The Ancients - The Oracle of Delphi

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

"If Croesus goes to war he will destroy a great empire." That was the prophecy the Oracle of Delphi delivered to the Lydian King - she just left out that fact it was his own empire that would be destroyed.Known as the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi was the High Priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Responsible for delivering divine prophecy to those that visited her - she was one of the most revered women in antiquity. In this episode, Tristan is joined by classicist and author Dr Garrett Ryan to talk all things prophecy. With fainting sheep, and godly intervention, was the Oracle really high on fumes - or is that a modern misconception?For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, we're talking all about the Oracle of Delphi, this mysterious but well-known aspect of ancient Mediterranean history. But what was this oracle? Who was this figure, the Pythia? Why was it at Delphi? And why would people venture to this oracle? What sorts of questions were they seeking the answers to? We're going to be answering all of those questions and more in today's episode with the brilliant Dr. Garrett Ryan.

Garrett, he's an author, he's a historian, he's the man behind the Told in Stone YouTube channel and also the Told in Stone website. And he's also genuinely just a lovely guy to chat to. It was a pleasure to get Garrett on the show. Huge credit to our ancients producer Annie who found Garrett, who thought he looks absolutely great for this topic. And she was completely right because it was wonderful to get Garrett on the podcast. And I think that you will very much enjoy this episode. So without further ado, to talk all about the Oracle of Delphi, here's Garrett. Garrett, it is great to have you on the podcast today.

Oh, thanks so much for inviting me. You are more than welcome, because I can't believe we haven't tackled this topic yet. And it's great to have you on, because the Oracle of Delphi, this feels like this figure, this woman, one of the most famous, respected, and important women in ancient Greek history, but also a figure shrouded in quite a bit of mystery. That's absolutely true. You know, everyone's heard of the Oracle of Delphi, but the actual Oracle, the Pythia, is a mysterious figure. You know, there's, of course, many Pythias over time. And often, actually, there are several women who share duties as the Oracle.

But we know none of their names, none of their stories. They all seem to be local women who show some gift for prophecy and are recruited, we don't know by whom, to become Apollo's mouthpiece at the most famous oracle in Greece. Well, you kind of explained what the Oracle of Delphi was, this figure, as you say. I mean, I think you might have mentioned it there too, but alongside the Oracle, is there another name that these women are usually referred to as? Yes. You jumped the gun there briefly. So they're called often the Pythia. And there's an interesting story behind that. So supposedly Apollo, when he first came to the site of Delphi, which is a lovely place on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, looking down on the Gulf of Corinth, he found a terrible serpent there, the python, in which he slew. And supposedly, the python gave its name to the site, you know, whence the Pythia and so forth. An alternative etymology has the reek of the serpent rotting.

Puthane is the Greek word for to rot, giving the name to Pythia. So kind of a less dignified reason to call her that. But whatever it was, there was a myth behind why they call her the Pythia. And that was the traditional term by the classical era. And so it sounds like if this myth is so central to this belief in the Oracle of Delphi, does the Pythia, does the Oracle have a particular connection to a particular ancient Greek god? Yes, Apollo. So Apollo is the god of Delphi. So Apollo is the god of Delphi.

There's also shrines to Dionysus and Athena there. But Apollo, the god of prophecy, is indelibly linked with Delphi above all. And he's the god who claimed the site as his own in the myths. There's the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which is sort of our first founding document for what happened there. And Apollo shows up. He pretty much dragoons a bunch of Cretan sailors as his first priests. He brings them to Delphi. Delphi makes them remain there. When Apollo shows up, he pretty much dragoons a bunch of Cretan sailors as his first priests. He brings them to Delphi. Delphi makes them remain there. And a local woman then becomes his first prophetess. Now, there were several other oracles of Apollo scattered across the Greek world. Others were similar to Delphi, actually, like Adidama in Asia Minor, for example.

But at all the most prominent oracles of Apollo, there was a woman who was Apollo's mouthpiece through whom he spoke in some way. And so do we have any idea how this woman would have been chosen from the surviving literature, perhaps from the surviving archaeology too? We know remarkably little about that. We know about the Pythia at Delphi. She was always a local woman drawn from the city of Delphi itself or the surrounding villages. She was, at least in later years, always a mature woman of 50 years or older. And presumably she had shown some gift for prophecy, but we don't know the process by which she was vetted or chosen. As I mentioned, there were several of them in the busiest times who

shared duties, but they almost have shown some aptitude for receiving the God's message. What that testing process looked like, who's to say? Matthew Feeney And actually, I want to keep on Delphi a bit longer from what you explained there, Garrett, because obviously you've explained this mythical origins of the Oracle of Delphi very much enshrined in this particular myth. But I do actually want to ask a bit more of why Delphi? Do we have any idea, perhaps from the archaeology? Is there perhaps another story here surviving from the archaeology as to why? Because it's such a beautiful location,

but it's far away from these city-states. They decide that this oracle is going to be in this beautiful inland place just north of the Corinthian Gulf. Yes, it's really remarkably remote, nowhere near any major city. And actually, some authors complain about this in antiquity. Plutarch says it's a long climb up to Delphi. You really want it. So the ancient story or one ancient story involved the idea that Apollo was especially present in this place.

