Pythia: The Oracle of Delphi and Her Prophecies

Ruins of the temple of Delphi

Delphi and the Oracle

For the ancient Greeks, Delphi was the centre of the earth, the navel point, with the stone Omphalus, an ornate phallus-shaped rock, housed right inside the temple of Apollo there. The Apollo temple in Delphi, on Mount Parnassus, was the home of Pythia, the extraordinary oracle of Apollo, the god of light, knowledge, and harmony. Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Euripides, Plutarch, Ovid and many more Greek thinkers and writers have sung her praise. About 600 of her prophecies are recorded in ancient texts. Socrates said about her, “The greatest blessings come by way of madness, indeed of madness that is heaven-sent.” She was possibly not an individual but a generation of oracles, united in their purpose of helping humans communicate with the worlds beyond. She remained a spiritual mother to the entire Hellenic era.

In the first century CE, Plutarch, who was born near Delphi, wrote an account of Cicero’s encounter with the oracle of Delphi. The oracle had advised Cicero to follow his own heart rather than what other people would say, according to Plutarch. The saying of ‘know thyself’ is a maxim that all of us would have uttered at some moment in our lives, but few know that it originally came from Pythia, the oracle of Delphi.

In 'Ion,' a play by Euripides, Pythia's magnificent rituals and prophecies are described in detail. She was the diviner par excellence to the ancient Greeks. Yielding to the divine seizures, letting god Apollo enter her body, sometimes wailing and howling, and sometimes as breathless as a blade of grass in the morning stillness, she foretold the future for kings and warriors and commanded their respect and love. Many wars were fought based on her prophecies, and many pursuits followed through.

The Apollo Temple in Delphi

On Mount Parnassus, Apollo is said to have built a temple after killing a python, the warrior of the Earth Goddess.

Considering the name of the oracle of Delphi and the way her rituals incorporated spring water, rocks, and other earth elements, it is reasonable to assume that Apollo may have reconciled with the earth goddess, allowing some of the early worship practices to continue when he assumed control.

Whenever a new god arrived in history, there was friendship as well as animosity among their followers. The new and powerful often succeeded in banishing the old ones to forgetful antiquity. What exactly happened in Delphi stays blurred in the quagmire of history and myth.

What Did Pythia, the Oracle, Look Like?

There is a painting dated 440 BCE of Pythia, which was created by a potter on a large cup from a time when the oracle was alive and active. In this painting, she is wearing an alb and laurel on her head. There is a laurel in her hands, and she looks quite sober for a frenzied soothsayer. The only surviving picture of her from her time, this profile personifies her while deepening her mystery and charm.

The painting begs the question of what the average age was for these oracle women. One story goes like this: the oracle used to be a young virgin. One day a man from Thessaly, Echecrates the Thessalian, came, kidnapped the young, beautiful oracle, and violated her. After this tragic incident, it was decided by a law passed in Delphi that all oracle women should be middle-aged. However, many depictions of the oracle in literature and painting ignore this fact and present her as a young and seductive woman in her early twenties. The fifth-century BCE writer Euripides described Pythia as wearing a long white alb that touched her ankles and a crown on her head made of laurel and ribbons.

Heinrich Leutemann's The Oracle of Delphi Entranced.

How the Oracle of Delphi Delivered Her Prophecies

“I count the grains of sand on the beach and measure the sea; I understand the speech of the dumb and hear the voiceless.” This is Pythia herself on how she arrives at the divine truth. Her prophecies were poetic, profound, and mysterious. Many of them later acquired the status of proverbs. One of her prophecies was, “Love of money and nothing else will ruin Sparta,” and this prophecy came true when, in 192 BCE, Rome and its allies subverted the independent Spartan state.

Modern explanations suggest that gases emitted from a spring inside her temple caused the oracle to enter an elated and delirious state, enabling her to deliver abstract and poignant prophecies. Geochemical surveys of the temple ruins revealed that ethane and ethylene emanated from the springs of the inner sanctum. However, the collection of extremely wise and articulate prophecies made by the oracle and found scattered in different ancient texts cannot be seen merely as the blabbering of an intoxicated person.

The laurel she held was possibly a sweet bay or oleander branch. Some speculated that oleander might have contributed to the state of high in which she was in during her prophecies. Whatever the explanation, or rather, one must not try to explain it away but just enjoy the myth, the fact remains that in a highly misogynistic society like ancient Greece, the tradition of Delphi oracles was a special example. The surviving legacy of Pythia at least proves that a few women broke the chains of patriarchy and rose to be revered even by the kings.

Pythia and Socrates

Pythia had stated that no man was wiser than Socrates in Athens. Socrates had sent many of his disciples to her to seek advice, but her proclamation of him being the wisest man did not convince him at all. For the rest of his life, he tried to understand the meaning of that prophecy and even tried to prove her wrong. It is remarkable that his scientific mind was not satisfied with the praise but wanted to solve the mystery as such.

End of the Oracle Culture in Delphi

In 4 CE, the oracles ceased to exist because by then Christianity had become widespread. The Christian Emperor, Theodosius, ordered the temples worshipping old gods to be shut down. Later, Emperor Nero and Constantine the Great pillaged the temple of Delphi and took away many artefacts to Rome and Constantinople. The place was forgotten, though mundane life continued where once the temple stood. The ruins of the temple stayed hidden under a village till 1463, when Cyriac of Ancona, a scholar and historian, discovered the ruins of the temple of Apollo in Delphi.

The Delphi of Today

The ruins of the temple of Delphi are a protected monument and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tourists flood Delphi to have a rendezvous with the mysterious past and to stand on the stone-paved atrium inside what is left of the temple of Apollo, wondering what the high priestess might have told them as she peeked into their future and life.

References

Apollo and the Pythia: The Oracle of Delphi, symbolreader.net

The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind its Lost Secrets, William J. Board, 2007.

The Oracle at Delphi: The Pythia and the Pneuma, Intoxicating Gas Finds, and Hypotheses, Jelle Z. de Boer, Toxicology in Antiquity, 2019.

Archaeological Site of Delphi, UNESCO World Heritage Convention.