Seers, portents and oracles in ancient Greece

Trying to predict the future, or at least the will of the gods, was an important part of ancient Greek religions. A “seer” was referred to as a mantis. They would put a question forward to the gods and look for signs, e.g., the movements of birds or weather patterns, to reveal the answer. One of the most important events for the mantis was the sacrifice, where every detail served as a sign. If the sacrificial animal shied away, it was supposed to show that the gods did not want the animal sacrificed. Significant signs, or portents, were also found in the shape and colour of the liver of a sacrificial animal. These could be read to determine the outcome of a proposed event. Warfare was an important time for seers, and an army would not go into battle unless they first had favourable omens.

One very special type of seer was an oracle, the most famous of which came from Delphi. Apollo was the god of omens and his temple of Delphi housed the pythia, a woman who served as the oracle for life. People would come from all over to ask the pythia a question. She would cleanse herself in the Castalian spring, which is at Delphi, and then a goat was sacrificed before she would enter the temple. She would breathe in burning barley and laurel leaves and position herself in a sunken part at the back of the temple called the adyton. The pythia would go into a trance over an opening in the ground, where vapours would rise. Questions would be put before her and she would give an answer, believed to come from the gods. The pythia would then give the answer to the priests who would write it out for the petitioner. These answers were usually written in verse and often very ambiguous or hard to understand. This meant that the prediction was open for interpretation, and it sometimes seemed that it would have turned out correctly no matter what the reality turned out to be.