Upon which Theo interposing said: It cannot be denied but that there have been great changes and innovations in reference to poetry and the sciences; yet is it as certain, that from all antiquity oracles have been delivered in prose. For we find in Thucydides, that the Lacedaemonians, desirous to know the issue of the war then entered into against the Athenians, were answered in prose, that they should become potent and victorious, and that the Deity would assist them, whether invoked or not invoked; and again, that unless they recalled Pausanias, they would plough with a silver ploughshare. To the Athenians consulting the oracle concerning their expedition into Sicily, he gave order to send for the priestess of Minerva from the city of Erythrae; which priestess went by the name of Hesychia, or repose. And when Dinomenes the Sicilian enquired what should become of his children, the oracle returned for answer, that they should all three be lords and princes. And when Dinomenes. replied, But then, most powerful Apollo, let it be to their confusion; the God made answer, That also I both grant and promise. The consequence of which was, that Gelo was troubled with the dropsy during his reign, Hiero was afflicted with the stone, and the third, Thrasybulus, surrounded with war and sedition, was in a short time expelled his dominions. Procles also, the tyrant of Epidaurus, after he had cruelly and tyrannically murdered several others, put Timarchus likewise to death, who fled to him for protection from Athens with a great sum of money,—after he had pledged him his faith and received him at his first arrival with large demonstrations of kindness and affection,—and then threw his carcass into the sea, enclosed in a pannier. All this he did by the persuasion of one Cleander of Aegina, no other of his courtiers being privy to it. After which, meeting with no small trouble and misfortune in all his affairs, he sent to the oracle his brother Cleotimus, with orders to enquire whether he should provide for his safety by flight, or retire to some other place. Apollo made answer, that he advised Procles to fly where he had directed his Aeginetan guest to dispose of the pannier, or where the hart had cast his horns. Upon which the tyrant, understanding that the oracle commanded him either to throw himself into the sea or to bury himself in the earth (in regard that a stag, when he sheds his antlers, scrapes a hole in the ground and hides his ignominy), demurred a while; but at length, seeing the condition of his affairs grew every day worse and worse, he resolved to save himself by flight; at which time the friends of Timarchus, having seized upon his person, slew him and threw his body into the sea. But what is more than all this, the oracular answers according to which Lycurgus composed the form of the Lacedaemonian commonwealth were given in prose. Besides, Alyrius, Herodotus, Philochorus and Ister, than whom no men have been more diligent to collect the answers of the oracles, among the many which they cite in verse, quote several also in prose. And Theopompus, the most diligent that ever made scrutiny into oracular history, sharply reprehends those who believed the Pythian oracles were not delivered in verse at that time; and yet, when he labors to prove his assertion, he is able to produce but very few, because doubtless the rest even then were uttered in prose.