When our Greek cruise ship dropped anchor here so passengers could visit the oracle of Delphi, my wife and I didn`t have the least idea what to expect. We said as much to a new friend we`d made on the cruise.
Les Mac Lain was a university professor who had endeared himself when we first met by announcing that he was ”a very devout pedantic and a charter member of Didactics Anonymous.”
”That means you think you`re too `teachery,` right?”
”Right, but Lord knows I`m trying to kick it.”
The professor seemed to welcome our ignorance about the Delphi oracle since it would give him a legitimate reason to hold forth on a subject he loved.
”You kids stick with me. I really know this place.”
The bus ride from Itea up Mt. Parnassus to Delphi was a lot like a trip through the mountains near Tucson, but instead of saguaro and joshua there were olives. The gray-green trees were everywhere.
”This,” our official female guide announced from the front of the bus,
”is the largest stand of olives trees in Greece, perhaps the whole world. You`ll be able to see it better when we get there.”
”Krissaean Plain,” whispered the professor. ”People have been fighting over these fields for thousands of years. Greeks really love their olives. I prefer pearl onions myself.”
”Some of our finest extra virgin olive oil,” the guide continued,
”comes from these slopes.”
There were a few among us to whom this immediately inspired questions. Our lady guide anticipated: ”Olive oil is rendered by use of giant screw presses.”
The professor busied himself looking out the window.
Impressive ruins
The ruins of ancient Delphi and the Temple of Apollo were impressive. When the bus stopped, our guide led us to the shade of a big tree by the entrance and told us a little about her subject, pointing out the various ruins.
There were elements dating from 1400 B.C., when Delphi had been a crossroads for travelers. It`s major historical significance, though, dated from the years of the oracle`s greatest popularity, a period that lasted longer than any of the empires it served, from roughly 650 B.C. to the time of Hadrian, 130 A.D.
As the guide continued to tell the story, she led the group up The Sacred Way, a path paved with huge cut stones leading toward the higher ground and the ruins of the Temple of Apollo.
Joyce and I never got close enough to the front of the group to hear what she was saying, but we had the professor. The sun was directly overhead and the day was hot. The professor put a large square handkerchief over his bald spot. It made him look a little like the portrait of Queen Victoria.
”Dates and guesses,” he said. ”That`s what that young lady is talking about. But what good does it do to visit a place like this unless you can feel the life in it?”
He pointed out great square cut stones along the Sacred Way. Literally thousands of words had been carved into them. ”People cut those words into those stones. Hard way to make a prayer. They built the walls and the buildings and when the earthquakes knocked them down the people came out and put them up again.”
The guide and our tour group stopped at a wide spot on the pathway. We stopped 50 yards behind them.
”It was probably close to 4,000 years ago,” said the professor, ”when some of the farmers who lived here first discovered the hole in this mountain with vapor and gasses coming out of it. Some of them said that those who breathed the vapors became clairvoyant and found they were able to predict the future.”
”Idle minds?” Joyce asked. ”Or could there have been something to it?”
”A lot of seismic activity can produce gases that can make you sick enough to hallucinate.” The professor said he thought the first prediction was probably some farmer saying he thought he was going to be sick.
Building is dedicated
”A small building was erected on the site,” said the professor, ”and dedicated to a local goddess, a lady named Earth, who, according to legend, set her son, Python, to guard it.
”The legend also said Python was a dragon. But it wasn`t enough. When the young Apollo came along and decided he wanted the place, it was no contest. He slew Python and built his temple.
”Delphi`s renown dated from that time. When word got around that someone or something here, at Delphi, could see into the future visitors started coming from all over the known world. The town and the temple grew to accommodate them.
”It was decided that one special person should act as the voice of the gods, that it should be a young woman, preferably beautiful and, of course, a virgin. Virgins were much sought after in those days.”
The professor stopped. ”Does that sound right?” We assured him we knew what he meant.
”Well,” he went on, ”the virgin was always referred to as The Pythia.
”When it was time for the questioning of the oracle, the Pythia would take a ritual bath, be anointed and go to a small room carved into the mountain just above the vent hole and below the nave of Apollo`s Temple. The suppliant would go to a nearby room and speak his question in a loud clear voice and wait.