And there's a story in an author, Diodorus Siculus, who was writing about the time of Augustus, that way back in the hazy past, some shepherds were grazing their goats on a grassy hill, and their goats suddenly fell down in ecstasies. They were thrashing about on the grass. So everyone is confused by this. The shepherds go over to investigate. They themselves are possessed. They're rolling on the ground. They're spouting nonsense. And so they bring their neighbors to investigate this crack in the pasture from which this inspiring breath is coming. And, you know, some people are driven mad by it. They throw themselves into the crack. It's a whole mess. And they realize or decide that this crack, the pneuma, the breath issuing from this crack is the very essence of Apollo's prophecy.

Now, this has given rise to theories about the nature of the Pythia's trances in which she was in touch with the god, that there was some kind of volcanic gas spewing forth from the earth at the site of Delphi, and that led people to found the shrine of this place where the divine breath issued forth. This has been disputed. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. And there's no archaeological evidence for a crack issuing forth great gouts of inspiring gases. But this is one theory for why it wasn't such an out-of-the-way place. And you mentioned that one theory.

It's so interesting, therefore, when you look at the archaeology, how all of this architecture starts emerging at Delphi and the archaeology around this central place. But it does seem, doesn't it, from if you've got this mythical origins and you've got these stories from Herodotus, but still like when the Oracle of Delphi really comes about, is it still something quite shrouded in mystery? Well, from archaeology, we guess around 800 BC is more or less when it happens. There may have been a Mycenaean shrine there many centuries before that, but it's all been overbuilt. So it's kind of hard to say what was going on there during the Greek Dark Ages.

So around 800 BC, kind of during the great flowering of Archaic Greece, when cities are being founded, when the first Panhellenic contests come into being, Delphi seems to be part of this efflorescence. The first temple that we know have evidence for, the first really solid temple, is about 100 years later, around 700 BC. And the temple we have now is much later. But supposedly that probably replaced the temple we have now, several less imposing structures. There was a legend that one was made out of wood, one was made out of wax for some reason, all these kind of later myths about the first shrines there. But a judge from votive offerings and from other physical evidence, it's probably around the early 8th century BC that Delphi as we know it comes into being.

And so if we go this far back, do we have any idea of who the first Pythia was? And so if we go this far back, do we have any idea of who the first Pythia was? Sadly, no. Actually, we don't know if there was a Pythia initially. It may have been that there was a less developed form of oracle there beforehand. We have actually evidence for it. The Pythia only did her duties nine times a year, once a month during nine months. That was it. If you missed the Pythia, show day, you had to make

do with a lesser oracle. So there's a few mentions of what's called a bean oracle, where they cast beans of different colors, you need to kind of, I guess, figure out what was going on from how the beans fell, much, much less impressive than the Pythia declaiming the voice of Apollo, but there you are. And we're not sure. So there's another oracle called Dodona in northern Greece, where supposedly or apparently the prophets divine the will of Zeus from the rustling of the wind and oak leaves. And so that rustling was somehow the voice of Zeus. And some hopefully very highly trained prophets were figuring out what that rustling meant.

And there's one theory that it was the rustling of the wind and laurel leaves that was the first oracle of Apollo. And the Pythia showed up later. But this is all speculation. We just don't know. So we don't know who the first Pythia was, who or why she was chosen, and what she replaced, if anything. It's so interesting. And to ask why of all oracles, the oracle of Delphi and the Pythia was so revered amongst other places.

And I love that you mentioned Dodona there. You know, the Oracle of Zeus. Zeus, who you think is perhaps the most prominent god, perhaps more important than Apollo. And yet, Delphi is a more prominent Oracle site in ancient Greek history, in the ancient Greek world, than Dodona. Why do we think Delphi therefore gains such prominence as this Oracle center? You know, it's debated. It's a fascinating thing. Why it is that the single oracle becomes really, in many ways, the center of the Greek world for a couple centuries. It's from Delphi that colonies are essentially sent out. Cities ask for colonies to be confirmed. Delphi sanctions

all sorts of other important decisions. And it's hard to say whether this is just a matter of inertia. Delphi got a few important things right, and people started going there more and more. If it's just the fact that it was just enough out of the way, it wasn't under the control of any one city. So it was trusted more for that reason. If you know your oracles are on top of Athens, well, Athens has more sway than say any other city does. But Delphi off in the middle of relative nowhere, maybe, you know, more seem more objective, so to speak, because the Greeks are not dead to the idea that there's human influence at work here, too. So is it more like neutral ground, almost?

