oracles

An oracle (Gk. manteion, chrēstērion, Lat. orāculum) was an answer given by a god to a question asked him by a worshipper; it usually took the form of a command or a prediction or a statement of fact. An oracle may also mean the shrine itself where the answers were given. In each of the many oracular shrines in the ancient world the god was consulted in his own particular way. The most famous were those of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus, and of Apollo at Delphi. The former dates from very ancient times and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; there the oracles seem to have been extracted in some manner from a sacred oak-tree, perhaps by the rustling of its leaves (late legends say by the sound of a sacred spring or brazen gong), and interpreted by priests known as Selloi, ‘of unwashed feet and sleeping on the ground’. Zeus had another oracular shrine at Olympia (see IAMUS). At Delphi a priestess, the Pythia, seated on a tripod and under the inspiration of Apollo, answered the question put to her by the enquirer (see DELPHIC ORACLE). Apollo had many oracles of similar type in Greece and Asia Minor. The healing god Asclepius had a shrine at Epidaurus particularly famed for sending curative visions to the sick through incubation. The shrine of the hero Amphiaraus at Oropus was similarly credited with healing properties. One of the most famous hero-oracles was that of Trophonius in a cave at Lebadea in Boeotia. Among foreign oracles that of Zeus Ammon at Siwa in the Libyan desert, consulted notably by Alexander the Great, had a high reputation among the Greeks. Very many oracular responses to questions are known, and mostly they direct the questioner to perform some religious act, such as a sacrifice to a particular god. It seems probable that the famous replies said to have been given on notable historical occasions are not in fact genuine. From at latest the sixth century BC (see ONOMACRITUS) collections of oracles were made and peddled.

There were no oracular shrines in Italy comparable in importance with those in Greece. During the Roman republic oracles, apart from the Sibylline books (see SIBYL), were not consulted by the state. However, under the empire, and with the increased worship of Greek and oriental divinities, more attention was paid to oracular predictions. As in Greece, the collection of oracles at Rome must have begun quite early. In 213 BC at a critical time in the Second Punic War the senate made the praetor Acilius seize and suppress several collections in circulation. With the similar purpose of arresting panic the emperor Augustus had 2, 000 books of prophecies burnt. The most important oracle in Italy was at Cumae, where the Sibyl's cave was situated under the temple of Apollo. At Praenestē there was an ancient and famous temple of Fortune (see FORTUNA), where oracles known as sortēs, ‘lots’, were given: tablets, each inscribed with its own oracle, were shuffled by a child who drew one and gave it to the questioner. Faunus was regarded as a prophetic god, as was the nymph Carmentis (mother of Evander); both are referred to by Virgil. At the temple of Faunus at Tibur incubation was practised; a sheep was killed and the enquirer slept in its skin. The use of oracles as an aid to decision-making became particularly apparent in the second century AD with the popularization of the sortes Virgilianae (see VIRGIL), a practice said to have originated with the emperor Hadrian, by which the enquirer opened Virgil's works and chose a line at random to be a guide to the future. Copies of the Aeneid were deposited in temples for that purpose.