Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

The Delay of the Deity
apparitions by day and oracles and celestial portents
and whatever other phenomenon is regarded an
caused by the direct interposition of God, cause
anxieties and fears to persons who have a guilty
conscience. For example, it is said, that Apollodorus
once in a dream saw himself flayed by the Scythians,
then boiled, and heard his heart speaking from the
caldron and saying, I am the cause of all this and
;
that at another time he saw his daughters all
ablaze,
their bodies encircled with flame, running about him.
Hipparchus also, the son of Peisistratus. a little
before his death saw Aphrodite flinging blood in his
face from a kind of basin; and the favorites of
Ptolemy the Thunderer, saw him summoned before a
Seleucus where vultures and wolves were
tribunal by
the judges, distributing many pieces of flesh among
his enemies. Pausanias, likewise, having caused a
free maiden to be brought by force from Byzantium
in order to pass the night with her, but when she was
come, owing to some perturbation
of mind and
suspicion, had her put to death this maiden he fre
quently saw in a dream calling to him, Hasten to
judgment; assuredly lust brings sorrow on men. As
the apparition did not cease to haunt him. it is said
that he set sail for the oracle of the dead at Heracleia
where he called up the ghost of the damsel by ex
piatory rites and libations. Appearing before him.
she said that he would be freed from his troubles
when he came to Lacedaemon: but as soon as he
arrived there he died.
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