1

The Delphic Paradigm

Jake Piccus
Professor Hopper
Senior Project
10/23/2015

Preface
There is a conundrum too often encountered by those in the field of archaeology with an
inquisitive disposition or so-called romantic resolve for uncovering the truth. That is, alongside
no matter what is unearthedbe it a lavishly adorned vase or an entire structure hidden beneath
a millennias worth of soilthere is the accompanying enigma which, while temptuous intuition
posits an explanation looms close, is alas impalpable and formless. Im talking about context: an
objects immaterial, perspective based meaning as intended by its creators; which, when absent,
denies a discovery real reason for existing beyond sensory level appreciation. Historical context
relies on what we know oras is most often the case with regard to the ancient pastwhat we
think we know rather than what we can actually see, which is limited to the present. This is the
great dilemma of history. Since only the material remains, what is left of the pasts far more
pertinent emotional and philosophical explications are, diluted by time, manifest only in ones
mind as question or possibility...

The omphalos
In 1893, a French interdisciplinary team of archaeologists scraped soil from the southern
slope of Greeces Mount Parnassus. The team stripped away layer after layer of historical
buildup, blowing past the medieval and Roman stratifications built atop one another like tree
rings. The dig progressed until, with baited breath, the team uncovered the prized Greek ruins
beneath. They were met with dismay. They had not found the glorious temple which was to
rival Athens great Parthenon. Instead they had found rubble. Remnants. And just like that, an
enigmatic place had become more enigmatic. It seems that around the 3rd century A.D.,
Christian zealots had trashed the temple, likely because theyor someone far scarier than them
or any of temples remaining supportershad deemed the site pagan and unworthy of further
existence.1 Sacre bleu! the French must have exclaimed. Delphi is in pieces, and for such
pettiness. What ignorance! But the marauding culprits likely had good reason for their actions.
Should some act of God given them the chance to explain themselves, these zealots may have
argued in defense of unfair condemnation, that they had leveled the temple during a time when it
no longer served any purpose, when worship of its Greek gods was a crime punishable by death!
A reasonable sentiment; but nonetheless one which would have received in response another
resounding sacre bleu! Strictly speaking, as both the ancient Greeks and their French
contemporaries well knew, the structure now reduced to a few remaining pillar pieces and a
crumbling foundation was much more than any old temple. This was Apollos Templehis
sanctuary at Delphithe Omphalos, or navel of the universe and home to the richest and most

See E.A.G. Archeology in Greece 1892. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 13, (1892) 199-152.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/623901 For a more modern perspective, see the works of J.Z De Boer and J.R. Hale. For
example, J. Z. De Boer and J. R. Hale, The geological origins of the oracle at Delphi, Greece, Geological Society,
399- 412.

renowned oracle in all the ancient world. For over one thousand years, there had been no place
more sacred.
While the word sacred draws skepticism today, many of the pasts great thinkers from
Socrates to Alexander the Great visited Delphi, which flourished for over one thousand years as
home to a very Greek sort of premonition which lent itself to philosophical dialectic. It is
important to recognize that for the vast majority of human existence, mankind has thrived off of
being superstitious, having utilized metaphor and allegory as ways to present and then attempt to
solve the fundamental problems humanity has faced in the universe: struggles of interpreting
ideas such as life, death, suffering, and of course, the mind boggling reality of existence. Since
ancient cultures were not nearly as attached to the content of their words meanings so much as
they were attached to the context, they often expressed ideas poetically rather than analytically.
It is this contrast with modernitys tendency to try and quantify these types of problems
scientifically that represents one of the main obstacles we face when trying to understand how
people lived, and more precisely, thought in the past.
Ancient accounts portray Delphi a breathtaking site; they invoke image of a treasured city
nestled against the lower slant of Parnassus: the great limestone mountain which soared above.
Picture its peaks dwarfing the scattered figures of individuals below: pilgrims of varying
personage all seeking premonition at Delphi. Daylight arrival saw travelers privy to fantastic
views of the surrounding landscape, vast and peppered by expanses of olive groves. Nightfall
brought possibility of thunderous claps of lightning; bolts believed born of Zeus shook ground
beneath foot and set skies ablaze with sporadic spectacles of light. According to Greek
mythology, Zeus himself determined Delphi center of the universe after observing two eagles
sent to fly from opposite corners make contact there. A stone called the omphalos marked the

place navel of the universe; here, supplicants believed the sacred ground allowed for direct
communication with the gods.2

Omphalos stone at the archeological museum at Delphi

Deep within the bowels of the Delphic temple, adjacent to a secretive chamber known as
the adyton, supplicants were granted access to the words of Apollo: the ancient worlds foremost
purveyor of wisdom. Here, alongside the lowly farmer, men of great importance: senators,
philosophers, and even emperors made the pilgrimage to receive the gods advice before making
decisions which would, in certain instances, determine the rise and fall of entire kingdoms. It
was also here, in a world dominated by men, that a woman held the position of power. Indeed,
despite the fact that women could neither vote nor hold property, at Delphi it was a woman
alone, a priestess of the title Pythia, who was nine times a year allowed entrance into the adyton
where she sat upon its sacred tripod and became enthused by Apollo himself.3 She entered

Pausanias 2.13.7 in W. H. S. Jones (trans.), Pausanias: Description of Greece, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library
(London: William Heinemann / New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918), 319.
3
J.Z De Boer and J.R. Hale present a good synopsis of Delphis lore and its historical process. For example, J. Z.
De Boer and J. R. Hale, The geological origins of the oracle at Delphi, Greece, Geological Society, 171, 412

divine trance and from this privileged state she uttered the gods wordswords of unimaginable
powerwords which despite having come forth from female tongue, embodied strength enough
to sway the decisions of kings.

Archaic Greece and the Delphic Paradigm

The French dig came about during a kind of golden age in classical archeology when
hard evidence was being unearthed and compared against literary sources for negation or
corroboration.4 It is hard to imagine the excitement and anticipation which would have
accompanied finding a legendary site like Delphi, having been referenced countless times in
mythology and written about by great thinkers like Plutarch and Plato. That being said, it is
comparably easy to imagine the let down that accompanied finding the place in pieces! Surely
enough, and as is often the case in history, Delphis excavation brought to light more questions
than it did answers. In one way this is fitting; Apollo was, after all, in the words of Plutarch, the
god of dialectic; and he frowned upon answers which either came too easily or were accepted for
too long absent a later period of fresh examination. In this sense, Apollo still seems to hold the
reins when it comes to providing clues to questions poised regarding his temple. Fittingly,
todays quest to understand Delphi demands one engage in a Greek sort of thought process; one
similar to the way in which Delphis supplicants engaged in dialectic when trying to decode
Apollos enigmatic Pythian oracles long ago. To come up with a conception of the place takes
an interdisciplinary approach, at the very least combining history and psychology with
mythological studies.

See the following article, which supplements well De Boer and Hales geological work on Delphi: William J.
Broad, For Delphic Oracles Fumes and Visions. New York Times Mar. 19, 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/science/for-delphic-oracle-fumes-and-visions.html

Let us forget about Apollos temple for the moment and look instead at what remains in
modernity from early archaic Greece.5 Historiographically, prior knowledge must be analyzed
from the cultural, etymological, and interdisciplinary perspectives, as their meanings are time
relative. As time passes, perception of prior knowledge changesrelative to its analysis in
different cultural contexts and timesand is then either built upon further, or discarded as an
erroneous relic of the past. During the Archaic age, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet
that would become Greek; but unfortunately almost no written documents from this period are
available today in their original forms. While some fragments of early pre-Socratic writings
have survived as references within later works, these few, often ambiguous sentences come cited
centuries after their respective times, taintedin more ways than oneby later thinkers who,
while Greek, were naturally left with no choice but to reinterpret the pre-Socratics writings
through the vein of their own temporal context.6 Thus, much of our understanding of Archaic
Greeces written material comes from later analysis within classical sources; and, while this
means we can see the fruits of early Greek labor evident in these later periods, an enormous gap
remains separating the modern scholar from peering into and being able to understand the
mindset and cultural context present alongside those who first created them. 7
This paper presents the argument that in lieu of such written sources, it is the analysis of
Delphi which offers us a unique window from which to peer clearly into this otherwise hazy
5

The fact that the vast majority of written material from archaic Greece consists of fragments is common
knowledge. Thus, in lieu of this difficulty using written sources to understand Archaic Greece, we can look toward
Delphi for guidance; the temple, famously written about in great detail by Plutarch maintained a strict tradition that
began during the Archaic period and persisted well into Roman times.
6
Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason, (W.W Norton & Company, 2001). 7
7
Aside from the fact that even for sheer curiositys sake the artwork, sculptures, and temples must be understood
contextually if they are to be appreciated as anything more than a pretty thing to look at, is the far more important
observation that a contextually accurate understanding of the archaic Greek mindset is imperative because it has
been a return to Greek works that has, throughout history, accompanied the Wests most revolutionary periods
of progress. See works of Peterson, Kuhn and Whitehead. In the west, writes Kuhn in Structures: only the
civilizations that have descended from Hellenic Greece have possessed more than the most rudimentary science.
The bulk of scientific knowledge is a product of Europe in the last four centuries. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 192.

period in history. Delphi adhered strictly to an ideological tradition well into the classical age
when we do have written material; so an understanding of Delphi as it functioned then offers us a
rare glimpse into how the site also existed centuries earlier. Furthermore, due to its position as a
panhellenic site, the Delphi of Socrates and even Plutarchs day functions like a time capsule
from which we may model how Archaic Greek ideology once existed broadly. During the 8th
century, Delphi became renowned throughout the Mediterranean by the same diverse groups of
peoples who, by means of colonization and transmigration, were actively engaged in manifesting
the genesis of a new Greek culture. Even before these Greek speaking peoples went on to
develop the powerful city states which would later define the Greek World, their shared faith in
Delphis oracle and in its position as worldly center served as a means through which to unite
them culturally. Thus, Delphi came to embody a very Greek sort of ideology all while this
ideology was simultaneously coming into existencein its various formsthroughout the
Mediterranean. More specifically, Delphi represented the homogeneous mixture of shared
religious and philosophical principles that stood in contrast withand perhaps functioned to
balancethe opposing fracturing effect which divided Greek society during the archaic colonial
age. In this respect, Delphi can be analyzed metaphoricallywith regard to its enigmatic,
spiritual, and mythological interpretationsas well as literallywith regard to its historical,
albeit also enigmatic function and place in Greek societyin such a way that elucidates an
overarching paradigm of Greek thought. In particular, Delphi seems to represent the mindset, a
sort of default mode prevalent in thinkers throughout early Greek society who, despite
wholeheartedly embracing the supernatural, are remembered today as great innovators and
pioneers of philosophy, art, and the rationally geared dialectical method.

