Omens and Oracles

Divination in Ancient Greece

Matthew Dillon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317148951
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Addressing the role which divination played in ancient Greek society, this volume deals with various forms of prophecy and how each was utilised and for what purpose. Chapters bring together key types of divining, such as from birds, celestial phenomena, the entrails of sacrificed animals and dreams. Oracular centres delivered prophetic pronouncements to enquirers, but in addition, there were written collections of oracles in circulation. Many books were available on how to interpret dreams, the birds and entrails, and divination as a religious phenomenon attracted the attention of many writers. Expert diviners were at the heart of Greek prophecy, whether these were Apollo's priestesses delivering prose or verse answers to questions put to them by consultants, diviners known as manteis, who interpreted entrails and omens, the chresmologoi, who sang the many oracles circulating orally or in writing, or dream interpreters. Divination was utilised not only to foretell the future but also to ensure that the individual or state employing divination acted in accordance with that divinely prescribed future; it was employed by all and had a crucial role to play in what courses of action both states and individuals undertook. Specific attention is paid in this volume not only to the ancient written evidence, but to that of inscriptions and papyri, with emphasis placed on the iconography of Greek divination.

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1 Ancient Greek writings on divination

Anyone who practises the craft of fire
Is a fool. If he happens to deliver unpleasant prophecies,
He is regarded as an enemy by his listeners.
But if out of pity for his consultants he invents falsehoods,
He wrongs the gods. Phoibos Apollo should be the only one
To prophesy to men – as he fears no one.

Euripides Phoinissai¹

Prophetic truth, particularly of a disagreeable nature, can be unpalatable to the listener, and knowing the future is not always an advantage for the recipient of prophecy. Teiresias, a prophet (mantis) and central to the legends of Thebes, makes this bitter comment to his daughter as she leads her blind father away in Euripides’ Phoinissai (Phoenician Women). He had been summoned by Eteokles (son of Oedipus) in order to ask him what measures could be taken to save the city from the attack of his brother Polyneikes. Kreon (Iokasta’s sister: Oedipus’ mother and wife) questions Teiresias, who is reluctant to speak, preferring not to deliver prophecies on this occasion. But Kreon restrains him as he attempts to leave, insisting that he must prophesy as to how the city can survive, to which Teiresias replies, ‘Now you wish it, but in a moment you will not’. Similarly, the same prophet in Sophokles’ Oedipus Tyrannus comments, ‘How terrible to know when the knowing does not help the listener’.

Teiresias (in the quotation above) refers to the ‘craft of fire’, meaning divination by means of the entrails of a sacrificed animal. He reveals to Kreon that the only way to save the city is for Kreon’s son, Menoikeus, to die. Kreon advises his son to abandon these prophecies (thespismata) and flee the city before anyone learns of them: but Menoikeus himself intervenes and accepts his own fate and divinely decreed death.² In myth, prophetic truth could be highly unpalatable to the protagonists, and this reflects also the day-to-day reality involved in divination – it can give knowledge of the past, present and future, but of its very nature it entails risks for the hearer, because this foreknowledge is not always welcome once it is revealed. Those who hear from manteis what they have been hoping for are, of course, happy, such as the chorus of women in Euripides’ Helen, when they learn from the mantis that Menelaus is alive (and not dead as they had feared).³

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In Sophokles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, the chorus describes the plague of ills that has descended on the city of Thebes. Oedipus has received an oracle from Delphi that the plague will only end when the murderers of Laios are killed or exiled. But when Teiresias reveals the truth – that Oedipus himself has killed Laios, who in fact was his father, and married his mother and borne children by her – his words are naturally more than unwelcome.⁴ This diviner fares no better in Sophokles’ Antigone, when he interprets various inauspicious omens for Kreon by revealing that he must allow Polyneikes, who attempted to capture Thebes but was killed in battle, a proper burial. Kreon is infuriated and rails that he has long been exploited by those who practise divination. He attacks Teiresias, rebuking him that he can enjoy the monetary profit of his trade, but that he, Kreon, is not going to listen to him – he shouts that Teiresias’ prophecies are false and that he loves evil, while the race of diviners as a whole is ‘silver-loving’. Teiresias replies by predicting that the Erinyes (Furies) of Hades and the gods will punish Kreon, and the play ends tragically with Teiresias’ prophecies being realised when Kreon’s son Haimon kills himself, and Kreon brokenly confesses his impiety towards the gods in having denied the truth of prophecy.⁵

