Having come to light again, in a unique setting of awe-inspiring natural surroundings, the ruins tell a tale of faith and prophecy, insight and diplomacy, that is at the very heart of the history of ancient Hellas.
The young and old, the great and not-so-famous used to come from far away to climb up the zig-zag Sacred Way amid fabulous shrines laden with gold and silver offered by all the city-states of Hellas and flanked by hundreds of statues. At the upper end of the Sacred Way stood the magnificent sanctuary of Apollo, built over what was thought to be the ‘navel’ of the Earth. Standing beneath often grey, misty skies, they beheld the chasm amid the Phaedrian Rocks and implored the Oracle for advice and inspiration.
There were several oracles in ancient times, but the one at Delphi was by far the most famous of them all. Its origins are lost in legend. It was said that a shepherd had once stumbled upon a cavern on Mount Parnassus that emitted intoxicating vapours. He fell into a trance and began to utter incoherent prophecies. The story spread far and wide and in time a temple was built over the cavern and a priestess called Pythia uttered what were regarded as the inspired words of Apollo, the god of prophecy (among other things). Thus religion blended with magic in a haunted natural background that worked strongly on the imagination of spell-bound visitors.
Originally, Pythia had to be a local virgin maiden who was not allowed to marry. This was because virginity was thought to be the proper vehicle for divine inspiration. However, after an affair between a Pythia and a young visitor was hushed up as unfortunate for the Oracle’s public relations image, the qualifications were revised and henceforth a woman over fifty was selected for the job, though she still was required to dress like a maiden.
The questions had to be put by the visiting applicant (whether king or commoner) to the Oracle in writing. There were sometimes questions about the past, but more often they were requests for advice regarding future action.
Three days before the time appointed for divine inspiration, Pythia prepared herself by fasting. Then she descended into the cavern below the temple, chewed leaves of the sacred laurel, drank water from the underground stream of Cassotis and seated herself upon a tripod. Inhaling the mystic vapours that arose from the cavern, she went into a trance and uttered mostly unintelligible murmurs. The utterances were taken down by ‘prophets’ or priests who sat around the tripod and interpreted Pythia’s words. The reply was then set down, usually in hexameter verse, signed, sealed and delivered to the applicant in a vase.
Unless the question or request for advice was an easy affair to deal with, the Oracle’s message was in most cases a riddle and it carried no official interpretation. It was a masterpiece of ambiguity and the applicant was left on his own to figure out what it meant. The Oracle was always on the safe side of prophecy. It is said, for instance, that King Croesus of Lydia, concerned about the Persian invasion, sought the Oracle’s advice about what to do. The reply was that if he crossed his river frontier, an empire would crumble. His interpretation was that the Oracle offered him the green light to cross the frontier. His guess was apparently wrong, however, as it was his own empire that was destroyed. And yet no one doubted the Oracle’s wisdom and Pythia could not be sued for damages.
The Delphic Oracle may sound today like amusing superstition, and yet in its time it was a highly respected institution that exerted a profound influence over the politics, wisdom and religion of ancient Hellas for more than a thousand years. No Greek city-state took an important decision without consulting the Oracle. No Greek colony was ever founded without advice from the Oracle as to the propitious timing and location of the new undertaking. Thus the Oracle’s fame and influence extended to the far away colonies of Greek city-states, which in their turn left a deep imprint on the cultural history of Europe and Asia.
The political influence of the Oracle was dealt a blow with the conquest of Hellas by Philip of Macedon. For several centuries thereafter, it retained a shadow of its former glory, specializing in counselling individuals rather than political rulers. With the spread of Christianity, appeal to the Oracle became unfashionable. By the Fourth Century A.D., most of the Delphi shrines had been plundered and the Oracle had become silent. Then the Emperor Julian the Apostate thought of Apollo and sent an emissary to Delphi inquiring how he could restore the Oracle. But Pythia’s weary reply to the emissary was: ‘Inform your Emperor that the Sanctuary is crumbled and the god Apollo has no longer where to lay his head. The laurel of his divination is withered and the water spring that spoke with voices is dry.’ This was the last recorded oracle — and it was not ambiguous. Delphi fell into oblivion for about fifteen hundred years.