The majority of ancient sources concerning the Delphic oracle are literary works, many
of which have been subject to scholarly scrutiny throughout the past one hundred years or so.8
Homers Hymns is perhaps the first literary source we have that makes mention of the mythical
Delphic oracle, although it is to Herodotus, who incorporated rudimentary historiography in The
Histories, that Delphis modern conceptualization owes early credit. In addition to introducing
several famous stories about Delphi including the tale of Croesus, Herodotus helped elucidate the
vast scope of Delphis societal importance as it stood beyond its function in mythology. While
later sources from writers such as Thucydides, Diadorus of Sicily, and Strabo help us understand
Delphi as well, for the purpose of this analysis I will focus on the writings of Plutarch whos
works arguably remain the best primary sources on Delphi.
The Roman Plutarch is a key source because, in addition to his vocations as a prominent
historian and philosopher, the man maintained priesthood at Delphi lasting from A.D. 93 until
his death 30 years later. Contextually, this puts Plutarch in a position far more valuable and
credible than other literary sources since, rather than simply passing through, Plutarch lived at
and actually participated in the functioning of Delphi.9 More indicative of Plutarchs prowess at
Delphi is the fact that in addition to being a priest he bore the title of agonothete during the
Pythian Games and presided over the Delphic Amphictyonic Council. 10 Owing to privileges

H.W. Parke and D.E.W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle (Oxford 1956). Parke and Wormell undertake the large
task of attempting to categorize Delphis recorded oracular statements by extent of mythical and historical
legitimacy.
9
Joseph Eddy Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations with a Catalogue of Responses ,
(California: University of California Press, 1978), 200. Also see the following article by Jeremy Mcinerney in
which he details Delphis resurgence in Roman times in a way reminiscent of Archiac Greece. Jeremy McInerney,
Do you see what I see?: Plutarch and Pausanias at Delphi in L. de Blois (ed.) The Statesman in Plutarchs Works.
Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of the International Plutarch Society, (Nijmegen/ Hernen, May
2002) vol. 1. Mnemosyne Supplement. Leiden: Brill, 2004. pp. 43-55.
10
Robert Lamberton, Plutarch, (Yale University Press, 2002). 52

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attained through the aforementioned roles, Plutarch would have had access to intimate aspects
and records of the Delphic sanctuary that might otherwise have been inaccessible.
Plutarchs most important writings with regard to Delphi consist of three essays in
Moralia: De Pythiae Oraculis, De E apud Delphos, and De Defectu Oraculornum. 11 In these
essays he describes Delphi as encompassing both religious and secular spheres, though he
importantly notes their interconnected nature. Plutarch details in length the oracular process by
which Apollo, speaking through the Pythia, offered premonitory advice nine times a year to the
thousands of pilgrims journeying there. He also paints a more secular picture of the surrounding
city of Delphi which, as a designated sacred land, was not under the control of any Greek city
state, or polis. Throughout Delphis history, the city served as a place where various Greek
poleis, far away states, and individuals would erect extravagant pillars, monuments, and temples
to showcase not only their gratitude to Apollo but their societal prowess culturally,
economically, and physically to one another. So while Delphi was undoubtedly renowned in the
ancient world for being seat of the Delphic Oracle, it was also a place of less mystical, albeit
famous occurrences such as the Pythian games; and, its neutrality served to make Delphi the
meeting place for the Amphictyonic League, a loose alliance between the poleis which over the
years grew increasingly politically charged.12
In the 1960s the philosopher and scientific historian Thomas Kuhn coined the term
paradigm to define the preconceived assumptions he believed to underlie any given field of
inquiry: a disciplinary matrix of sorts.13 Accordingly, he saw knowledge as the understanding

11

I have referred to these essays by their Latin translations. In Greek their titles are:
, ,
, and in English: Oracles at Delphi no Longer Given in Verse, The E at Delphi, and On
the Obsolescence of Oracles.
12
Robert Lamberton, Plutarch, (Yale University Press, 2002).
13
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 224.

11

of an idea as seen through the lens of a particular paradigm. For example, in the Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn references the Ptolemaic theory, that is, the once prominent notion
that the Earth was center of the universe, as having once been a paradigm because in the context
of its time, the Ptolemaic theory was considered fact by societys most prominent thinkers.14
Astronomers who operated under the Ptolemaic paradigm would have, in effort to further their
knowledge on the subject, based their subsequent rational inquiries on the presupposition that the
Earth was indeed the center. But similar presuppositions are not limited to observational
science; and I believe that with care, the main principles behind Kuhns conception of the
paradigm can be utilizedperhaps more broadlywith respect to the social sciences as well. In
religion, the holy textsthe Bible, the Torah, the Quranwere once upheld, and still are by
many today, as the unquestionable word of God. A scientific law, states Kuhn, to be
considered part of a dominant paradigm, must represent a scientific communitys explication of a
problem or topic as universally accepted to be correct.15 Just the same, a religious text can often
function as well if not better as part of a paradigm since, especially within societies lacking
separation of church and state, religious fundamentalists are far less likely to engage in or lend
credence to anything like the scientific communitys extensive systematic process of ongoing
observation and experimentation. Under this line of thinking, while the Christian raiders blamed
for Delphis destruction would have, centuries earlier, seen such actions as inconceivable, acting
within the scope of their own paradigm they instead saw little need for preserving the temple
since their societys religious ideology was at odds with what had once been the Greek ideal.

14

Ibid, 53-54.
For a general synopsis of Kuhns theories, see: Alexander Bird, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/thomas-kuhn/>.
15

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Before zeroing in on Delphi, the first part of this paper seeks to emphasize the roles
which Greek religion and mythology played in the Archaic age with respect to shaping the
Greeks shared ideological perspective. In specific, religious ritual and mythology were then so
intertwined with the rest of what comprised the Greeks world view that they must be seen as
having been contextually responsible for the great aspects of Greek innovation which occurred
during this period. Delphi, as a place in part devoted entirely to inquiry, embodied a paradigm of
its own which, though surely religious in nature, encouraged the thought process by which the
Greeks, on a broad scale, came to formulate their ideological opinions on a diverse array of
topics during this time. As a result, an understanding of Delphis symbolism and of its oracular
process help us better understand early Greece and the way in which Greek thinkers interpreted
the world around them.
To begin our search for understanding this Delphic paradigm we must first understand
the context which birthed it. For in many ways culture is akin to biology, and comes to be as the
result of some sort of evolutionary process instigated by the changing environment; product of
the unique historical context of the time.

The Orientalizing Age

The Temple of Delphi and its oracle rose to power in the 8th century B.C concurrent with
the rise of the Greek polis and the adoption of a new system of writing: monumental changes
which helped distinguish the periods drastic shift away from the pasts Mycenaean culture
toward what would characterize Greece during the Archaic and later Classical periods. 16 As
mentioned earlier, reliable primary sources pertaining to early Archaic Greece and to the colonial

16

The time period focused on by this paper dates from around 900 BCE to around 500 BCE. For definition of the
term Archaic age, meaning the Old-Fashioned Age and designating Greek history from approximately 750 to 500
B.C. see Thomas R. Martin, Ancient Greece From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1996), 51.

13

process leading up to it leave much to be desired. Nonetheless, the historiography we do have is

sufficient to paint a narrative with broad strokes. Catherine Morgan, a current professor of
classical archeology at Kings College London and expert on Archaic Greece, writes that
beginning in the 8th century and continuing on through the archaic age, was a long process of
state formation in many regions of the Greek mainland.17 Due to factors including war, internal
strife, and stasis, Greek speaking Mycenaeans migrated en masse throughout the Mediterranean,
taking with them their myths and spreading them orally.18 This exodus of sorts fractured the
Mycenaeansboth geographically as well as culturallyand put groups of them in contact with
various near east peoples like the Phoenicians. Diverse colonies popped up in Marcel, Spain,
North Africa, and Ukraine, mostly places near the sea where contact with foreigners would occur
and trade could be easily facilitated.19 Trade evolved into forms of cohabitation. What followed
was a major restructuring of cultural and political life, a Greek Renaissance marked by the
emergence of various permanent city states; each of which evolved to hold uniquely different
perspectives shaped by different types of living situations.20 Scholars have aptly termed this
period of [deep immersion] at every level in the orient the Orientalizing age; since with time,
these, in some cases, vastly different peoples settled and produced children together, children
17

Catherine Morgan, Athletes and Oracles, (Cambridge University Press 1990) 1. Morgan continues, changes in
the material expression of religious belief are some of the most widespread and dramatic of all those which occurred
during the eighth century. Martin argues During the archaic age the Greeks developed the most widespread and
influential of their new political forms, the city-state, or polis. See Martin, Ancient Greece from Prehistoric to
Hellenistic Times, 51.
18
For a detailed study on Greek colonization see, Carol Dougherty, The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text
in Archaic Greece, (New York: Oxford University Press 1993), 15-21.
19
Scholars like Mcinerney, Dougherty, Huffmon, Morgan, among many others support the modern consensus that
Greek civilization, as it came to be, developed as a direct result of east asian influence around 900-700 BCE. This is
in contrast with the more Eurocentric belief system which was prevalent during the 18 th and 19th centuries. Martin
writes, some Greeks had emigrated from the mainland eastward across the Aegean Sea to settle in Ionia as early as
the ninth century B.C. Starting around 750 B.C., however, Greeks began to settle even farther outside the Greek
homeland...The Phoenicians were active in building commercially-motivated settlements throughout the western
Mediterranean. Within a century of its foundation sometime before 750 B.C., for example, the Phoenician settlement
on the site of modern Cadiz in Spain had become a city thriving on economic and cultural interaction with the
indigenous Iberian population. Martin, Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times, 56.
20
See Greek renaissance as described in Morgan, Athletes and Oracles, 1.

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who grew up amidst two different cultures, amidst two different perspectives. And it was these
peoples who would become the Greeks. 21
Delphis early origins remain foggy, but during this pivotal period in history it
underwent the transition from being a relatively unknown sacred site, perhaps relegated to a
nearby cave and presided over by a Pythian cult, to become the mecca of holy places, known
throughout the ancient world by the loose amalgamation of Greek speaking peoples and by those
who hailed from the civilizations in Asia Minor and Persia.22 Various classical scholars such as
Thomas R. Martin have noted that for reasons which remain somewhat unclear, Greek leaders
frequently felt they had to secure the approval of Apollo of Delphi before setting up their new
colonies.23 For this reason, Delphis role as a panhellenic sitemeaning a place accessed by
many different Greeks and held in high esteem,grew exponentially during this time as more
and more colonial leaders came seeking charters.24
It is hard to say for certain whether or not Delphis ancient tradition remained the same
and was embraced by its new supplicants or if it changed during orientalization to accommodate
21

See Jeremy Mcinerney, A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean,(John Wiley & Sons, 2014). And
M. Hurwit, The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C, (Cornell University Press, 1988).
22
See Ibid., 59. for expansion on evidence supporting that the Delphic sanctuary began to be internationally
renowned in the eighth century B.C. For expansion on pre-8th century Delphi as a cult of Pytho see William J.
Broad, The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets, (Penguin Books, 2007), 30-34. See
Homer 8.46.80 in E.V Rieu (trans.), The Odyssey (Baltimore: Penguin, 1967), 124. (cited in Broad, 2007) for
Agamemnons consultation of the oracle described, in sacred Pytho and Homer Il. 2.511.520 in W.H.D Rouse
(trans.), The Iliad (New York: New American Library, n.d) 110. (cited in Broad, 2007) where Achilles mentions
the treasures in rocky Pytho. See Mark P.O Morford and Robert J. Lenardon, Classical Mythology (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007), 243. Morford and Lenardon reference the scholarly survey of the problems with a
reconstruction of the origins and procedures of the oracle, as compiled in H.W Parke and D.E.W Wormell The
Delphic Oracle, 2 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956).
23
See Herodotus 4.151.1 in A. D. Godley (trans.), The Histories (Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.)
(cited in Martin 1996) for written primary source example pertaining to oracles role during colonization: For seven
years after this there was no rain in Thera; all the trees in the island except one withered. The Theraeans inquired at
Delphi again, and the priestess mentioned the colony they should send to Libya. For a concise explication of the
narrative pattern or plot of archaic colonization including such beginning at Delphi, see Carol Dougherty, The
Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece, (New York: Oxford University Press 1993), 15-21.
24
Evidence for this exists in the fact that Delphi almost always played a role in the origin myths surrounding each
polis. See, Martin, Ancient Greece from Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times, 59.

