Oracle

by Jackie French

  ‘Why?’ Nikko’s head still spun slightly from the effects of the gas.

  He and Euridice sat together on a stool just inside the wide front door of the Pythia’s house. Below them the view was a wild sweep of cliffs and trees, with a smudge that was Krissa and the endless glitter of the sea. On the other side the great shining cliffs shone gold, kissed by the afternoon light.

  The mountain air smelled of cold tin and flowers.

  The guards on either side of the doorway were to keep people out. The King of Delphi’s orders had been clear. There was no more talk, it seemed, of taking the new Oracle away from Delphi. Thetis lay on her bed in the inner room, still drowsy from the gas, while Dora spoonfed her mutton broth.

  ‘Why did I come back?’ Euridice reached over and took his hand. He hadn’t quite dared to touch her first. That ambassador of the Mother had looked too strong for any mortal to reach for.

  But her hand felt just the same: callused, muscled and warm.

  ‘I am still a priestess. I always will be dedicated to the Mother. But the Mother has three faces,’ said Euridice.

  ‘The maiden, the mother, and the hag. It seems I am not content to stay a maiden. And,’ she added, ‘I am definitely too young to be a hag. When you sent Pegasus to me…I hadn’t realised then how long you’d waited.’ She glanced at him, now almost shy. ‘Or how much I would have lost if I had let you go. The elders of the temple agreed. So I came up here to look for you.’

  ‘And found Thetis on the mountain.’

  Euridice nodded. ‘The gas up there—it’s happened before. There’s even a cave near the shrine where gas seeps out. People who smell it lose control, as though they are drunk.’ She glanced into the inner room. ‘I suppose when Thetis breathed it she lost her control over her voice, and began to speak again.’

  ‘You heard this at the Temple?

  She nodded. ‘I learned a lot. And I will learn more when I visit there again,’ she added. ‘I am one of their priestesses, even if I’m not to live there, or stay a maiden.’

  ‘Then you will really marry me?

  She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps. As long as you understand that if anyone ever calls me “wife of Nikkoledes” I will cut out their living tongue and feed the still-squirming pieces to the pythons.’

  Nikko laughed. ‘If you plan to keep your bow by your side, and your arrows on your back, I doubt anyone will dare to call you “wife of Nikkoledes”.’

  ‘No.’ She touched his cheek gently. ‘I think it more likely that both our names will slowly be lost, as we become nothing more than the guardians of the Oracle. We must protect her, Nikko. Make sure no one forces her to breathe the gas too often, or she may die.

  ‘We must build her a temple there, with a curtain so she is hidden from view, and no one can intimidate her, and make her give the prophecies they want. The King of Delphi will help,’ she added. ‘This may make Delphi the richest town in Greece because of supplicants’ gifts to the Oracle. But it will be our job to keep her safe, to give her the knowledge of what’s happening in the world so she can give her judgements.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  She shook her head, her plaits bobbing at her shoulders. She had loosened them—and put her weapons down—when she came inside. ‘My life was dedicated to the Goddess, and it seems it shall be. But it will be here, not at the Temple, as I had thought. And your life: you will be giving up all other choices now too, to stay here with Thetis.’

  ‘I have always watched over my sister.’ He hesitated, but continued. ‘But if we have a daughter…’

  Euridice met his eyes. ‘We will pray that she inherits the art of seeing, but not of always having to tell the truth. Let others’ daughters become the Delphic Oracle, not ours.’

  ‘You think there will be others?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Her voice was confident. ‘Men need a woman’s eye, a woman’s voice, to tell them how things truly are. And in all of Greece, there is now one woman’s voice any man can listen to and obey, and keep his honour. There will always be an Oracle at Delphi,’ she smiled, ‘until perhaps other women’s voices are heard and the affairs of men become everyone’s concern.’

  An eagle hovered low outside, floating on the air, close enough for them to see the bronze wing feathers, the savage slash of beak. It was almost as if we’ve come home, thought Nikko. And suddenly this was home—he could see it as clearly as if Thetis had told him as the Oracle: him and Euridice and their children, laughing, sitting by their hearth fire. And up on the hill the Oracle of Delphi, sitting in her white temple on her tripod, guiding men.

