The oracle of Apollo at Delphi is the most remarkable; and respecting
it we are furnished with the greatest body of particulars. The
locality of this oracle is said to have been occasioned by the
following circumstance. A goat-herd fed his flocks on the acclivity of
mount Parnassus. As the animals wandered here and there in pursuit of
food, they happened to approach a deep and long chasm which appeared
in the rock. From this chasm a vapour issued; and the goats had no
sooner inhaled a portion of the vapour, than they began to play and
frisk about with singular agility. The goat-herd, observing this, and
curious to discover the cause, held his head over the chasm; when, in
a short time, the fumes having ascended to his brain, he threw himself
into a variety of strange attitudes, and uttered words, which probably
he did not understand himself, but which were supposed to convey a
prophetic meaning.
This phenomenon was taken advantage of, and a temple to Apollo was
erected on the spot. The credulous many believed that here was
obviously a centre and focus of divine inspiration. On this mountain
Apollo was said to have slain the serpent Python. The apartment of the
oracle was immediately over the chasm from which the vapour issued. A
priestess delivered the responses, who was called Pythia, probably in
commemoration of the exploit which had been performed by Apollo. She
sat upon a tripod, or three-legged stool, perforated with holes, over
the seat of the vapours. After a time, her figure enlarged itself, her
hair stood on end, her complexion and features became altered, her
heart panted and her bosom swelled, and her voice grew more than
human. In this condition she uttered a number of wild and incoherent
phrases, which were supposed to be dictated by the God. The questions
which were offered by those who came to consult the oracle were then
proposed to her, and her answers taken down by the priest, whose
office was to arrange and methodize them, and put them into hexameter
verse, after which they were delivered to the votaries. The priestess
could only be consulted on one day in every month.
Great ingenuity and contrivance were no doubt required to uphold the
credit of the oracle; and no less boldness and self-collectedness on
the part of those by whom the machinery was conducted. Like the
conjurors of modern times, they took care to be extensively informed
as to all such matters respecting which the oracle was likely to be
consulted. They listened probably to the Pythia with a superstitious
reverence for the incoherent sentences she uttered. She, like them,
spent her life in being trained for the office to which she was
devoted. All that was rambling and inapplicable in her wild
declamation they consigned to oblivion. Whatever seemed to bear on the
question proposed they preserved. The persons by whom the responses
were digested into hexameter verse, had of course a commission
attended with great discretionary power. They, as Horace remarks on
another occasion, [2] divided what it was judicious to say, from what
it was prudent to omit, dwelt upon one thing, and slurred over and
accommodated another, just as would best suit the purpose they had in
hand. Beside this, for the most part they clothed the apparent meaning
of the oracle in obscurity, and often devised sentences of ambiguous
interpretation, that might suit with opposite issues, whichever might
happen to fall out. This was perfectly consistent with a high degree
of enthusiasm on the part of the priest. However confident he might be
in some things, he could not but of necessity feel that his
prognostics were surrounded with uncertainty. Whatever decisions of
the oracle were frustrated by the event, and we know that there were
many of this sort, were speedily forgotten; while those which
succeeded, were conveyed from shore to shore, and repeated by every
echo. Nor is it surprising that the transmitters of the sentences of
the God should in time arrive at an extraordinary degree of sagacity
and skill. The oracles accordingly reached to so high a degree of
reputation, that, as Cicero observes, no expedition for a long time
was undertaken, no colony sent out, and often no affair of any
distinguished family or individual entered on, without the previously
obtaining their judgment and sanction. Their authority in a word was
so high, that the first fathers of the Christian church could no
otherwise account for a reputation thus universally received, than by
supposing that the devils were permitted by God Almighty to inform the
oracles with a more than human prescience, that all the world might be
concluded in idolatry and unbelief, [3] and the necessity of a Saviour
be made more apparent. The gullibility of man is one of the most
prominent features of our nature. Various periods and times, when
whole nations have as it were with one consent run into the most
incredible and the grossest absurdities, perpetually offer themselves
in the page of history; and in the records of remote antiquity it
plainly appears that such delusions continued through successive
centuries.