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colonial culture. It is likely that a little of both went on since the Greeks instinctually picked
aspects of foreign culture to then interpret and morph into something uniquely their own.25 At
any rate and for reasons which we may never know precisely, Greek ideology and Delphic
ideology came to mirror each other early on at a very base level, and subsequently remained
intertwined thereafter. The term base level in this sense is intended to describe the Greeks
persisting shared set of cultural principles which existed transcendent from, albeit alongside, an
opposing sense of cultural diversity. While Greek city states developed independently from one
another and lacked any sort of political unity, the Greek people were at the same time united
panhellenically through their shared past: as individuals who spoke the same language and who
believed in the same gods. So ideologically speaking, Greeks from varying poleis identified with
one another consciously at some deep level while simultaneously harboring an often vehement
regard for themselves as being culturally unique.
Delphi physically became the place where all Greeks could congregate despite their many
differences elsewhere.26 Delphi was governed by a conglomerate rather than a single entity and
transcended the aspects of competition and independent progression exemplified by the poleis.
As Delphis oracle grew in prowess and increased its lead in position over various oracles
elsewhere, so did the rest of the city in other respects. Of notable importance was that Delphi
became incredibly wealthy; archeological evidence backs this fully, having revealed Delphi to
25

Morford and Lenardon argue Delphi was occupied by an oracle of the great mother-goddess of the MinoanMycenaean period, sometimes known as Ge-Themis and that the slaying of the dragon (the traditional
manifestation of a diety of earth) therefore, represents the subsequent conquest by Hellenic or Hellenized Apollo.
Morford and Lenardon, Classical Mythology, 243. See Herbert B. Huffmon. The Oracular Process: Delphi and the
Near East. Vetus Testamentum, 57, no. 4 (2007): 449-460,
<http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.calpoly.edu/stable/pdfplus/20504276.pdf?acceptTC=true>
Huffmon shows similarities between near east oracles and the ones in Greece around the 8 th century, further
substantiating the claim of a cross cultural revolution during Archaic Greece.
26
See Jeremy Mcinerney, Parnassus, Delphi, and the Thyiades, GRBS 38, no. 3 (1997) [1999]: 263-283.
Premonition at Delphi was consistently held on the 7th day of each of the 9 months, corresponding with Apollos
holy day.

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have been a city no less rich in treasure than it was in foot traffic.27 The oracles services were
of course not free, and payment varied considerably depending on who was doing the paying!
Votive offerings, given on behalf of entire poleis were, for example, quite grand spectacles; such
monuments littered the path leading up to the temple and served as a way in which the city states
could attempt to outshine one another. Monuments came from as far east as Egypt, and the
remnants of several obelisks have been found relatively intact in recent years. Also still visible
at Delphi are portions of its Pythian stadium. In addition to amassing wealth from oracular
payments, Delphi flourished further as result of its hosting the Pythian games: one of four similar
sporting events which took place at important panhellenic sitesthe most famous having been
Olympus Olympic gamesand which drew competitors and spectators from across the Greek
world.28 While the temptation for one single powerful polis to take control of Delphi could be
imagined to have been great; the Greeks were contrarily quite willing to share Delphi with one
another so long as it meant universal access to its oracle was preserved. The place was far too
valuable in their eyes to risk quarreling over and perhaps risking ones right to enter the sacred
space. Thus the more powerful polis leaders came together and founded the Amphictyonic
League, a loose alliance somewhat analogous to an ancient United Nations which was comprised
of city state appointed members tasked with presiding over the city peacefully.29 So the notion
stands uncontested that, when compared to nearly every other place at the time, Delphi was
special in that it served as an escape from the zero sum game which was elsewhere omnipresent
throughout Greece.
27

J.Z de Boer and John R. Hale, The Oracle of DelphiWas She Really Stoned? Archaeology Odyssey, (2002).
For further elaboration on Delphi as a place which all Greeks might come to honor gods common to their race
and on Delphis evocation of the Greek spirits competitive nature with regard to both athletics and the arts, see
Morton and Lenardon, Classical Mythology, 244. Broad writes that, even in Homers daythe Oracles successes in
prognostication and earthly rewards were seen as so great that Delphi had become synonymous with extravagant
wealth. Broad, 2007, 32.
29
Ibid, 48, 49, 254.
28

17

Outside of Delphi, Greek culture was far from being easily identifiable as inherently
Greek; this point is important, since popular culture tends to depict ancient Greece
homogenously whenalthough inhabitants of different polis shared the same languagetheir
culture varied quite greatly. One thing the Greeks did share though was a knack for
reinterpretation. Each polis idiosyncrasies were unique products of experiences during
orientalization, as digested from within a shared Greek culture of borrowing and then
reinterpreting new ideas from outside and inside influencers. This is why at a deep level what it
really meant to be inherently Greek was to be an expert at interpretation. Interpretation defined
the process by which colonists refreshed their culture early on during the orientalizing age; and it
just so happens, interpretation, in all of its many glorious forms, was what Delphi was all about.
During orientalization, migrating Greeks experienced a cultural splintering effect when
they diverged from one another and mixed with eastern cultures; and when they came across
each other later, they discovered that they had changed considerably. If one was to smash a rock
and then scatter its pieces in different climates, after some time dissimilar types of weathering
might cause the pieces to appear quite different from one another, even though the rock was once
uniform in appearance. Orientalization cast a similar effect upon the Greeks; they harbored
some sense of familiarity but could not escape their acquired differences. Consequently, this
trained the Greeks to more openly interpret the cultural differences they encountered amongst
themselves through their own subjective lenses rather than reject them flat out. This is how they
made sense of the world, and perhaps this lack of dogma played a role in them becoming so
innovative during this time period.
Theoretically, the notion of changing perspectives from time to time is one which
Thomas Kuhn saw as being crucial with regard to the growth of knowledge, for the simple

18

reason that the understanding of a thing changes relative to the context in which it is being
analyzed. Two poignant examples which illustrate the Greeks interpretive approach can be seen
in the way they understood their religious beliefs, that is, as characteristically non-dogmatic, and
in the way they made the transition from linear-b to using a Phoenician alphabet. With regard to
the latter, Greek speaking colonists preserved their oral language but replaced the old linear-b
alphabet of the Mycenaean era with a Semitic one they had been introduced to through contact
with the orient.30 The fascinating thing is how the Greeks actually tailored this alphabet to fit
their own Greek language. While the Greeks used the Phoenicians symbols, they attached to
each symbol entirely new meanings which corresponded to Greek vocalizations rather than
Phoenician ones.31 Using Kuhnian terminology, the Greeks changed the perspective from which
they interpreted the meaning behind each symbol in order to have the alphabet fit the Greek
language. If we consider symbols as being a form of knowledge, we can apply some of Kuhns
ideas to the analysis of the Greek Phoenician alphabet. Objectively speaking, after the Greeks
reinterpreted it, the once strictly Phoenician alphabets characters came to represent two entirely
different languages dependent upon on how it was being perceived. To someone lacking
knowledge of both the Greek and the Phoenician oral language, any form of the writing would
have been impossible to read. On the other hand, a Greek or Phoenician speaker who had been
taught to read the alphabet from either one or both of its correct perspectives would certainly
be able to comprehend it its meaning. Here, context is everything. As to how this
reinterpretation may have come about in this particular case, one might imagine an early colony
and the life of one of its bilingual children, born to Greek and Phoenician parents, and his
internal grasping for identity within a bifurcated culture. It certainly seems possible in such a
30

Jeremy Mcinerney, A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean,(John Wiley & Sons, 2014).
Mcinerney, Jeremy. From Sicily to Syria: The growth of trade and colonization. Lecture 6, Ancient Greek
Civilization, The Great Courses #323.
31

19

scenario to understand how the Greeks might have so naturally come to reinterpret the
Phoenician alphabet from a Greek perspective, in effect preserving a portion of each culture. 32
The Greeks alphabet stands as an important example of the Greek cultural mindset because it so
clearly illustrates their pattern of re-interpretation which elsewhere occurred in much more
abstract ways.
In the same way that the Greeks reinterpreted the Phoenician alphabet in order to express
their own language, the Greeks treated religion as something interpretively moldable. Greek
colonists came into contact with varying forms of oriental mythology and philosophy; Greek and
Vedic myths as an example, hold enough similarities to suggest that the Greeks borrowed aspects
of eastern mythology and then mixed in their own Greek heroes and context to change the
perspective into one which was more familiar.33 This aspect of religious plasticity came
naturally to the Greeks; because mythology, for the majority of its existence, had been an oral
tradition lacking written documentation. Recall that mentioned earlier, the Myceneans brought
with them their mythology during colonization. Without a sacred text to fall back on, traveling
bards introduced the general populace to a diverse variety of often competing myths; and this left
room for interpretation and even debate between Greeks over which myth was right.34 Even
iterations of the same myth had to be at least slightly different from the last; and similar to the
game telephone, after a certain amount of oral repetitions, especially over the course of several
generations, any original story would have probably changed considerably. Furthermore, it

32

Mcinerney uses the bilingual child theory as an explanatory tool yet acknowledges the difficulty involved in
actually proving it. Nevertheless, the theory remains an ideal one for illustrating one possible way in which the
Greeks may have been inspired to adopt the new alphabetic system.
33
See Mcinerney and Bruce S. Thronton, Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization. (Encounter
Books, 2002). For more on how the similarities between Vedic and Greek Mythologies, see Hector Currie and Juan
Pacheco, Paranada: Beyond Beyond. Integral Review 5 (2009): 187.
34
Irad Malkin, Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece, (Brill Archive 1993), 25.

20

seems likely that charismatic bards were given the privilege of altering myths on occasion in
order to highlight certain points and lessons when such an opportunity was ripe for presentation.
During a hard harvest season, for example, a bard might highlight the duties performed by a
particular hero with regard to pleasing the gods responsible for crops in effort to inspire the local
farmers to action. Therefore, and in stark contrast to later religions of the book, different
versions of each myth were actually expected under the oral traditiondepending of course,
upon variables such as who was telling it, and under what circumstances. So rather than fight
over differing myths, the Greeks accepted variation as a natural part of their shared mythology,
and this non-dogmatic system of interpretation became a defining factor in the Greeks thought
process as it concerned all forms of knowledge.

Philosophy and the Delphic Paradigm

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of
a series of footnotes to Plato.Alfred North Whitehead35
The Greeks viewing contrast as an acceptable property in myth and in culture was
pivotal with respect to the Delphic paradigm as a whole since this non-dogmatic ideology spilled
over to influence how the Greeks perceived their surrounding world with increasing degrees of
complexity. The discussion of worldly phenomena in particular took on more complex form in
the 6th and 7th centuries B.C.E, when the thinkers we now label the pre-Socratic philosophers
sought to rationalize the holistic and poetic messages inherent within myth using a more
specified language and a narrower scope of focus than had been used before.36

Greeks began to

change the perspective from which they attacked questions posed by mythology, doing so

35

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, (Free Press, 1979) 39.

21

procedurally, from a less metaphorical angle that employed reason over rhetoric. But this
process was gradual and compared with modern definitions of philosophy, what it was the preSocratics were doing was more comparable to the religious debates taking place than to any sort
of modern science. In fact, these early practitioners of philosophia really only differed from past
thinkers in that they upheld the dialectic process when arguing over what might be the truth of
things; outside of this, they remained nonetheless inspired by the same mythology of their
forebearers.
The Greeks were accustomed to arguing over differing mythologies and over the various
possible messages inherent within them. As we have seen, the Greeks embraced forms of
rational discourse on matters of religious interpretation because they had no sacred text to use as
reference point. Scholars such as Jeremy McInerney have even gone so far as to argue that the
notion of heresy was all but non-existent in Greece as result.37 But with orientalization came a
more cerebral form of this interpretive analysis, likely influenced by some of the philosophical
components encountered through eastern religion; still, what some consider the birth of Greek
philosophy remained at this time a thing by and large religious in nature. It was only as time
went on that the perspectives introduced by the pre-Socratics would congeal into separate,
definitive fields of philosophymany of which, it is important to add, would splinter further to
form subsets resembling many of the modern sciences today. But during the pre-Socratics era
these first practitioners of philosophia were simply lovers of wisdom thinkers concerned

37

See Mcinerneys argument that Socrates trial and death was motivated primarily by political reasons rather than
religious heretical ones. Mcinerney, Jeremy. Socrates on Trial. Lecture 21, Ancient Greek Civilization, The Great
Courses #323.

