Greek divination

Greek divination is the divination practiced by ancient Greek culture as it is known from ancient Greek literature, supplemented by epigraphic and pictorial evidence. Divination is a traditional set of methods of consulting divinity to obtain prophecies (theopropia) about specific circumstances defined beforehand. As it is a form of compelling divinity to reveal its will by the application of method, it is, and has been since classical times, considered a type of magic. Cicero condemns it as superstition. It depends on a presumed "sympathy" (Greek sumpatheia) between the mantic event and the real circumstance, which he denies as contrary to the laws of nature.[1] If there were any sympathy, and the diviner could discover it, then "men may approach very near to the power of gods."[2]

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Site of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the Pythia sitting on a tripod through which gas was seeping made utterances rendered into theopropia by the priests.
Basic concepts
Social and cultural anthropology

The Greek word for a diviner is mantis, pl. manteis, generally translated as "seer" or "soothsayer."[3] A mantis is to be distinguished from a hiereus, "priest," or hiereia, "priestess," by the participation of the latter in the traditional religion of the city-state. Manteis, on the other hand, were "unlicensed religious specialists," who were "expert in the art of divination."[4] The first known mantis in Greek literature is Calchas, the mantis of the first scenes of the Iliad. His mantosune, or "art of divination" (Cicero's mantike, which he translates into Latin as divinatio), endowed him with knowledge of past, present, and future, which he got from Apollo (Iliad A 68-72). He was the army's official mantis. Armies of classical times seldom undertook any major operation without one, usually several. Mantosune in the army was a risky business. Prophets who erred were at best dismissed. The penalty for being a fraud was usually more severe.

One of the characteristics of Greek mantic culture is "a contrast between official and independent practicioners."[5] On the official side were the internationally recognized oracles, who divined under the auspices of a specified divinity according to a specified method, had their own temple at a specified location, and were supported by their own priesthood; for example, the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona, and so on. Although these oracles were located in sovereign city-states, they were granted a political "hands-off" status and free access so that delegations from anywhere could visit them.

The English language has reduced mention of mantic pronouncements to one word, "oracle," based on Latin oraculum, which can also mean the mantic center. This double meaning is true in ancient Greek and Latin also.[6] The Greeks and Romans did not have a standard word that would apply in all cases. Manteion and chresterion were common in Greek. A prophecy might be referenced by the name of the god: "Apollo said ..." or "Zeus said ...." or by the name of the location: "Delphi says ..." etc. Implication was common: hieron, "the sacred [pronouncement]," fatus meus, "my fate," etc.

The other type of mantis was the independent consultant mentioned above. The important generals and statesmen had their own prophets, to avoid such difficulties as Agamemnon experienced, when Calchas forced him to sacrifice his daughter and ransom his female prize in the opening of The Iliad. Privately hired manteis, such as Alexander used, never seemed to disagree with command decisions, or if a possibly negative prophecy was received, made sure that it was given the most favorable interpretation. By that time, based on what Cicero said, the leaders were probably skeptical of prophecy, but the beliefs of the superstitious soldiers were a factor to be considered.

Oracles
Main article: Oracle

Oracles were individuals committed to and capable of vatic practice.[7]

Amongst others, there were oracles at Delphi and Dodona,[8] although Greek divination had less of an institutional facet.[9]

Tiresias
Main article: Tiresias

Of all oracles of ancient Hellenic culture and society, a man named Tiresias was thought as the most vital and important.[10][11]

Oracular deities

Zeus

Zeus was known as Zeus Moiragetes, which is to refer to the power of Zeus to know the fate of mortals.[12] The newly-born Zeus himself learnt his fate by the night and, accordingly, by Phanes, while within a dark cave.[7][13]

Herodotus stated[8] the earliest oracle was the oracle of Zeus located at Dodona,[14] although archaeological remains at Delphi date to earlier. There was an oracle at Dodona from the 5th century BCE, although the oracle of Zeus might have still have had a practice at the same locus earlier, prior to construction of the temple, a possibility which seems probable since the temple remains show an oak tree at the location.[8]

