Pythia (; ) was the title of the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in central Greece. She served as its oracle and was known as the Oracle of Delphi. Her title was sometimes historically glossed in English as the Pythoness.wiktionary:Pythoness
The Pythia was established at the latest in the 8th century BCMorgan, C. (1990). Athletes and Oracles: The Transformation of Olympia and Delphi in the Eighth Century BC. p. 148. (though some estimates date the shrine to as early as 1400 BC), and was widely credited for her prophecies uttered under divine possession (enthusiasmos) by Apollo. The Pythian priestess emerged as pre-eminent by the end of the 7th century BC and continued to be consulted until the late 4th century AD,Michael Scott. Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World. Princeton University Press, p. 30. when the Christian emperor Theodosius I destroyed the Temple of Apollo. During this period, the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks, and she was among the most powerful women of the classical world. The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greeks. Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Aristotle, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Julian, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Nepos, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides, and Xenophon.
Nevertheless, details of how the Pythia operated are scarce, missing, or non-existent, as authors from the classical period (6th to 4th centuries BC) treat the process as common knowledge with no need to explain. Those who discussed the oracle in any detail are from 1st century BC to 4th century AD and give conflicting stories.Michael Scott. Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World. Princeton University Press, p. 11. One of the main stories claimed that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied or ecstatic state induced by vapours rising from an opening in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish. Priests interpreted her utterances as enigmatic prophecies and recomposed them into verse as dactylic hexameter, many of which are preserved in Greek literature.For an example, see Lewis Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States , 1907, vol. IV, p. 189. "But all this came to be merely considered as an accessory, leading up to the great moment when the Pythoness ascended into the tripod, and, filled with the divine afflatus which at least the latter ages believed to ascend in vapour from a fissure in the ground, burst forth into wild utterance, which was probably some kind of articulate speech, and which the Ὅσιοι [Osioi], 'the holy ones', who, with the prophet, sat around the tripod, knew well how to interpret. ... What was essential to Delphic divination, then, was the frenzy of the Pythoness and the sounds which she uttered in this state which were interpreted by the Ὅσιοι [Osioi] and the 'prophet' according to some conventional code of their own." This idea, however, has been challenged by scholars such as Joseph Fontenrose and Lisa Maurizio, who argue that the ancient sources uniformly represent the Pythia speaking intelligibly, and giving prophecies in her own voice. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, describes the Pythia speaking in dactylic hexameters.Herodotus. The Histories. Godley, A. D., translator. Harvard University Press. 1920. Book one, chapter 65. (1922)
Name The name Pythia is derived from "pythia hiereia" (), meaning ; it is related to Pythios (), an epithet of Apollo, itself deriving from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. As such, the word is likely related to Python, the name of the mythical snake that was slain by Apollo near Delphi. Etymologically, the Greeks derived this place name from the verb () 'to rot', which refers to the sickly sweet smell from the decomposing body of the monstrous Python after it was slain by Apollo.Homeric Hymn to Apollo ll. 363–369.
Origins
The Delphic oracle may have been present in some form from 1400 BC, in the middle period of Mycenaean Greece (1750–1050 BC). There is evidence that Apollo supposedly took over the shrine with the arrival of priests from Delos in the 8th century, from an earlier dedication to Gaia. The 8th-century reformulation of the Oracle at Delphi as a shrine to Apollo seems associated with the rise in importance of the city of Corinth and the importance of sites in the Corinthian Gulf.Forrest, W.G. (1957), "Colonisation and the Rise of Delphi" (Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte Bd. 6, H. 2 (Apr., 1957), pp. 160–175)
The earliest account of the origin of the Delphic oracle is provided in the Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo, which recent scholarship dates within a narrow range, c. 580–570 BC.Martin L. West, Homeric Hymns, pp 9–12, gives a summary for this dating, at or soon after the inauguration of chariot-racing at the Pythian Games, 582 BC; M. Chappell, "Delphi and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo", Classical Quarterly 56 (2006:331-48) It describes in detail how Apollo chose his first priests, whom he selected in their "swift ship"; they were "Cretans from Minos' city of Knossos" who were voyaging to sandy Pylos. But Apollo, who had as one of his cult epithets,As Robin Lane Fox observes in discussing this origin of the Delphic priesthood, in Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer, 2008:341ff. leapt into the ship in the form of a dolphin (, gen. ). Dolphin-Apollo revealed himself to the terrified Cretans and bade them follow him up to the "place where you will have rich offerings". The Cretans "danced in time and followed, singing , like the paeans of the Cretans in whose breasts the divine Muse has placed "honey-voiced singing". "Paean" seems to have been the name by which Apollo was known in Mycenaean times.