22

with uncovering the truth out of enigmas present in myth for the sake of properly understanding
reality as it was depicted.38 Anthony Gottlieb writes of this transition in The Dream of Reason:
The fact is that the history of philosophy is more the history of a sharply inquisitive cast
of mind than the history of a sharply defined discipline. The traditional image of it as a
sort of meditative science of pure thought, strangely cut off from other subjects, is largely
a trick of the historical light. The illusion is created by the way we look at the past, and
in particular by the way in which knowledge tends to be labeled, chopped up, and relabelled.39
For the Greeks, this inquisitive cast of mind as explained earlier, was already present with
regard to their fractured cultures non-dogmatic mindset towards mythology, but Greek contact
with the more philosophical forms of eastern religions sped up the transition toward more
metaphysical rumination. Scholars such as J.W. Sedlar have argued that Greek philosophy
originated in the cities of Ionia on Asia Minors western shorethat portion of the Greek world
closest to the Orient the perfect location from where, writes McEvilley, alongside the exchange
of mythology, occurred an intense metaphysical interchange between the Greek and Indian
cultures around 600 B.C.E. that points to striking similarities between the two metaphysical
schemes.40 According to Martin West, It was the very extravagance of oriental fancy that...

38

Philosophia encompassed the totality of the Greeks fundamental assumptions about reality; assumptions that
would eventually fragment into the highly complex inter disciplinary knowledgebase we have today. For
Philosophia as lovers of wisdom see "Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.3.8 quoted in Tankha, Ancient Greek
Philosophy: Thales to Gorgias (Pearson Education India, 2006) 104.
39
Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. (W.W.
Norton & Company, 2010) viii.
40
J.W Sedlar, India and the Greek World. (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980) 10. T. McEvilley, The shape of
ancient thought: Comparative studies in Greek and Indian
philosophies. (New York: Allworth 2002) 31.

23

...freed the Greeks from the limitations of what they could see with their own eyes, led
them to think of ten thousand year cycles instead of human generations, of an infinity
beyond the visible sky and below the foundations of the earth, of a life not bounded by
womb and tomb but renewed in different bodies aeon after aeon...that god is intelligence;
that the cosmos is one living creature; that the material world can be analyzed in terms of
a few basic constituents such as fire, water, earth, metal; that there is a world of Being
beyond perception, beyond time. These were conceptions of enduring importance for
ancient philosophy.41
So what led to the growth of this pre-Socratic philosophy, like what led to the Greek-Phoenician
alphabet, was a shift in Greek perspective brought about through the contact with and subsequent
interpretation of new ideas introduced during orientalization. In the case of philosophia, this
took the form of a change in which to interpret mythology and explain expressions of the divine.
Philosophia resulted from a change in religious perspective. 42 Adam Drozdek argues in his aptly
named book on the subject, Greek Philosophers as Theologians, that philosophia and religion
were, at the time, essentially the same thing; philosophia being separated only through its way of
translating religious ideas into more concise forms and definitions:
...theology was of paramount importance for all Greek philosophers even if theological or
religious language is not used, or if theological reasoning is of apparently secondary
importance, or if religious concepts are rationalized. The emergence of Greek philosophy
coincides with theological elaboration of the concept of the divine.43

41

Martin West, Greek Philosophy and the Orient. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1971) 67.
Early practitioners of philosophia tried to free themselves from the egotistical rhetoric sometimes involved when
debating over emotionally charged issues such as myth.
43
Adam Drozdek, Greek Philosophers as Theologians: The Divine Arche, (Ashgate Publishing, 2013) vii
42

24

As an illustration of this, consider that there are at least three different Greek origin myths we
know of today which completely contradict one another.44 In a world of confounding cultural
and interpretative perspectives, philosophia came out of the Greeks desire to elaborate upon
these ideas and perhaps prove one myth as being more correct than the others.45 Of particular
importance to theology, being concerned with making rational sense of the origin of thingswas
the Greek conception of the void, this rip out of chaos during a time of nothingness which
birthed everything in existenceincluding the gods themselves. Hesiod wrote Theogany right
around the time the Greeks adopted their alphabet and thus stands a credible source detailing a
particular origin myths posited genesis as it circulated (surely alongside others) during
orientalization.46
These things declare to me from the beginning, you Muses who dwell in the house
of Olympus, and tell me which of them first came to be. In truth at first Chaos came to be,
but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold
the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth,
and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the
mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.
Hesiod. Theogony. 121.47
Hesiod held that realitys origin began with chaos: a yawning void of nothingness. Such an
idea which has in modern terms, been likened to the state before the Big Bang resembles in
44

See, Argonautica Orphica 12, Aristophanes Birds, 683ff, Hesiods Theogony, 116ff. not to mention the countless
Asian and indo European origin myths which had been introduced during orientalization.
45
This lack of dogmatism gave Greek religion an enormous amount of flexibility and indeed, during such times
there was no such thing as heresy as they lacked a way to discern who was right from who was wrong. But it also
had the effect of encouraging debate and discourse which led to new ideas.
46
With the advent of writing it is plausible that some of the prior notions of non-dogmatism allowed with the oral
tradition was challenged using the now more palpable written word.
47
Hes.Th.121. from, Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. EvelynWhite. Theogony. (Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd). 1914.

25

many aspects the Indian Rig Veda in that it introduced a variety of enigmatic ideas to be
ruminated over.48 Around 2000 BCE, Vedic Seer Dirghatamas conceived of a state before
existence when:
Then was neither being nor non-being... (line 1)
The breathless breathed breathlessly... (line 2)
All was darkness wrapt in darkness... (line 3)
...Sages searching in their hearts with wisdom found the bond between being and nonbeing. (line 4)
...This was before the gods... (line 6)
Creation Veda X.12949
Each line as a paradox, holistically represents a form of knowledge which to be digested into
more palpable terms, must first be dissected into separate arguable premises in order to delineate
possible perspectives of analysis from one another. These types of enigmas were common in
Greek myth, and were conducive to philosophical thought. Such paradoxical ideas actually
demanded a period of dogmatic analysis; and, in line with the fracturing of society exhibited
elsewhere, rumination over concepts as complex as what if anything might constitute that which
could be neither being nor non-being spawned a diverse variety of interpretations. 50
According to Thomas Kuhn, enigmas such as these are not only beneficial but are
actually required for scientific progress, since they introduce the various loose ends necessary for
the development of further discourse. Kuhn believed that in scientific fields, both historically as
well as presently, knowledge on any given topic is represented differently depending on the
48

Londhe, Hindu cosmology. 2008. Retrieved May 14, 2014, from

http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Hindu_Cosmology.htm
49
Currie, 2009, 186.
50
Defining what exactly being is and its various forms and what non-being is represent further possibilities for
fracturing into dogmatism.

26

particular way in which it is being observed.51 He therefore argued against the notion of
scientific knowledge being objective fact, since scientific knowledge, as he saw it, is based on
the nature of some facet of reality as perceivedand thus limitedthrough a certain perspective,
as opposed to how it actually exists outside of it. Under this line of thinking, when faced with
enigmatic ideas such as the void, Greek thinkers were forced to develop diverse dogmatic
principles from which to build further investigation.
But Kuhn simultaneously relents to the fact that a devout type of dogmatism or adherence
to a particular perspective is in fact a necessary part of scientific progressat least most of the
time. Kuhn divides scientific progress into one of two categories: either normal science or
revolutionary science.52 The former, which Kuhn believed defines science the vast majority of
the time, demands strict adherence to a particular paradigm of thought. In other words, normal
science is dogmatic, and evolves in concordance with the definitions of presuppositions present
in current scientific textbooks; ideas found to be incongruent with the current scientific laws
are deemed misguided and discarded in favor of better hypotheses which play by the
established set of rules. But on relatively rare occasions, Kuhn continues, occur periods of
revolutionary science whereby new experimental evidence proves so contradictory to prior
notions of fact, that thinkers are left with no choice but to discard their prior conceptions and
laws and engage in a non-dogmatic backtracking of sorts. They continue the process of crossing
51

For example, science is concerned with understanding natural phenomena from a wide variety of different
perspectives, each of which appear highly different from one another: biology is concerned with understanding
living phenomena while geology deals with rocks. Anatomy includes, among many subdisciplines, physiology and
molecular genetics.
52
The following is an excerpt from Stanfords archived article on Kuhn; see the link for a more comprehensive
overview of normal and revolutionary science. A mature science, according to Kuhn, experiences alternating
phases of normal science and revolutions. In normal science the key theories, instruments, values and metaphysical
assumptions that comprise the disciplinary matrix are kept fixed, permitting the cumulative generation of puzzlesolutions, whereas in a scientific revolution the disciplinary matrix undergoes revision, in order to permit the
solution of the more serious anomalous puzzles that disturbed the preceding period of normal science. Bird,
Alexander, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/thomas-kuhn/>.

27

out now defunct theories, troubleshooting until one emerges seemingly without any sort of new
evidentiary doubt. Orientalization saw to a period of something akin to Kuhns revolutionary
science, whereby a new breed of thinkers, influenced by new East Asian thought, were no longer
satisfied with the literal anthropomorphic interpretation of myth and sought to reanalyze these
cosmological stories from a new philosophical angle. 53
On an individual level, knowledge is shaped by ones personal conception of reality, a
conception in many ways shaped by ones particular place and experience within society. In this
way, Greek society as a wholecomprised of fractured groups of individuals each holding
unique experiences due to orientalizationwas especially privy to countless expressions of
knowledge. Take for example the Milesian school of philosophy which arose out of Thales
postulate that the archemeaning the first transmutable substance, and that which mythology
asserted had come from the voidwas water.54 Thales, as a resident of the port town Miletus
had been privy to east Asian thought as it arrived alongside trade goods. Jonathan Re and J.O.
Urmson write how many of the problems studied by Thales were found in various forms in
earlier quasi-mythological cosmogonies and theogonies...
53

While knowledge of reality today is comprised of countless different fields of science, this was obviously not
always the case. Knowledge according to Kuhn progresses in accordance with a pattern: relatively simple ideas
fragment to form increasingly specialized fields of thought which themselves, in turn, further increase in complexity
at an exponential rate. Its important to understand that knowledge builds this way, evolving throughout history in
accordance with the times historical context and cultural paradigm. Consider the following excerpt from Vasso
Kindi, Theodore Arabatzis, Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Revisited. (Routledge, 2013), 149: Kuhn
notes the apparently inexorable...growth in the number of distinct human practices and human specialties over the
course of human history. (RSS, 116). Rescher interestingly compared how the 1911 and 1974 editions of
Encyclopedia Britannica described physics, which were divided into twenty specialties. The fifteenth edition from
1974 split physics into twelve ranches, which had apparently so many subfields that they were not even surveyed in
their entirety. Further, the National Science Foundation divided physics in its register of scientific and technical
personnel into twelve areas with ninety specialties in 1954, and sixteen areas with 210 specialties in 1970.
According to Rescher, substantially the same story can be told for every field of natural science, which is to say that
there has been a continual growth in the taxonomic refinement of natural science. Rescher further claims that there is
every reason to think that scientific speciation has proceeded exponentially and in the standard evolutionary manner
encountered in the biological sphere, just as Kuhn held. (Rescher 1978, 226-230).
54
Miletus was the largest city of Ionian Greece, and, being a port city near the mouth of Meander, it conducted an
extensive trade with Egypt where the Greeks founded Naukratis. Surely, not only goods were transported but
information about Egyptian religion as well. Drozdek, 2013, 5.

28

...it was the treatment of these problems in straightforward descriptive terms and the
rejection of personification that gave Thales and his successors, for later Greeks and for
us, the title of philosopher. Although they abandoned much of the mythological
language, the pre-Socratics continued to be affected at certain points by pre philosophical
assumptions. When Thales declared that all things came from water, he was probably
giving rationalistic expression to a partly mythic Egyptian idea, paralleled in Babylonia,
that the world arose from Nun, the goddess of primeval waters, which was itself a
reflexion of the annual reappearance of the earth as the Nile recedes.55
This sentiment, accepted as fact by Thales and by his adherents, was thus incorporated into a
world view, a paradigm in the words of Kuhn, and used as a stepping stone from which to
introduce further arguments of increasing complexity. In contrast, Heraclitus of the Ephesian
school in Ionia argued for various reasons that fire was a more plausible arche; and, Anaximines,
a contemporary of Thales, instead took air for his arche noting the substances role both as an
evaporate with regard to water and as an accelerant with regard to fire. Each of the
aforementioned theories was but a different interpretation of what could be the arche; but, as can
easily be conceived, each perspective lent itself to a completely different understanding of the
surrounding world. So from the shared premise, that is, from the shared belief in a single
transmutable substance, it was perspective which served as the engine that drove a diverse
variety of independently progressing interpretations.
While the above examples illustrate the traditional manner in which knowledge is
pursuedby a narrowing of perspectives that splinters existing knowledge into more
manageable, specific chunksthere were several problems with this approach that certain
Greeks attempted to circumvent. The main problem encountered with such a method of
55

Jonathan Re, J.O. Urmson, The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy, (Routledge, 2004), 309.

