Oracle

ORACLE. – Divine communication given in specific places (cave, grove, sanctuary, and the like) by a person consecrated to the sacrifice of a particular deity and entrusted with a legitimate mission. It is a form of divination practiced among various ancient peoples.

In Greek, the most commonly used words are: χρηστήριον, which designates the place where prophecies are dispensed, and then the answers themselves and even the instrument by which they are obtained; and χρησμός, which denotes both prophecies in verse (in hexameters) and oracular responses. Another very commonly used term is μαντέον, which in the singular denotes the place and in the plural the prophecy.

I. IMPORTANCE OF THE O

Among primitive peoples one is sometimes closer to the oracular form than to the merely divinatory one, since it is generally the established religious authority (shaman, sorcerer, priest-king) that elicits the oracle, often from one and the same place; thus, for example, in the Sandwich Islands the king, who commands the god, utters the responses from his wicker hiding place; whereas in very numerous other cases the priest, ecstasy (v.), is possessed by the god who, violently agitating him, thereby makes his will known: as, for example, happened to the priestess Pythia of the Delphic o. (v. DELFINO).

The 7th and 6th centuries mark in Greece the period of the greatest flourishing of the o., which then, toward the end of the 5th century, together with the crisis of religion, began their decline; until, once Greek independence had fallen, their importance—especially that of Delphi—also declined, owing moreover to the rise of new philosophical and religious theories.

The oracular style and content characteristic of certain books (Apocalypse of Istaepe, Sibylline Oracles) by Judeo-Oriental writers, heirs to the ancient political-religious hatred of Rome, was subsequently employed by the apologists of nascent Christianity to foretell the pagan empire’s imminent ruin (v. SIBILLA).

In Rome, in the earliest period, mention should be made of the divinatory and non-oracular responses derived from the Sibylline Books (introduced from Campania, according to tradition, in the time of Tarquinio il Superbo).
II. SHRINES, PERSONNEL OF THE O. AND MODES OF CONSULTATION. — In Greece, while some o. never succeeded in possessing a shrine of their own (being limited to caves, springs, etc.), others, with time, came to be housed in imposing and richly endowed sacred buildings, such as the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the Didymeion of Miletus (v. below), and many of the oracle-clinics of Asclepius (Athens, Epidaurus [V. below]), where incubation was practiced and porticoes were attached so that the sick, in contact with Mother Earth, might receive the revelation of the god. Originally, most o. seem to have belonged to priestly families, such as the Helloi (or Selloi) at Dodona, the Deukalionides at Delphi, etc. With time, however, these families lost their authority, and the o. passed under the administration of the cities, which had them managed by magistrates chosen by lot. In some o., especially the major ones, there were interpreters of the god, called prophets (προφήτες) or prophetesses (προφήτες), who often acted as direct intermediaries between the divinity and the worshipper (the most celebrated of the prophetesses was the Pythia of Delphi), while at other times they assisted the «inspired» worshipper, interpreting his incoherent words or actions in order to draw up the response (in verse). If extispicina was practiced at the o. (as at Olympia [V. below]), there was also a diviner (μάντες). Certain cities, moreover (as happened at Rome with the XV viri sacris faciundis for the interpretation of the Sibylline Books), consulted public officials (at Sparta the πύθος, at Athens the πυθοχρήστου).

In its essential features, consultation of an o. proceeded as follows: after certain preliminary ceremonies performed by the devotee (fasting, sacrifices, etc.), the lustratio of the prophet (or priest) took place; at times, in order to intoxicate himself, he drank wine or even blood. Then, while the client, having handed him the written questions (on tablets), remained outside the adyton, he entered the cave, spring, etc., in order to come into direct contact with the divinity that possessed him. His incoherent utterances were then generally collected and interpreted by a priest, who recorded the response on tablets (those of Dodona are famous). Finally, the devotee had to pay a tribute, often leaving (as in the sanctuaries of Asclepius) an inscription commemorating the grace or healing obtained.

