8. It has appeared incomprehensible to many, why Apollo should be a god of prophecy, and how this office can be reconciled with his other attributes. Many have been satisfied with supposing an accidental association of music, prophecy, and archery, without being able to discover any principle of union. In the following pages we shall endeavour to account for the combination in the same deity of attributes apparently so unconnected.
Prophecy, according to the ideas of the ancients, is the announcement of fate (of μοῖρα, αἶσα). Now fate was considered to be the right order of things, the established physical and moral harmony of the world, in which every thing occupies the place fitted for its capacities and function. Fate therefore coincides with supreme Justice (Θέμις); which notion Hesiod expressed by saying that Zeus married Themis, who produced to him the Fates. The pious, religious mind could not separate Zeus and Destiny: Fate was the will and thought of the highest of the gods. A man whose actions agreed with this established harmony, and who followed the appointed course of things, acted _justly_ (κατ᾽ αἶσαν, ἐναίσιμα); the violent and arrogant man endeavoured at least to break through the laws of Fate. Now it was this right order of events which the ancient oracles were supposed to proclaim; and hence they were called θέμιστες, ordinances or laws of _justice_.(1399) They were not imagined to be derived from a foreknowledge of futurity; but merely to declare that which, according to the necessary course of events, must come to pass. It cannot indeed fail to surprise us that the oracle was delivered by a woman in a state of ecstasy, and not as the result of serious reflection. But do we not find in the earlier period of Grecian philosophy (especially in the Ionic school) every new and profound discovery appearing as the work of sudden illumination and ecstasy, and indeed often accompanied with miraculous circumstances? And would not the mind in that age have naturally been raised to such an excited and rapturous state, when, endeavouring to escape from the narrow bounds of daily life, it recognised in the general course of events the influence of the gods? The means adopted to promote this inspiration, the vapour of the chasm, the chewing of the laurel-leaves, the drinking of the water of the well, are of the most innocent description. We do not however mean to deny that these ceremonies soon became an unmeaning form, the oracle being made subservient to political purposes.