29

systematic deconstruction was what Kuhn termed incommensurability. Kindi and Arabatzis
summarize Kuhns observations that disciplines progress through specialization:
Kuhns view is that speciation and the resulting isolation enable scientific disciplines to
specialize, which then permits sciences to better focus on some problems and natural
phenomena, and develop tools and language for this task. This kind of specialization not
only leads to success in individual disciplines because it, permits the resolution of
problems with which the previous structure was unable to deal (R.S.S 250), but it means
that science in its totality manages to solve more puzzles than a lexically homogeneous
science ever could. it is by these divisions...that knowledge grows (R.S.S 101).56
But as perspectives continue to narrow and form many specialized subsets, it becomes more and
more difficult for knowledge of a thing as seen from one perspective to be translated into a form
equivalently understood from another perspective. As an example, a surgeon and a molecular
biologist, two people representing analysis of the human body from two very different
perspectives, would find it impossible to fully grasp how exactly the other understood the inner
workings of the same human body. Among other variables, both people would be using
terminologies vastly different from each other as descriptors for the various parts of the body: the
surgeon being primarily concerned with understanding organs and other such components on the
macro level, and the molecular biologist far more concerned with the bodys microscopic
components. Similarly, languages which are very different from each other suffer from
incommensurability since when describing the same situation or feeling, much can be lost in

56

Vasso Kindi, Theodore Arabatzis, Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Revisited. (Routledge, 2013),
141-142. Kindi and Arabatzis citation of (R.S.S) references the following work: Thomas S. Kuhn, James
Conant, John Haugeland, The Road Since Structures. (University of Chicago Press, 2000). For further explication
by Kuhn himself, see pg 141 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions where he describes the transitions,
similarities, and incommensurabilities of the Ptolemaic, Copernican, Newtonian, and Einsteinian theories as
examples of the changing perspectives of knowledge throughout history.

30

translation between the two languages. So with regard to knowledge as a whole, at certain
points, the underlying once visible connection linking two perspectives together disappears
entirely amidst each perspectives limiting specificity. In effort to surpass this, Thales student
Anaximander parted ways with his teacher by asserting the first transmutable substance was in
fact boundless. He coined his arche not water, fire, or air, but rather the apeiron, which in the
last remaining fragment we have from Anaximander, can be interpreted as being a transcendent
substance consisting of whatever might be the intangible unity between incommensurable
substances. Thus the apeiron represents that which might be both fire and water, both hot and
cold, or described another way, neither hot nor cold.57 By defining the arche as such,
Anaximander avoided having to dogmatically choose a particular substance as being the first;
instead he preserved the initial expression of the first substance as portrayed by mythologys
paradoxical explication of the Chaos. The apeiron, as encompassing the boundless enigmatic
unity between opposing substances, represents that which transcends the inevitable loss of
knowledge incurred when the holistic understanding of a thing is deconstructed into specific
fragments.
But though Anaximanders efforts to maintain some theoretical semblance of unity were
noble, the ensuing cascade of philosophy was unable to resist the pattern of increased
specification. Kuhn argued that the fundamental paradigms for all modern science originated in
historys great works because they were sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring
group of adherents as well as sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the

57

See, Currie, 2009, 187-189, 194, 197, 207-208, 212. Also see, Elizabeth Asmis, What Was Anaximanders
Apeiron? Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Number 3, (July 1981) 279-297.
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v019/19.3asmis.html> Also see Jurgen Lawrences essay Sources of
Metaphysical thinking in pre-Socratic philosophy, where he explains the roots of Apeirons meaning: As to its
meaning, we may begin with unlimited, which cannot be too far off the mark, because peras, its root, means
boundary. <http://www.philosophypathways.com/fellows/lawrenz.pdf>

31

redefined group of practitioners to resolve. 58 The pre-Socratics subsequent discourses injected

new ideas into the intellectual vernacular which, depending on their many possible
interpretations, blossomed into numerous philosophical subsets and schools. This was a time
during which ideas were fresh; philosophy being born rather than acquired from intellectual
interaction with near-east sages and the immense feelings of awe which must have arisen
alongside a new world view with so many unanswered questions. Adherents to opposing
arguments over such matters fragmented into the followers of differing philosophical schools
which themselves splintered into sub schools. In this sense, long before the classical
philosophers and their more specific, refined arguments, it was pre-Socratics such as the
Milesian philosophers on the coast, who, being the first of those privy to orientalizations east
Asian ideas, can be considered both discoverers and creators, the original receivers of previously
inaccessible knowledge they then transformed through interpretation. Later thinkers such as
Socrates carried the flame further by reinterpreting their predecessors ideas in the context of
their own times, but classical philosophy is but result of further digestion of ideas introduced first
during the Archaic periods philosophical revolution.59
Indeed, part of what defined the Greeks culture was their inclination to form factions
from ideological perspectives; and each faction was out to prove its perspectives superiority
over the others. As Jeremy McInerney argues, what it meant to be Greek in another major way
was to be competition with other Greeks. Strife, that is, a noble struggle to be better than
ones neighbor was a central theme in Greeks zero sum culture. 60 This manifested itself in
58

Kuhn, 1962, 53.

One may notice the emphasis on interpretation. This was a defining factor of the Greeks cultural thought
process, perhaps having roots in the non-dogmatic nature of Greek mythology. Without a sacred text to fall back on,
Greek bards, the original knowledge bearers, spawned a diverse variety of often competing myths leaving much
room for interpretation and debate over which myth was right. Similarly, philosophy Greeks which came after the
pre-Socratics similarly reinterpreted philosophy within the contexts of their own times.
60
Mcinerney, Jeremy. Delphi and Olympia. Lecture 7, Ancient Greek Civilization, The Great Courses #323.
59

32

philosophy with the fracturing of schools and the often heated discourses between thinkers, as
well as in the physical form of competition exemplified in the Olympic Games. So ingrained
was this idea of competition as a central aspect of life, that even the gods and heroes of the
Greeks mythology were engaged in the constant struggle to come out on top, to outshine one
another.
Perhaps ironically, todays notion of religion being detrimental to real world acquisition
of knowledge is in sharp contrast with how religion functioned in 8th century Archaic Greece.
Rather than impeding scientific enquiry, religions enigmatic questions and cosmological
dilemmas meshed with the Greeks holy pursuit of competition to actually encourage the first
fruits of philosophical rumination.61

Competition and the Divine

Delphi was far more than a temple with its sole purpose being a place of worship; rather,
it mirrored Greek religion and dialectic as it functioned in society as a whole, which it stands,
was vastly different from how both religion and scientific inquiry function in modernity. Delphi
was, like Greek culture and ideology, a cultural hearth and place of inquiry which was loosely
though at the same time thoroughly oriented around religion. Like many ancient civilizations,
religion played a fundamental role in every aspect of Greek life, including those aspects which
when taken out of context today, would appear purely secular: philosophy, architecture, tragedy,
comedy etc.

61

McInerney argues that the profound sense of awe felt in the face of eternity forms the basis for all ancient
religions. Through this same sentiment, cosmologyas a component of philosophia and the later more specific
fields of astrology and astronomywas born out of the conundrums faced when rationally attempting to make sense
of origin myths.

33

Socio-politically, Greek city states were themselves fragmented, but Greek inhabitants
did share a common sense of pride for being Greek; they shared the notion that they were all
descendedwith perhaps varying levels of removalfrom those great peoples of the heroic age
whose stories had been preserved in mythology. Religious ritual also served as a very real way
to bind the Greeks together both on the micro and macro panhellenic scale; and sacrifice at the
city alter, as an example of the former, was an activity of utmost importance within each polis. It
was through these and similar actions that groups of individuals could come together with the
shared purpose of gaining the favor of the gods, who might then impart upon them some
supernatural influence in return making life a bit easier.62 The ways in which the gods were
worshipped varied from polis to polis, but all Greeks agreed that the gods played an integral role
in their own humanly affairs; thus, the idea of living ones life heroically, and in a way which
would put on a show for the beings above, was a shared sentiment and paramount aspiration for
all Greek individuals.
On rarer more monumental occasions, Greeks would leave their individual polis and
congregate together at massive festivals with sole intent of pleasing the gods with showings of
epic fanfare, competition and pageantry. Olympus held the famed Olympic Games, but at
Delphi the Greeks competed in the Pythian Games to honor Apollo. Indeed, alongside being site
of the most famed oracle, among the multitude of city states, Delphi became one of four cities
which held, every two to four years, one of these panhellenic games.63 But, alongside this
physical form of competition, Apollo demanded dialectic occur at his temple in the name of
religion. Philosophy too became a competitive part of Greek culture, one so intertwined with
62

See, section Civic Religion in: Cara L Sailors, The Function of Mythology and Religion in Greek Society, (East
Tennessee State University, 2007). 28. Each polis had a calendar year divided both by unique religious events and
more strictly human activities though the two were often interconnected, a harvest for example, might have
coincided with a religious festival.
63
Broad, 2007, 49, 60.

34

religion at Delphi that with regard to the Delphic paradigm, the two must be considered
inseparable.
Dialectic was famously made popular by Platos descriptions of the lengthy discussions
Socrates had with multiple other people with different points of view. Dialectic encompassed
the rules of engagement for rational discussion, the purpose of which was finding out the truth of
a matter when faced with more than one plausible answer. As part of this methodology,
rationalism at Delphi might be described more a process than an affirmation based on fact;
similar perhaps to how theology might be rightly defined today. The oracle functioned from
seemingly irrational premisesas in the words of the godsbut a very rational method of
discourse followed. What seems to lack credibility today is the idea that benefit may be accrued
from this rational process regardless of where it actually proceeds from; since irrational belief, if
declared a fact, can be rationally analyzed just the same. At Delphi, as in Greece as a whole,
philosophical and what we would deem today secular thought came about as result of religious
stimuli; and, it was not so much the oracle that mattered as it was the discourse that followed.
Since the god Apollo demanded dialectic, a more apt description of Delphi may be that of a place
religiously dedicated to rational discourse in its purest form. As such, within both the context of
its own time as well as ours, Delphi was neither religious nor strictly philosophical but was
something else entirely. The difficulty for the modern scholar is that in his time religion is
strictly separated from more secular matters such as politics and science; and unless abstractly
related, religion and secularism are more or less mutually exclusive. While it is true that many
people consider themselves both religious and scientific, one is required to conform to each
respective ideology and reflect upon each in a fundamentally different ways. When a biologist is
studying organic molecules under a microscope, to be considered seriously he must temporarily

35

refute his religious beliefs as he must conversely refute his faith in the material alone when in his
personal life he prays to God. Today these ideologies have been all but completely
deconstructed from how they existed holistically in the Delphic paradigm.
This section of the paper seeks to equate the principles involved with Delphis oracular
process to those same shared principles present in Greek ideology albeit on a larger societal
scale. In other words, Delphis paradigm on the micro scale mirrors the archaic Greeks shared
paradigm on the macro; and in this respect, Delphi becomes a window in which to understand
the shared interpretive headspace of the early Greeks. Delphis oracular process entailed a
streamlined procedure nearly identical to how philosophy fractured out on a cultural scale in
early Greece. The pre-Socratics first pulled knowledge from mythologys non-dogmatic open
ends, which they then subjected to increasing levels of scrutiny perpetuated by fragmenting it
into specific, more dogmatic, perspectives for observation. At Delphi, Apollos enigmatic
oracles were first viewed non-dogmatically before being deconstructed dogmatically into its
various possible interpretations; finally these differing perspectives were debated over through
dialectic in order to yield the most reasonable answer to what might be the oracles true meaning.

