Customer Reviews

The Mystery of the Oracles

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Keen investigation of the oracle business in the Ancient World.
This work is based mainly on the writings of Herodotos, Pausanias and Plutarchus (himself a high priest of Delphi!).
The author gives an excellent description of the different sites and of what happened before and behind the curtain.
The oracles took a central place in the everyday life of a citizen and were consulted for nearly everything, with as trivial questions as : should I go to this place? Should I close this transaction? etc.
For trivial questions the clients got trivial answers. For more important questions about for instance war or peace, the answers were ambiguous (like the one Cresus got). The answers could be rigged, e.g. Themistocles bought the answer he wanted to get. There was even a corrupt Pythia (Perialla).
The authors proves unambiguously that oracles were the nerve centre of big political and economical interests.
There was a bitter competition between the different sites to get the best and richest clients. Those who got the richest clients were the most famous.
A book not to be missed about a central institution in the Ancient World, that was not more than a religious swindle.