Pod Insights Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean Oracle You Glad to Hear From Me? Decoding Ancient Oracles & Prophecies... About this episode We're here this Tuesday with another fun history episode because Liv deserves a break too! This was a fun one to research and write for you all, just a good ole deep dive into all the fun little oracles that are out there. Okay, we only looked at Delphic oracles, but to be fair that's because they were so incredibly important within the ancient Greek cultural understanding that they are the easiest ones to find. Plus I was reading through a great book about them and got way to excited. Leave any questions wherever you can leave comments, Liv and I love hearing from you all! With all swiftness and much chaos, Hermes <3
Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events.
Sources: The Delphic Oracle: its Responses and Operations by Joseph Fontenrose, The Ancient Oracles: Making the Gods Speak by Richard Stoneman, History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides translated by Rex Warner.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand).
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Liv Albert? Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com grouptrip.
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1:13 Speaker 02 Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
2:10 Speaker 03 Hey, hi, hello, and welcome back to Let's Talk About Myths, baby. We are back again this week with a special little history intermission with me, Michaela Pongoush, as Liv is on a much deserved vacation and I have forbidden her from doing any sort of work. It's extremely difficult to find real time off with a job like ours. There always seems to be something going on at every point of time, but it's important to make the time. And it's definitely more helpful now that Liv has encouraged me to do my own episodes. One of us can be handling the show at a time, which allows the other the time off for themselves. And she really needs it. So, we are back again this week with some fun history stuff. What sort of history will we dive in today? Some more Herodotus? No, no way.
2:55 Speaker 03 We'll need more time than just one week for that. But Herodotus will show up again today, actually, I can promise you that. Today, we shall be looking at oracles. Not the oracular sites themselves, Delphi, Dodona, etc. They're all wonderful places and boy, do we love the Pythia, but the function of the actual oracles themselves. How they existed within antiquity. What was their purpose? Who could seek one out? And how important were they actually? Those kinds of questions. And I'm sure based on everything we know about oracles from myth, we can guess they were pretty important. So let's get into it.
3:46 Speaker 03 Oracle, you glad to hear from me?
3:50 Speaker 03 Oh, that was dumb.
4:06 Speaker 03 So, oracles exist in their own little religious sphere. We talked a bit last year on a Historia episode about divination in the Greek world and all that entails, and oracles did exist within these. Yet, as a system, they were much more structured and entrenched in the religious sphere of ancient Greece and Rome. I'm trying to think of a modern equivalent to them today, but I am woefully unknowledgeable about modern religion, so I don't know, buds. The basics of oracle. So, the oracles were a message from the gods that a person or state needed to seek from a specific oracular site. It always involved going to that specific site, making some sort of offering, and then posing your question before you would get an answer through either a priest or priestess
4:51 Speaker 03 that would interpret it for you. The modes of oracles are many and varied. At Dodona was the rustling of the leaves in the oak trees, and at Delphi it was the utterings of the pythia. These would always be interpreted by a human man or men, and could be more than one. So you might remember that regardless, these messages do come from the human mind. I mean, there is of course something to say about the certain state of mind that someone has during religious experiences that of course changes the way they see or interpret things, that makes it feel more real and religious. But, the point of my saying this is that the oracles could and absolutely were a fake influence the political goings-on in the ancient Med, and that also at the same time,
5:35 Speaker 03 they were incredibly real and important to the people who believed in them. So they were very much seen as a direct correspondence with the gods themselves, and a way for people to get advice or help from any sort of query that they had. We see that there are a variety of gods that can be spoken to, but the biggest one seems to always be Apollo. Dodona was Zeus, okay, but there was the pre-eminence of Delphi, and Apollo was the guy that was so often called on. He also had various other oracles around the Med, but, you know, Delphi is the big one. So what's up with Delphi, and why was it so important? Delphi was considered the very center of the ancient Greek world. We have that myth that Liv has told us about, the one where the two eagles fly around
6:19 Speaker 03 the world until they meet in the very center of Delphi. Yeah, it was just the center of the ancient Med. And it was marked by a stone sculpture that was called the omphalos, or literally the navel. And it's not just a mythic thing either. There was an actual real world reason for why Delphi was so important, and that is that it was extremely accessible. Delphi is located in a region called Phocis. It's on the slopes of Mount Parnassus and was extremely close to the Gulf of Corinth. This geography does a couple of things. It made it incredibly accessible while also keeping it protected. Beyond this, it was also a site that had been inhabited for quite a long time, longer than you might think.