So like a Theban person and an Athenian could go to it, not thinking there's that personal bias emerging? Kind of like Olympia. Olympia is in the middle of absolute nowhere. There's a city nearby, but it's not an important one. These shrines that were between the main zones of influence of Athens, Thebes, Sparta, had more, I don't know, must have seemed more attractive, at least to minor city-states, for their seeming objectivity, isolation,

whatever you want to call it. Absolutely. I mean, this is great. And actually, before we go into the whole process of what we know about someone going to visit the Pythia and why they would do it. One quick question I'd like to ask all about, well, transformation over the centuries. We talked about 800 BC and Garrett, the Oracle of Delphi, I believe it stays in existence until like Theodosius and the real edicts of Christianity really coming in. I mean, I'm presuming, you know, this is centuries, this is almost a millennia of time that we're covering in this podcast, giving an overview of. Do you have any significant developments, transformations, changes in the Oracle of Delphi over those centuries?

I mean, so the physical sanctuary develops magnificently during the Archaic period. Between about 600 BC and the Persian Wars, so 490 BC, that's when Delphi as we know it really comes into being. So there's this great stone temple, the Temple of Apollo, which is the centerpiece of everything. There are these treasuries built by about 20 cities. So that's where they dedicate their offerings to the god. There's not enough room for their offerings in the temple proper. They build kind of their own impressive storehouses of marble with imposing sculpture upon them to contain those offerings. There's a great sacred way that's laid out with fine stone paving going up to the temple. And then around, what, about 580 BC,

there's games are founded at Delphi, the Pythian Games. And these become one of the four great Panhellenic Games, a lot like the Olympic Games. And so there's a whole stadium laid out above the Sanctuary of Apollo. And so really in that century, it goes from being a probably pretty primitive temple to being, you know, this grand imposing marble or limestone structure ringed by treasuries, fronted by a grand processional way, and loomed over by this stadium and athletic grounds. And so it really becomes a physical embodiment of what it had become already spiritually, one of these centers of Greek life and Greek civilization. And then it really is kind of its heyday, the late Archaic period. Herodotus, our great source for this period,

has all these wonderful stories about people coming to Delphi to consult the oracle in this era. After the Persian Wars, so Delphi seems to have hedged its bets during the Persian Wars. The Persians with their massive, you know, half million man army came awfully close to Delphi seems to have hedged its bets during the Persian Wars. The Persians with their massive, you know, half-million-man army came awfully close to Delphi. And so the oracle seems to have seen the way the wind was blowing and suggested to Greeks who consulted the oracle that they might want to consider conciliating the Persians. And this may not have helped the oracle's credibility when the Greeks actually ended up winning the war, contrary to Apollo's apparent advice. But the oracle seems to have become less important after the Persian Wars for a number of reasons, probably the most important being that the Greek world becomes less polycentric. It had all these many minor cities who existed in kind of this

stasis. They fought each other, but they all kind of had this independent existence. Whereas after the Persian Wars, and especially after the 4th century BC, there are a few major kingdoms who dominate all of Greece. And so there's less scope for consulting the oracle on important political decisions, if not personal ones. No, but I was going to say, no, of course, so you're getting into my very interesting period of, you know, like the Macedonians and Alexander the Great and his successors and so on. But I mean, it's interesting because I know Alexander and actually one of his successors, Craterus, they leave a dedication at Delphi. Even if it might not have been as big a golden age then

as it had been before for Delphi, was it almost the legacy of the oracle, the legacy of the sanctuary lived on so that it was still important for people to leave dedications there, to leave their mark there so people could go and see it, even if the oracle itself had lost some of its importance? Certainly. Well, actually, as you may know, Alexander himself went to Delphi, and he came on an off day when the oracle was not in session, but he didn't care because he

was Alexander. And so he physically dragged her to the tripod inside the temple and said, pretty much, prophesy. And she just said, he threw up her hand, said, you are invincible. And that was good enough for him, and he left. So, right, you know, he, of course, left dedications there, and his successors, the Macedonian kings, also did. When the Romans showed up in the middle of the 2nd century BC and make Macedon and then all of Greece provinces, they dedicate their own. The general Aemilius Paulus appropriates a king's dedication and puts his own dedication upon it. And so the Romans are kind of appropriating directly this legacy. Nero visited and actually competed in the games above the sanctuary.