Looking at it from the practical point of view, the history of the Delphic Oracle implies the probable existence of an extensive research department at the sanctuary. It is also assumed that the temple priests had organized and employed a network of agents in various city-states who were quick to inform the sanctuary’s central intelligence authority about the local state’s forthcoming application for an oracle as well as about the prevailing political, social and economic situation. Between the time the application was formally filed, the required complicated procedural ceremonies and delivery of the Oracle, there was ample opportunity for the priests to consult their card index of V.I.P.’s and consider what reply would be most beneficial for the country’s interests — and their own.
Oracles, prophecies and fortune-telling are older than recorded history, with certain people becoming professional at trying to interpret the unknown and foretell the future. These were practices often carried out under the auspices of religions of the past as divine authority was supposed to lend them credence and respectability. Inevitably the increase of scientific knowledge subsequently reduced oracles to sheer superstition.
And yet there is one field of prophesying the future which is nowadays assuming scientific respectability — besides becoming fashionable. It is generally called ‘futurism’ (or ‘mellontology’, to use its Greek equivalent) and is widely patronized by corporations, colleges, learned societies and even government agencies on both sides of the Atlantic.
Many industrial corporations are curious about obtaining an insight into marketing and consumption patterns one, two or three decades hence. Other institutions are concerned about future trends in cultural, social, demographic or even religious practices and are forming committees or institutes about the year 2000 and so on. Government agencies are trying to foretell the framework of communications, transportation, energy consumption, etc., in the future. Five-year plans (like one for Greek industry that is expected to be announced soon), which are based on assumptions derived from past ‘ and present trends, are being drawn up to map out government and private action in the economic and social fields.
The techniques of forecasting used by futurists assume a variety of forms. These do not include science fiction (where novelists from Jules Verne to H.G. Wells and George Orwell employed their vivid imagination in projecting their scientific knowledge into a Utopian future, often quite inaccurately but at times with remarkable predictability) or public opinion polling (where samples of opinions about future events, such as election results, are often gathered).
One technique, which is the simplest of all and is used by a major California-based corporation, uses computers and limits forecasts to cautious extrapolations of past and present trends. Another technique (probably inspired by science fiction) involves the creation of a ‘model’ of what society — or rather a specific social sector — is expected to look like in the future, whether in politics, business, technology, education and so on. In creating a social model of the future, both the changing factors and the factors that are likely to remain constant are taken into account, as well as the possible relationships between them.
Some futurists contend that political and other events as well as scientific and technological inventions are almost impossible to predict but that sociological predictions are relatively easy to make. The latter include population trends, development of life span, growth of national income, working hours, leisure time, spread of mass communications, etc. Perhaps futurists will offer an important service to sociology if they can discern what is unknowable about the future and what is relatively knowable and to what extent.
It appears, however, that the most useful function of futurism would be not merely the prediction of the future, in whatever sphere, but the presentation of moral choices. As military strategists prepare for a whole range of future eventualities, so futurists can predict certain possible social patterns of the future out of which people can select what should be the more favourable pattern and thus take the proper decisions leading to it, while avoiding the unfavourable pattern — which is in essence a warning against the wrong decisions. (For instance, as reported in the May 1975 issue of The Athenian, the Greek Minister of Culture and Science recently presented a bleak forecast of the Greek environment in the year 2000 — assuming of course that the present pollution situation is left unchecked and no immediate measures are taken.)
Thus, in our day, computers with their hardware and software have replaced Pythia and her tripod. But back at Delphi, hotel keepers this spring posed a question to the Oracle that their predecessors must have asked Pythia time and again in ancient times. The question went like this:
Will tourists flock again this year
From over the mountain range,
And bring along with them
Much needed foreign exchange?
Pythia went through her routine ritual and the high priests, after consulting eurodollar quotations as well as telex messages from Nicosia all the way to New York, delivered this oracle, in classical ambiguity:
Tis all a written book,
A word on every page; You cannot tell the coming word
Until you turn the page.