”In her special room, The Pythia would sit on a kind of tripod, which was in contact with a great carved stone. This stone, though it looked like a cross between a somewhat abbreviated phallus and a giant acorn, was called The Omphalos or the navel of the world, but I don`t think it really was.”
We had reached another wide spot on the Sacred Way.
A powerful chew
”Now, get this,” he said pointing toward the Temple, ”Probably along in that area The Pythia-this teenager-was given leaves; some to burn and some to chew. The historians say it was laurel.
”Then, perched on the sacred tripod, over the ancient Greek equivalent of a diesel bus-exhaust, this young girl, The Pythia, would inhale the fumes and chew the `laurel.` It wasn`t long before the girl, probably stoned out of her gourd, would get into some serious muttering.
”Whatever she said was considered divinely inspired. The suppliant could see her lips moving and a priest writing. She could have been saying anything from `This yucky smoke is ruining my hair` to `Can I have another hit of the laurel?` but the priest would be able to `interpret` a good answer and deliver it to the asker in Homeric Hexameters or plain prose.”
”Homeric Hexameter?” I asked.
”Kind of a pedantic pentameter,” said the professor. ”Whether the answers were in rhyme or prose probably depended on the political stature of the suppliant and the size of the fee he paid to the priests.
”The system seemed to work, but the quality of the answers was always a problem. A local politician might ask if the gods saw him winning an election, only to be told the election would result in a great change for him.
”Whether the oracle meant `great` like wonderful or great like really, really big was moot. Nothing was ever expanded upon or explained by the oracle.
”The King of Lydia, Croesus (of the rich-as-Croesus Croesuses), reportedly went to the oracle for a little advice during his war with Cyrus. He wanted to know whether he should take his armies across the river Aly.
”The oracle answered, `If Croesus crosses the River Aly, he will destroy a great kingdom.`
”Feeling victory had been assured, Croesus crossed the Aly whereupon Cyrus and a few thousand of his friends cancelled Croesus` passport and sent him and his army home on the next bus. A little testy, Croesus went for another session with the oracle. `You didn`t say it would be my kingdom.` To which the oracle answered, `I didn`t say it wouldn`t.”`
A crowd gathers
More tourists seem to be pausing to listen to the professor rather than the guides. He couldn`t hide his pleasure, stood a little taller and spoke a bit louder and took the handkerchief off his head.
”Now, you might think,” the professor went on, ”that any culture that depends on teen-aged girls, gassed to the eyeballs, for answers to everything from political problems to the fundamental murmur of the universe is asking for trouble.
”You`d be right. Whether it was talking out of school, giggling in school or that the generation gap was just too great, after a while, the powers-that-be, who had become among the most influential (if unofficial)
advisers in the world, announced that henceforth the position of The Pythia would only be filled by ladies over the age 50 who were irreproachable in every respect. Some sources said the virginity requirement was probably dropped because it presented recruiting problems.
”The Pythia`s mutterings did become more acceptable. But, because the older ladies did tend to cough more, wheeze louder and fall off the tripod and lose consciousness more often, the temple was obliged to keep spares on call-a lot of spares.”
Prof. Mac Lain said there had been a day when the ”emissions” from the Gods were so thick and pungent they used up three Pythias, all of whom were carted off gasping.
”According to the books, in spite of the Roman Emperor Hadrian`s best efforts, sometime during the 2d Century A.D., the oracle began to fade. The cult of Apollo had lost so much ground to Christianity as to make the oracle meaningless. As the emissions thinned and the springs dried up, Apollo was reported to have retired. The last prophecy from Delphi`s oracle was to the Roman emperor, Julian: `Tell the king: no longer has Phoebus a hut, nor a prophetic laurel, nor a spring that speaks. The water of speech even is quenched.”`
On the bus ride back to Itea, Prof. Mac Lain kept shaking his head.
”I think,” he said, ”the oracle just ran out of gas.”
Before the voyage was over I thanked Prof. Mac Lain for his expertise in Greek history. He looked surprised, ”My field is computer science.”
Later I read ”Delphi” by Basil Petrakos, one of Greece`s former directors of antiquities. All of the professor`s facts checked out. I strongly suspect most of his guesses would, too.