Domitian helped to rebuild the temple. Hadrian, the great Panhellen, gave a great deal of money to the site. But we know that by his time, by Hadrian's time, by the 2nd century BC, that Delphi was becoming more of a tourist attraction than anything else. So Plutarch, the famous biographer, was also a priest at Delphi. And he records that there were fewer and fewer people. And he has this wonderful dialogue called On the Failure of the Oracles, where he speculates on why there are fewer and fewer oracles and why they're just not doing so hot as they used to. And it's really a fascinating document of Greece in the second century AD. But the short answer is that yes, Delphi's prestige gave it so much inertia that it continued to be important into the fifth century

AD, when the oracle itself was closed down by the Edicts of Theodosius and other Christian emperors. But the site retained some vitality till the great invasions of the 5th and 6th centuries. Gareth, that's absolutely fascinating. I had no idea that Plutarch wrote something basically on the lines of, and I know I'm kind of, I'm not quoting directly, but on the failure, on the demise of oracles by the time of like the 2nd century AD. Oh, yes. It's a wonderful thing. It was, I guess a better translation would be on the demise of oracles by the time of like the second century AD. Oh, yes. It's a wonderful thing. I guess a better translation would be on the obsolescence of the oracles, on why they were kind of fading into obscurity. And he actually speculates upon the

failure of the pneuma, this divine breath at Delphi, which seemed to be less abundant than it once had been. But his concludes in the end that there's just fewer people in Greece, so there's less need for oracles and that's all there is to it. But they were speculating, even in that age, about why certain sanctuaries could have kind of peaks of influence and then these troughs of obscurity. And Delphi certainly, by his time, had become more tourist attraction than important sanctuary. important sanctuary. Gone Medieval is History Hit's podcast dedicated to the greatest millennium in human history. I'm Dr Kat Jarman, a Viking Age bioarchaeologist and author. And I'm Matt Lewis, a medievalist and writer. Every Tuesday and Saturday, we'll explore some of the biggest stories, the greatest mysteries and latest research.

We'll talk Vikings, Normans, Popes, rebellions and so much more. We'll travel the medieval world in search of the stories you haven't heard and get under the skin of the ones you do know. Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. That was a brilliant overview of several centuries, almost a millennia of Delphi's history right there. Let's therefore focus in on this golden age of Delphi, the end of Archaic Greece, before the Persian Wars, as you've said. And let's set the scene. First of all, who could visit or who would aim to visit the Oracle of Delphi?

What sorts of people? A surprising range of people. Everyone from Eastern kings, like Croesus of Libya to humble local suppliants who wanted to know whether they should get a good job or should make a business voyage to Italy. And so everything from high political business to purely personal matters was addressed at the Oracle. We hear most, of course, about these political things when cities come, send representatives to sanction important decisions. So I mentioned Croesus already. So Croesus of Lydia was the wealthiest king of his time. This is the mid-6th century BC. And he rules most of what's now Western Turkey, across the Aegean from

the Greek world, or much of the Greek world. And Croesus consults the oracle a few times, most notoriously when he's thinking about invading, or rather attacking, King Cyrus of Persia, his very aggressive and very powerful neighbor. And Croesus asks the oracle, what will happen if I attack Cyrus? And the oracle says, famously, a great kingdom will be destroyed. And Croesus thinks, of course, well, that'll be Cyrus's kingdom. This is great. So he launches his invasion and is annihilated. Cyrus wins the war, conquers all of Croesus' kingdom. And so, of course, it was decided that retroactively the oracle had meant the kingdom of Croesus, Lydia, not Persia. is consulted in the archaic period on colonization. So this is the era in which Greeks are sending out teams of citizens to establish daughter cities everywhere from North Africa to what's now the Ukraine to Italy. And so if a city wants to send out a colony, they'll ask the oracle whether they

should send that colony, or if they do, how big it should be, where it should go. And the oracle seems to have helped to coordinate or at least sanction these important decisions. The oracle also helps in times of constitutional trouble, which is kind of chronic in the Greek world. They're always having these minor civil wars, stasis, whatever. And so Athens, for example, when Athens becomes democratic under Cleisthenes, he sends his constitution to be sanctioned by Delphi. And so there is a great deal of political, again, sanctioning, if not necessarily innovation happening there. On a much more modest level, individuals can consult Delphi. And so one of Socrates' friends famously asks the oracle, who the wisest man in Greece is, and is told it's Socrates, which is great if you're Plato and

writing this all down later. Much more humble things like, you know, will my wife have a son? Should I take this voyage? So the god can be consulted on anything. It's more a matter of getting a place in line because there's limited space for the oracle. And as I mentioned, the Pythia only sits once a month. And so to get that place in line, you have to be a friend of Delphi. And that means, often, being a member of a city that has special relationships with Delphi, the sanctuary, being important to yourself, or being able to give a healthy donation to the gods' coffers. And so, as in anything, it helps to be rich and powerful if you're trying to consult Delphic Oracle. So let's say, if I'm a friend of Delphi, I've come from a particular city, let's say Thera, If I'm a friend of Delphi, I've come from a particular city, let's say Thera, because people in Thera are thinking, let's go to North Africa, let's think about making a colony in North Africa or something like that.