7:01 Speaker 03 There is considerable evidence for a Mycenaean stronghold on the site. The site was full of figures that suggest that it was connected with a female earth cult. I am a bit skeptical on calling it a mother earth sanctuary. That's up to you. That just feels a little bit too new agey and western for me. Regardless, this idea of sort of a preeminent mother goddess, female figure, oh, there I go, using mother goddess. A preeminent female goddess figure is true across many Mycenaean and Minoan sites. There was a heavy focus on this. So, Delphi has always been a sacred site. Who knows why? I'm sure there are lots of people who have theories, and especially the one about the
7:45 Speaker 03 gases that escaped through the cracks that cause it to be important. And I mean on that, like, I don't know why the Panthea made her, how or what made her give her little oracular utterings. I honestly think it kind of falls into the religious fervorance. But, you know, it could be the gases. I'm leaving that up to you. Regardless, you know what? This isn't a Delphi episode or a Pythia episode. This is an oracle episode. So let's get back to them. Why would someone want to go to an oracle? What are the reasons that a person or a state might seek out an oracle? Because remember, oracles were really open to anyone.
8:26 Speaker 03 And especially Delphi, people could make their way for whatever reason they had and ask the God for advice. Whether they could get the advice is not really, um, you know, if they could get the advice or not is really up to the mood of the priests, but whatever. There were plenty of reasons. There's the expected, what do I do in this situation? Kind of questions that almost, um, ask the oracle to tell the future. There are questions of marriage or business or children of honestly, anything under the sun for the everyday person.
9:00 Speaker 03 You, if you have a query, the God may have an answer for you. But then there is the matter of the state and what kind of questions they have. And this is where the oracles and especially Delphi really comes into prominence because Lord D. The God needed to be consulted for just about anything a state wanted to do. Wanted to go to war against your neighbors? Go ask the God. Plague devastating your lands? Go ask the God. Should we send out a new colony somewhere? Say it after me. Go ask the God. Literally any important decision must be run by the God before it is made in the state. Which sounds super annoying, but it was really important. And we can see that from the oracles we get in the literature like Herodotus.
9:42 Speaker 03 Remember back in September when we went through book one of Herodotus's histories? How often was Chrysus asking the God what he should and should not do? Like literally all the time. The God was like his best friend until, you know, he wasn't.
9:58 Speaker 03 Right, so which brings us to what kind of oracles exist out there? This is where I turn to a book by Joseph Fontenrose called The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations. This is an older book from the sixties, I believe. Um, I went and pulled it out from the UBC library and guys, it has literally the most amazing old book smell. It's just like old paper and glue and I'm just in heaven, just honestly, catch me sniffing books in the library, I don't care. So not only does Fontenrose speak about oracles and Delphi and all the interesting things surrounding that, but in fact, he created an extremely thorough catalog of all the oracles from Delphi
10:39 Speaker 03 and only Delphi that we know of. So you know, these aren't even all the oracles in antiquity, just the ones from Delphi. That must have taken such a long time, like my brain literally cannot wrap around how much work that must have been. Been, but you know what? I'm reaping the fruits of his labor and it's wonderful. He separates the oracles into four categories: historical, quasi-historical, legendary, and fictional. We will go through each of these, figure out what each of them mean, and also examine an oracle or a couple from each section. It's a case study in oracles, folks. Are you ready for it? So we start with the historical oracles. How do we define what makes an oracle historical?
