The Opulent Shrine

Over the centuries, stories of the Pythia have been collected in texts devoted to myth, poetry, philosophy, history, and political science. In this episode, we explore the story of the Oracle of Delphi, her prophecies, and attempts by modern researchers to explain the oracle’s gift. Who was this priestess, and what power did she hold over the ancient Mediterranean world?

Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben, with original music by Purple Planet.   

Episode sources  

Chapters

• 0:00 Pre-roll
• 0:08 Intro
• 4:33 Python & Pythian Apollo
• 10:22 The Oracle
• 14:14 The Pneuma
• 18:02 Conclusion
• 20:07 Outro

Transcript

Pre-roll
You’re listening to Enchanted, a podcast on the history of magic, sorcery and witchcraft. I’m Corinne Wieben.

Intro
In 399 BCE, the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was on trial for crimes against the city-state of Athens. In his defense, Socrates claimed that Athenian authorities only charged him because he annoyed them with his probing questions and made some of them look foolish in public. The charges were twofold. Socrates stood accused of corrupting the youth of Athens with his radical ideas and impiety against the gods of Athens. As he faced the 500 men seated in the Athenian assembly, he explained what compelled him to challenge his fellow citizens and their ideas so doggedly. According to the Apology of Socrates, recorded by his student, Plato, Socrates explained:

I will refer you to a witness who is worthy of credit, and will tell you about my wisdom—whether I have any, and of what sort—and that witness shall be the god of Delphi. You must have known Chaerephon; he was early a friend of mine […] and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell him whether […] there was anyone wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered that there was no man wiser […] Why do I mention this? Because I am going to explain to you why I have such an evil name. When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of this riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature. After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. […] Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom […] and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me […] This investigation has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most dangerous kind, […] but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration […] And so I go my way, obedient to the god, and make inquisition into the wisdom of anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and this occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.

Socrates’ defense rested on one principle on which he knew the men of the Athenian assembly must agree: that the Pythia, the priestess who served as the oracle of the god Apollo at Delphi, spoke the truth. Over the centuries, stories of the oracle’s prophecies have been collected in texts devoted to myth, poetry, philosophy, history, and political science. It was the unwise ruler who made a momentous decision without first consulting the oracle. But who was this priestess? And what power did she hold over the ancient Mediterranean world?

In this episode, I bring you the story of the Oracle of Delphi, her prophecies, and attempts by modern researchers to explain the oracle’s gift.

Python & Pythian Apollo
The name Pythia, a title often used for the oracle, comes from the story surrounding the origins of Delphi and its temple dedicated to Apollo. According to legend, Zeus wanted to discover the site of the exact center of the earth, so he released two eagles, one from each opposite pole of the world. As they flew toward one another, their paths crossed at Delphi. There, a sacred stone representing the navel of the earth was jealously guarded by Python, a giant serpent or dragon. Python oversaw the worship of the earth goddess Gaia at Delphi until Apollo, god of the sun, health, poetry, and prophecy, slew Python with his deadly arrows and established his own temple there. Python is female in one of the major sources for this story, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, written around 522 BCE, which tells the story this way:

There the lord Phoebus Apollo resolved to make his lovely temple, and thus he said, “In this place I am minded to build a glorious temple to be an oracle for men, and here they will always bring perfect hecatombs, both they who dwell in rich Peloponnesus and the men of Europe and from all the wave-washed isles, coming to question me. And I will deliver to them all counsel that cannot fail, answering them in my rich temple.” […] And the countless tribes of men built the whole temple of wrought stones, to be sung of forever. But nearby was a sweet flowing spring, and there with his strong bow the lord, the son of Zeus, killed the bloated, great-she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, to men themselves and to their thin-shanked sheep; for she was a very bloody plague. She it was who once received from gold-throned Hera and brought up fell, cruel Typhaon to be a plague to men. […] And this Typhoon used to work great mischief among the famous tribes of men. “whosoever met the dragoness, the day of doom would sweep him away, until the lord Apollo, who deals death from afar, shot a strong arrow at her. Then she, rent with bitter pangs, lay drawing great gasps for breath and rolling about that place. An awful noise swelled up unspeakable as she writhed continually this way and that amid the wood: and so she left her life, breathing it forth in blood. Then Phoebus Apollo boasted over her: “Now rot here upon the soil that feeds man! You at least shall live no more to be a fell bane to men who eat the fruit of the all nourishing earth […]” Thus said Phoebus, exulting over her: and darkness covered her eyes. And the holy strength of Helios made her rot away there: wherefore the place is now called Pytho, and men call the lord Apollo by another name, Pythian; because on that spot the power of piercing Helios made the monster rot away.

