The Oracle at Delphi

Where the Pythia breathed in the god and answered for Apollo

On the slope of Mount Parnassus the ancient Greeks placed the centre of the world, marked by a stone they called the omphalos, the navel. For well over a thousand years cities and kings climbed here to put their questions to the Pythia, a woman of blameless life chosen from the local peasants, who sat on a tripod over an opening in the earth in the sunken inner room of Apollo’s temple and, in a trance, spoke for the god; the priests turned her words into verse. Plutarch, who served as a priest here, put the trance down to a sweet-smelling vapour rising from the chasm. Modern researchers have argued for ethylene in that vapour, others for oleander leaves chewed as the laurel of the old texts, and the limestone keeps the argument alive. Carved on the temple were know thyself and nothing in excess. Theodosius I shut the oracle down at the end of the 4th century. Its treasuries, theatre and temple are an archaeological site, with the museum holding the Charioteer of Delphi.