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When the captains that accompanied Polyneices
were feasting, an eagle swooped down and carried the
spear of Amphiaraüs up to a height and then let it
drop. The spear became fixed in the earth and was
changed into a laurel. The next day, when the
captains were fighting, at that very spot Amphiaraüs
was swallowed up with his chariot, where now is the
city that is called Harma.1 So Trisimachus in the
third book of his Founding of Cities.
When the Romans were fighting against Pyrrhus of
Epeirus, Aemilius Paulus received an oracle that he
should be victorious if he would build an altar where
[p. 269]
he should see a man of the nobles with his chariot
swallowed up in an abyss. Three days later Valerius
Conatus in a dream saw a vision which commanded
him to don his priestly raiment (he was, in fact, an
expert augur). When he had led forth his men and
slain many of the enemy, he was swallowed up by the
earth. Aemilius built an altar, gained a victory, and
sent back an hundred and sixty turreted elephants
to Rome. The altar delivers oracles at that time of
year when Pyrrhus was vanquished. This Critolaüs
relates in the third book of his Epeirote History.
1 ‘City of the Chariot’; cf. Pausanias, ix. 19. 4, and the scholium on Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, ii. 11. 1.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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