G. L. Huxley observes: "If the hymn to (Delphic) Apollo conveys a historical message, it is above all that there were once Cretan priests at Delphi."Huxley, "Cretan Paiawones". Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 16 (1975:119-24) p. 122, noted by Fox 2008:343. Robin Lane Fox notes that Cretan bronzes are found at Delphi from the eighth century onwards, and Cretan sculptures are dedicated as late as c. 620–600 BC: "Dedications at the site cannot establish the identity of its priesthood, but for once we have an explicit text to set beside the archaeological evidence."Fox 2008:342. An early visitor to these "dells of Parnassus", at the end of the eighth century, was Hesiod, who was shown the omphalos.
There are many later stories of the origins of the Delphic Oracle. One late explanation, which is first related by the 1st century BC writer Diodorus Siculus, tells of a goat herder named Coretas, who noticed one day that one of his goats, who fell into a crack in the earth, was behaving strangely. On entering the chasm, he found himself filled with a divine presence and the ability to see outside of the present, into the past and the future. Excited by his discovery, he shared it with nearby villagers. Many started visiting the site to experience the convulsions and inspirational trances, though some were said to disappear into the cleft due to their frenzied state.Diodorus Siculus 16.26.1–4. A shrine was erected at the site, where people began worshipping in the late Bronze Age, by 1600 BC. After the deaths of a number of men, the villagers chose a single young woman as the liaison for the divine inspirations. Eventually, she came to speak on behalf of the gods.It was also said that the young woman was given a tripod on which to be seated, which kept her from falling during her frenzied states.
According to earlier myths,Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology notes on this point Ovid, Metamorphoses i. 321, iv. 642; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica iv. 800; Servius, commentary on the Aeneid iv. 246; pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke i. 4. § 1; Pausanias x. 5. § 3; Aeschylus, The Eumenides opening lines; see excerpts in translation at Theoi Project: Themis. the office of the oracle was initially possessed by the goddesses Themis and Phoebe, and the site was initially sacred to Gaia. Subsequently, it was believed to be sacred to Poseidon, the god of earthquakes. During the Greek Dark Age, from the 11th to the 9th century BC,D. S. Robertson, "The Delphian Succession in the Opening of the Eumenides" The Classical Review 55. 2 (September 1941, pp. 69–70) p. 69, reasoning that in the three great allotments of oracular powers at Delphi, corresponding to the three generations of the gods, "Ouranos, as was fitting, gave the oracle to his wife Gaia and Kronos appropriately allotted it to his sister Themis." In Zeus' turn to make the gift, however, Aeschylus could not report that the oracle was given directly to Apollo, who had not yet been born, Robertson notes, and thus Phoebe was interposed. However, the usual modern reconstruction of the sacred site's pre-Olympian history does not indicate dedications to these earlier gods. a new god of prophecy, Apollo, was said to have seized the temple and expelled the twin guardian serpents of Gaia, whose bodies he wrapped around the caduceus. Later myths stated that Phoebe or Themis had "given" the site to Apollo, rendering its seizure by priests of the new god justified, but presumably having to retain the priestesses of the original oracle because of the long tradition. It is possible that the myths portray Poseidon as mollified by the gift of a new site in Troizen.
Diodorus explained how, initially, the Pythia was an appropriately clad young virgin, for great emphasis was placed on the Oracle's chastity and purity to be reserved for union with the god Apollo. But he reports one story as follows:Diod. Sic. 16.26.6
The scholar Martin Litchfield West writes that the Pythia shows many traits of shamanistic practices, likely inherited or influenced from Central Asian practices, although there is no evidence of any such association at this time. He cites the Pythia sitting in a cauldron on a tripod, while making her prophecies in an ecstatic trance state, like shamans, and her utterings unintelligible.Martin Litchfield West, The Orphic Poems, p.147. "The Pythia resembles a shamaness at least to the extent that she communicates with her [deity] while in a state of trance, and conveys as much to those present by uttering unintelligible words. [cf. Spirit Language, Mircea Eliade].
It is particularly striking that she sits on a cauldron supported by a tripod, reiterating the triad of the great goddess. This eccentric perch can hardly be explained except as a symbolic boiling, and, as such, it looks very much like a reminiscence of the initiatory boiling of the shaman translated from hallucinatory experience into concrete visual terms. It was in this same cauldron, probably, that the Titans boiled Dionysus in the version of the story known to Callimachus and Euphorion, and his remains were interred close by".
According to William Godwin, the tripod was perforated with holes, and as she inhaled the vapors, her figure would seem to enlarge, her hair stood on end, her complexion changed, her heart panted, her bosom swelled, and her voice became seemingly more than human.
Organization of the Oracle
Priestess
Since the first operation of the oracle of the Temple of Delphi, it was believed that the god lived within a laurel, his holy plant, and gave oracles for the future with the rustling of the leaves. It was also said that the art of divination had been taught to the god by the three winged sisters of Parnassus, the Thriae, at the time when Apollo was grazing his cattle there. The Thriae used to have a (an oracle by lot, or cleromancy) in that area in the past and it is possible that such was the first oracle of Delphi: throwing lots in a container, then pulling lots, the color and shape of which were of particular meaning and import.