The Oracle at Delphi

Most scholars accept that premonition occurred at Delphi on the 9 th day of each month.
The Pythia entered a chamber known as the adyton, sat atop a tripod, and after perhaps inhaling
fumes which leaked from a fissure beneath, relayed Apollos oracular response to supplicants in
the form of enigmatic verse.64 Scholarly arguments pertaining to exactly how the Pythia

64

The name Pythia comes from Pytho, a reference to the monsterous python mythology (precisely, Homeric Hymn
3 to Apollo) posits to have been Delphis original guardian before it was slain by Apollo. As a side note, while the
third Delphic Hymn is often referred to as Homeric, this relates to its structural similarity to the Iliad and the
Odyssey; the author of these Delphic hymns remains unknown. See, Anonymous. The Homeric Hymns and

36

underwent enthousiasmos the Greek word for direct contact with godgenerally involve
either some sort of intoxication or trance or perhaps more cynically, the simple notion that it was
all an act: smoke and mirrors, manipulation and faade.65 Whatever the case may be matters
very little however, with regard to the much more important interpretative process which
occurred after. Similarly, with regard to the Greeks early cosmology, the precise roots and
historical accuracy of the specific myths that inspired such detailed analysis mattered little in
comparison with the ensuing philosophical discourse over its meaning, at least from a Kuhnian
perspective.66
Much like the ambiguity present in various mythological stories, oracles were almost
always enigmatic, that is, they mirrored mythologys open endedness in such a way which
allowed for multiple interpretations.67 Understood to be of divine nature, the Pythias words
were characteristically vague and poetic; this was believed a challenge posed by the gods since

Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. (Cambridge, MA.,Harvard
University Press; London William Heinemann Ltd. 1914).
<http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg003.perseus-eng1:3> Though the oracular statements
were always written in verse, it is not certain that the Pythias exact words were copied down verbatim; some
scholars believe the Pythia actually spoke in tongues which were then interpreted by the male priests who
transcribed it into hexameter verse. J. Z. De Boer and J. R. Hale, The geological origins of the oracle at Delphi,
Greece, Geological Society, 171, (2000): 399-412., J.Z de Boer, J.R. Hale, J. Chanton, New Evidence for the
geological origins of the ancient Delphic oracle, Geology 29, (2001): 707-710., Daryn Lehoux, Drugs and the
Delphic Oracle, Classical World 101, no. 1 (2007): 41-56,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/classical_world/v101/101.1lehoux.html
65
Ibid. De Boer and Hale claim to have found geological evidence for a fissure beneath Delphis temple which had
at one point leaked a type of hallucinogenic ethylene gas. This discovery has had the consequence of exonerating
some classical sources which had mentioned the fissure, but were discredited by 19th and 20th century academics on
the basis of an earlier botched expedition which failed to locate the fissurenow inactiveduring an archeological
survey. In Greek religion enthusiasm (/enthousiasms) refers to being taken by a higher power,
usually personified by the gods (cf. /theiasms, inspiration; /ntheos, possessed by god).
TH.SCH.. "Enthousiasmos." Brills New Pauly. Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and , Helmuth
Schneider. Brill Online, 2015. Reference. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-newpauly/enthousiasmos-e12221560>
66
As another example, exact knowledge of the origin of some Greek ideaslike those which sparked them to use
the Phoenician alphabet, to create their myths, and to utilize various perspectives to interpret myths,mattered very
little when compared to the more important process of how the Greeks went about interpreting these ideas.
67
Kindt, Julia. Delphic Oracle Stories and the Beginning of Historiography: Herodotus Croesus Logos. Classical
Philology, 101, no. 1 (2006): 34-51, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=c6beb027-7d36-42e5-ae9ad749ab060ab1%40sessionmgr12&vid=1&hid=26&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=2
0815191

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they demanded supplicants to engage in dialectic.68 For example, one of oracles the most
commonly referenced statements was uttered in response to Croesus, the King of Lydia who had
come to Delphi sometime around 547 B.C.E seeking advice on whether or not to invade Persia.
The Pythia warned Croesus, that if he went to war with Persia he would destroy a great
empire. Croesus then, blindly interpreting these words within the scope of his own biased
notions of superiority, confidently went to war unaware that the great civilization he was about to
destroy would be his own.69 Oracles were often requested on behalf of entire city states. When
the Persian emperor Xerxes defeated the Spartan force at the battle of Thermopylae in 480
B.C.E, the Athenians, in a panic, sought Apollos advice at Delphi. The oracles response,
according to Herodotus, was Though all else shall be taken, Zeus, the all seeing, grants that the
wooden walls only shall not fail. While many Athenians interpreted this as meaning the walls
and thorny bushes around their Acropolis would protect them, Themistocles argued that it was
his wooden ships which would serve as their saving barrier; and he defeated the Persians at sea.70
Most primary sources indicate that like the Croesus example, most of the Pythias statements
were phrased simply in a manner which allowed for contradictory conclusions to be reached
rather easily. While again, the cynical view is such that this was devised by charlatans to ensure
the Pythia was never wrong, it can also be argued that this was an intentionalor perhaps
coincidental though no less beneficialdesign in Delphis working which mirrored the
68

Divination was not limited to the superstitious laymans daily ritual, it was a cultural necessity that permeated
throughout all Greek society. The Delphic Oracle in particular had great importance in the political sphere where
Senate members would ask the oracle for advice and then rationally debate its possible meanings back in Athens.
See, Hugh Bowden, Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy. (Cambridge University
Press, 2005). 1-11. Bowdens introduction offers a good synopsis of religions role in Greek society, and chapter
1offers a description of Delphis oracular process that complements the work of De Boer and Hale.
69
Kindt, Julia. Delphic Oracle Stories and the Beginning of Historiography: Herodotus Croesus Logos. Classical
Philology, 101, no. 1 (2006): 34-51, <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=c6beb027-7d36-42e5-ae9ad749ab060ab1%40sessionmgr12&vid=1&hid=26&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=2
0815191> For a more complete list of Delphis oracular statements, see H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The
Delphic Oracle (Oxford 1956).
70
See, Hdt. 7.143.2. Herodotus, The Histories with an English translation by A. D. Godley. (Cambridge, Harvard
University Press. 1920).

38

contradictory elements present in the Greeks fractured culturesuch as competing traditions of

myth and especially the enigmas within them.
The enigmas importance in encouraging philosophical debate was known in Greek
times. On the topic of understanding the origins behind the E at Delphi, a mysterious symbol
inscribed on the Doric Delphic temple, Plutarch considers, in a rather Platonic fashion, the
important role enigma plays in the oracular process. Philosophy, writes Plutarch, quoting
Ammonious during an earlier discussion had with the man:
...embraces inquiry, wonder, and doubt, it seems natural that most of the things relating
to the God should have been hidden away in riddles, and should require some account of
their purpose and explanation of the cause...these problems when suggested to persons
not altogether wanting in reason and soul lure them on and challenge them to inquire, to
listen and to discuss. Plutarch. De E 271
Plutarch spent time engaged in Roman politics before returning to that part of Greece where he
grew up; around 92 A.D become Delphis senior priest and spent the rest of his life there
engaged in spiritual and philosophical reflection. He describes Apollo as being no less
philosopher than he is prophet, a god of multiple spheres: the rational and tangible process of
philosophy along with the opposing and far more elusive mystical act of prophesy.
Since it is our personal concern to question him [Apollo] as prophet, but a general
concern to pray to him as god, they hold that the letter [E] embraces the virtue of prayer
no less than that of inquiry. Plut. De E 572

71

Plutarch, On the E at Delphi, translation by A.O. Prickard, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1918) with a few minor
changes and some additional notes taken from the translation of C.W. King (London: George Bell and Sons,
1889). <http://penelope.uchicago.edu/misctracts/plutarchE.html#394a>
72
Ibid

39

So while the oracle was literally believed to speak the words of Apollo, she did so in such a way
which dually required the implementation of a very non-mystical process. Well put by
Mcinerney, such enigmata allows the differences between philosophy and religion to be elided,
wherein philosophical enquiry becomes a holy and venerable activity. 73 Recall that in a
similar vein, there was no separation between secular and religious interpretation of things such
as mythology in early Greece, cosmology too being the result of feelings of awe naturally felt
when faced with ideas such as the universe and eternity. But by Plutarchs time, philosophy was
already well cemented into its various dogmatic schools of thought, far removed from the
broader pre-Socratic inquiry into mythical and cosmological enigmata; but because he was at
Delphi, and because he found himself within the Greek paradigm there, Plutarchs description of
Apollo hearkens back to the less dogmatic ideology of earlier times, in a way analogous to the
intertwined secular and religious spheres which would have been held by those living in the early
Greek Archaic period. Indeed, the dichotomy between two elements seemingly in opposition
with one anotherin this case the mystical idea of enthousiasmos and the rational idea of
philosophyplayed a tremendously important role throughout Delphi.
Delphic symbolism echo the Greeks unsaid sentiments upheld during orientalization
which they used to make sense of the world despite their lack of cultural grounding. Two
inscriptions famously etched next to the entrance of the temple read Know thyself and Nothing in
excess: messages which beckoned the Greeks to interpret their coming premonition from within
the context of themselves, weighing one possible meaning against the other so as to analyze the

73

Jeremy McInerney. Do you see what I see? Plutarch and Pausanias at Delphi L. de Blois (ed.) The Statesman in
Plutarchs Works. Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of the International Plutarch Society, (Nijmegen/
Hernen, May 2002) vol. 1. Mnemosyne Supplement. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 43-55.

40

Pythias mystical response from a rational place.74 A third phrase, go bail and woe is at hand
references the prior two inscriptions, warning that if one is so confident as to believe himself
capable of adhering perfectly to the aforementioned maxims, a tragic fate is sure to befall him.
This idea warns against hubris and encourages instead the dialectic process to undertaken by the
many rather than the few. These three phrases were widely known as the Delphic maxims,
which, writes Plutarch, a multitude of arguments has sprung up out of each, from a seed. 75
The maxims also point to the fact that differences in interpretation stem from the differencesor
dogmainherent within the unique individuals. Interpretation thus depended on individuals first
understanding their own internal biases; and then, after reaching independent conclusions,
entailed relaying these dogmatic lines of reasoning to others in a rationally sound way. Delphic
symbolism placed great importance on the power of variance with regard to dialectic; for without
multiple perspectives and hearty disagreement, there could be no debate. As a consequence of
this, Delphi can be said to have encouraged a form of interdisciplinarity.
Even Apollo was known by various names: Pythian, Inquirer, Delian, Phanean, since
he demanded perspectives different from one another for the dialectical process to work as
intended.76 Recall the earlier example of how the Milesian philosophers formed diverse
interpretations of the shared premise that there must be a first universal substance. Should this
process have occurred at Delphi, it would have been followed up by a period of dialectic
whereby thinkers would have agreed to rationally compare the conclusions of each school
without their attached dogmas.