So walking up towards the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and you hinted at it earlier with all these magnificent donations, but walking up to the temple, it's not just the temple, is it? Would you be amazed, awed by these incredible monumental architecture that you would see stretched all across the way up to the temple? Yes, absolutely. What we miss now more, any that no reconstruction can really capture, is the glint of metal in a place like that. That the gleam of gold, of silver, and of polished bronze, which would have been absolutely everywhere, would have hurt your eyes to walk up to that sanctuary. Croesus, for example, gave a gold bowl that weighed 500 pounds, and that was displayed, we have to assume, somewhere very prominent to encourage some of the donations, near the temple. Every treasury probably had its doors

open. You'd have seen inside, again, the gleam of gold and silver. There would have been hundreds of bronze statues, forests of statues in every direction, some with a patina because they were old, some gleaming because they were new. It would have been hard to take in, to be honest, the sheer profusion of detail and color. And so you would have gone up the processional way and joined the line, when we have to assume, waiting to get into the temple. And so on the day of a consultation, before it all began, there was sort of a fail-safe where to make sure that the god was in a prophetic mood, they would bring out a goat, a young goat, and they would sprinkle water on it, on its face. And if the goat did what goats should do, which is shudder when the other water hit it, then the god was in a propitious mood,

and all was well. The goat has sacrificed, it's time to move on. If the goat does not shudder the way it's supposed to or does not shudder at all, then the God is not in a prophetic mood and everything's off. Everyone has to go home, wait till next month, and that's the end of it. And if you try to force the issue, which happened once, you know, if you try to make the Pythia prophesy, the consequences could be catastrophic because this one time they did this and apparently the Pythia went into hysterics and died shortly thereafter. The God was not pleased and so he punished his instrument. And so there was this sense that the God was not always willing to accommodate all suppliants. He had to be in a good mood and the goat had to shudder. And if it did, then all was great. If not, you know,

got to wait till next month. So to continue, so the actual process of consultation. So you're in this line. And before you consult the God, you pay your tax. It's an additional sacrifice, how they phrase it, but just a tax. So you give, we don't know how much it was exactly, but you give a few coins to Apollo. And you have with you your own sacrificial victim, probably another goat in general, a goat or a lamb. And so once everything, you pay your tax, you go forward, you sacrifice your victim to the god. And if all the organs are a-okay, there's nothing going on with the liver or whatever else, then you continue. And we don't actually know how it was set up under the temple,

because the Temple of Apollo was pulled apart in late antiquity for its building materials, and above all for the metal between the blocks of limestone. And so it was absolutely destroyed. And the aditon, the innermost sanctuary in which the consultation actually occurred, was just a pit, a pit with a bunch of scattered stone blocks in it. It was uncovered 100 years ago. And so we have to guess from literary sources what happened next. But it seems that there was an antechamber of some sort inside the temple, where the suppliant, you know, the customer, came with a few priests who were called the prophets, the prophetes. And from this antechamber, there was an open door, probably screened by a curtain. And within that chamber, that inner chamber, the aditon, is where the Pythia sat. And she sat,

we know, on a tripod, you know, a seat with three legs. If you believe the story about the crack, right over the crack, you know, with its billowing vapors, but that probably wasn't actually true. And the Pythia had a small altar inside her room, where she burned offerings of bay leaves and barley to Apollo. She would sit upon her tripod holding a laurel sprig in one hand and a dish full of water in the other. And the suppliant would shout his question basically through the curtain at her, that of the prophet at her form. We're not sure how that worked. And then she would respond in the voice of Apollo. And we don't know if she was in a self-induced trance, how this worked, but she supposedly, usually her words were not frenzied,

you know, as you might have assumed, you know, from the whole gaseous exhalation thing. They were, you know, just simple sentences. And these were then put into hexameters, the standard Greek poetry, by the prophets. and then the customer goes away with his prophecy all packaged in its hexameters, and then that is that. And so it appears that it's a process of just a matter of the customer going to this antechamber, speaking his request, being answered by the Pythia in a more or less coherent fashion, that being repackaged into a poem by the prophets, and then everyone going away happy. We don't know how long this all took, how systematic it all was.

It was like, okay, that's five minutes, next customer, next customer, or if it was a much more involved thing. But that appears to have been the basic process. I could ask so many questions now, but I'll ask them as they come to my mind from what you've just said there, Gareth. And the first one is you mentioned how it's he, he, he will try and get a prophecy there. Do we know of any women who, were women allowed to ask the Pythia questions too? Or was it from our surviving evidence, was it mainly or was it always men? This may just be a big blind spot in my own knowledge to be honest.