 Archaeological evidence suggests that there may have been an oracle present at Delphi as early as 1400 BCE, during the Mycenaean era, and some scholars suggest Python may have represented Delphi’s older, feminine-centered tradition of earth worship. Apollo’s conquest, then, becomes the story of the people of Delphi adopting the worship of the newer god and consulting the oracle in his name.

Another, less violent, version of the tale comes to us from the Ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, who opens his play Eumenides in Delphi in front of the temple of Phoebus Apollo, where the oracle herself tells the audience the origin story of the temple’s origins, saying:

First, in this prayer, of all the gods I name/ The prophet-mother Earth; and Themis next,/ Second who sat—for so with truth is said—/ On this her mother’s shrine oracular./ Then by her grace, who unconstrained allowed,/ There sat thereon another child of Earth—/ Titanian Phoebe. She, in after time,/ Gave o’er the throne, as birthgift to a god,/ Phoebus, who in his own bears Phoebe’s name./ And all this folk, and Delphos, chieftain-king/ Of this their land, with honour gave him home;/ And in his breast Zeus set a prophet’s soul,/ And gave to him this throne, whereon he sits,/ Fourth prophet of the shrine […]/ Gives voice to that which Zeus his sire decrees.

While the Pythia’s speech leaves out the story of Python, it does still tell the story of an oracular temple overseen by three female deities—Gaia, goddess of the earth, Themis, goddess of justice and law, and the Titaness Phoebe—before it finally passes to Phoebe’s grandson, Phoebus Apollo. With or without violence, the story of the temple at Delphi appears to be the story of a place dedicated to the worship of the earth, in the form of the goddess Gaia, until the god Apollo comes to claim the place where he will speak the will of the gods through his oracle.

The Oracle
The Pythia herself was a woman chosen after the death of her predecessor from among the priestesses who served the temple of Apollo. These women could be young, old, rich, poor—their selection seems to have been based solely on their ability to be possessed by the god. On the days sacred to Apollo, usually the seventh day of the month, the public could consult the oracle. After fasting and spiritual preparation, including bathing in the waters of the nearby Castilian spring and drinking water from the Cassotis, she would be led into the inner sanctum, called the adyton, where priests would burn laurel leaves as incense and deliver the pilgrims’ questions to her. Inscribed on the entrance to the temple were the three famous Delphic maxims: “Know yourself,” “Nothing in excess,” and “Surety brings trouble.”

The Pythia’s prophecy could, of course, be a curse as well as a gift. Her responses were often poetic, symbolic, and metaphorical, and many plays, poems, and other writings from the Greek world involve misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the oracle’s messages. In his Histories, the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus tells the story of King Croesus of Lydia. To test the oracles, Croesus sent riders out to each temple site where an oracle was said to offer prophecies. The riders were to ask the oracle what the king was doing at that very moment. Back home, the king was cooking lamb and tortoise stew, and the oracle at Delphi delivered the detailed answer he wanted, but not without reminding the king’s messenger that this test was beneath the god to answer. According to Herodotus, the oracle replied: “I know the number of the grains of sand and the extent of the sea,/ And understand the mute and hear the voiceless./ The smell has come to my senses of a strong-shelled tortoise./ Boiling in a cauldron together with a lamb’s flesh,/ Under which is bronze and over which is bronze.” Having received the answer he was expecting, Croesus sent gifts to the oracle, whose prophetic powers he now trusted.

Later, when contemplating an invasion of a neighboring kingdom, Croesus once again consulted the Oracle of Delphi as well as another oracle. He sent riders carrying offerings to Apollo, and when the riders arrived and presented their offerings, they asked the following: “Croesus, king of Lydia and other nations, believing that here are the only true places of divination among men, endows you with such gifts as your wisdom deserves. And now he asks you whether he is to send an army against the Persians, and whether he is to add an army of allies.” Both oracles gave the same reply, saying, “[I]f [Croesus] should send an army against the Persians he would destroy a great empire.” Hearing the prophecy, Croesus rejoiced, expecting to easily destroy the Persian Empire. He made his preparations, allied himself with the Spartans, and attacked Persia, only to be besieged and captured before the Spartans could even join his forces. Herodotus writes, “The Persians gained Sardis and took Croesus prisoner. Croesus had ruled fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days. Fulfilling the oracle, he had destroyed his own great empire.”

