Herodotus, Histories 1.49.1 · 1.49.1

Herodotus frames this section with the same verb twice. Delphi's answer arrived passively, echrēsthē, "it was given as an oracle"; the Amphiaraus answer would have come actively, echrēse, "it gave as an oracle," except that nobody ever wrote it down. He says so plainly: oude touto legetai, "not even this is told." It is a small, honest admission from a writer who elsewhere quotes an oracle word for word; here he has nothing to quote, and he says so instead of inventing something.

What Herodotus does know is Croesus's verdict, and the verb he chooses is telling: enomise, "he judged" or "believed," the same verb that will call Delphi "the only true oracle" one section earlier. Here it reaches wider, to Amphiaraus as well, joined by ektēsthai, "to have acquired," the verb for owning property. Croesus does not simply trust the Amphiaraus oracle; he counts it as one more truthful oracle he has acquired, a second trophy from the same contest. A king who collects oracles the way he collects proof is still the man who cooked a tortoise to outwit the gods one section ago, and the habit has not left him.

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