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A Reconsideration of the Pythia's Use of Lots

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A Reconsideration of the Pythia's Use of Lots 5 A Reconsideration of the Pythia’s Use of Lots Constraints and Chance in Delphic Divination Lisa Maurizio It is a commonplace in scholarship on Delphic divination that Apollo’s priestess, the Pythia, offered clients oracles in verse or prose as well as using lots; that is, she shook beans or stones in a bowl, most likely a phialē. In Sarah Johnston’s book on divination, to cite one example, she argues that in addition to offering lengthy ‘conversational’ oracles, the Pythia used lots when ‘enquirers, consciously or not, wished to actually restrict Apollo’s latitude of reply’ because lots provided binary answers.¹ Here Johnston links lots to an assumed desire on the part of clients: they want simple, clear answers from Apollo and ask simple, clearly stated questions to get them. In his recent book on Delphi, Michael Scott is rather agnostic about the Pythia’s use of lots, but nonetheless views Delphic divination as binary, or limited in the way Johnston describes. Scott writes that ‘most questions put to the oracle seem to have been in the form of “would it be better and more profitable for me to do X or Y . ”’.² The views of Johnston and Scott, which are representative of much scholarship about lots and divination at Delphi, are coupled with, and indeed depend on, an assumption about how divination works, namely, that clients want clear answers such as lots are imagined to offer to their questions; and an assumption about the goal of divination, namely, that divination is practised to expedite and authorize actions to solve problems and questions. Both assumptions about divination, perhaps because they seem obvious, precede and dictate how modern scholars have taken ¹ Johnson 2008: 52, 54. Italics in original. ² Scott 2014: 27. Scott further reasons that consultants presented options and sought guidance from the Pythia, rather than asking about future events. Lisa Maurizio, A Reconsideration of the Pythia’s Use of Lots: Constraints and Chance in Delphic Divination In: Ancient Divination and Experience. Edited by: Lindsay G. Driediger-Murphy and Esther Eidinow, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844549.003.0005 112 recorded Delphic oracles to represent historical practice. For example, of the roughly twenty-five out of 600 or so Delphic oracles with the formula ‘it is better and more profitable’, a little more than half are on inscriptions. Because this inscriptional evidence conforms to assumptions about the manner and goal of divination, this evidence is often and increasingly in scholarship considered the best indicator, perhaps even a transcript, of how questions and answers were exchanged during a divinatory consultation. The reasoning seems to be: remove the ambiguity and verse from Delphic oracles, rely on inscriptions, and you will hear the voice at the centre of the world. This voice says yes or no, and not much else. The Pythia’s putative use of lots both confirms and derives from this view.³ This chapter reviews the visual, material, and written evidence used to argue that the Pythia used lots at Delphi, and collects additional evidence that may bear upon this question. In addition, it queries the notion that a simple and direct question and answer, whether by a lot or conversational oracle, com- prised a divinatory session at Delphi that had as its goal a clear resolution of a problem. Anthropologists who consider the complex process of turning a divinatory dialogue into a text suggest that most divinatory texts are necessarily distillations that mask rather than reveal a divinatory mechanism, dialogue, or practice. This anthropological literature draws attention to how accounts of divinatory sessions often recount divinatory product (oracle), not divinatory process. To this end, I turn to anthropological work that examines aleatory binary modes of divination, especially two forms (the rubbing board and poison oracles) studied by Evans-Pritchard, whose work on divination remains a touchstone among anthropologists and classicists. In sum, this essay recon- siders the Pythia’s use of lots at Delphi in view of ancient material evidence not formerly included in such discussions and recent anthropological work. 1. The Phialē in Divination and Libation One common reconstruction of aleatory consultation at Delphi envisages the Pythia as examining lots tossed in a phialē. This reconstruction derives ³ Plato (Phdr. 244b–c) classified kleromancy—sortition with some type of lot (klēros)—as well as other forms of divination that rely on interpreting objects such as entrails, birds, stars, etc. as technical. He distinguished these types of divination from those he labelled as non-technical or intuitive because they depend on divine inspiration. Plato’s distinction has not entered scholarly arguments about the Pythia’s use of lots; its usefulness for understanding how divinatory sessions unfold has been questioned. See Tedlock 2001; Raphals 2013; Struck 2016: 16–8. ’ 113 from an interpretation of a well-known Attic drinking cup attributed to the Kodros Painter (c.430 ). This cup depicts a woman sitting on a tripod, holding a laurel leaf and staring into a phialē as a bearded man stands by her side.