doubt within his knowledge, he might be more tolerably dark in matters beyond his prescience.