4
Ammonius smiled quietly, suspecting privately that Lamprias had been indulging in a mere opinion of his own and was fabricating history and tradition regarding a matter in which he could not be held to account. Someone else among those present said that all this was similar to the nonsense which the Chaldean visitor had uttered a short time before: that there are seven vowels in the alphabet and seven stars that have an independent and unconstrained motion; that E is the second in order of the vowels from the beginning, and the sun the second planet after the moon, and that practically all the Greeks identify Apollo with the Sun. Cf.Moralia, 1130 a or 381 f, supra, or 393 c, infra. But all this, said he, has its source in slate and prateAn expression as obscure in the Greek as in the English. It means, apparently, idle talk. Cf. S. A. Naber, Mnemosyne, xxviii. (1900) p. 134. and in nothing else.
4
Apparently Lamprias had unwittingly stirred up the persons connected with the temple against his remarks. For what he had said no one of the Delphians knew anything about; but they were used to bring forward the commonly accepted opinion which the guides give, holding it to be right that neither the appearance nor the sound of the letter has any cryptic meaning, but only its name.
