1
It seems that our beloved Apollo finds a remedy and a solution for the problems connected with our life by the oracular responses which he gives to those who consult him; but the problems connected with our power to reason it seems that he himself launches and propounds to him who is by nature inclined to the love of knowledge, thus creating in the soul a craving Cf.Moralia, 673 b. that leads onward to the truth, as is clear in many other ways, but particularly in the dedication of the E. Cf. 426 e, infra. For the likelihood is that it was not by chance nor, as it were, by lot that this was the only letter that carne to occupy first place with the god and attained the rank of a sacred offering and something worth seeing; but it is likely that those who, in the beginning, sought after knowledge of the god either discovered some peculiar and unusual potency in it or else used it as a token with reference to some other of the matters of the highest concern, and thus adopted it.
1
On many other occasions when the subject had been brought up in the school I had quietly turned aside from it and passed it over, but recently I was unexpectedly discovered by my sons in an animated discussion with some strangers, whom, since they purposed to leave Delphi immediately, it was not seemly to try to divert from the subject, nor was it seemly for me to ask to be excused from the discussion, for they were altogether eager to hear something about it. I found them seats, therefore, near the temple, and I began to seek some answer myself and to put questions to them; influenced as I was by the place and the conversation itself, I remembered what, when Nero was here some years ago, I had heard Ammonius and others discussing, when the same question obtruded itself in a similar way.
