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Oracles and payola

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti


When we look into what the oracles said we immediately see that they could be very dangerous. It is not that the y don’t tell the truth (or at least the ones that have reached us do) the point is that they had to be interpreted, but the people who received them was usually wrong and Apollon was more “Loxias” than ever. However very odd things happened when the Pythia – virgin and maybe also very chaste – proved not to be so indifferent to the call of the golden metal. One of this strange things happened after the Pysistratos’s period, when the Alcmeonids, who this king’s sons had banished from Athens, and who had uselessly tried to come back and chase the tyrants, offered to reconstruct Apollon’s temple that had been destroyed by a fire and, about what Herodotos wrote, -
“As they had incalculable resources and as their family enjoyed of a very good repute they rebuilt a richer temple than the old one. The old one was a tufa one, but the Alcmeonids employed only parian marble”
Obviously by this they acquired reputation, liking and earned a good renown and good profits. Then it was not difficult for them to contact the Pythia and arrange everything with her.
The priestress of the time was a very shrewd person and had her future very much at heart, certainly much more than the divination tripod, or the fumes which, enclosing her, put her in contact with the god and all the other settings of the ceremony. She certainly gave to the crowd the impression that she was pervaded by Apollon, when she really never lost her head. Thus the Alcmeonids had no difficulty in corrupting her and made so that every time, privately or officially, some Spartan came to ask an oracle, the Pythia did tell him that if the postulant wished that all went well at Sparta, the first thing Sparta had to do, was to free Athens from the tyrants. Due to the fact that at those times people always went to Delphis for anything that needed a decision, and due to the fact that every time a Spartan came the Pythia repeated her refrain, at the end, notwithstanding the fact that the Spartans were friend of the Pysistratids, they decided to obey to what they believed was the peremptory order of Apollon. There were wars, deaths and grief, but at the end the Pisistratids were banished. History followed its course and, when the Pythia left her prestigious office, she found herself a very rich woman.