[41]
At the same time one might assert, not without reason, that a dryness engendered with the heat subtilizes the spirit of prophecy and renders it ethereal and pure; for this is
the dry soul, as Heracleitus has it.
1
Moisture not only dulls sight and hearing, but when it touches mirrors and combines with air, it takes away their brightness and sheen.
2
But again the very opposite of this may not be impossible: that by a sort of chilling and compacting of the spirit of inspiration the prophetic element in the soul, as when steel is dipped in cold water, is rendered tense and keen. And further, just as tin when alloyed with copper, which is loose and porous in texture, binds it together and compacts it,
3
and at the same time makes it brighter and cleaner, even so there is nothing to prevent the prophetic vapour, which contains some affinity and relationship to souls, from filling up the vacant spaces and cementing all together by fitting itself in. For one thing has affinity and adaptability for one thing, another for another, just as the bean
4
seems to further the dyeing of purple and sodium carbonate
5
that of scarlet, when mixed with the dye;
All in the linen is blended the splendour of glorious scarlet,
as Empedocles
6
has said. But regarding the Cydnus and the sacred sword of Apollo in Tarsus we used to hear you say, my dear Demetrius, that the Cydnus will cleanse no steel but that, and no other water will cleanse that sword. There is a similar phenomenon at Olympia, where they pile the ashes against the altar and make them adhere all around by pouring on them water from the Alpheius; but, although they have tried the waters of other rivers, there is none with which they can make the ashes cohere and stay fixed in their place. De Defectu Oraculorum. Plutarch. Frank Cole Babbitt (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1936.
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