74

Plat. Charm. 165. in Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. (Cambridge, MA,
Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955). And see, Pausanias, Pausanias Description of
Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. (Cambridge,
MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.)
75
Plut. De E 2.
76
Ibid, 2

41

Take the far more simple task of determining the right perspective from which to go
about proportionally increasing the size of an altar at Delos, site of another one of Apollos
temples:
That the god is a master of dialectic Theon said, is shown clearly by most of his oracles;
for you will grant that the solution of puzzles belongs to the same person as their
invention for example, when a response was given that the Altar at Delos should be
doubled, a matter requiring the most advanced geometry, the God was not merely
enjoining this but was also putting his strong command upon the Greeks to practice
geometry. Just so, when the God puts out ambiguous oracles, he is exalting and
establishing dialectic as essential to the right understanding of himself.77
Plutarch. De E 678
Theon explains that geometry was determined the most fitting way to go about completing such
a task. After reaching this shared premise, no doubt began further discussion over how to best
tackle the problem mathematically. The problem ended up unsolvable. Apparently using just a
compass and straightedge, it is impossible to mathematically solve the problem of doubling a
cube; instead it ended up being doubled using a mechanical method. But whereas for Theon, a
mathematical angle of attack worked best one oracle, for another under different circumstances
mathematical principles may obscure the oracle; Theon relents: I was at the time passionately
devoted to mathematics, though soon to find value of the maxim nothing too much. 79 As he
wanted a variety of disciplines to be practiced, Apollo wanted variety of gods to be worshipped

77

Plut. De E 6
Ibid
79
Ibid, 7.
78

42

at his oracles80 Though Apollo remains the most well known god worshipped at Delphi, half
the time and no less important, the god Dionysus was worshipped; this represented yet another
angle of attack from which supplicants might interpret oracles. While Apollo, being the god of
dialectic encouraged and demanded the rational thought process, this was balanced by
Dionysus, who represented a more emotional, humanlike perspective, and demanded looking at a
problem from a point of view which was almost entirely opposite of Apollo. Dionysian ritual
sometimes encouraged the copious consumption of inebriants such as wine which lowered
inhibitions and numbed the more analytical aspects of the mind encouraging raw human
animalistic emotion. If one only adhered to the dialectical process within the rational scope of
Apollo, than one was at risk of becoming too computer like, devoid of emotion and ruled by
purely rational processes; on matters of science and understanding systems, this may be good; in
contrast, when analyzing human problems which dealt with morals, complex expressions of
emotion and more enigmatic irrational concepts, one might have to yield to the more
humanlike, and instinctual Dionysian perspective. At Delphi, these two perspectives,
metaphorically represented by Dionysus and Apollo, were present in equipoise, deemed the best
human modes of thought for assessing open ended problems from a balanced perspective.81
Plutarch notes an almost magical invocation of Greeks innovative past which occurred
preserved at Delphi, and caused one to second guess preexisting internalized dogma and
presuppositions. He writes that as we sat down near the temple...I began to raise questions with

80

Kristen Heineman, The Decline of Delphi (Phd Dissertation University of Newcastle, 2013), 151.
<http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/939916>
81
Delphi is famous as the seat of Apollo, the god of reason, of limit. The Delphic motto is "Know thyself," the
stern injunction inscribed at its temple portal. Delphi is also home to Dionysos, the god of instinct, of un-limit, the
boundless apeiron. Somehow the two gods, so seemingly opposed at a fundamental level, gained here, at the center
of the cosmos a mysterious equilibrium of force-counter-force, of materiality contra immateriality, of Being contra
Non-Being. Currie, 2009, 196.

43

myself, and to put others to them.82 Plutarchs Delphi of 92A.D existed in a vastly different
world than did Delphi during Archaic and Classical Greece, and only 100 years before Plutarchs
writings, Strabo had described the place as a shell of its former self. 83 With Rome in power and
engaged in a process of cultural exportation, long gone were the days of orientalization which
demanded the constant reimagining and internalized critiquing of such ideas. However, as
Jeremy McInerney notes, In Plutarchs writings Delphi serves as a monumental evocation of
cultural memory, a place reverberating with multiple meanings. It is a place where past and
present meet, where Greece and Rome face each other, and where hegemony is redefined in
terms entirely favorable to the Greeks. 84 In fact, during the first century, Delphi experienced a
surging renewal of prosperity with Roman emperors holding newfound stock in the sanctuary;
and Mcinerney writes matter of factly that Delphi was no backwater in Plutarchs day. 85 From
Plutarch himself:
The Pythias words, going straight to the truth, pass every test, and have never yet proved
false when examined. They have filled the shrine with the richest offerings, Greek and
barbarian, and adorned it with fine buildings and Amphictyonic possessions. You
yourselves can see many structures where there were none before, while many that were
in ruin have recently been restored. Just as others grow next to healthy trees, so too,
Pylaea is just as flourishing and prosperous as Delphi. Thanks to the wealth here she
has not looked so lovely in a thousand years.

82

Plut. De E 1
Jeremy McInerney. Do you see what I see? Plutarch and Pausanias at Delphi L. de Blois (ed.) The Statesman in
Plutarchs Works. Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of the International Plutarch Society, (Nijmegen/
Hernen, May 2002) vol. 1. Mnemosyne Supplement. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 43. Strabo considered the site as rich in
monuments but poor in silver.
84
Ibid, 44
85
Ibid, 43. McInerney cites that, Nero and Domitian who paid for renovations on the temple and visited in 84
which had benefitted from the largesse of emperors such as Nero and Domitian as examples of Delphis
resurgence.
83

44

Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis 408F-409A86

In the above passage, writing to his friends in Athens of his city and of its temple, Plutarch uses
language which suggests that Delphis numinous present is more than a match for Athens
glorious past, a fortunate assertion by a reliable source which lends credibility to the idea of
using Delphi from the 1st century as a means by which to better understand how it functioned
earlier during its prime.87 Though Plutarch is often seen as unusually accommodating to
Rome, his Pythian Logoi excise Delphis recent past by all but completely ignoring postclassical Hellenistic and Roman monuments despite the fact that in the early second century,
Delphi was adorned with hundreds if not thousands of [new] major dedications. 88 Instead,
Plutarch focuses entirely on earlier Greek structures, which he describes as having a sort of
living cultural energy akin to that which remained present within Homers epic poetry:
Aristotle used to say that only Homer could compose poetry in which the words moved
thanks to their energy. I would have to say that among dedications, too, the ones made
here also can move and giving signs in accordance with the gods foreknowledge; no
part of them is empty or senseless; rather, all are full of the divine.
Plutarch, De Pythiae Oraculus, 398a.89
McInerney notes that Roman travel writer Pausanias too, visiting the site in the second century,
similarly:
...managed to expunge the Roman presence at Delphi almost entirely...If Delphi is to
serve as the centre for a Greek culture that is worthy of parity with Romes power it is a

86

As referenced by McInerney. Ibid, 43.

Ibid, 45. McInerney writes, Delphi can claim a status that far exceeds that of Athens since all of Delphi is sacred
to Apollo and all discussions that take place here are infused with the gods presence.
88
Ibid, 49, 51.
89
Plutarch describes, in De Pythiae Oraculis 398A, the monuments which he sees as sharing in the mystical spirit of
Delphi. As referenced by McInerney in Ibid, 48.
87

45

Delphi in which the deep past is vividly present...When Pausanias visited the sanctuary in
the second century AD he saw the sanctuary in much the same state as it must have
appeared to Plutarch. Like Plutarch, Pausanias managed to expunge the Roman presence
from Delphi almost entirely. He names 77 separate dedications and offerings at Delphi,
and not one of them is Roman.90
Throughout his description of Delphi, Pausanias simply filtered out those periods of the past
that did not evoke the days of Greeks independence. 91 While Pausanias language at first
presents a very secular view of Delphi laced with healthy skepticism, he transitions into using
language which evokes a sense of awe over the enigmas power at Delphi which comes across as
very reminiscent of Plutarch. Pausanias concludes that rather than taking the spiritual enigmas
of mythology at face value as he did before, upon deeper reflection a more pertinent meaning can
be unveiled:
As for these stories of the Greeks, when I began my work I regarded them as full of
nonsense, but now that I have reached the Arkadian material I have begun to think about
them this way: in the olden days those of the Greeks who were considered wise spoke in
enigmas, and did not offer straightforward explanations, and so I think that this story
about Kronos is a piece of Greek wisdom.
Pausanias 8.8.392
The power of metaphor and religious enigma as it related to practicing the philosophical process
came from the idea that by doing so one was performing an action dictated by divine will and
free of the dogmatism that came with a more egotistical adherence to a particular line of thought.

90

His silence on these dedications contrasts with the almost manic detail of his description of Greek dedications
Ibid, 51.
91
Ibid, 52
92
As referenced by McInerney. Ibid 52.

46

Beginning in classical Greece and continuing on to Hellenistic and Roman times, philosophy had
been deconstructed to the point where various schools of thought were often marred by agendas
and egotistical efforts to continue their dogmatic traditions. The sanctity of Delphi had the effect
of preserving the aspect of religious duty as it related to the practice of rational philosophy as
had been done by the Pre-socratics during orientalization. McInerney writes, in other words the
power of antiquity continues to operate in the present...as with Plutarch, the [Delphic] landscape
exists both in space and in time. McInerney considers both Plutarch and Pausanias description
of the Roman Delphi as representing the religious centre of what is eternal Greece one which
by being, cut off from the usual flow of time...is also released from the inevitable decline that
time brings. While Pausanias shares with Plutarch the commonplace sentiment that the
affairs of men are transient and frail...both writers appear to exempt Delphi from the process of
inevitable decline. For Plutarch it is a holy spot where the god makes his presence felt, and for
Pausanias it is the living centre of a venerable Greece. In both cases, the impact of Hellenistic
and Roman times is inconsequential. 93
Though Delphis paradigm remained intact during Hellenistic Greece and some of
Roman Greece, throughout the rest of the Mediterranean the Delphic paradigm had been
crumbling. One variable which, during the latter years of Hellenistic Greece, played a role in the
deconstruction of the Delphic paradigm was the rise of what cultural Historian Dr. William
Fleming, in his book Arts and Ideas, considered a transition to a culture of spectatorism.
Fleming contrasts early Greeces culture of amateurism with a later culture of professionalism
that served to delegate the inquiry of knowledge to a privileged few; these professionals were
much more inclined to fall into strict patterns which guided their intellectual pursuits. Fleming
writes:
93

Ibid, 53.

47

In the earlier Hellenic centers, poets, playwrights, and musicians were mainly skilled
amateurs; even in sports the emphasis was on active participation. In the Hellenistic
period, however, a rising spirit of professionalism is noted in the fame of individual
writers, actors, virtuosos, and athletes, with the result that people became passive
spectators rather than active participants.94
Mediterranean thinkers became immersed in culture of professional philosophy, that is, they
practiced philosophy for material gain in the form of money or fame. Recall that early
philosophia, as a religious pursuit, was practiced by amatueurs, and by Greek bards interested
in the love of knowledge, their purpose being to better understand their religious culture. These
thinkers, immersed in a culture of orientalization, desired to unlock and compare knowledge they
saw hidden within diverse mythologies. As Greece progressed and left orientalization, people
and groups alike became more comfortable within their own various ideological paradigms.
True, pure, rational thought as encouraged at Delphi became more and more difficult after
colonization because the sentiments from which people proceeded became more constricted by
rigid ideological paradigms. With the passing of time, the Greeks childlike curiosity yielded to
the emerging culture of professionalism. This new and powerful motivator contributed to the
destruction of the Delphic paradigm since it began to replace the amateur spirit which had been
upheld by the many Greeks earlier on. Less amateurs meant less perspectives to consider; and,
keeping in line with Kuhns theory on the growth of knowledge, this meant longer periods of
normal science whereby strict paradigms or laws governed the ways in which certain avenues
of thought were considered culturally acceptable. Kuhn argued that when an open end is
found, to make sense of it, thinkers find it necessary to pick a side and adhere to the most
plausible perspective from where investigations continue. The earth is round or the earth is flat,
94

William Fleming. Arts and Ideas. (Holt, Rinehart And Winston, 1974).

48

for example. After some time pursuing a certain vein of reasoning, if they are to declare
themselves correct, thinkers must reject adherence to all opposing perspectives and declare them
false. The move from amateurism to professionalism in Greece meant that professional egos and
money were on the line; being right became more important than ever, and intellectual leaders
had all the more reason to vehemently assert their dogma.
Nevertheless, Delphi with its ritual process and its unique position of neutrality meant
that it remained a place where the early Greek paradigm was preserved for a period of time. Up
until Delphis fall, the paradigm from which oracular sentiments were analyzed was enigmatic in
every way imaginable: the oracles deliberately open ended phrasing, Apollo and Dionysus, the
Delphic maxims, and dialectic; thus Delphi remained for the most part free from dogmatism. It
was up to the individual consulting the oracle to use his or her own reasoning and personal
experience to determine which perspective to take. This often meant that in matters where the
oracle was posed to an entire society, some individuals chose to look at the oracular response in
one way, while others chose different manners. Because of its divine nature, Delphis oracular
statements superseded professionalism and thus periodically broke the dogmatic cycle; when
oracles were brought back to the poleis politicians would have had to debate and convince each
other that one perspective was more logically sound over another in a way which would have
pleased Apollo.95 But as is the case with historys great civilizations, architectural monuments,
and sculptures, ideologies too find themselves replaced and discarded with the progression of
time. Greek and Roman religionthat which gave Delphi its powerslowly became replaced
by Christianity; and with this transition came a great change in context.