As regards the modes of consultation of the o., it may be said that they were as varied as those of divination: 1) water (hydromantia), the quintessential agent of divination, from which the priest derived the response either by throwing certain objects into it (Epidaurus Limera [Pausanias, III, 23, 8]) or by listening to its color in a cavern (Apollo Clarius; V. below), etc.; it was much used in the o. of Apollo; 2) flight of birds (ornithomantia) was an archaic practice (already known to Homer) and very widespread (Dodona, Delphi, Rome, etc.); 3) examination of the entrails (extispicina), used at Olympia and Paphos, and sometimes performed on an altar made of the victim’s ashes (Apollo Spodios at Thebes [Pausanias, IX, 11, 2], Olympia), was particularly widespread among the Etruscans; 4) sortes (cleromantia), a practice well known in Italy (Caere, Falerii, Anzio, Praeneste, etc.), where this term was synonymous with oracula (Cicero, Div., II, 33); they consisted of detached letters carved on tablets or on wooden or bronze dice (ibid., II, 41), capable, when cast or selected, of forming words; 5) fire (empyromantia), in which the diviner interpreted the divine signs in the flame of the sacrifices (at Olympia [cf. Pindar, Od., V, 13, 9], at Delphi, at Thebes, etc.); 6) incubation (ἐγχολι-μυρικ), closely connected with oneiromantia, or divination through the interpretation of dreams, was practiced in all the sanctuaries of Asclepius, as well as at the o. of Amphiaraus (v. below), at that of Apollo at Patara (Herodotus, I, 182), at that of Faunus at Tivoli (Virgil, Aeneid, VII, 81; Ovid, Fasti, III, 291; IV, 650), at that of Podalirius in Apulia, in most of the temples of Serapis, etc. The god appeared in a dream (ἐπιφάνεια), or answered the worshipper directly—who slept (incubatio) in the temple—in order to heal him or indicate a remedy (iatromantia). At times incubation was performed by the priest, as in the Plutonion of Acharaca (Strabo, XIV, 1, 44).

III. SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL O

1. O. of the gods. — a) Apollo. — This god, who was one of the greatest in the Greek pantheon, was particularly suited to being venerated and consulted in the o., the most famous of which in the ancient world belonged to him. Thus, in addition to the very famous one at Delphi (v.), on the Aegean island of Delos, where the god had been born (cf. Hymn. Hom. in Apoll., 115 ff.), tradition claimed that the oldest of the o. had arisen, that of Apollo Delios: there the response was obtained from the living voice of the god, which resounded indistinctly and terribly in the fissures of the adjacent Mount Kynthos (Virgilio, Aeneid, III, 60). The coast of Asia Minor had various o. of Apollo, of which the most celebrated and perhaps the oldest was that of Apollo Didymeus, with a famous temple beside which a spring gushed forth; a priestess, exalted by fasting and prayer and, after bathing her feet and the hem of her garment in the water, mounted the tripod, or circular disk, from which she delivered the response (Giamblico, De mysteriis, III, 2). At Colophon there was the celebrated sanctuary with the o. of Apollo Clarius, where, for consultations, once the clients had gathered, «the priest asks only the number and name of the persons present; then he descends into a grotto, drinks the water of a mysterious fountain, and this man, for the most part unacquainted with letters and poetry, answers in verse the question that each person puts to him mentally» (Tacito, Annals, II, 54). In the age of the Seleucids, the o. of Apollo Daphnius was established near Antioch in Syria; it possessed its prophetic power in the Castalian spring, whose water, according to some, while boiling, exhaled a breath that induced delirium in those present; according to others, it delivered the response when the leaves of a nearby laurel were thrown into

