The Oracle at Delphi
"Let's try tonight to to build up to an understanding of uh Diocletian and his so-called reforms -- and why these were bad; and why you don't want to you don't want to try them again....!
You don't want to go down that road another time, and --
And where all of this stuff uh came from --
And I suppose, where we start is the um -- The Cult of Apollo at Delphi as the.... the, um -- you could call it an organ of World Government, as a matter of fact :
The more you look into it, the more it does appear as functioning in many ways uh -- similar to The United Nations Security Council and The General Assembly of our own time..... yeah you do!
And some of these personalities also seem to come back -- we'll get after Butros Butros a little bit later on....!
The Delphic Apollo : There were probably half a dozen different oracles that the greek world knew, but this was the dominant one --
And it had this funny position of being in The Centre of The Greek World in terms of geographical location --
The Legend is, that Zeus wanted to find The Center of The World so he released An Eagle from each extremity of the universe and these flew on a line and met and that was Delphi, so -- it's this rocky craggy place where this strange temple is located.
Now, the Apollo that is worshiped there is, of course, The Oligarchical Deity par excellence and many things flow together into the into the shape of Apollo --
In many ways, Apollo is Marduk -- Marduk being this.... sinister oligarchical god of the interior of Asia-Minor, of Turkey; but then of course, there's also, in Apollo this overtone of Isis and Osiris; and that Apollo with this pythoness, this woman, The Pythia, we'll see, who -- she reminds you somewhat of Isis and Osiris; and of course, the fact that Osiris was castrated -- big important aspect in the whole thing -- and then brought back from the dead by Isis.
The way that the temple was set up was, that you had this priestess, The Pythia, The Pythoness, who was uh -- whether she was young as she was at certain points, by tradition, or sometimes only older women were allowed to do this function : she would uh start off by being a relatively illiterate country woman who knew really very little of what she was doing but she would mount a seat which was placed on a tripod over a kind of cleft in the ground, it was something you obviously you wouldn't want to fall into --
But she was sit on this thing, and after having eaten certain kinds of ceremonial foods — burned barley corns and other kind of stuff, she would begin to babble ---
And she would just babble -- and she would go into transports of apollonian ecstasy (whatever) and just talk, like speaking in tongues, I guess, if you've if you've heard any of that stuff going on --
Now, how did anybody make sense out of this....?
Well, there was A Priesthood, that was attached to The Temple of Apollo, and these were the oligarchical families of Delphi, which was a small state it was a -- well it was A City-State, I guess, to some extent but small, not populous not powerful not anything special in itself.
But somehow these people represented a cross-section of Greek Oligarchical Opinion and more important were connected to these Babylonian Magi, and the people who were operative in The Persian Empire to The East, so uh --
The Way it Would Work, then, is that you would come as a representative of Athens or of Corinth or whatever you were, you would bring gifts — put down money; and you were then allowed to Question The Pythoness, who would then go into one of these transports and she'd rattle off a whole bunch of babbling, and then the priests would come up, and they would explain what it was that she had said; which had of course to come out in greek hexameters of a certain literary quality.
Now that -- that makes these guys
the original Spin-Doctors —
They put The Spin; there was —
Something Happened and they
tell you what it was — right?
“What did all that mean?”
and in Greek hexameters.
Now, uh — the prestige of this oracle was was immense, it was a — it was obviously A Bank, there were these deposits of treasure gifts that were made; the wealth of this place was was a legend in antiquity, and it was also therefore A Treasury : it looks like various cities actually kept part of their funds there, the kind of A Central Bank for The Greek States — obviously with The Priests, with cults and then of course — the fact that, since everybody came there on these missions The Priests learn the knack of pumping everybody for information.
So, as many authors say : this was
The Biggest Intelligence Bureau in The World.
They would uh sometimes formulate answers…. for example one guy, he said, “Look, should I invade my neighbouring country….?” and The Answer was, “….if you carry out the invasion you will destroy a great kingdom.”
…..of course it turned out that it was his own kingdom that was destroyed — this was King Croesus.
But there are, I think, important tendencies in the way that The Delphic oracle operated that are that are worth pointing out : The main thing is that it was An Organ of The Oligarchy, and that this can be proven by the political choices that it made, and it made these things repeatedly.