Apollo

Apollo, the most important oracular deity, is most closely associated with the supreme knowledge of future events which is the possession of Zeus.[15] Apollo was known as Apollo Moiragetes,[12] referring to Apollo as the god of fate.[16] The oracle at Delphi gave oracles from Apollo.[14]

Apollo in an oracular function is associated with both plague, purification[17] and truth. Even though the prophecies given by him were ambiguous, he is said to have never uttered a lie.[18]

Apollo's oracle at Delphi is the most famous and was the most important oracular site of ancient Greece.

According to Homer and Callimachus, Apollo was born with prophetic abilities and the power of reading the will of Zeus. However, a less popular belief is that he was instructed by Pan in divination as found within myth.[7]

Apollo and Hermes

Apollo transfers to Hermes a skill in cleromancy,[19] upon the request of Hermes. Speaking within the hymn, Apollo expounds on the difficulty he experiences with his own divination, and then proceeds to provide the gift of divination to his brother Hermes, though a lesser skill, because the mantic dice are not under the control and influence of the will of Zeus.[20] Hermes' skill at divination, though inferior to the skill of Apollo, is still of a divine nature.[15]

The gift of Apollo is bee maidens with oracular abilities.[21]

Hermes

Hermes is associated with divination by lottery,[15] otherwise known as cleromancy.[22]

The triad of bee maidens are prophetic via Hermes.[23]

Pan and the nymphs

In Arcadia Pan was the principal oracular deity, instead of Apollo.[7] Prophecy is associated with caves and grottoes within Greek divination, and the Nymphs and Pan were associated variously with caves.[7] Panolepsy is a cause of inspirational states of mind, including abilities of a mantic nature.[7]

Prometheus

The god Prometheus gave the gift of divination to humanity.[24]

Aeschylus wrote Prometheus Bound during the 5th century BCE in which Prometheus founded all the art of civilization including divination. This he did by stealing fire from the gods and gifting this fire to humankind. The 5th century BCE telling is a re-telling of a story told by Hesiod within the 8th century BCE[25]

Methodologies

Greek practice made use of various techniques for divination, which are classified as direct or indirect, spontaneous or artificial.[26]

Classifications

Direct

In direct divination, a divinater might experience dreams, temporary madness, or phrensy (frenzy); all these things being states in which an inspired recognition of truth is attained. The divinator must take steps to produce a state of being and mind which allow for the experience of divination. Attested techniques include, sleeping in conditions whereby dreams might be more likely to occur, inhaling mephitic vapour, chewing leaves from the bay plant, and drinking of blood.[26]

Indirect

This is divination whereby a divinator observes natural conditions and phenomenon[26]

Augury
Main article: Augury

Augury, or divination by omens, is a practice which still survives to the modern era (circa 2013).[27]

Cleromancy
Main article: Cleromancy

This is divination by throwing of lots,[22][28] stones, or dice. Cleromancy was practiced at places including Dodona, and by the Pythia at Delphi.[29]

Astragalomancy is a type of cleromancy performed by throwing the knuckle-bones of sheep or other ruminants (astragaloi[30]) to be able to tell the future.[27] As each face of the astragalos is assigned a numerical value, astragaloi can be rolled like dice and the resultant roll matched to a table of possible outcomes. A number of these tables were engraved on public monuments in southern Anatolia.[31]

Extispicy
Main article: Extispicy

Divination by way of the making of a sacrifice took the form of examination of entrails,[32] by which is meant the bowels and viscera.[33][34]

Enthusiastic

Enthusiastic prophecy is when a god speaks through the mouth of a diviner.[8]

Pan was able to dwell within people, which is known as panolepsy. A degree of possession of an individual by a nymph is known as nympholepsy.[7][10]

