CHAPTER LIV

HOW VENGEANCE OVERTOOK THOSE WHOM THE WORDS OF THE ORACLE HAD INDUCED TO RAISE THE PERSECUTION

“BUT why need I longer dwell on these lamentable events, and the general sorrow which in consequence pervaded the world? The perpetrators of this dreadful guilt are now no more: they have experienced a miserable end, and are consigned to unceasing punishment in the depths of the lower world. They encountered each other in the fatal arena of civil strife, and have left neither name nor race behind. And surely this calamity would never have befallen them, had not those impious words of the Pythian oracle exercised a delusive power and influence over their minds.