First of all, the main favouritism of The Delphic Oracle was for Sparta and why is this important? Well, as Schiller pointed out in the famous lecture on on History : the principal tendencies that come back in western civilisation are, the tendency of Lycurgus of Sparta : the oligarchical imperialist militaristic one, and Solon of Athens, the city builder on the other side —
Well, it is legendary that Lycurgus’ constitution of Sparta was either dictated — as I think is likely — dictated by the priests of Apollo at Delphi, or at the very least, approved by them that was like Lycurgus brought it to the oracle and saying don't you think that the lack of demonians ought to be governed by these laws and then of course the python earthquake and the priest said yes you win like kyrgyz so that is the version that we find in Xenophon that ly kyrgyz went to the oracle and got the uh version the constitution for sparta approved thank you joey we're just we're just going through some stuff on the delphic uh oracle great over there yeah over there would be fine but not not on that yeah good thank you now um you can also see in cases of war the delphic oracle would sometimes declare that it was supporting one side or the other uh for example in the case of the peloponnesian war a little bit before 400 right this general war of the greek states uh the delta apollo made a an unsolicited declaration that they were supporting they were supporting sparta not only were they supporting sparta but they were not going to wait to be asked they were going to support them and go down the line with them no matter what they did which is rather revealing i guess you'd say now the other the other way that the delphic apollo expressed its pro-oligarchical tendencies is its support for the persian empire because of course greek history in this time is this endless war century upon century of trying to stand up against the constant encroachment of the persian empire which they basically succeeded in holding off and ultimately uh conquered even though the greeks by that time will weaken themselves it is uh the attack of uh the persian emperor xerxes which concerns us here :
This is reported in Thucydides — The Athenians sent a delegation of two representatives to the Delphic Apollo, basically saying well “Xerxes is… is attacking us, he's approaching — what should we do?”
And uh this is a this is a remarkable opinion that was then tendered by the Delphic Apollo;
The Delphic Apollo basically said uh — you wretched men what are you sitting here for?
fly to the ends of the earth and leave your homes
in the topmost heights of your wheel-shaped city
the fierce the fire and fierce ares driving his syrian car
will destroy your city and he will lay low
many other fenced cities and not yours alone —
so after some more verbiage like this depart from my sanctuary with your souls steeped in sorrow this was the advice that the Delphic oracle gave athens at the moment that Xerxes was on the march now the two athenians said we can't go back with that we can't you know that's defeatist that's going to ruin everything right no but nobody's going to fight if they've heard that opinion from the norfolk apollo so what they did they they knew that there was a trick you could pull with the darpa kapala you could get a second opinion and the way you did that was you had to come in as a suppliant not just as a client with gifts but you had to come expressing a great deal of uh subordination to this thing and you had to pick up what they called supplicatory branches in other words you had to some come in with these bowels of laurel or myrtle or whatever it was and therefore can't you give us a second opinion right can't we have a better response for the country and the pithia at this point says, “Well —
don't quietly await the cavalry and infantry
that in a mighty host of advancing from the mainland
but turn your back and withdraw —
you should live to fight another day —
and uh mentions a few things about uh maybe ships or the ocean or something like this um they then this was this was also her basically saying run for your lives although in a slightly less purple rhetoric they went back these two athenians to their uh general themistocles and he was forced then to put his own spin on this basically saying well indeed why don't we try fighting in the water instead of on land and this is then the battle of salamis which the greeks won against the persians but no thanks to the to the toxic oracle right which was basically saying run for your lodge and then when the greeks the the athenians tried to give supplementary presence to the delphic oracle as a result of the victory say well you know thanks to your prophecies we did prevail the delphic oracles is apparently the only time this ever happened said no we can't take those presents from you athenians so uh this obviously gave the gave the dolphin oracle a bad name now the other thing that the delphic oracle uh did was its support of rome and i think this this is the uh the thing that i wanted to look at just a little bit uh also this evening the delta oracle is basically anti-etruscan remember that in the italian peninsula at the time when you had rome starting off the most advanced civilizations were these etruscans in the north tuscany right florence whatever — Po plain, and then in the south from Naples, all the way south; those were all Greeks right that was the so-called magna graica and remember that naples continued to speak greek all through the roman empire until it went away into the middle ages that was a Greek city and not not Italian nevertheless the delphic oracle supported Rome — and they did this with the same kind of public stress that you can see in the way that they supported Sparta or supported the Persian Empire against against Athens and the other greek uh cities during the course of uh early roman history —
You have to remember that The Romans were this backward uh uncouth brutal murderous bunch compared to most of their neighbours, they were inferior — but the uh Delphic Apollo supported them.