  But not alone. Not while he lived. And if Euridice had her way, every Oracle to come would have guardians as well.

  ‘She should be stronger now. Come on.’ Euridice stood, still holding him by the hand, and led him into Thetis’s room. Dora was sitting by the bed now, the empty bowl in her lap.

  Thetis was a small ball among the furs of the bed, her face to the wall, but she rolled over as they came in. He kneeled beside her.

  ‘Thetis, can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was a hoarse whisper, like a frog’s. She smiled slightly. ‘The gas hasn’t worn off. It will soon, I think. Then I will only speak when I am near the chasm.’

  ‘You don’t want to speak?’

  The tears were there again. ‘No. Speaking the truth is hard, Nikko. I learned that when I was small. Hard for people to listen to. Harder still to speak.’

  And hard to live with, thought Nikko, hard for you, but just as hard for me. His sister had led him on a long journey, and a difficult one.

  Perhaps it was the effects of the gas, perhaps just the feeling that today he had lived for fifty years, his mind bruised. But for the first time he knew exactly what he felt for Thetis, what he had always felt.

  He hated her, just a little: this girl who had robbed him of a normal life. He feared her a little too: this woman who would see and listen and analyse it all, and tell the truth. Always, no matter how agonising the results, she’d tell the truth.

  And he loved her still. The love had always been there, and always would. No matter what, he would always give his life for his sister.

  He stroked the damp hair from her forehead. ‘Do you need anything?’

  She looked up at him. Suddenly this was the Oracle who stared at him, not the sister. ‘You want to ask me a question. But you won’t.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  An almost-laugh, soft as the brushing of a feather. ‘The way I know everything, Nikko. The way I always have. I listen and I watch and I think. I know you best of all, my brother. You want to ask, will you be happy?’

  Nikko tugged Euridice closer, and put his arm around her. ‘Well, little sister, will we be happy?’

  Thetis raised herself up on the furs. She looked at them a moment. There were dark rings around her eyes, and a blue tinge around her mouth. Her skin looked shiny and pink but not a healthy pink. She was silent so long that Nikko was sure that the effects of the gas had worn off, that her iron control over her voice had closed off all possibility of speech.

  And then she spoke. Is it still the gas? Nikko wondered, even as he listened to her words. Or was Thetis choosing to speak now, just once of her own accord, a gift of love?

  This voice was like a knife rasping across stone, almost impossible to make out. ‘I see happiness, and a long life, and many sons and daughters.’

  ‘And you?’ Euridice’s voice was urgent. ‘What will your life be?’

  Thetis lay back. Behind them women were muttering, stopping the King from entering. Another handed Dora a bowl of scented water to wash Thetis’s feet.

  Thetis smiled. It was a true smile, but for some reason Nikko felt tears spring into his eyes. Beside him Euridice was weeping too.

  Thetis’s whisper was almost soundless now. ‘And me? No lover, no children, no dancing for the moon. I am the beginning of a thousand years of women. I am what I will always be, just this and nothing m
ore. I am the woman who must tell the truth.’

  NOTES ON THE TEXT

  This is a story made up of whispers and legends, and history buried under the earth: the powdery remains that are all we have of that strange time when the walled fort of Mycenae was the greatest power in Greece. It is almost from beyond history, in fact. I have put the echoes of the past together as best I can. But there is no way I, or anyone else, can accurately and completely recreate that world.

  Some people who read this story will object to the way I’ve characterised some aspects of the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle was dedicated to Apollo, not to an earth goddess. She lived in a white temple.

  These things are true. But the Oracle of Delphi was dispensing her wisdom long before the worship of Apollo arrived in Greece.

  The only written records from the age of Mycenae that we understand are accounts figures, listing what was collected in tributes, what was spent on dependants of the palace, what was traded and how much. We can take information from scenes portrayed on walls, or pots, or the ruins of cities that had long been covered by the earth. There are also legends, often told as stories of ‘gods’ or superhuman heroes descended from gods, which may well be an ‘oral history’ based on real events.

