On 17 Jul,07, at 11:33 PM, Caroline Tully wrote:
>
> There are lots of great articles about Delphi and the gaseous vent
> and a new book too - The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science
> Behind its Lost Secrets. William J. Broad. Penguin.
>
I have heard the "gassed pythoness" explanation for
the Delphic oracle since I was a little kid.
But as I got older, I wondered something: There were quite a few
well-known oracles in the ancient Mediterranean world besides Delphi.
Alexander the Great took a long trip off into the Western Desert
of Egypt to consult one of them, for example. And they were
not all situated on gas vents, were they?
To attribute the pythoness's words at Delphi to intoxication
begs the question of how all of those other oracular
sites operated. I wonder if William Broad addresses that question.
Chas
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"Letter from Hardscrabble Creek" -- a Pagan writer's blog
http://www.chasclifton.com/blogger.html
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