8
One could not go wrong in giving such precepts and admonitions, but they seem to me very far from prophecy. Prophecy’s task is to know in advance what is unknown and altogether beyond perception—for example, to foretell to Minos that his son Glaucus. See Loeb Apollodorus (Fraser), i. 311. will be smothered in the jar of honey, and forewarn the Achaeans of the reason for Apollo’s anger and that Troy will be captured in the tenth year. That is prophecy. If such things as you mention are to be ascribed to it, I too must be called a prophet without a moment’s delay. Even without Castalia and the laurel and the Delphic tripod, I will foretell and predict that if a man walks about naked in time of frost, with rain and hail falling as well, he will catch a chill and not a slight one, and, what is even more prophetic, a fever will in all probability follow; and so on—it would be ridiculous to mention all that I could foretell.
9
Then away with such pleas and prophecies! But that point you made at the beginning, perhaps that can be admitted, that you knew nothing of what you said; it was some divine inspiration filled you with your verses, and not so very reliable at that, or it would not have kept part of what it promised and left the rest unfulfilled.
