been made, they often showed considerable resource. Thus, when Croesus had been utterly ruined, he begged his conqueror to grant him one luxury—to allow him to send to Delphi, and ask Apollo whether it was his usual practice to treat his benefactors in this way. Apollo replied that, in point of fact, he had done everything he could; he had personally requested the Fates to put off the affair for a generation; but they would only grant a delay of three years. Instead of showing annoyance, Croesus ought to be grateful for having been ruined three years later than he ought to have been. There are Irish landlords who would see a parable in these things. Sometimes we can see that Apollo himself is slightly irritated, as an editor might be by a wrong-headed or impertinent querist. Some African colonists had been pestering Apollo about their local troubles and his own former predictions; and the response from Delphi begins with the sarcastic remark, "I admire your wisdom if you know Africa better than I do." The normal tendency of the Delphic oracle was to discourage rash enterprise, and to inculcate maxims of orthodox piety and moderation. The people of Cnidos wanted to make their peninsula an island by digging a canal, but found it very hard work; and the oracle told them that if Zeus had meant the peninsula to be an island, he would have made it an island—which reminds one of some of the arguments against the Channel Tunnel. In one special direction, however, Delphi gave a real impulse to Hellenic progress. It was a powerful promoter of coloniza-