11:22 Speaker 03 Historical, oh my god, wow. Say that 10 times fast because I don't think I can. How do we define what makes an oracle historical? Basically, if the record of it exists closely to when the oracle was said, that makes it more likely to be real. Fontenrose does clarify that two of these in his catalog are certainly not historical, but regardless, it is very much restricted to being recorded closely to the time of events. This is important, as we will see in later oracles, because there are so many oracles and it is so very difficult to decide how true they are or are not.
12:04 Speaker 03 This also means that within this category, we are more likely to see queries that are actually being asked by the ancient peoples. These fall into categories that Fontenot has created. The first being res de vini, or divine things. Sorry, Siobhan, that's my Latin prof. She hates when we translate res as things, but you know what? Now I can't help it. Then we have res publicae, or public things. And finally, res domesticae et profanae, or domestic and secular things. The divine things, of course, have to do with, well, religion, cults, sacrifices, and religious laws and customs. The public things have to do with rulership, legislation, colony and city foundations,
12:50 Speaker 03 interstate relations, and war. And finally, the res domesticae et profanae have to do with people's birth and origin, marriage, and other romantic relationships, and death, burial, career, events, people generally, rewards and punishments, signs, where the person should go to live, or random nomic utterances. Basically, life advice is the vibe of this category.
13:17 Speaker 03 I find this last category so utterly delightful because of its banality. It's so human, like, yeah, where should I move? Should I keep trucking on with my job? Or is there greener pastures elsewhere? It's so human. I think this falls so heavily in the historical category and the legendary, which we'll get to later, but it's just so delightful. It really helps show just how human they were, that wonderful connection that we get when looking at antiquity that reminds us that people have always been the same. We've always been ridiculous and had careers that could be just, you know, so banal and boring, but whatever.
13:56 Speaker 03 We always are concerned with certain things, like, what does it mean when someone sneezes near me? My left hand was literally so itchy this morning, and all I could think was, huh, this mean money is coming in soon. I mean, both my house-sitting jobs were canceled today, but certainly. Things could change, right? Right? Anyway, historical oracles. Oh, hate saying that. To this catalog, we have H6, made in 426 B.C. The Spartans come to Delphi to ask a question. Should they found a colony in Trachinä? The answer? They should do so. This oracle comes from Thucydides, Book 3, Chapter 92.5.
14:37 Speaker 03 First of all, they consulted the god at Delphi, and when they had received a favorable reply, they sent out settlers from Sparta itself and from other cities in the Spartan area. Oh, how fun, a historical oracle. But Michaela, that comes from literature. How is that a good example of a historical oracle and not a literary one? Well, because, because it just is. And, and we will get to what makes an oracle literary, but, you know, it's not this one. If you want another one, one that seems much more historical, well, how about this one? H21, made in 352/1. Why am I saying dates like that? 352/1? This is me and my weird can't read numbers things.
15:19 Speaker 03 Anyways, it was the Athenians this time, and they inscribed on two plates. The first saying, is it better for the demos of the Athenians that the basileus let the lands now unworked within the sacred orgasm for the building of a portico and repair of the goddess's sanctuary? And on the second, they wrote, is it better for the demos of the Athenians that the lands now unworked within the boundaries of the sacred orgasm be left unworked for the goddess? They put both these plates within two sealed hydres, which is just a type of pot that was for transporting water, and sent it off to Delphi and asked the Pythia to pick between the two hydres for the thing that the Athenians should do. She picked the one that states they should leave the land unworked. But how do we have this oracle?
16:04 Speaker 03 Well, we actually have it from an inscription at Eleusis. And also some text, but what is incredibly important here for its historicity is that we have physical evidence of this. So what makes these two historical oracles similar? And what makes them different? Well, let's look at the dates. I know, the Thucydides one is a bit difficult to believe in, because, you know, that thing he says in the beginning, you know, where he's gonna write down the, the speeches as how he thought they should be said, but... Whatever. It's probably the more believable of all the Thucydides things. It's a pretty basic oracle here. Should we do this thing, or should we not? And we know that Sparta did go about creating this colony, so yeah, this happened.
