It was the most important religious center in ancient Greece. Between the 8th and 2nd centuries BC, he was much sought after by people who supposedly received predictions about the future, advice and guidance. The city of Delphi was the seat of the main Greek temple, dedicated to the god Apollo, and in whose underground the famous oracle worked.
In mythology, the place originally belonged to Gaia (a deity that represents the Earth) and was guarded by her daughter, the serpent Python. The god Apollo, associated with the gift of prophecy, would have taken control of the place after killing the serpent, which fell into a crevice in the ground and would have started to decompose, starting to emit intoxicating vapors. The Greeks believed that when a priestess – a woman of irreproachable life chosen among peasant women – inhaled such gases, she had her spirit possessed by Apollo, who made the prophecies through her. “The best-known form of consultation consisted of asking a question to the priestess, known as the Pythia.
In a kind of mediumistic trance, she would pronounce the answers in verses similar to those used in the poems Iliad and Odyssey, by Homer”, says Fernando Brandão dos Santos, professor of Greek literature at the São Paulo State University (Unesp), in Araraquara (SP). The religious center was consulted by ordinary citizens as well as political leaders, who used the prophecies to guide their governments.
After the Roman Empire took Delphi, in the 2nd century BC, the place suffered several looting and the subsequent expansion of Christianity also contributed to its decay. The pagan temple was permanently closed by a decree of Emperor Theodosius at the end of the 4th century. Some questions about Delphi, however, would puzzle scientists many centuries later. In the past decade, geologists, chemists and archaeologists worked in the region and concluded that indeed strange gases could emanate from the Temple of Apollo.
capital of predictions
Lulled by hallucinogenic gases, priestesses divined the future of the ancient Greeks
1. Upon arriving at the Greek city of Delphi, the visitor registered and paid a fee. When the time for his consultation approached, he purified himself at a source of water and followed the sacred path. This took him to the Temple of Apollo, where the famous oracle was located. There a priestess made predictions aided by several priests
two. Along the sacred path, which led through rough and steep terrain, there were statues, reliquaries with sacred treasures and other buildings dedicated to Apollo. Such monuments were built by city-states, such as Thebes and Athens, or by wealthy citizens, as a thank you to the oracle’s predictions and advice.
3. Before entering the Temple of Apollo, pilgrims sacrificed a sheep or a goat, whose entrails were examined by priests looking for prophetic signs. Then visitors entered the temple one at a time — which was surrounded by columns and is now in ruins. There, they presented the consultations to the priestess
4. Before each session, the prophetess descended into an underground chamber beneath the temple, where she inhaled “holy” vapors, which induced her prophecies. Some historians believe that the answers were interpreted and passed to the pilgrims by the priests. Others say that the prophetess herself spoke to the visitor, using enigmatic words.
5. Two geological faults run through Delphi. Studies carried out in 1996 showed that the subsoil of the place is formed by bituminous limestone, which can emit ethylene, a gas capable of producing hallucinations. This would explain the «holy vapors», which would rise through cracks in the land, as the fault lines intersect well below the Temple of Apollo.
6. One of the geological faults is lined with a series of water sources, some of which are now dry, one of which is directly below the temple. When hot water, coming from the depths of the Earth, passed through the layer of bituminous limestone, it created conditions for the release of ethylene vapors.
7. Next to the Temple of Apollo there was a theater, built in the 4th century BC, which could seat about 5 thousand people. There, musical shows, plays and poetry reading sessions were presented during the religious festivals held in Delphi. The theater offered spectators a majestic view of the Temple of Apollo]
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