⁴ The woman is labelled Themis and the man Aigeus, a legendary king of Athens. The names suggest that myths about either figure may offer clues about the nature of their encounter. In Euripides’ Medea, Aigeus visits Delphi to inquire about his prospects for conceiving children.⁵ Themis, too, is associated with Delphi: she is the goddess who, after inheriting the site from Gaia, either gave it to Phoebe who gave it to Apollo, or gave it directly to Apollo herself.⁶ Since the tripod and laurel branch are associated with Delphi, the image on this cup has been interpreted as a representation of this scene.⁷ And yet, because the goddess Themis does not appear in the story of Aigeus’ consultation, the figure on the cup has been interpreted as a generic prophetess of Apollo (so named because oracles are sometimes called themistēs), or a historical prophetess, a Pythia, named Themis.⁸ One early investigator, Frank Egleston Robbins (1916), chose not to identify the figure but nonetheless argued that Themis is shaking lots, such as beans or stones, in her phialē.⁹ This explains her rapt attention on her bowl and not Aigeus. He went on to argue, by extension, that the Pythias selected or rattled lots in a phialē, in addition to composing oracles, when inspired by Apollo during divinatory consultations at Delphi.¹⁰ The various uses of the phialē in Greece—in divinatory rites and for libations—provide a context in which to re-evaluate the image on our cup. In Perachora in Argos, due east of the archaic temple of Hera Akraia, a small artificial pool with some 200 bronze phialai was found. Scholars originally thought that the waters of the pool were used for purification and the phialai were considered dedications. J. Dunbabin, however, identified the pool and phialai as the manteion of Hera mentioned, though not described, by Strabo.¹¹ Dunbabin argued that this set-up could be explained as a divin- atory device with reference to two other examples: the practice of tossing ⁴ LIMC I.2 Aigeus no. 1, p. 274; Avramidou 2011: 39–40. ⁵ Eur. Med. 660–868. ⁶ Aesch. Eum. 1–8 and Paus. 20.5.6. ⁷ Shapiro 1993: 221–3. ⁸ Johnston 2008: 56–60. ⁹ Robbins 1916: 279. ¹⁰ No phialai marking or recording an oracular consultation have been found at Delphi. Two phialai found to the north-east of Apollo’s temple, in the ‘red house’, a structure dating from the end of the seventh century to 585–575 when it was burned down, are not dispositive for determining if the Pythia used one during divinatory sessions. Luce 1992: 697–8 with Scott 2014: 64. ¹¹ Strabo 8.6.22; Dubabin 1951: 61. 114 barley cakes into a pool of Ino in Epidauros Limera;¹² and throwing tablets into a pool of the Palici at Sicily, to see if they floated or sank.¹³ More recently, Strøm, following Tomlinson, has argued that the phialai are not mantic implements, but debris from a nearby dining room that was con- nected to this pool by water channels.¹⁴ But although Dunbabin’s hypothesis is now out of favour, nevertheless, tantalizing support for it comes from the cult of Apollo Deiradiotis, founded by Pythaios the son of Apollo, on the hill of Aspida in the northwest of Argos. There a priestess of Apollo reportedly drank the blood of a sacrificed ewe and prophesied.¹⁵ Several inscriptions from the site mention both male and female prophets, though no ewe’s blood. Kadletz suggests that several terracotta phialai found in a cistern at the site imply that two types of divination were practised, just as posited at Delphi: an inspired priestess delivered oracles to clients and phialai were tossed into water to see if they floated.¹⁶ Three other forms of divination, not explicitly associated specifically with the phialē, nonetheless offer an explanation for why Themis is staring into her phialē and not at Aigeus: hydromancy (observing water in a bowl); or lekanomancy (observing oil floating on water in a bowl), for which the magical papyri mention the use of a phialē;¹⁷ or katoptromancy, wherein one stares into a mirror, here the bottom of an empty phialē.¹⁸ Alternatively, since the phialē is a drinking vessel, Themis may be about to drink sacred water from the Kastalian or Kassiotis spring as a means of inspiration— drinking water was believed to inspire priests at the oracle of Apollo at Klaros and oracle-seekers at Hysiai in Boiotia.¹⁹ Or, as Leicester Holland proposed, Themis may be about to pour a libation.²⁰ Recent work on libation in Greek art offers two reasons that support Holland’s interpretation and explain Themis’ downward gaze.
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