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The Delphic Oracle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Hugh Lloyd-Jones
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Extract

The ancient Greeks believed that the oracle at Delphi went back to immemorial antiquity. But were they right? The history of the site has been traced through excavations that are among the greatest achievements of modern archaeology. The interest of the French school in Delphi goes back to 1861, but for political reasons systematic excavation could not begin till 1893; since 1902 the series of volumes of the Fouilles de Delphes has appeared regularly. Mycenaean Delphi has been shown to have amounted to very little; and the chief centre seems to have been not on the site of the great temple, but at Marmaria, near the temple of Athene Pronaia. A few clay figurines may pertain to a private, but hardly to a public cult; an isolated Minoan marble drinking-horn shaped like a lion's head proves little. By the beginning of the Dark Age the settlement seems to have been destroyed by fire; before its life resumes during the Protogeometric period, there seems to have been a complete break in continuity. Only when the Dark Age is over does Delphi become important.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , April 1976 , pp. 60 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1976

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References

NOTES

1. Burkert, W., Rheinisches Museum 118 (1975), 1 f.Google Scholar, has now made a strong case for connecting Apollo's name with ἄπελλα, and has argued that he originated in the Peloponnese.The Apollo of historical times may well contain elements of different origin; Dr. C. Sourvinou-Inwood will soon publish a new study of the question, taking account of recent archaeological discoveries.

2. Python (Berkeley 1959).

3. Historia 6 (1957), 160–75.

4. A History of the Delphic Oracle (Oxford); Parke followed this in 1967 with an excellent short book, Greek Oracles (London), available as a paperback in the Hutchinson University Library series.

5. Les Thèmes de la propagande delphique (Paris 1954).

6. Revue de philologie 30 (1956), 268–82.

7. La Mantique apollinienne à Delphes (Paris 1950).

8. The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951), 70 ff.

9. It is well described by Russell, D. A., Plutarch (London 1972).Google Scholar

10. See Bowra, C. M., On Greek Margins (Oxford 1970), 233 ff.Google Scholar