But to the best of my knowledge, the consultants were almost always if not always male. I'm sure that someone will have a passage to prove me wrong right now. almost always, if not always, male. I'm sure that someone will have a passage to prove me wrong right now, but at least coming to my mind that as in most aspects of Greek public life, the women did have important religious roles, as Epithia herself did, of course. Usually the public face of Greek life, a city's representative, will be male. And so I don't know if women could consult Epithia in a private capacity. Perhaps they could, but I'm not aware of it. Absolutely fair enough. And actually, the examples that I can think of, they're all normally kings or ambassadors and so on and so forth, which is really interesting in itself. I mean,

one other thing I'd like to ask quickly, and you mentioned it there, but obviously, we need to talk about this a bit more, is it seems as if it's a bit more complicated than this common perception that we have of the oracle being high on fumes when she's delivering these, well, these oracles. Yes, yeah. It's one of these, you know, actually, if you saw the movie 300, there's this rather bizarre scene where they actually transpose Delphi to Sparta and, you know, have a frenzied prophetess, you know, kind of dancing about. And of course, there's more respectable precursors for this line of thought. Like the Indiid, for example, the Sybil of Cumae is possessed by Apollo, you know, and it kind of, you know, is twitching in the grip of the god and, you know, speaks in

this deep voice. But as far as we know, the oracle, the Pythia was usually speaking just, you know, in a normal voice, you know, in conventional sentences, was not frenzied. And so really, it comes from a couple sources, late sources, which mentioned this crack and the vapors issuing from it. And the problem is that the Greek word for this, pneuma, doesn't necessarily mean like, you know, a hissing vapor. It could just be the divine inspiration of the god. And most scholars believe that this pneuma is a more metaphorical sort of vapor. It's the god's influence coming into the Pythia. Now, about 20 years ago, so I should preface that by saying, when the temple was first excavated 100 years ago, they expected to find this crack and everything with it, you

know, crack issuing vapor, you know, that that would be a spectacular thing. And they found absolutely nothing. Just a small chamber with a solid floor of rock, no obvious cracks, and really nothing distinctive about it. Just a floor of cut rock beneath the temple. But about 20 years ago, some geologists studying the area discovered that the limestone beneath Delphi contains bitumen, bituminous. And there are many earthquakes in the area, as in much of Greece. And when bituminous limestone is cracked, it produces very small amounts of methane, ethane, and ethylene. And ethane and ethylene can produce effects in large

enough quantities on those who inhale them, almost like a laughing gas. And so the theory was, when the geologists first published their findings, that the oracle was poised over a micro fault in this limestone. And every time there was a small earthquake, a little puff of ethane or ethylene is coming up through the crack and being ingested by the oracle. And that's part of her inspiration. But that's been very controversial. We don't think that the quantities were large enough for anything to happen. And there's the awkward fact that those gases are flammable. And there's no accounts of, you know, gouts of flame or anything, you know, issuing from, you know, the Oracle. And also there's the fact that the

consultants, the customers are only about 10 feet away from the Oracle. And there's nothing about the customers being high either. So if there was a gas, it was very, very localized and very weak. And we should probably imagine more of a self-induced trance or someone who was just convinced themselves they were in the grip of the god and could prophecy in that state of mind. Also, the ability to then say things in hexameter. That's quite an achievement in itself, isn't it? It is. And we don't know how often the Pythia herself did this or how often it it was interpreted by the prophets, you know, who were, you know, poets-in-training or something, who were doing all this. Or even if all our quotes were in verse, just the most famous ones are.

But yeah, it was sort of a way of, you know, because of course for the Greeks, you know, Homer is an examiner. You know, they're great with his poetry as an examiner. And so it elevates the utterance of the God to put it in this very dignified, rhythmic sort of utterance. But that's also interesting from what you mentioned there, Gareth. So even when they were consulting with the Pythia, with the oracle, there would be these other figures, as you say, perhaps during the hexameter, listening in also there, who also seems to be pretty important in the whole process. Oh, yes. The cult personnel is as important as theithia herself in many ways. We don't know how many there were in most periods, but there are at least four or five of these prophetes, prophets, and a number of ahosioi, just priests, who are officiants. animals, for example, or those who are gathering the offerings. And so there's the nameless underlings who are keeping the whole operation running, of course, while the Pythia is prophesying

and the prophetes are being bad poets. And so it's, yeah, it was quite an operation. And what's remarkable is how it continued for so long by just the mutual consent of the Greek world, basically. You know, there were wars that involved Delphi, the sacred wars, in one of which it was actually seized and the treasures were melted down by the local city to pay their mercenaries, which is a big, obviously, kind of a sacrilegious thing to do. But that was the exception, not the rule.