16:50 Speaker 03 And it's also important to remember when Thucydides was writing, which was during the middle of the fifth century. This isn't something that happened fifty years earlier or more, and he is writing it down, you know, and he isn't writing it down after talking to some random in a field, which makes it sound like I'm shit-talking Herodotus. I love, I love Herodotus. I would never do such a thing. This closeness in time allows for it to be more believable, especially because we have evidence for such a thing happening. And the same is true with the Eleusis one, and that we have an actual inscription for this. Yes, inscriptions can't necessarily be easily dated, but let me tell you that the people who do dating for inscriptions are very, very good at what they do.
17:31 Speaker 03 It's a whole complicated procedure that I have never been able to fully understand because like, what is happening? Has to do with like, what is being said, and the forms of the letters being used, and the actual like, conjugation of the Greek, the linguistics of it all. It is so confusing, but I trust them and their dating. They do have their controversies, the whole three-line, four-line sigma thing, but you know, hey, what is life without a little spice? Now, the differences between the two, well, obviously, one is very much so being used within a text to show what a group of people are doing during a tumultuous time on the Greek mainland. The mid-fourth century was also difficult, but the Eleusis oracle didn't necessarily have to do with interpersonal affairs. Or did it?
18:16 Speaker 03 It did, actually. Eleusis and Athens had a difficult relationship, to say the least, and that's for an entirely different episode. Regardless, what we see is that the oracle was being asked questions about these big things from various different states for various different reasons.
18:33 Speaker 03 Now on to the quasi-historical. I'm still gonna be haunted by the historical oracles, okay. The quasi-historical oracles fall right between the historical and legendary ones on the scale of believability. These are oracles that are more divorced from their time of uttering, like the ones found in Herodotus. These are the difficult ones to pin down, while with the historical, we can be pretty sure that they happened as they are said. And the legendary ones, we know are not, you know, true as they are said. The quasi are more uncertain. They are heavily debated by many on the level of authenticity that they each hold and what they do and do not mean. It's really very personal to each scholar on the believability of each individual oracle. And each oracle is different.
19:18 Speaker 03 Basically, this is the category where all the debates and fights happen, which is fun. And it also means that I'm just going to present these oracles to you guys unless you decide if they are or are not true, or how true they are. There's probably truth in each and every one of these, but it just varies depending on different factors. Time, method of preservation, context, etc., etc. What we shall look at is the way that oracles are responded to, which Fautin rose goes on in great depth and is exceedingly confusing, but I will break it down for you all. First, there are the simple commands and expressions. The yeah, no, or else kind of responses. Then we have the conditioned commands.
19:57 Speaker 03 Seriously, the names of these are just giving me language class flashbacks and it's just, uh, my brain hurts. It's 10:30. It's fine, whatever. I love you all. I do it for you. Okay, so the conditioned command is like, do X when Y happens. Cross the street when you see a turtle upside down. I don't know, I'm giving a weird example, but basically that. Then we have the prohibitions and warnings. Don't do X. That's an easy one. Next, we have the statements of past or present fact. These can be a variety of things, such as simple proverbs to extraordinary statements of things that happened in the past or present, basically revelations. The second to last is the simple statement of future events.
