The Odyssey and Delphi: Notes on Greek Divination

C. Michael Sampson (University of Michigan)

It is not often that one can speak of the oracles of Dodona and Delphi as avant-garde, yet in the Homeric poems, they are precisely that.  Apart from the prominence of the mantis and omen-based divination, the Iliad and Odyssey are noteworthy inasmuch as they are largely unaware of oracles as a means of discerning the gods’ will.  We are far from the fifth century: Delphi is named only as ‘Pytho’ (Il. 2.519, 9.405), and references to it speak only of its lainos oudos (Il. 9.404; Od. 8.79).  Were it not for one exceptional reference to a prophesied quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles (Od. 8.75-81), there is no evidence that Homer is aware of Delphi as an oracular shrine at all.  The same nearly holds for Dodona; in the Iliad reference is made to the Selli—who are called interpreters (hypophêtai, 16.235), apparently of Zeus—but only in the Odyssey is it made clear that the shrine provides access to the boulê Dios (Od. 14.328; 19.297). 

The omission of oracles as a prominent form of divination is perhaps explained by the fact that Homer otherwise prefers the mantis and the interpretation of omens as his normative mode of divination.[1]  But when one considers other novel instances of divination such as the vulgar necromancy (or so-called nekuia[2]) of Odyssey 11 and Theoclymenos’ ecstatic vision of the suitors’ slaughter in Odyssey 20, that the same poem also begins to make mention of oracles indicates more than a simple coincidence. 

This paper argues that the Homeric epics can be used as a literary witness to recent historical changes in Greek divination.  The Odyssey, in particular, shows an awareness of modes of divination that are either exotic or have recently been introduced to the Greek cultural imagination.  These changes have elsewhere been argued to have been set off in the eighth and seventh centuries.[3]  Since, as Catherine Morgan has pointed out, there is no evidence for sanctuary activity at Delphi before c. 800 BCE, and no reliable evidence of oracular activity before the late eighth century,[4] the Odyssey—all questions of dating aside—represents a moment in Greek cultural history prior to the establishment of Delphi as the predominate pan-hellenic divinatory shrine.  The Odyssey, in this light, can also be treated as an important document in the history of Greek divination.