II. b) Zeus

The o. of Zeus never had the importance or fame of those of Apollo. Besides the very Dodona (v.), where the god was associated with other divinities, Zeus had an o. at Olympia (where it replaced an older o. of Gea). It consisted of a great altar, made from the ashes of sacrificed animals and sprinkled with water from the Alpheus. The response was obtained by the priests through extispicy and empyromancy. The o. that might be ranked third in the esteem of the Greeks (after Delphi and Dodona) was that which arose from a «contaminatio» of a Greek god with an Egyptian one: Zeus Ammon, whose place of worship was in an oasis of Libya, near the famous «Fountain of the Sun» (Diodoro, XVII, 50). The responses were obtained (according to Egyptian custom) by carrying the statue of the god in procession and interpreting the possible and supposed signs made by its head (Diodoro, loc. cit.) and probably (according to Greek practice) by making use in some manner of the water of the nearby spring, as well as of the trees of the oasis (Silio Italico, III, 690 ff.). c) Asclepius. — Among his most celebrated sanctuaries, those of Trikka (very ancient), Epidaurus (dating from the end of the sixth century B.C.), and Cos, the homeland of Hippocrates, should be mentioned. At Rome, following a pestilence, the Sibylline Books ordered (293 B.C.) that an embassy be sent to transport the cult of Asclepius from Epidaurus, for whom a famous sanctuary was erected on the Tiber Island (Livio, X, 47).

IV. ORACLES OF HEROES AND ORACLES OF THE DEAD

A clear distinction between these two types of oracles is arbitrary, since generally the dead who were evoked had been heroes or even diviners during their lifetime:

1. Oracles of heroes: a) Oracle of Trophonius

It consisted of a cleft along the side of a mountain above the sacred grove and temple of Trophonius (Pausanias, IX, 39). The devotee, accompanied by two youths, purified and anointed with oil, drank the water of the two springs Lethe and Mnemosyne and, dressed in white and carrying two honey cakes, descended by a long staircase to the cave. As soon as he entered the gallery, according to the cautious description of Pausanias (IX, 39, 11), who visited the oracle, he “was immediately dragged along by a kind of suction resembling that of a whirlpool formed by the most violent and rapid of rivers. Once they have entered the inner adyton, not all learn the future in the same manner: some have seen, while others have heard. But all return in the same way and are expelled from the opening feet first.” Gathered up almost unconscious and terrified, the devotee was questioned by the priests about what he had seen and heard; from his account they elicited the hero’s response. b) Oracle of Amphiaraus, near Oropus in Attica, where a temple was also erected with a great altar and the statue of Amphiaraus, the famous diviner who had been swallowed up in a fissure in the earth opened by the wrath of Zeus, together with two sacred therapeutic springs. After an entire day of fasting and the sacrifice of a kid, the devotees spent the night in the temple (incubation), lying on the animal’s hide (Pausanias, II, 34, 5). The clients who were cured then had to throw several gold coins into the spring of Amphiaraus.

2. Oracles of the dead

They were generally associated with caves, galleries, and so forth, sometimes pervaded by mephitic exhalations from the earth, through which it was believed possible to reach the regions of the dead. The prototype of these oracles remains the episode in Homer (Odyssey, XI) of Odysseus, who, having landed in the mythical land of the Cimmerians (regarded by some as nothing other than the coast of Cumae in Campania [V. below]), digs a small pit in the ground into which he pours milk, honey, wine, water, flour, and finally the blood of sacrificed victims (v. 25 ff); the shadows of the dead crowd around in haste, crying out, to drink II. But he keeps them at bay with his sword until the shadow of the diviner Tiresias approaches; after drinking the blood, Tiresias will prophesy the future to Odysseus. The oldest necromantic oracle in Greece was undoubtedly the Aornus of Ephyra in Thesprotia, where Orpheus had summoned Eurydice (Pausanias, IX, 30, 6), and where the tyrant of Corinth, Periander, summoned his wife Melissa, whom he had killed (Herodotus, V, 92, 7); and the oracle of Phigalia in Arcadia, where the Spartan Pausanias summoned the soul of a young girl whom he had accidentally killed (Pausanias, III, 17, 8–9). But the most famous route of access to the underworld was that of Avernus at Cumae in Italy (v. MORTI, mondo sotterraneo dei), where, from the cave sacred to Apollo, Sibyl (v.) led the devotee to the regions of the underworld.