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Is the Pythia Possessed?—Lily Caswell

        Is the Pythia possessed by a kind of demon? Maybe I’m pulling teeth here, but in between lines 33 and 34, it says that “She goes through the doors and reappears in a moment, shaken, thrown to her knees by some terrific force.” (Aeschylus, p 232) I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe in angels and demons. The Pythia might also be on some kind of hallucinogenic drug. It is said that when visitors came to the Oracle to have their future told to them, that the Pythia would go into a room and come back out in some sort of trance, possibly caused by certain gasses coming up out of the earth. It may be a combination of the two.

        According to Greek mythology, the Pythia would mutter words that were incomprehensible to most people. Which makes me wonder how the Pythia can say coherent sentences in The Eumenides when everywhere else priests have to translate her gibberish to the people because she’s muttering almost to herself. Did anyone else find this as interesting as I did?


I commented on Jamie’s and Braylan‘s posts.


Sources:


https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/delphi

Comments

  1. IsabelleSeptember 21, 2020 at 8:30 PM

    That description also gave me pause, and, normally, I have trouble getting into Aeschylus' writing. You are right about the drugs the Pythia would take, and I have doubts the Priests even understood and just muttered gibberish of their own. We know the effects of drugs on the people in our society. My question is: How long did it take before the Pythia died or went mad?

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  2. Jessef LeslieSeptember 21, 2020 at 10:54 PM

    I did as well but I'm pretty certain she saw the ghost of Clytaemnestra that the Furies also see and speak to in the same shrine of Apollo. And it is a play so having her run out screaming in tongue might not be as entertaining

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