Oracle Of Delphi: Center Of The Ancient World The Temple of Apollo at Delphi, photograph by author All of this literary attention highlights Delphi’s importance, but why exactly did it hold such a special position in the ancient Greek world? Lord Byron even left some graffiti on the stones of the gymnasium when he visited the site in 1809.
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Delphi has also captivated later artists and writers. There are a plethora of ancient sources which refer to the oracle, from the 5th-century BC poet, Pindar, to the 2nd-century AD geographer, Pausanias. The Oracle of Delphi has fascinated civilizations as both an institution and a concept across the millennia. Map of ancient Greek religious sanctuaries, via Ancient History Encyclopedia However, it was the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi that was the most renowned and enduring of them all. There were also oracles of Apollo as far afield as Didyma in Asia Minor and on the island of Delos. The king of the gods, Zeus, had prestigious oracles at both Olympia and Dodona. Oracular consultation took place at permanent sites and sanctuaries scattered across ancient Greece. This intermediary was known as an oracle. But perhaps the most important form of divination was the practice of consultation of a god through an intermediary. Divination took many forms, from the study of sacrificial entrails to the interpretation of the flight of birds.
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What exactly is an oracle? Or, more specifically, what was an oracle in an ancient Greek context? The communication of divine knowledge from god to mortal, also known as divination, played a major role in ancient Greek religion.
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“ I know the number of grains of sand and the extent of the sea I understand the deaf-mute and hear the words of the dumb.” The words of the Oracle of Delphi in Herodotus, The Histories, 1:47