Normally, despite the very fractious nature of the Greek world, the constant wars, the endless bickering, everyone agrees that Delphi is sacred ground and should be respected because of this, the presence of the god there. That is also really interesting in itself because that leads me onto a tangent of the Celts in the early 3rd century BC.

Now, I know it's debated between the various surviving sources like Justin and Pausanias whether they did sack it or not. But there is Brennus and the Celts after they defeat the Greek army at Thermopylae or get round it, that they do go to Delphi. And in one version, they're, you know, they're beaten away by the will of the gods and thunder and crashing rocks and everything and Delphi is saved. But in the other version, Delphi is completely looted. And there's potential evidence of that gold in Telosa in southern France, the Telosa gold.

Oh, yeah, the gold of Telosa. Yeah. So that is an example of where it's a non-Greek people. Potentially, you know, they raid and they loot and they, you know, they pillage Delphi, this key central treasure. Oh, right. Yeah, that the Celts were no respecters of Greek sanctuaries, certainly. And there's not much evidence in archaeology for major destruction at that time, but they could certainly have looted the treasures.

And actually, the Romans themselves are equally guilty in many ways, because Nero, for example, takes hundreds of statues from Delphi to decorate his own villas in the city of Rome. And so there's this sort of more sanctioned artistic looting. Perhaps the most famous example comes very late in the history of the sanctuary, when Constantine takes the famous Serpent Monument, which commemorated the victory of Plataea, to Constantinople, to the Hippodrome there. And so this monument that's already more than a thousand years old becomes a centerpiece of this new great Roman Christian city on the Bosporus. There's this wonderful example of cultural appropriation and kind of signaling cultural continuity in his new ready-made capital.

That can still be seen actually in Istanbul. You go to the Hippodrome Park and even though the serpent heads and the cauldron are gone, the twisted bronze column with the names of the Greek cities who defeated the Persians at Plataea is still there. And it's a wonderful relic from Delphi that's traveled to this Roman city. And that you can still see today, as you say, the remnants of in Istanbul. I mean, that is also interesting. And let's kind of keep going back to that golden age a bit longer because we talked through that whole process. One other thing I'd love to stress a bit more, which you did mention,

and you mentioned especially with figures such as Croesus, is that the people who went to Delphi, if they were a friend of Delphi, they didn't have to be Greek. They could be other figures too, maybe perhaps a Thracian, a Lydian, or someone from even further afield too. Yes, it's a remarkable, if not quite ecumenical feel, but certainly a universalizing idea that this Greek sanctuary can welcome anybody. And I should note that the Greeks thought that their gods were universal. They thought that the Egyptians, for example, worshiped the same gods by different names. There's this wonderful myth about how the gods fled the monster Typhius and assumed animal forms when they went to Egypt. And that was why the

Egyptian worshiped these animal-headed gods. It was the Greek gods in disguise. And so the Greeks thought that their gods were everyone's gods, you know, in, again, various guises. And so Apollo would answer anybody if he came with the right intentions. Kind of like the Eleusinian Mysteries near Athens. If you knew Greek, you were in. You just had to know Greek. That was it. You had to understand the responses, that that was the whole point. But these kings, like Croesus, who probably did not know Greek, sent representatives who consulted the Oracle who did know Greek, and that was enough. And so the idea seems to be that, you know, if a sanctuary has this universal cachet, it's actually just ennobled, given more prestige by having non-Greece consulted,

even though it's really by Greeks and for Greeks for the most part. It's so interesting to think how far the oracle's impact could stretch when you look at the ancient Greek world. And forgive me if I'm completely wrong, but is it even in Afghanistan, ancient Afghanistan, with the success of the kingdom there, where you have that archaeological evidence which says how a Thessalian went to the Oracle of Delphi and helped them found this place in modern-day Afghanistan? Oh, yes, it's a wonderful example. Yes, at Ihanoum, it's now the border of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan on the Oxus River. They found the Delphic maxims inscribed in the gymnasium there.

And this is, you know, what, 3,000 miles from Athens or Delphi, here, you know, on the edge of the steppes in the middle of, you know, Central Asia. That yes, if someone was sent all that way to Delphi to consult the oracle and came back with these maxims, which they then inscribed on their gymnasium. This wonderful example of influence spanning an entire continent. Garrett, it's so cool. It's so cool. I could ask so many more questions, but we are going to start wrapping up. We talked about some examples. Are there any other particular examples of figures going to the Oracle of Delphi and there being a famous prophecy that you find more amusing, funny, or interesting than others that we haven't really shone a light on yet?