  This story is set in a land quite unlike the Greece we know today, or even the Greece of ‘the golden age’ of science and philosophy, which began in about 400 BC. The land I am writing about had a different language, a different culture and a very different appearance too. There were no groves of oranges and lemons; no great amphitheatres for Greek plays. There was no moussaka, baklava, coffee, and possibly not even lamb kebabs, though like all hunting societies they probably cooked meat on sticks by the fire.

  We believe that the ancient Greeks of the time when the trading empire of Mycenae was at its peak (1400–1200 BC) had writing and a sophisticated culture. But, for some unknown reason, around 1000 BC their written language and much else was lost. Their cities were destroyed or abandoned.

  Perhaps there were droughts, earthquakes or other disasters, or an invasion of people from the north. Possibly all of these happened—so many disasters in such a short time that the culture vanished, except from stories of the past, told while sitting by the fire.

  Certainly life in ancient Greece changed dramatically at that time. And one place where things changed most was Delphi.

  The earliest ‘Oracle’ at Delphi was probably a priestess of Dia, Gia or Demeter, the Earth Mother. She may also have been a seer with no particular religious affiliation. It was only later, when northern invaders brought herds of cattle, long-legged horses, and the worship of Zeus the thunder god, and Apollo god of wisdom, youth and the moon, that the Oracle of Delphi became part of Apollo’s temple.

  There is a legend that Apollo wrestled with a giant snake or dragon at Delphi, which could be interpreted as the overthrow of one temple, the Pythia’s, by the priests of Apollo.

  The earliest recorded stories about the Oracle claim that a rift opened in the earth after an earthquake. The goats wandered in a daze, and people began to babble. The rift and its gases was fenced off, but one woman, the Oracle, was allowed to breathe the gases once a month—any more might have been fatal—to prophesy. Eventually the role was probably shared, to save any one woman from too much exposure.

  But the words that have been handed down to us from the Delphic Oracle weren’t only prophecies. The Oracle was known as much for her wisdom as for her gift of knowing what might happen. If you asked the Oracle for advice she would just as likely tell you something about yourself as about what might happen to you. Her gift was for insight, rather than prediction.

  This is the oracle I have depicted here: not a magician, not a prophet—except in the sense that a clever and intellectually honest person can predict many events—but a wise woman, at the centre of the political world of ancient Greece, the one who told the truth even when it wasn’t what her listener hoped to hear.

  There is no political advisor in the world today who has what the Oracle possessed—the power and utter independence required to tell the truth, with no repercussions, as well as being in a position to know possibly more than anyone else about the politics of the web of ancient Greek states. Delphi became a place of truce, where political discussions and conferences were held, and the Oracle and the women who tended her would have had access to all that was discussed, both there and at the guesthouses where the dignitaries stayed.

  As in Ancient Greece, every politician today has people to please, problems to gloss over. But the Oracle, independent of any single political leader, could not only tell the truth: she had the means to know what that truth might be, guided by the group of ‘wise women’ who helped and watched over the Oracle and her rites.

  There was also the gas, ethylene (see below) seeping up from the earth, which stupefied the mind so that perhaps only the truth could be told. It might have been a bit like today’s ‘truth serum’ which doesn’t so much stop you lying as make you gabble out whatever you think of first—which is usually what your captors want to know. The Oracle had no power to dissemble—and little reason to. And if her prophecies were sometimes a bit obscure…well, that stopped the client getting too angry until he was far away, and might as well accept what the truth meant.

  I am not saying that the Oracle of Delphi was never a prophet. I am saying, however, that she may not have needed mysterious power to be one.

  Certainly Thetis in this book has no magic. She watches, analyses, deduces…and finally, under the gas, speaks. But this book is supposition. I simply do not know how much truth is in it.

  I do know, however, that this wasn’t the book I meant to write. I have written many books: I outlined them, sketched them out, and then followed that design pretty closely. But from the first paragraph, this book changed everything I had meant to say. It was almost as though the story took me over, rather than the other way about.

