Herodotus on Delphi

The sanctuary that rose up around the oracle of Apollo at Delphi was one of the four called "panhellenic", literally "common to all Greeks", because of the role they played through time as centers for contact among Greek cities, colonies, and political entities, as well as non-Greek powers in the ancient Mediterranean. Scholars have likewise pointed to the importance of the panhellenic sanctuaries in the development of the polis and the construction of Greek identity. The following section is Herodotus' description of Delphi's participation in Athenian decision-making in the face of the huge Persian invasion undertaken to avenge Persian loss at Marathon in 490.

Consider: what role does Apollo's oracle play in the deliberation? how does this reflect the public role of Greek religion?

For the Athenians had sent envoys to Delphi and were ready to consult the god; and when they had performed the customary rites about the shrine and had entered the inner hall and sat down there, the Pythia(1) , whose name was Aristonike, delivered the following oracular response:

Wretched ones, why sit you here? Flee and begone to remotest Ends of earth, leaving your homes, high places in circular city; For neither the head abides sound, nor the body; Nor at bottom do the feet stay firm, nor the hands, Nor does the middle remain uninjured. All is lost. Fire pulls all down, and sharp Ares, driving his Syrian-bred horses. Many a fortress besides, and not yours alone shall he ruin. Many the temples of god to devouring flames he shall consign. There they stand now, the sweat of terror streaming down them. They quake with fear; from the rooftops black blood pours in deluging torrents. They have seen the coming destruction, and evil sheerly constraining. Get you gone out of the adyton! Blanket your soul with your sorrows.

When the Athenian envoys heard this, they were in extreme distress. They were prostrated by their calamity, foretold by the oracle. But Timon, son of Androboulos, who was as notable a Delphian as any, counselled them to take suppliant boughs and consult the oracle a second time, as suppliants. The Athenians followed his advice and said to the god: `Lord, give us a more favourable oracle about our fatherland; reverence these suppliant boughs with which we come before you, or we will never go away from the shrine (adyton(2) ) but remain right here until we expire.' When they said this, the priestess (promantis) gave them this second response:

No: Pallas (Athene) cannot appease Zeus of Olympos With many eloquent entreaties and all her cunning counsel. To you I declare again this word, unyielding as adamant: All shall be taken by foemen, whatever within his border Kekrops(3) contains, and whatever the glades of sacred Kithairon(4) . Yet to Tritogeneia(5) shall far-seeing Zeus give a present, A wooden wall, which alone shall abide undestroyed by the foemen; Well shall it serve yourselves and your children. Do not await the charge of horses and foot that come on you, A mighty host from the landward side, but withdraw And turn your back in retreat; on another clay shall you face them. Salamis, isle divine, you shall slay many children of women, Either when Demeter is sown or again when she is harvested.

This second oracle seemed to be gentler than the first , and indeed it was so. So the envoys wrote it down and returned home to Athens. When they had left Delphi and made their report to the People at home, there were many interpretations proposed as to its true meaning, but there were two that clashed with each other more than all the others. On the one hand, some of the older men said that they thought the god was predicting that the Akropolis would be preserved. For in the olden days the Akropolis of Athens had been fenced in with a thorn hedge, and some therefore interpreted this hedge to be the 'wooden wall'. On the other hand, there were those who said that the god signified the ships, and these urged the abandonment of all else and the preparation of the fleet.

But those who claimed that the `wooden wall' was the ships were baffled by the last two verses of the Pythia's oracle. . . [above]. In respect of these lines of verse, the opinion of those who construed the ships as the `wooden wall' was confounded. For the oracle-interpreters [khresmologoi] took the verses in this sense: that the Athenians must prepare themselves for a sea-battle at Salamis, which they would assuredly lose. However, there was a man among the Athenians who at this time was but lately come into their front ranks, whose name was Themistokles son of Neokles. This man said that the oracle-interpreters construed the whole matter wrongly. For if the verses had really been directed against the Athenians, the oracle would have been couched in far less gentle terms; instead of `Salamis, isle divine', it would have run `O cruel Salamis', if its inhabitants were going to die around there. Rather, he said, the oracle if rightly taken was really directed against their enemies, and not the Athenians. So he counselled them to prepare for a battle at sea, since it was the ships that were the 'wooden wall'. This was Themistokles' explanation, and the Athenians judged it preferable to that of the oracle-interpreters; for the latter would not have them prepare for a sea-battle or indeed, to put it in a nutshell, lift a finger against the enemy but advised rather that they should just leave Attica and settle in some other country.

Notes for Herodotus/Delphi reading

1. Pythia is the formal title given the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, the oracular intermediary with the divine. She was the one who chewed the laurel leaves and straddled the sacred tripod to engage contact with the god, often giving nearly-unintelligible answers that were translated into understandable (and even poetic, as here) responses for the suppliants at Delphi.

2. Actually, the adyton is the inner part of the temple.

3. Kekrops is the name of a legendary founder of Athens.

4. Kithairon is the name of a mountain in Boeotia, on the outer fringes of Attica.

5. Tritogeneia is one of the titles of Athena. Its literal meaning is "born of Trito" (the name of a lake near where one story has her birth), but here the title is just a way of referring to Athens the city

(Herodotus vii.140-3, trans. D. Grene, modified)