Posts Tagged ‘Greek’
People came from all over Europe to call on the Pythia at Mount Parnassus to have their questions about the future answered. Her answers could determine when farmers planted their fields or when an empire declared war.
The Pythia, a role filled by different women from about 1400 BCE to the 4th century CE, was the medium through which the god Apollo spoke.
Plutarch, a priest at the Temple of Apollo, attributed Pythia’s prophetic powers to vapours while other accounts suggested the vapours may have come from a chasm in the ground.
This traditional explanation, however, has failed to satisfy scientists. In 1927, French geologists surveyed the oracle’s shrine and found no evidence of a chasm or rising gases. They dismissed the traditional explanation as a myth. Their conclusion was fueled by a misconception that vapours and gases could only be produced by volcanic activity.
However a recent study is causing archaeologists and other authorities to revisit the notion that intoxicating fumes loosened the lips of the Pythia. The study reveals that two faults intersect directly below the temple and there is evidence of hallucinogenic gases rising from a nearby spring and preserved within the temple rock.
Plutarch made the right observation.
Oracle at Delphi is the lens and I’ve just added some videos which explain the gases under the temple.
After I had made Greek Mythology : A Lensography of Legends, a page for my small collection of tales from ancient Greece, I asked advice on why this one was totally ignored. And good advice I got too!
One suggestion was to broaden the topic and have, not just the links to my Greek myths, but to draw an outline of what the ancient Greeks actually believed. An abbreviated cosmogony.
I keep forgetting that not everyone learned about the Greeks in primary school, it depends on the educational guidelines of their country and also on the age that they attended school. Sometimes the brush of mythology is drawn faintly, but the knowledge that our society is the way that is is – surely that’s taught in schools globally?
The Greeks invented everything from Western warfare to mystical prayer, from logic to statecraft, poetry, drama, philosophy, art, architecture and a whole lot in between. Our thought is Greek thought.
The best book I’ve ever seen which sums up the whole Greek influence on our present society is the wonderfully written Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter
I love Thomas Cahill and devour his books. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea is the fourth volume in his Hinges of History series.
