The Pythia was over fifty years old when selected for service. Her job was to allow the inspiration of Apollo to guide her in answering questions that were put to her on a single day in each of the nine months when Apollo's abode was in Delphi. The Pythia, havng performed preliminary ablutions, entered the special room or adyton, probably burned bay leaves and barley meal on an altar and climbed up to sit on a tall bronze tripod perhaps inhaling fumes. She may have worn a laurel crown. Pictures show her carrying a sprig of bay-laurel. Fontenrose says the Pythia spoke coherently and directly, without the aid of a priest, when she answered. Hugh Bowden says there is no evidence she chewed on special substances to gain inspiration.
According to Hugh Bowden, with the limit of nine days a year for consultations with the Pythia, there was a protocol for gaining admission. First tier queries came from citizens of Delphi. Second tier queries came from people to whom the people of Delphi had granted something called προμαντεία 'promanteia', although Didyma: Apollo's Oracle, cult, and companions, by Joseph Eddy Fontenrose, says Delphic promanteia was granted to men of high rank. The third tier, according to Bowden, consisted of delegations from other city-states. [For more on gaining access to the Pythia for non-citizens, see: "On Prothysia and Promanteia in Greek Cults," by F. Sokolowski; The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Jul., 1954), pp. 165-171.] When people not from Delphi spoke with the Pythia, they were accompanied by someone from Delphi acting as "prophetes".
"... King Kleomenes of Sparta induced Kobon, an influential Delphian, to persuade the Pythia to give a response denying Demaratos' legitimacy to the Spartans....""He catalogues the responses of the Pythia, explaining the context, the source, the question and answer and variations, if available, and a judgment on how likely it is to be historical. Here is one that is not historical:
"Iphitos and the Eleians should renew the Olympic Games."The occasion of the consultation was "civil strife and plague throughout Hellas" in or before the year 776 B.C. (the traditional starting year for the Olympics). The one asking was King Iphitos of Elis, requesting relief from the strife and plague.
Croesus
Probably the best known of the oracles, according to Fontenrose, are the responses made to the very wealthy King Croesus of Lydia, in Asia Minor, and reported by Herodotus. Fontenrose calls them pseudo-historical. When Croesus asked if he should make war against the Persians, the response of the Pythia is said to have been that if he made war on the Persians, he would destroy a great kingdom. Croesus assumed the great kingdom was that of the Persians, but it was, instead, his own.
Plutarch and Other Writers
Unusually, we have a fair amount of information on the Pythia. Not only do most of the great ancient literary writers mention her, but the biographer Plutarch served as a priest. [See Plutarch's dialogue: Why the Pythia Does Not Now Give Oracles in Verse.] Bowden lists the following as among the ancient sources on the Pythia:
- Plato
- Thucydides
- Xenophon
- Aeliean
- Lucian
- Athenaeus
- Diogenes Laertius
- Callimachus
- Philostratus
- Eusebius
- Livy
- Cicero
- Vergil (Virgil)
- Horace
- Pliny
- Justin
- Ovid
- Lucian
- St. Augustine.
Sources:
Didyma: Apollo's Oracle, cult, and companions, by Joseph Eddy Fontenrose; University of California Press: 1988.Classical Athens and the Delphic oracle: divination and democracy, by Hugh Bowden; Cambridge University Press: 2005.