20:38 Speaker 03 These can be conditional, like seen earlier, or just statements of what is to happen. And finally, we have the conditioned predictions. These are similar to the conditioned commands from earlier with a mix of the statements of future events. This is the Herodotus, you know, this is the from Herodotus, like, "If you go to war, a great empire will fall" kind of oracles. Each of these modes of utterances are common when it comes to quasi-historical responses, except for the conditioned commands. They don't seem to appear as common. Simple future statements appear to be pretty common for quasi-historical oracles within the subsection of clear predictions. If we then look at the topics, you know, the divine, public, and domestic and secular
21:20 Speaker 03 things, the quasi-historical shares a lot of similarities in topic with the legendary oracles, more than the historical. Phaeton Rose has a whole table. I don't like tables, but I'll give him credit because, you know, it is a detailed table. And what we can gain from it is that, at the end of the day, quasi-historical oracles are much more similar in almost every aspect, topic, and mode with legendary oracles than with the historical oracles. You won't be surprised to find out that a lot of these quasi-oracles come from Herodotus because he speaks both things, not only of his present time, but also of the past. And that makes it difficult because each and every oracle seems similar in presentation. It's hard to decide which ones lie solely in fact and which one, you know, dances the
22:05 Speaker 03 line. We start with oracle Q3. Asked by the Peloponnesians through Lycurgus about the plague and famine that is occurring in the Peloponnesus. "Please, God, grant us an end of and a remedy for the plague." Which the god responds to as, "Zeus has sent famine and plague upon you for neglecting his Olympic festival, which Pesos, Pelops, and Heracles founded. You can end the plague if you renew the festival." This we get from Phlagon's Olympiad 1.6. Next is Q27. Asked by Archias of Corinth concerning the proposal of a new colony. The response being, "Ortegia lies in the sea of Trinachria, where Alpheus gushes forth mingling with the spring Arathusa."
22:50 Speaker 03 This one we get from Pelusanias 5.7.3. What can we notice about these instances? Okay, maybe I didn't give enough information. We all remember who Pelusanias was, right? He was the Greek travel writer during the first century BCE. And Phlegon, well, Phlegon is a name that I hadn't even heard of before, so I had to look him up. He is Phlegon of Tralys, who was a Greek writer and the freedman of Emperor Hadrian, which if you didn't know is much later. He wrote a couple historical texts, which none survive, but a few chapters here and there. So what we have are two authors that are both speaking about something that has happened in the far past, where they couldn't possibly even have firsthand accounts of what happened.
23:34 Speaker 03 That's not to say that there isn't truth in these oracles. I mean, Qthi is incredibly believable. The gods absolutely, or you know, they would believe that the gods would send down plague for some slight and wouldn't take it away unless they were placated, right? Just look at the first book of the Iliad. And the second one, well, colonies were set out all the time. And this one, well, I'm trusting the scribbling on the paper beside this oracle in Fortenrose's book from some past person who had, I guess, checked it out. They just wrote Syracuse down. And this is also true. Syracuse was a Greek city-state that was founded in Sicily by Corinthian colonists in the 8th century BCE. So there was absolute truth within these oracles. Just can't we trust the entirety of the oracle as it is written?
24:20 Speaker 03 I don't know. That's up to you, dear listener.
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26:28 Speaker 01 I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed and the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.
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27:44 Speaker 03 Now on to the legendary oracles. These are the oracles which are definitely not real, but goddamn are they fun to think that they are. As mentioned earlier, these oracles are considerably similar to the quasi-historical ones, but they're also so far detached that it's not hard to understand them as something that is not real. Mostly because we also get a lot of them from literature and writing. Yet they share some similarities with the historical oracles as there can definitely be some sort of thread of truth within them. The fact is that these oracles were written down to serve the purpose of the writer. They have a function within the plot, probably as a plot amulet themselves. But, but, this is a big but,
28:27 Speaker 03 these are oracles that also exist within the ancient Greek imagination as real. It's part of their shared collective history. Just as we've seen with earlier texts like the Iliad and the Odyssey, it doesn't matter if they are real or not. What matters is that they are understood as part of their collective history. So we're going to dive right into them and explore them a bit. Let's start with L41, which concerns Hesiod. "The question and the occasion is not stated. We simply have the response to Hesiod, which is, 'Blessed is Hesiod, whose fame will spread over the earth; but beware of the grove of Zeus and Nemeos, who where you are fated to die.'" This oracle comes from a number of sources, and one of them was Thucydides,
29:12 Speaker 03 where he says, "Demosthenes camped for a night with his army in the precinct of Nemean Zeus, where the poet Hesiod is said to have been killed by the local inhabitants, having been told by an oracle that he was destined to suffer this fate at Nemea." Fatunros states that this was a spontaneous utterance, right? It was probably given to Hesiod as he entered the Pythias temple, and it's also likely a production of the 5th century that made it a sort of legend within the people of the time. Who knows if this is true of Hesiod? If when he entered this area, he was actually killed? Who knows if it was actually said to him? Regardless of all that, it became real to the people of later Greece.
