text:  Was not one commissioned by dream or vision to go to a particular place to proclaim it there; and is it not added that the cry "great Pan is dead " was re-echoed from shore to shore and that this happened at the time of the ceasing of oracles? It little matters whether you look to public events or private histories--you will see signs and omens and wondrous visitations prefiguring and accomplishing their purposes; and if occasionally when too they are indisputable they seem to accomplish no end it may be only a seeming non-accomplishment--but suppose it real it would then the more follow that they arise necessarily from the nature of things though a nature with which we are not acquainted