It seems to have been something of a Christian commonplace, at the turn of the fifth century, to taunt the ancient pagan oracles for being unable to predict their own demise. “Where are the frightening and shadowy spectres of Hecate,” asked Gregory of Nazianzus in his Epiphany sermon of 380 or 381, “and the subterranean tricks and prophecies of Trophonius, or the mutterings of the oak of Dodona, or the sophistries of the Delphic tripod, or the prophetic drink of Castalia? The only thing they could not prophesy was this: their own falling into silence.” Commenting, some thirty years later, on the stinging challenge to the prophetic powers of the pagan gods in Isaiah 41:22, Jerome observed “that after the coming of Christ all the idols have fallen silent. Where is Delphic Apollo and Loxias, Delian and Clarian [Apollo], and the other idols that promised knowledge of the future and deceived mighty kings? Why were they able to foretell nothing about Christ, nothing about his apostles, nothing about the ruin and abandonment of their temples? If, then, they were not able to foretell their own downfall, how could they foretell the good or bad fortunes of others?”