Greek thinkers thought epileptic fitting and thus epilepsy had an origin with a divinity, and the means of making this association is thought through divination. This conclusion on the consciousnesses of ancient Greek thinkers is drawn by the fact of the sheer number of divine signs observed within society of the time, and the propensity of people to know a variety things as all having divine causes.[35]

Hydromancy
Main article: Hydromancy

Hydromancy, or divination by water, is a Hellenic practice which still survives in the modern era (circa 2013).[27]

Necromancy
Main article: Necromancy

Necromancy is a divinatory practice of consulting the dead.[36]

Pyromancy
Main article: Pyromancy

Pyromancy, divination by fire is a practice that has survived to the modern era (circa 2013).[27]

Stikhomanteia

Divination of this type utilizes writings, either by scraps of paper with writing upon them chosen from within a vessel, or by opening a book at random. The first of these two type was practiced by the Sibylline oracles.[22]

Thriai

This is divination by using pebbles. The Thriai were personification of this type of divination.[21][23]

Ancient sources

Democritus advocated divination.[37] Herodotus provided a record of the prophetic productions resulting from Delphi.[32] Dicaearchus dismissed any notion of the trueness of divination by any means other than dreams and frenzy.[37] Aristophanes mentions an oracle in his comedy Knights.[38] Aristotle wrote On Divination in Sleep, written 350 BCE.[39] Posidonius attempted to elaborate a theory of divination; he envisioned the sight of the future, as a cable might unwind, so insight into the future unfolds within the mind.[29] Chrysippus claimed empirical evidence for the truthfulness of divination.[29] Plutarch advocated the divination at the Oracle of Delphi;[29] he considered enthusiastic prophecy to be possible when the soul of the Pythia becomes incorporated with Apollo in an inner vortex internal to the Pythia.[8] Cicero wrote a book On Divination.[37] Xenophon recorded his own meeting with a diviner named Eucleides,[5] in chapter 7 of his work Anabasis.[40]

Pythagoras was said to have practiced divination.[37] Socrates both practiced and advocated divination.[37] Xenophon was thought to be skilled at foretelling from sacrifices, and attributed much of his knowledge to Socrates in "The Cavalry Commander".[37]