  I write in a study surrounded by a garden. I wrote this book in autumn, and the world outside my study was filled with the reds and blues and purples of sage flowers, late roses, passionfruit and scented camellias. Perhaps, with this book, the flowers outside my study gave off the ethylene I have described below, wafting into my study, and I too breathed in just a little of the Oracle’s ‘pneuma’, or spirit.

  The Mysterious Gas of Delphi

  The mysterious gas, or ‘pneuma’, that caused the goats to run in circles and the Oracle to speak, is mentioned in the earliest recorded stories of the Oracle of Delphi. But in modern times there is no sign of the gas in the region, nor of any cleft in the ground.

  Was the gas just a legend?

  For many centuries it was thought it was. But in the early years of this century various scientists from the USA and Holland studied air and water samples from Delphi. They discovered that ethylene—once used as an anaesthetic—as well as perhaps a little ethane too, still seeped out of some rocks near Delphi, though in almost untraceable amounts. It seems that one earthquake opened up rifts in the ground that let out the gas and another earthquake closed them. The ancient descriptions of the Oracle—her slumping posture, her harsh voice, her out-of-control actions—all fit the symptoms of someone who is inhaling ethylene.

  Ethylene is given off by ripening fruit and some flowers; it is also given off by oil deposits or oily rocks, deep below the ground. It smells slightly sweet—as did the ‘pneuma’ at Delphi. According to ancient texts the Oracle also forgot her prophecies afterward…and that too would fit in with someone who was slowly being anaesthetised.

  In ancient Greece a woman was less valuable than a good hunting dog. No one listened to women, and girls would have grown up feeling that their opinions didn’t matter, as they were themselves so much less worthy than men.

  But the Oracle was different. She spoke with the authority of Apollo, never doubting her powers because they came from him. And the gas—the sweet, relaxing ethylene gas—allowed her to drop her inhibitions and speak with her mind
and heart.

  By 1000 BC the Oracle gave her prophecies in a small temple, hidden from the questioner by a curtain. This would have concentrated the ethylene fumes in her room and protected the questioners…though the gas might also have left them feeling just disoriented enough to feel overawed, as though something otherworldly had happened.

  Religion

  I have simplified the religion of Mycenaean days into a single form of worship of an earth goddess, the ‘Mother’. It’s likely the reality was far more complex, that some ‘fertility symbol’ was worshipped in many different ways by different peoples, who may also have worshipped other local gods—the mountain behind their village, the spirits of the stream, the demons who caused meat to rot. The more centralised religious system—the Zeus and Apollo, Aphrodite and Athena that we know as the ‘Greek Gods’—probably came some time later, and took over the roles of the local gods and goddesses.

  The End of the Oracle

  The Oracle spoke for about 1000 years. Then in 83 BC the shrine was damaged by one or maybe several earthquakes. Some say that this was when the Oracle lost the power of true predictions. (Had the quakes shut off the gas?) Delphi was still a sacred site, though, and the Oracle still consulted.

  In 66 AD the riches of Delphi were looted by the ancient Roman Emperor Nero—possibly insane, and definitely greedy. By this time the Oracle—or oracles—gave only an almost meaningless mutter, ‘translated’ by the priests of Apollo. Possibly by then it was the priest who chose which prophecy to give rather than the woman on the tripod.

  The shrine of the Oracle was ordered to close by the Christian Emperor Theodosius I in 395 AD. The site was then abandoned for almost 100 years, but slowly people started to come back and, by 600 AD, the village of Kastri had grown up nearby.

  Sacrifice

  In the time of this book—and to this day, if in different forms—it was common to sacrifice to the gods to give thanks or to ask for a good harvest or a baby or whatever you wanted. The wealthier you were, and the more urgent your plea, the greater the sacrifice. At some times, and in some places, the king might sacrifice himself (or an unfortunate substitute dressed up as the king) to ensure victory or to try to break a drought or plague. The firstborn child was especially valuable as a sacrifice, as the sooner your children became adults the sooner they could help feed the family and look after you in turn. There are many stories of firstborn sons and daughters being sacrificed by their own families.