For example whenever they got into these wars with the Etruscan cities, like you read this in um -- Titus Livius, right? Livy — the history of the roman republic there whenever there's a a a battle a war going on between say they they is a large and relatively rich Etruscan city just a little bit north of Rome that The Delphic Apollo was giving advice what to do how The Romans could could overturn -- and they did, at a later point the Delphic Apollo decided that they would give an unprecedented permanent endorsement of Rome --
And they did this by singling out a special black stone which was called the niger lapis -- very interesting thing, right -- niger lapis it just means black stone -- that's all it means the blackstone rangers way back then this was located in greece but it was the symbol of the magna mater it was the great mother sibel this was supposedly the dwelling place of the goddess Sibel
So the deltic apollo put out an opinion that this black stone had to be moved and it had to be taken from greece and put in the roman forum and that's where it stayed and they there still is in the roman forum today if you go there there's a black stone that they claim is the is the one
well that's true and i don't know uh during the during the so this was a this was a a permanent endorsement this is something that was never really done for anybody in quite that form now later on uh in the punic wars when rome was fighting with uh with Carthage right the great thing that decided who was going to dominate the central mediterranean during the days when hannibal crossed his uh elephants over the alps and was laying waste to all parts of italy the delphic apollo sent messages of encouragement to the senate and the people of rome saying hang on keep fighting don't give in you can defeat hannibal and ultimately did this is pretty much what happened but again with the help of the intelligence and the propaganda and the cults coming out of the delphic apollo the other thing that we have to just recall is that in these days after the death of alexander the great there were kingdoms that grew up as the result of the falling apart of alexander's empire right these are the so-called i guess they're sometimes called the epigones the epigony they're sometimes also called the digadoki the generals that —
And if you were a big general under alexander the great you had a pretty good chance of becoming king and founding a dynasty and the cases of that that are most interesting are the Ptolemaic dynasty in egypt; these were greeks basically who set up a a kingdom here in egypt and then the so-called cellucids the cellucids was another general and his gang who took over syria okay um the delphic apollo liked the talmaic dynasty supported them which is interesting we get it later on when you get to the cleopatra because that's of course what what she was now when the roman empire came along it's interesting to see which of the roman emperors or proto-emperors were most supportive of the Delphic apollo mark anthony during the time that he dominated the eastern part of the roman empire came forward as a protector of the delphi kapala saying i'm going to rebuild this place if it was burned down of course a number of times that i'm going to i'm going to fix it up again the other emperors who um were most in favor of the dolphin kapala were nero who uh went there and uh actually he he did some kind of an indian giving operation he gave them a hundred thousand sisters but then took away all their land something like this domitian uh nerva trajan hadrian and it's interesting that the there's a there's a definite pattern that the emperors that were most friendly to the delphic apollo were also the most ferocious in in persecuting the the early christians now later this guy plutarch right we don't want to forget him when the delphic apollo had been uh more or less incorporated into the roman system of things Plutarch, the guy who writes these these famous parallel lives right the lives of the noble greeks and romans was a member of the priesthood right he was he was somebody who operated as part of the priesthood of the of the Delphi Apollo the last attempt to revive this thing in its old glory was the emperor julian the apostate remember him remember because constantine became A Christian — so-called and made in the the official uh religion of the roman empire became aryan christianity with uh with constantine but julian the apostate said no this is no good let's get back to the good old pagan ways and he tried to build this significantly around the uh the uh temple of apollo at delphi now the point of this is that this is the essence of what is metastasising this this thing --
And again it's it appears as a Greek institution, but what it really represents is this of Whore of Babylon faction, it is the Babylonian magi — the people that pop up, for example around The Roman Court, right? The most famous example, I think you may remember, is the Emperor Tiberius, right? — The one who presided over the crucifixion — had a Babylonian adviser, by the name of Thrasyllus, right? Maybe people know the famous story about about how Tiberius met Thrasyllus as well —they're on this cliff of of Capri, right? The island of Capri, near Naples? And what — what Tiberius would do, is, he would test these different uh — soothsayers and if he didn't like what they told him, he'd have them thrown off the cliff —
So, he was -- Tiberius with with a bunch of centurions and guards and um, he went up to Thrasyllus, and he said “Let's see if this guy knows what's going on….”
So he asked him a couple of questions, and then he said, “Well, what do you see in my future…?”
And Thrasyllus looks into his crystal ball or his bird-entrails or whatever he had, and he said “Wait a minute, I — my picture is completely blurred by the fact that my life is in extreme danger —”
And Tiberius said, “THIS guy knows what's going on — let's get him!”
So that's — that's The Type of the of The Babylonian mages, and these — these are the people that were present in the, uh Roman Empire….
Now —”