Teiresias is equally unpopular with the ruling establishment in Euripides’ Bacchae. King Pentheus of Thebes is so incensed by Teiresias’ support of the newly introduced worship of Dionysos that he orders the destruction of the diviner’s seat of prophecy, after accusing him of wanting to introduce Dionysos as a new god so that he can read bird signs and omens from entrails sent by this new deity – and charge fees for this purpose.⁶ These plays are evidence that on the Athenian dramatic stage Teiresias is presented as the archetypal mantis: he prophesies accurately (in four separate complete tragedies), and while his advice is sometimes welcomed more often than not it is rejected or criticised. Yet diviners in Greek tragedy proclaim the truth, and those who reject it do so at their peril. Agamemnon in the Iliad differs from the rulers of Thebes like Pentheus and Kreon in that he accepts the advice of his mantis Kalchas over the plague that was devastating the Greek force, but abuses him for never bringing anything but bad news: he is always a ‘mantis of evil’.⁷

Critics of divination do not, of course, take the advice of their manteis (diviners), and they refuse to believe in their warnings. In the Iliad, Hektor famously rejected the mantis Polydamas’ interpretation of an omen that retreat was essential, commenting caustically: ‘One omen is best, to fight for one’s country’.⁸ This approach, as might be expected, led to disaster for the Trojans. In Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, the chorus of old Thebans within the city sing that Teiresias has predicted that the Greeks have announced plans, in their nightly council, for a fierce assault on Thebes. Shortly afterwards, a messenger from the scene of battle reports that the mantis of the assaulting army, Amphiaraos, has forbidden Tydeus, one of the heroes attacking Thebes, to cross the River Ismenos in front of the city, as the sphagia (a sacrifice before battle) is inauspicious. But Tydeus rejects his advice, with the insult: ‘the mantis shrinks from death and war’. This response, like that of Hektor, leads to doom, not only for Tydeus, but for all the seven heroes attacking Thebes, who will perish before the city.⁹ Recurrent in both epic and tragedy is the lesson that rulers and military commanders must heed prophetic specialists, even if those in authority find the manteis’ advice unpalatable, as failure to follow the predictions inevitably leads to disaster. As Chilon the Spartan ephor and one of Greece’s ‘Seven Wise Men’ warned: ‘Do not have hatred for divination’.¹⁰

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The vocabulary of Greek divination

Hundreds of terms existed for the numerous facets of Greek divination (manteia). Oionos as a noun literally means ‘bird’, but, as the earliest form of Greek divination involved the observation of birds, the term oionos came to be employed for any phenomenon which was ominous or portentous. As the chorus leader in Aristophanes’ Birds argues: ‘we birds are clearly your prophetic Apollo’, this god being the principal, but not the only deity, involved in prophecy.¹¹ Cheiron the centaur describes Apollo’s power:¹²

You Apollo know the destined end of all that is

All the paths leading to them, how many leaves

Earth sprouts forth in spring, how many grains

Of sand in the ocean and in rivers are tossed by the waves

And blasted by the wind, and what will happen,

From where it will come – all this clearly you perceive.

An Athenian white-ground kylix cup of the fifth century BC depicts Apollo sitting on a folding chair and pouring a libation, perhaps for himself, or possibly for his raven, which perches in front of him. His harp reflects his role as the god and patron of music, while the raven testifies to his role as a prophet and god of prophecy (Figure 1.1).¹³

Apollo’s messenger was the raven, while for Zeus it was the eagle. A raven itself could stand as a symbol for Apollo: Achilles ambushed Polyxena at a fountain near the shrine of Thrymbaion Apollo where, accompanied by the Trojan prince Troilos, she had gone to draw water. Here Achilles killed Troilos and then kidnapped her. A raven is frequently shown in vase paintings of this scene, clearly recognisable by the viewer as a prophetic device to indicate Apollo’s prophetic shrine, as on an Athenian black-figure vase of around 560 BC (Figure 1.2).¹⁴ Prophecy was also involved in this episode: the Roman playwright Plautus in his Bacchides, presumably reflecting a Greek play which he has adapted, as well as Greek myth, has Troy falli...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Omens and Oracles
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 Ancient Greek Writings on Divination
• 2 Diviners of Epic Sagas
• 3 Diviners in the Historical Narrative
• 4 ‘Interpreting Omens from Birds’
• 5 Portents and Prodigies
• 6 Sacrificial Entrails and Battlefield Sacrifices
• 7 Dreams, Dice and the Dead
• 8 Oracular Centres of Apollo and Zeus
• 9 The Demise of Oracular Shrines and the Transformation of Omens
• Bibliography
• Index