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What was the role of an oracle in greece
What was the role of an oracle in greece
What was the role of an oracle in greece
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The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi is shrouded in myth and mystery, but one thing is certain, their prophetic influence stretched far and wide and was detrimental in shaping Greece.
Neither war nor boundary was determined without conferring the Delphic Oracle first. The Oracle of Apollo was held in high regard by the likes of "Plutarch, Plato, Aristotle, and Diodorus" (Broad 10). The Trojan War and Theban War were in part responses to the Oracle's forecasts (Fontenrose 4). The Delphic Oracle shaped the decision of Spartans and consulted the "Greek states at the time of the Persian War" (Fontenrose 6). For well over a millennium, devotees would continue to seek the Delphic Oracle's counsel. The Greek legacy is riddled with her prophecies.
Delphi, Greece's relative geographic location is in the center of Greece. According to Richard Haywood, its location could literally be the reason that the "Delphic Oracle was near the center of Greek life for centuries" (112). Delphi was inhabited as early as the Bronze Age. The Oracle's existence is believed to have appeared as early as the 8th century BCE (Scott 11). Several stories exist to explain the origins of Delphi. One myth says that Zeus released two eagles "from opposite ends of the world and they met at Delphi" signifying the geographic center of the earth (Scott 36). Another myth claims the word Delphi was obtained directly from a Greek word meaning "womb", indicating the birthplace of the world (Scott 36). However, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo written "between the late 7th century BCE and mid-sixth century BCE" tells the tale of Delphi's genesis in a different light.
According to the Homeric tale, Apollo traveled throughout Greece in search of the perfect site for his temple. H...
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...'s future, creating a blurred line between the real and fantastical. Fact and fiction continues to cohabitate in the daily debate and rituals of Modern Greece and it is quite possible that the Delphic Oracle is to praise and/or to blame.
Works Cited
Broad, William J. The Oracle: The Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient Delphi. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy. The Delphic Oracle, Its Responses and Operations. Berkeley: U of California. Print.
Haywood, Richard. "THE DELPHIC ORACLE." Archaeology 5.2 (1952): 110-18. JSTOR. Web. 25 May 2014. .
Lehoux, Daryn. "Drugs and the Delphic Oracle." Classical World 101.1 (2007): 41-56. Web.
Scott, Michael. Delphi a History of the Center of the Ancient World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014. Print.
Morford, Mark P.O., Robert J. Lenardon and Michael Sham. Classical Mythology 9th Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
If Athens and Melos went to battle against each other, the gods, if they favored anyone, would favor Athens. We have now examined Thucydides' strongest arguments for Athenian rule. It is clear that Athens had a stronger claim to rule than the Melians had to remain sovereign. We also know that Athens' claims hold up when we examine them for validity. Thucydides beliefs in Athens' claims were therefore well founded.
The Differences between Apollo and Dionysus are not difficult to see. Though both Gods are associated wi...
The article, “The Delphic Oracle: A is effective in defending the theory that the prophecy of the Pythias occurred after an inhaling of gases from a vent of geological origin. The article is structured very
Howe, Helen, and Robert T. Howe. A World History: Ancient and Medieval Worlds. Volume 1. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1992. 533.
Nardo, Don. The Ancient Greeks at Home and at Work. 1st ed. San Diego, CA: Lucent, 2004. Print.
It was the seat of the Delphic oracle, the most famous and most powerful of ancient Greece. The oracle originated in the worship of an earth-goddess, and later legend ascribed it to Gaea. It passed to Apollo; some stories say he won it by killing the Python, others that it descended to him peacefully through Themis and Phoebe. The Delphic oracle was the preeminent shrine of Apollo, but in winter, when Apollo was absent among the Hyperboreans, it was sacred to Dionysus, who was said to be buried there. The oracle was housed in the great temple to Apollo, first built in the 6th cent. B.C. (it was destroyed and rebuilt at least twice). The oracular messages were spoken by a priestess seated on a golden tripod, who uttered sounds in a frenzied trance; they were interpreted to the questioner by a priest, who usually spoke in verse. Delphi was unique in its universal position in the otherwise...
...r. "Ancient Greece." Gardner's art through the ages the western perspective. 13th ed., Backpack ed. Boston, Mass.: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. 101, 123,129. Print.
The development of an empire is a change strongly emphasized in the Archeology as a radical departure from the Hellenic tradition, and consequently a major source of conflict among the Greeks. Prior to the adven...
Ziolkowski, Eric. "Ancient Newcomer to Modern Culture." World Literature Today 81.5 (2007): 55-57. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. .
"Unhandled Exception." Ancient Greece - History, Mythology, Art, War, Culture, Society, and Architecture. 2008. Web. 27 Feb. 2011. .
"The Ecole Initiative: The Eleusinian Mysteries." The Ecole Initiative: The Eleusinian Mysteries. N.p., 01 Nov. 2007. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.
The sun is gone, you have no idea what happened but you have a sneaking suspicion that the god Apollo had something to do with it... In this essay I will tell you about the god Apollo's powers, what he looked like, and one of the many quests he went on.
Zeus was not always the gray haired muscular man that he is seen as today. The first conception of the sky god did not have any form at all. The sky god was created by nomadic hunters in the Russian steppes, a treeless expanse above the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains (Stone, 8). Each tribe had a different name for him including Dyaus, Dies, Dios, Deus, and Deu Pater. Although the names changed they all referred to the brightness of the sky. The name Zeus was not used until the migration to Greece (Stone, 8). These proto-Greeks are believed to have migrated and taken over this land around 1700 B.C. (Stone, 10). The people already living there did not put up much of a fight. These natives worshipped small clay and wooden figures which was there goddess, an earth mother whom they called Ge and later Gaia (Stone, 11). The Greeks could not believe that a god could be reduced to the form of a man. It was not long before they realized they used these figures to pray for rain (Stone, 12). The natives also told elaborate stories about their gods as well as the creation of the earth. The Greeks were very envious of these stories and wanted Zeus to have stories of his own. A...