See also

References
  1. Cicero. "Divination". Perseus Digital Library. Book II, Chapter 69.
  2. Cicero. "Divination". Perseus Digital Library. Book I, Chapter 1.
  3. One who knows the divine will. The root is the same as for English "mind:" "Appendix I: Indo-European Roots". *men-1. The American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth ed.). Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.. Compare English "mindful."
  4. Flower, Michael A. (2015). "Chapter 20, Religious Experience: Unlicensed Religious Specialists". In Eidinow, Esther; Kindt, Julia (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  5. L. Raphals (1 October 2015). The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion. Oxford University Press. p. 4 of copy of Chapter 43. ISBN 978-0191058080. Retrieved January 14, 2017.
  6. William Smith; William Wayte; G.E. Marindin, eds. (1890). "Oraculum". A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Perseus Digital Library.
  7. Y. Ustinova (2009). Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0191563423. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  8. S. Iles Johnston (April 2009). Ancient Greek Divination. John Wiley & Sons. p. 3. ISBN 978-1444303001. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  9. K. Beerden (August 2013). Worlds Full of Signs: Ancient Greek Divination in Context. Brill. p. 5. ISBN 978-9004256309. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  10. Y. Bonnefoy, W. Doniger (Divinity School, University of Chicago) (November 1992). Greek and Egyptian Mythologies. University of Chicago Press. p. 207. ISBN 0226064549. Retrieved 2015-12-21.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. M. Iampolski (New York University) (1998). The Memory of Tiresias: Intertextuality and Film. University of California Press. pp. 2 of 285 pages. ISBN 0520914724. Retrieved 2015-12-22.
  12. Sophocles, D.H. Roberts (1984). Apollo and His Oracle in the Oresteia. published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. p. 86. ISBN 3525251769. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  13. References used to add "Phanes" - Iamblichus:Commentary on the Timaeus & Oxford Dictionaries & Erika M. Nelson Reading Rilke's Orphic Identity ISBN 3039102877. - [Retrieved 2015-12-22]
  14. M. Gagarin (December 2009). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, Volume 7. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195170726. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  15. P. Laude (October 2005). Divine Play, Sacred Laughter, and Spiritual Understanding. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 75. ISBN 1403980586. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  16. J.G.R. Forlong (December 2008). Encyclopedia of Religions. 1. published by Cosimo, Inc. ISBN 9781605204857. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  17. Hornblower, S.; Spawforth, A.; Eidinow, E. (2014). The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198706779. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  18. Williams, Rose (2009-06-20). The Clay-Footed Superheroes: Mythology Tales for the New Millennium. ISBN 9781610410069.
  19. N.O. Brown (1990). Hermes the Thief: The Evolution of a Myth. published by SteinerBooks. ISBN 0940262266. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  20. D.L. Merritt (November 2012). Hermes, Ecopsychology, and Complexity Theory, Volume 3. Fisher King Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-1926715445. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  21. J.L. Larson (2001). Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195122941. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  22. J. Robinson (1807). Archæologia Græca: Or, The Antiquities of Greece; Being an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Greeks ... Chiefly Designed to Illustrate the Greek Classics, by Explaining Words and Phrases According to the Rites and Customs to which They Refer. To which are Prefixed a Brief History of the Grecian States, and Biographical Sketches of the Principal Greek Writers. published by R. Phillips. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  23. Scheinberg, S.; Heinrichs, A. (April 1980). Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Harvard University Press. p. 11. ISBN 0674379306. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  24. P.M. Peek (Drew University) (1991). African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing. Indiana University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0253343097. Retrieved 2015-12-25.African systems of thought
  25. B. Grant (New York University) (2009). The Captive and the Gift: Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus. Cornell University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0801475412. Retrieved 2015-12-25.Culture and society after socialism
  26. E.A. Gardner (1931). Whibley, Leonard (ed.). A Companion to Greek Studies (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  27. Kostas Dervenis (December 2013). Oracle Bones Divination: The Greek I Ching. Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. ISBN 978-1620551646. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  28. The London Journal (1847). The London Journal, and Weekly Record of Literature, Science, and Art, Volumes 5-6. G. Vickers. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  29. L. Raphals (October 2013). Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece. Cambridge University Press. p. 358. ISBN 978-1107010758. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  30. J. Larson (2001). Greek Nymphs : Myth, Cult, Lore. Oxford University Press. p. 12. ISBN 0198028687. Retrieved 2015-12-22.
  31. Fritz Graf (2005). "Rolling the Dice for an Answer". In Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter T. Struck (ed.). Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. Leiden: Brill. pp. 52–98.
  32. M.A. Flower (2008). The Seer in Ancient Greece. University of California Press. p. xiv. ISBN 978-0520252295. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  33. Definition - entrails Merriam-Webster [Retrieved 2015-12-16]
  34. A. Annus. Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World (PDF). University of Chicago 2010. Retrieved 2015-12-17.
  35. Derek Collins (April 2008). Magic in the Ancient Greek World. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0470695722. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  36. D. Ogden. Greek and Roman Necromancy. Princeton University Press. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  37. J. Mikalson (June 2010). Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy. OUP Oxford. p. 123. ISBN 978-0191614675. Retrieved 2015-12-16.
  38. Aristophanes (translated by Leonard-Hampson Rudd) - Knights published by Longmans, Green and Co. 1867, 453 pages, Original from the University of California [Retrieved 2015-12-22]
  39. Aristotle - On Prophesying by Dreams published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Retrieved 2015-12-21]
  40. Xenophon, Anabasis Carleton L. Brownson, Ed. Perseus Tufts Retrieved January 14, 2017
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