Oracle of Delphi

Before Apollo came to Delphi, the sacred cleft on Mount Parnassus belonged to Gaia, the primordial earth goddess, and was guarded by a serpent called Python. The Titaness Themis, goddess of divine law, also held sway there. But Apollo, god of prophecy born on the island of Delos to the Titaness Leto and Zeus, king of the gods, journeyed to Delphi and shot Python with arrows from his silver bow. The monster died, and Apollo claimed the sanctuary. From that day, the priestess who served him was called the Pythia, named for the serpent he had slain.

The Pythia was an ordinary woman of Delphi, chosen from the local peasants. On the seventh day of each month, when Apollo was believed to be present, she purified herself in the Castalian Spring, a sacred fountain flowing from the rocks of Mount Parnassus. She entered the inner chamber and climbed onto a bronze tripod above a chasm in the earth. Ancient writers said vapours rose from the cleft, and the Pythia breathed them in, chewed laurel leaves sacred to Apollo, and fell into a trance. The god spoke through her. Her words were wild, a torrent of sounds that temple priests translated into verse. The result was a prophecy in the form of a riddle, ambiguous enough to be true no matter what happened, and devastating enough to destroy those who misunderstood.

The most famous victim was Croesus, king of Lydia, who asked whether he should attack Persia. The Pythia told him that if he crossed the river Halys, he would destroy a great empire. Croesus invaded and was defeated; the empire he destroyed was his own. In another tale, Laius, king of Thebes, consulted the Oracle about his childlessness. The Pythia warned that any son born to him would kill his father and marry his mother. Laius exposed his infant son Oedipus on a mountainside, but the boy survived and fulfilled the prophecy exactly, bringing ruin upon Thebes. The Oracle also shaped Socrates, the Athenian philosopher. When a friend asked whether any man was wiser than Socrates, the Pythia replied that no one was wiser. Socrates spent his life trying to understand how he could be wise when he knew nothing, and his pursuit led to the philosophical method that would define Western thought.

The sanctuary at Delphi was the centre of the Greek world. Zeus, king of the gods, had released two eagles from opposite ends of the earth, and they met at Delphi, proving it to be the omphalos, the navel of the world. A stone carved like an egg stood in the temple to mark the spot. The Greeks came to Delphi to offer treasures, seek arbitration between cities, and compete in the Pythian Games, a festival held every four years in honour of Apollo's victory over Python. The laurel wreath was the prize, for the laurel was the tree of Apollo. For centuries, no Greek city would found a colony, declare war, or make a major decision without consulting the Oracle.

But the Oracle's power could not last forever. As the Greek world came under Roman rule, new religions challenged the old gods. In the fourth century CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius, a Christian who had banned pagan cults, ordered the temple closed. The Pythia spoke her last prophecy, and the tripod fell silent. The temple was abandoned, and the sacred spring ran dry. Yet the riddles of Delphi survived in the writings of historians and poets, and the idea of a voice that speaks truth in riddles became one of the deepest patterns in Western storytelling.