29:56 Speaker 03 It became common knowledge that this place in Nemea, this grove to Nemean Zeus, was where Hesiod was killed. It becomes common knowledge and a way for them to relate to their world and the areas within it. It's the mythic tradition of their land. The next oracle in this category is Al 7, which I think you will all be a little bit familiar with. Here, Orestes is the one asking the questions, and he asks the Pythia how he can avenge his father's murder. She responds that he must kill the murderer of his father with the same level of guile that they used to kill Agamemnon. Otherwise Apollo will visit him with terrible diseases and assaults of the Eurenese.
30:40 Speaker 03 He will be homeless and friendless, forbidden participation in sacred rites until his death. And having done the deed, he must not have recourse to any hearth but Apollo's. That's a heavy one. Basically, you are fucked, good boy. And the thing with this is that this oracle exists solely within the theatrical traditions at Athens, where it is found within the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides. This oracle is obviously a plot point. It is needed for the story of Orestes, the Orestia, to happen and is integrally important to it as well. We can see how obviously this oracle is legendary, how it could not be true.
31:22 Speaker 03 But we can also understand it as something that could live within the ancient Greeks imagination as part of their collective history, as something that is close to truth, or it could possibly have happened. It's a legend, sure, but so was the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this was still considered their actual past. The way it had been transmitted through history to us is through these plays, but we can look past this and see this as something that everyone in antiquity would have known about. That Orestes went to the Pythia after the murder of his father to seek answers and help for what he should do. And it's a teaching lesson. It carries cultural truths, that you go ask the Pythia the hard questions that you don't know the answers to.
32:05 Speaker 03 And that if you do horrible things, you will be separated from the community and not be allowed to participate in those integral community events. The next legendary oracle is L45, one that is also close to the Orestes one. Here, it is the Athenian seeking advice from the Pythia, since there is a great famine and plague that is sweeping their country. It happens a lot. Anyways, how can they get out of this mess, they ask? Her response is to send boys and girls to Minos as penalty for the wrongdoings. Doesn't that sound familiar to us all? Isn't that that thing where the Athenians had to send tributes to King Minos? That he would then feed to the Minotaur and the labyrinth? The thing that Theseus volunteered for and then stopped?
32:49 Speaker 03 And that got off to the rest of his fuckery? Yeah, yeah, it is. But the reason I'm bringing this one along is to once again emphasize the importance of oracles within the Greek cultural. Memory and understanding. They were not something that was just practiced. Because they, they, you know, just practiced because they existed. Um, because in their own cultural memory, they had been doing this forever. It was so deeply entrenched in their culture that there was no question to their validity. Sure, we can look at these oracles now and can pick out the ones that were actually uttered by a woman in a temple. And the ones that existed solely within stories, but that diminishes their value within the ancient contexts.
33:31 Speaker 03 Oracles were a very serious practice that held very real sway and influence on the people of the time. They were real to them. Sort of like the Christian miracles, it doesn't matter if they happened or not, what matters is what they meant to the people who believed in them. The final, final legendary oracle I'm going to share is L sixteen, because it's short and sweet. In this one, Amphikolos asked the Pythias some questions about migration. And the response is to settle in Chios. That's it. Ta-da. We get this from two separate sor- sources, Iron of Chios and Placanias.
34:09 Speaker 03 But, once again, you know, this just illustrates the importance of the oracles that even when they are existing within a text that is, you know, obviously, this isn't real, this isn't what's said. It still exists within their cultural understanding of their history. It's rooted in truth for them. Who cares if this actually happened? This was real to the people of Chios.
