Though =EI= were inscribed over the Gate of _Delphos_, yet was there no uniformity in his deliveries. Sometimes with that _obscurity_ as argued a fearfull prophecy; sometimes so _plainly_ as might confirm a spirit of divinity; sometimes _morally_, deterring from vice and villany; another time _vitiously_, and in the spirit of bloud and cruelty: observably modest in his civil enigma and periphrasis of that part which old _Numa_ would plainly name,[280] and _Medea_ would not understand, when he advised _Ægeus_ not to draw out his foot before, untill he arriv'd upon the Athenian ground; whereas another time he seemed too literal in that unseemly epithet unto _Cyanus_ King of _Cyprus_,[281] and put a beastly trouble upon all _Ægypt_ to find out the Urine of a true Virgin. Sometimes, more beholding unto memory than invention, he delighted to express himself in the bare Verses of _Homer_. But that he principally affected Poetry, and that the Priest not onely or always composed his prosal raptures into Verse, seems plain from his necromantical Prophecies, whilst the dead Head in _Phlegon_ delivers a long Prediction in Verse; and at the raising of the Ghost of _Commodus_ unto _Caracalla_, when none of his Ancestours would speak, the divining Spirit versified his infelicities; corresponding herein to the apprehensions of elder times, who conceived not onely a Majesty but something of Divinity in Poetry, and as in ancient times the old Theologians delivered their inventions. [280] Plut. _in_ Thes. [281] _V._ Herod. Some critical Readers might expect in his oraculous Poems a more than ordinary strain and true spirit of _Apollo_; not contented to find that Spirits make Verses like Men, beating upon the filling Epithet, and taking the licence of dialects and lower helps, common to humane Poetry; wherein, since _Scaliger_, who hath spared none of the Greeks, hath thought it wisedom to be silent, we shall make no excursion. Others may wonder how the curiosity of elder times, having this opportunity of his Answers, omitted Natural Questions; or how the old Magicians discovered no more Philosophy; and if they had the assistance of Spirits, could rest content with the bare assertions of things, without the knowledge of their causes; whereby they had made their Acts iterable by sober hands, and a standing part of Philosophy. Many wise Divines hold a reality in the wonders of the Ægyptian Magicians, and that those _magnalia_ which they performed before _Pharaoh_ were not mere delusions of Sense. Rightly to understand how they made Serpents out of Rods; Froggs and Bloud of Water, were worth half _Porta's_ Magick.