The Pneuma
The Oracle of Delphi remained a hub for political, economic, religious, and cultural life in the Mediterranean until 361 CE, when a messenger sent by the Roman Emperor Julian returned to report that the temple had fallen and the pure waters of the nearby stream had ceased to flow. Thanks to modern attempts to find a scientific explanation for the Pythia’s prophecies, a theory that the oracle was a victim of poisoning has emerged. In their 1956 history of the Delphic oracle, H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell point out that Roman sources, especially the writings of Plutarch, attempted to find a rational or scientific basis for the oracle and shifted power away from the Pythia onto the priests who reportedly interpreted her words. Roman sources describe the priestess as either sitting on a tripod over a chasm from which a mysterious vapor arose or entering a cavern to inhale the vapor. She would then enter a trance and speak or chant the god’s responses, which the priests of Apollo would then interpret on her behalf. The first-century Roman writer Strabo wrote, “They say that the seat of the oracle is a cave that is hollowed out deep down in the earth, with a rather narrow mouth, from which rises a pneuma (a gas or vapor) that inspires a divine frenzy; and that over the cleft is placed a high tripod, mounting which the Pythian priestess receives the pneuma and then utters oracles in both verse and prose.” Parke and Wormell traced the mention of a chasm down to the fourth century BCE. Still, they could find no mention of any chasm in texts before that era and concluded that this was a later addition to the descriptions of the oracle’s method and therefore unreliable.

In the 1990s, a multidisciplinary team of American scientists and scholars, including a geologist, an archeologist, and a chemist conducted extensive testing of the groundwater and geological deposits around the temple ruins. They found traces of hydrocarbon gases, including methane, and concluded that these must have been the vapors mentioned in the Roman sources. A team of Italian and Greek scientists revisited this study in 2006, suggesting that there were insufficient traces of ethylene gas near the temple site to induce a trancelike state, but that the Pythia’s trance may have been the result of oxygen deprivation from inhaling carbon dioxide or methane over an extended period of time. These positions, though, have their critics, and the debate continues, with some scientists and scholars attempting to explain the Pythia’s trances by pointing out the unique combination of geological fault lines, bituminous limestone, and groundwater containing light hydrocarbon gases all found at Delphi. Others, especially historians and anthropologists, reject these scientific explanations in favor of taking the Greeks at their word. These scholars see the desire to apply modern rational explanations to ancient religious beliefs as problematic since it denigrates and dismisses Ancient Greek cultural beliefs as mere superstition.

Conclusion
I’m inclined to agree with those that reject a modern rational explanation for the Pythia. While later Roman writers and some modern scholars have attempted to diminish the Pythia’s power by saying she was drugged and delusional and that the priests were truly in charge of the oracle, it does a real disservice to Ancient Greek culture. That the Pythia was always a woman probably dates back to the time when Delphi was the center of worship for the earth-mother Gaia, and it seems more fitting to credit agency—and prophecy—to her. If you asked the ancient Greeks where the oracle got her prophecies, most would tell you, without hesitation, that the pneuma, the spirit of Apollo, entered the Pythia and spoke through her. They would tell you that what mattered were her words—those of the god—not those of the priests.

Perhaps we should listen to the Greek lyric poet Theognis of Megara, who advised that a messenger sent to Delphi—a theoros—must be entirely faithful to the words of the oracle, writing:

A man who is theōros must be straighter […] than a carpenter’s pin and rule and square—
a man to whom the priestess of the god at Delphi makes a response, revealing
a sacred utterance from the opulent shrine.
You will find no remedy if you add anything;
if you subtract, you will only err in the eyes of the gods.

Outro
If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to Enchanted wherever you listen. This episode was produced by me with original music by Purple Planet. You can find them at purple dash planet dot com. If you want to learn more about the Oracle at Delphi, be sure to check out the sources link in the show notes. Special thanks to Enchanted’s Patreon patrons for supporting the production of this and every episode. If you want to support Enchanted, please visit patreon dot com slash enchantedpodcast. If you’re looking for a way to support the show that won’t cost you anything, you can always give Enchanted a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Audible, or wherever you listen and recommend Enchanted to your friends. You can get in touch with me via email at enchantedpodcast at gmail dot com or follow on Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr at enchantedpodcast and on Twitter at enchantedpod. As always, for more information and special features for each episode, visit enchantedpodcast dot net. I’m Corinne Wieben. Thank you for listening and stay enchanted.