34:38 Speaker 03 Now, we're on to the final category of oracles. I'll try to make this, well, not incredibly long, but long enough that we can properly cover it. So, these are the fictional oracles. A fictional oracle is, well, entirely fictional. These are vastly different from the others, which can exist in literature and do exist in literature, as we can see. But in, it's that, it, it's not something that exists within the Greek historical or mythic imagination of themselves, you know? This is not like. You know, our, our people were fighting at Troy, kind of understanding. Um, I think it could be easy to call the legendary oracles fictional, but that to me removes the cultural importance of them.
35:21 Speaker 03 They are more than just a story. They are a part of ancient Greek living history. The fictional ones, on the other hand, are entirely not real. They are created by whoever the writer was to serve whatever creative purpose they had, and that's it. They did not exist so that people could consider them real or as part of history. The point wasn't to get the reader or audience to understand them as real, but as something that exists entirely within the plot of the writing. They are fully not real. The writer, audience, and us should see them as just that. Because of this, we have significantly less of these oracles. The guidelines for this category is considerably strict and when looking at the oracles from antiquity.
36:06 Speaker 03 But let's get into them. We have a couple. The first is F5. This is from Themistius, who was a rhetorician from the 4th century CE. He wrote several orations and some philosophical texts. This one comes from Oration 24. It was Aphrodite and Heretes asking for a way to help Eros. Sweet baby Eros, grow up. Please, oracle, find a remedy for this terrible affliction. The Pythias response was, you don't know the child's nature. He could be born alone, but he cannot grow alone. For his growth, you need Anteros. Each will grow or fail as he sees the other grow or fail. This story just isn't real, right? It doesn't exist within the Greek mythic imagination.
36:48 Speaker 03 The purpose of this is fully so that Themistius can prove his point during his oration. He made it up. If there is a point for the plot, for the purpose, it's, it's, you know.
37:03 Speaker 03 It's not real. This, this isn't something that was a story about them. I mean, maybe, but probably not. Our next example is F6, where the Achaeans are seeking a question concerning the war at Troy. The question is not stated. We are simply given the answer, which is that all must allow Palamedes to conduct sacrifice to Apollo Smithios. Did I pick this one because there was a mention of Apollo Smithios? Yeah, yeah, of course I did. I love that guy. Who is he? Who is he even? Sorry. Anyways, back to the oracle. This comes from Pseudo-Dictus Critensis, which is literally just a book about the Trojan War that was written extremely late, late, but like is, it's Trojan War fanfiction.
37:50 Speaker 03 Some reason people of late antiquity believed it. I don't, whenever you see pseudo in front of a writer's name, it means they're not real. Okay, so pseudo dictus, not dictus, right? This is a fanfiction.
38:04 Speaker 03 It follows a character, Dictus of Crete, who is in the Trojan War stories, and he was the buddy of Ida Menius, who was the Cretan king during the Trojan War. This story, the Critensis, it's essentially Dictus's diary of his events, but this isn't real. It's a much later text. It was written like eighty, eight hundred years after the writing of Homer text, and it truly, you have to understand this is fanfiction. And it's great that Apollo Smithios is mentioned. Like, that just fills me with so much joy. I can't believe it. What a wonderful thing. Anyways, so the last of these fictional oracles that I will look at is F12.
38:45 Speaker 03 Asked by Kerakles, who is a priest of Apollon Pentheus, because he saw something unlawful within the temple. We aren't given the question. This one was probably spontaneous, but the god answered, "In return for seeing what he should not have seen, he will deprive of his sight of his dearest." This comes from Heliad, or Heliodorus of Amisa, who wrote a novel called The Ethiopica.
39:10 Speaker 03 For what we know, it was his only novel and follows the story of Charaklia, a princess from ancient Ethiopia, who is abandoned at birth and eventually taken in by Charakles, a Pithian priest who brings her to Delphi, where she is made a priestess of Artemis. Then, a man named Tilagines comes to Delphi and they fall in love. They then run off, they have many an encounter before her birth is made known and they are married.