Yes. So perhaps the most famous one, after Croesus' consultation of the Oracle, came just before the Persian invasion in 480, when Xerxes is leading his great army down through Greece. And the Oracle is temporizing pretty hard to avoid getting, you know, swamped. But the Athenians are desperate to find their salvation from the Persians. And so before the invasion, they asked the oracle how Athens can be saved. And they actually asked twice. And the second response is that Athens will be saved by wooden walls. And Themistocles interprets this as saying that the Athenians should invest in a navy, a large navy, which then goes on to win the Battle of Salamis and really turn the tide against the Persians and win the Persian war. So if this is an authentic oracle, and if Delphi actually said this, they may have had a real hand in turning the tide against the Persians and winning the second Persian war

and saving Greece from becoming yet another Persian province. There's also a humorous one, and I cannot remember the city. It might be Agai. It's this minor city. And they won a naval victory, and they were very proud of themselves. And they asked the oracle, you know, are the Argentinians the best of all the Greeks? And the oracle just says, no, pretty much. He's like, no, you're not first, you're not third, you're not even 12th.

You are nothing among the Greeks. And that's it. Oh, put down. Yeah. Yes. The Oracle could be pretty vicious when it's stuck or fancy. But yeah, so obviously, there are these moments where the Oracle really does at least sanction important decisions being taken in the Greek world, but also has this very personal role for many thousands of Greeks over across the centuries. I mean, absolutely. Because as you said, those are sometimes, you know, big ones, big questions with cities, with warfare, with politics and how it can influence that. But as you say, there are so many other cases where it's like

someone asking for, will I get a good harvest this year, I'm presuming, or something along that lines, which is more, as you say, personal, which perhaps we don't have the source material surviving for like specific accounts, but we know that people were traveling for purposes like that. Oh, exactly. And actually our best evidence for what people wanted, there are these strange things called dice oracles, which come a little bit later in antiquity, but it's a series of ready-made responses where you cast dice. And then in response to X or Y question, the roll of the dice determines the response of the God. And it's all things like that. Like, you know, will, you know, I have a good year, you know, is my wife And it's all things like that. Like, you know, will I have a good year?

You know, is my wife being faithful to me? You know, is, you know, should I take this long journey? You know, will I be healthy in a year? So all these, you know, very human concerns that dominate everyone's lives then and now are also part and parcel of the oracle's responsibility. I guess it's such a difficult question for me to answer. But that's why you're on the ancients and that's why I'm saving it to last. Garrett, with the Romans, the assassination of Julius Caesar, there's a story there and then at a later date you have all of these omens added to the story. The Romans love having some infamous omens to assign to this moment in their history.

It begs the question about the validity, the veracity of these stories, for instance, the Themistocles and the wooden wall. I mean, what do you think about, like, do we think that these events could have happened, or that these are later additions to a story added at a later date, you know, kind of playing on the prophecy idea on the Oracle of Delphi, and adding this story in to make it even more epic for generations down the line? It is a hard question to answer, you know answer. That's the great agony of being an ancient historian, is that your sources are always partial, both in the sense of being incomplete and sense of being biased in various ways. And in the case of these famous prophecies pertaining to, for example, the wooden walls, this was written by Herodotus, who was writing it 50 years later and celebrating

the Athenian victory. So there was interpretation both initially by Themistocles, if that was indeed the prophecy, and then later by Herodotus reporting that prophecy and how it was used. certainly gave many thousands of these prophecies. And they were taken seriously in most cases. What was done with the legacy of those oracles, the ones that became very important, and how they were cast and recast by historians has to be approached in a case-by-case basis. And even then, we have no definitive answer for any one case. Again, the very human nature of the oracle means that even with the best of intentions, there's always this element of reinterpretation, you know, veneer and varnish and, you know, layer after layer put upon it until it no longer resembles the original thing that was given. So I suppose, you know, without quite throwing up my hands and saying, we just don't know, it's that we don't usually know and that we have to just make our best educated guess on the basis of what that we know about that author and the author's aims in composing his works well garrett this has been absolutely great really interesting nice introduction to the oracle of delphi and as you

say you know there are several other oracles too which we'll have to do in due course on the ancients dodona dodona is definitely something i'm really interested in. But Garrett, last but certainly not least, you've written a book all about ancient Greece in which the Oracle of Delphi does feature, and it is called? It is called Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants. Frequently asked questions about the ancient Greeks and Romans. Ah, brilliant. It's a book that answers 36 questions about the Greeks and Romans that were often posed to me by my students in college classrooms. And I had a lot of fun writing it. So it's basically 36 what I hope are fairly engaging essays that answer questions like, was the Oracle of Delphi high on fumes?

And other things about Greek belief and the classical world as a whole. Brilliant. Well, Garrett, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. It was my great pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Well, there you go. There was Garrett Ryan explaining all about the Oracle of Delphi. I hope you enjoyed the episode. It was wonderful to get Garrett on the show, to have him dining in from the USA. Now, last things from me, you know what I'm going to say. If you want more ancients content in the meantime, and of course you do, ancient history is the best. If you want more of that content in the meantime, well you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter

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