95

Hugh Bowden, Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy, (Cambridge University
Press, 2005).

49

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see
the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is
familiar with it. Max Planck96

Conclusion
Of all the things exchanged during orientalization, mythology was arguably the most
important with regard to ushering in a new age of innovation. Greek myths, and all myths for
that matter represent in a unique way the first form of humanitys experiential knowledge as it
pertained to everything, free from the potent effects later concrete forms of culture began to have
on civilization. Myths long preceded both written language and other more permanent forms of
cultural which have collectively altered preexisting paradigms and changed the way mankind has
thought about and compartmentalized things. Myth may be considered pure in a way, a
reflection of humanity at a time when all we knew was our own psychology, our wants and
desires, untouched by civilizations progressive ideological paradigms. These stories represent
an archaic knowledge of ourselves long before religion, science, epistemology and logic had
begun to progress into their more present forms. The opposing human elements of experience
and raw imagination were the bricks and mortar from which mythical stories were constructed,
and as such, myths provide profound insight into the nature of humanity from a variety of
instinctual perspectives. Today, myths are sometimes seen as being the first forms of religion;
but this view is simplistic. Though religious elements were undoubtedly mixed into these
mythologies, at a more grounded level, myths are simply humanitys first stories; stories based
on experience, passed orally from person to person, from generation to generation, and tinged
96

Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie. Mit einem Bildnis und der von Max von
Laue gehaltenen Traueransprache. (Leipzig 1948), 22, as translated in Scientific Autobiography and Other
Papers, trans. F. Gaynor (New York, 1949), 3334.

50

with elements of creative and spiritual expression. The oxymorons and poetics present within
myth in the form of religious and rational enigmas must be thus understood to be creative
elements, early forms of wisdom pertaining to broad aspects of the collectively acquired human
experience. When the Greek civilization began their process of rational inquiry by analyzing the
open ends posed by these stories, they were in effect rediscovering and relabeling some of the
fundamental cosmological questions posed by past generations, preserved artistically within the
many origin myths that which circulated from as far as India.
The decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity as the predominant
religious force coincided with the end of Delphis position as religious center. Delphis sacking
at the hands of Christian raiders was in many ways the symbolic end to both Apollos
millennium long reign and of Greco-Roman religion. The Mediterraneans gods became pagan
gods; they fell from grace and become relics delegated to the sands of time. Thomas Kuhn
argued that a period of strife always precedes a paradigm shift because it calls upon the current
generation to question the ways in which established beliefs may or may not fit into their
changing world view; thus Kuhn believed the decision to reject a paradigm is always the
decision to accept another. 97 Delphis fall represented, both religiously and philosophically, the
fracturing of its paradigm; Christianity was in many ways the final catalyst required for the
subsequent paradigm shift that occurred thereafter. Unlike Greek religion, Christianity was
based upon religious text; the bible formed the ideological bedrock from which Greek religious
beliefs could be reanalyzed. The pliable manner in which the oral Greek and Roman religious
tradition operated found itself effaced by rock solid biblical interpretations by those in charge of
enforcing new religious ideology. This new religious paradigm was far less pliable with regards

97

Kuhn, 1962, 77.

51

to debate and enquiry than had been the oral traditions of the past; and one might argue that as a
direct consequence of this, came the end of the Greeks dialectic process. The Greeks
accommodating philosophical manner of inquiry was result of what they deemed a religious duty
to entertain possible perspectives; but, alongside Christianitys rise to dominance, came a new
notion of heresy.98 With this powerful tool leaders could quench the dissemination of viewpoints
they deemed hostile or potentially threatening to their religious world view, and compared with
the Greek bards elaborate turned philosophical debates over religious enigma, Christianitys
singular use of the bible made it far easier powerful groups to twist and construe its words for
their own machinations. Socrates once proclaimed his disdain for writing; he believed the
written word had the propensity to become dangerously dogmatic to the point of stifling the
progression of discourse; perhaps he was right in this way.
By banning Greek religion, Christian political leadersfamously Theodosius I
introduced the conflict necessary to complete their paradigm shift. Greek temples were sacked
and acts central to the practice of Greek religionlike animal sacrificewere made illegal.
Nevertheless, and as eloquently put by the 20th century classical scholar E.R. Dodds:
A new belief-pattern very seldom effaces completely the pattern that was there before:
either the old lives on as an element in the new sometimes an unconfessed and half
unconscious element or else the two persist side by side, logically incompatible, but
contemporaneously accepted by different individuals or even by the same individual.
E.R Dodds99
Though Greek religions blatantly obvious acts of worship were explicitly banned, Greek
worship also included the pursuit of what, under Christian rule, was now deemed separate,

98
99

Eric R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, (University of California press, 1951, 2004). 180.
Ibid. 179.

52

scientific thought. The Delphic paradigm, unable to exist as a strictly religious ideology,
fractured into various branches, some purely rational and others more spiritual and artistic. Since
Christianity divisively separated the notion of religion from the rational spheresas evident by
the idea of Unam sanctam, the Christian position that spiritual power must reign above secular
and rational powerthe pursuit of philosophy and later science diverged from being what was at
Delphi, still considered a religious pursuit; they became something which by new definition was
considered entirely separate. Mark Petersons book Galileos Muse, puts forth a fascinating
perspective which takes into account this idea. Peterson argues that during the Renaissance, the
rediscovery of Greek ideas by thinkers such as Galileo came about not from the direct
continuation of academic lines which were at the time deemed strictly secular, but rather from
the analysis of Greek art, poetry, and other such works which, while more spiritual in nature,
embodied hidden within them the mathematical and scientific principles which had once been
part of the Delphic paradigm as a whole.100 In an interview with Harvard University, Peterson
states that during the Renaissance: Whats happening in the arts and what [Galileo] did that
looks like science, these things look totally different; but mathematically, abstractly, they are the
same.101 From this perspective, the Renaissance entailed a massive interdisciplinary effort to

100

Mark A. Peterson, Galileos Muse. (Harvard University Press, 2011) 2,4,5. Each section of Petersons book
attempts to recover classical excellence in works of Renaissance arts; in poetry, painting, music, and architecture,
and in doing so, uncovers a clear mathematical thread running through every one 2. Peterson uses one example to
illustrate Galileos break from medieval theories of motion, he writes: What [Galileo] he says is almost misleading:
I wonder not a little how such a question escaped the attention of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid, and so many
other mathematicians and illustrious philosophers...there is a fragment of Euclid which treats of motion, but in it
there is no indication that he ever began to investigate the property of acceleration....Galileo ignores two thousand
years of history and connects his work directly to the Hellenistic Greeks instead, even if there is no real precedent to
point to. It is no wonder if this remark has been considered unhelpful in understanding what Galileo did...Greeks
had known everything necessary to discover the parabola law, even if they hadnt actually discovered it. The
simplest interpretation of these lines, reinforced in many other places, is that Galileo really did regard himself as
direct heir of the Greeks. Most of this book will explore what that means. 4, 5.
101
Mark A. Peterson, video interview by Sarah Luehrman, The 5th De Bosis Colloquium in Italian Studies, Harvard
University Department of Romance Languages and Literature, March 5, 2012.

53

piece back together some portions of the Greek paradigm which had subsequently been
deconstructed during its fragmentation.
Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks
to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent
on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And
what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of
other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous. There are only a few
enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has
been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe
it to a few writers of antiquity that the people in the Middle Ages could slowly extricate
themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a
millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernists snobbishness.Albert
Einstein102
Though the Delphic paradigm is gone forever, it still serves to teach us the value of
interdisciplinarity by representing the earlier unified expression of knowledge before it became
compartmentalized as we see the world today. In modernity, not only are religion and
secularism separate from one another, and religion and science and philosophy separate from
each other, but even the fields comprising them are themselves comprised of even more complex
subsets. And while Kuhn states that it is by these divisions that as humans we are able further
the progression of our knowledgebecause we need to label specific perspectives in order to
grasp minutia more fullyone consequence of this is the loss of a holistic understanding along
the way. If you think about it, all of these specific subsets have their own rules and dogmatic

102

Written for the Jungkaufmann, a monthly publication of the Schweizerischer Kaufmaennischer Verein, Jugendbund February 29, 1952. Quoted in: Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, (Crowne/Archetype, 2005)

54

traditions attached with them. This makes it harder to bend the rules in ways which are
sometimes necessary for innovation. With regard to the science of history, historians are, like
scientists, forbidden from allowing unindicted personal bias to shape their work; the deliberate
misrepresentation of truth risks biasing future works. But as is especially evident in
historiography, historical knowledge is far from objective; instead comprised of assumptions
be them personal, cultural, or archeologicalwhich regardless of intent, effectively limit
subsequent understanding to a subjective perspective. Winston Churchills clich adage,
history is written by the victors warns of the danger in failing to recognize this fact. Early
Greece was special because Delphi complemented the fragmentation of the city states as a
holistic hub where Greeks could come and escape their limiting dogmas. There were a lot of
different dogmatic traditions that varied from polis to polis, and this allowed for the growth of
knowledge along the lines of what Kuhn described as normal science. Each city state followed
their own set of rules; and specific religious and philosophical ideologies progressed
independently. But at the same time, within the Greek world Delphi afforded an opposing
unifying effect. The potent combination of Greeces polis structure with Delphis transcendent
position allowed the Greeks to periodically reassess their dogmatic lines and engage in what
Kuhn termed revolutionary science: where for a brief time it was from the whole that questions
were once again analyzed.
What gave these men the right to be considered philosophers, unlike the other
astronomers, geographers, and doctors who were active especially in the latter half of the
period, was their common assumption that the world possessed some kind of integral unity and
determinability which could be understood and explained in rational terms. A more important

55

debt to myth appears in the central presupposition that the world is coherent and intelligible, is
somehow a unity in spite of the diversity of its appearance.
-Nietzsche 1890
It really is the human mind which through language and labels has separated our
subjective experiences of reality into various categories. Because of this there is the issue of
incommensurability, the philosophical conundrum that comes with being a creature of
intelligence. The brain wants to define and label our experiences in a way which allows us to
communicate specific aspects of our surroundings to other people. The mind wants to separate
things. But intuitively, and emotionally, what complements the mindbut is at the same time
indescribable using the minds terminologyare incommunicable feelings. One of the reasons
that myth continues to be analyzed in the study of art, psychology, philosophy, and literature, is
because it preserves an instinctual expression of human experience. In their efforts to pass on
and infuse myth with characteristics they had deemed important, early humans used their
imagination to condense and deconstruct the vastness of the human experience into digestible
stories comprised of archetypical characters, themes, and recognizable symbols. Different gods
personified various human characteristicsdifferent methods of thinking and acting as
archetypes each representing a fragment of the whole human psyche. If you really think about
what Dionysus represented at Delphi, it was something akin to Anaximanders boundless
apeiron, the intangible feeling and perceiving aspects of human intuition and instinct. And what
Apollo represented was the analytical mind. Delphic mysticism encouraged the functioning of
these perspectives in unison, both being necessary for a holistic understanding of reality. In
todays increasingly fractured and complex world, the sheer volume of information afforded to
us demands interdisciplinary cooperation more than ever. What revolutions might be had should

56

the arts and sciences, like mind and the body and like Apollo and Dionysus be made to
periodically meet one another, in the absence of dogma, under something akin to the Delphic
paradigm.

57

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