39:43 Speaker 03 Guys, it's a story, right? Okay, it's a fiction, it is novel, it is a piece of creative writing and this oracle exists within it as a plot point. It is a function of the plot that moves it along and adds intrigue. This novel was also lost, actually, for a good long while, though we know that it was much loved in the medieval tradition. There's some disturbing bits, though, so I'm wary to give it much attention, simply because the reason Charaklia was abandoned was because she was born with white skin, because her mother either looked at a white woman or a white statue or something. And there's something in that that leaves me feeling really quite icky and doesn't, whatever, it doesn't sound ancient. I don't want to give it that much attention. The point here is that the oracle here does not exist as something that the reader,
40:28 Speaker 03 present or ancient, should understand as an actual, real oracle. It is simply a function of the story, a plot point, fiction. And that's the thing with these fictional oracles, they're not real. They just aren't, they just are a part of the story. And that is what makes them entirely different from the legendary ones, because the legendary ones exist within the Greek understanding as a part of their history, as a part of something that had happened in their mythic past that explains why they do something a certain way or why they are the way they are. And the truth of them isn't what is important, it is the message.
41:26 Speaker 03 There it is. There's some information on all the different types of oracles that have survived from antiquity. They are vastly fascinating. And this was actually really, really fun to put together. Liv mentioned it a while back. I don't remember what prompted it for her, but I just remember her saying it would be fun to look at oracles and their various functions and the ways that they pop up. Maybe it was because of the Herodotus series. Maybe it was one of you guys dropping a little comment. Regardless of what it was, it helped to create this episode. 'Twas the spark. Because, great. So this was a lot of fun, especially coming off all the myth stuff we do on this channel. It's interesting to
42:09 Speaker 03 step into that now with a more expansive understanding of oracles and how they function within antiquity. We should go through each of the oracles that have popped up over the last, what, seven, eight years and decide which category each belonged to. That would be so much fun, wouldn't you guys? It wouldn't be a lot of work. It wouldn't be incredibly time consuming. Alright, let's not do it. Maybe just moving forward. If you're listening on Spotify, we would love to hear from you. We love the comments and thoughts that you drop on any of the episodes. It's honestly so much fun to read what you guys have to say. I really should respond, but I just keep forgetting. I apologize. You could send
42:51 Speaker 03 Liv or I a message on Instagram, you know, @mythbaby4liv and @pithyawannabe from me, or comment on any of our posts. We also have a new account for the Memory Collective, @collectivemem, if you want to give us a follow there. I promise that that account, and also mine, will get more active. I'm just drowning in all the other work and school stuff I have to do. Who knew writing an honest thesis would be difficult? I'm joking. Of course, it would be difficult. Regardless, we would absolutely love to hear from you all. So please feel free to send us any messages wherever you can send us messages. Let's Talk About Myths, Baby is written and produced by Liv Albert, who better have had a delightfully relaxing week, or I'm gonna fight her. Love you, Liv.
43:34 Speaker 03 Michaela Punglish is the Hermes to all your Olympians, the producer, exhausted, done with school mentally and physically, but persevering. Select music by Luke Chaos, thank you, Mr. Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, a collection of creators that all strive to bring you accurate and reliable information on the ancient world. These include the wonderful friends at Movies We Dig, the Partial Historians, Sweetbitter, and so much more. Get ad-free episodes and so much more by subscription to the Oracle Edition on Patreon. Oh my god, the Oracle Edition, whatever, the Oracle Edition on Patreon at patreon.com/MythsBaby, or via the link in the episode's description. We have lots of fun over on Patreon.
44:18 Speaker 03 Did you know if you joined our Patreon, you can also join our private Discord server, where we share pictures of our cats, memes, Scream, and to a channel just called The Void, and talk about anything that tickles our fancy. That's all for this week, I hope you all enjoyed it, and see you when I see you next, which might be sooner than you expect. Bye-bye.
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