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HERODOTUS AND ORACULAR OBSCURITY

THE RIDDLER | April 30th 2008

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Herodotus, A.P. David insists, is the original post-post-modern in a pluralist world. He made history by inventing history. But his use of oracles clashes with our modern sense of divinity and rationality ...

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The use of oracles in Herodotus confounds a modern reader. Not only are such things considered irrational and perhaps a little silly now, but also the Delphic worldview can feel alienating. The Apollonian eye that stares out atop the pyramid from every dollar bill, which sees what has been, what is, and what's to come, has a measured disinterest in our interest. This is not the God who cares for us and shapes our ends in line with a loving plan. Nor is it the calculus of impersonal forces that results in a chance embryo in a possible universe. Rather, it is a god with an unbearably clear vision of the language and motion of history, who deigns to speak this to us, riddlingly, in our own language. And of course, in light of this riddle, something essential always gets lost in the translation.

Apollo's wisdom is therefore useless. Or worse: for us, it has neither the comfort and assurance of personal truth, nor the impersonal clarity of science.

The oracles themselves were written in verse, and so they have a certain timelessness. For Herodotus--and for us--reading the verses delivered to famous and long-dead folk is to travel through time and confront a living enigma in music.

Croesus went so far as to test all the oracles he knew. He sent out his emissaries to ask them what he was doing on the 100th day after their departure; meanwhile, on the 100th day, he boiled some tortoise and lamb meat in a bronze cauldron with a bronze lid. The Pythia, presiding over the oracle of Apollo, spoke hexameters in the Delphic hall:

... A smell steals over my senses, the smell of a hard-shelled tortoise,
seethed in bronze with the meat of lambs, mingled together;
bronze is the base beneath, and bronze the vestment upon it. (tr. Grene)

So Croesus had his true oracle, and he propitiated the Greek god with great sacrifices and dedications. He performed the test because he had a much more important question to ask, one that seems to come up in history from time to time: should he invade Persia?

Of course it would be extraordinarily irresponsible for a leader to not consult with somebody who might know the way of things before he chose war over peace. For "in the one, children bury their fathers; in the other, fathers their children" (Herodotus). As in the private sphere, if you lose your investment, most would say it was your own fault if you had not consulted some sort of economist. And if you go out the door without an umbrella and it later rains, well, you should have checked the weather. Yet neither economics nor meteorology are considered hard sciences. Weathermen and economists study past patterns as a way to diagnose the present, and so delimit alternatives for the future. (Ancient medicine was also like this, and modern medicine too, in terminal cases and in pregnancy.) Not without reason are the pronouncements of the Fed called "oracular".

And yet there is not in these modern consultants and their educated guesswork the implication of an Apollonian plan, a true course of history, which mocks our intuitions about it and riddles us at best. Perhaps Apollo is the historian's god, an alternative to Jehovah and Newton. Croesus was told by the oracle that if he invaded Persia, a great empire would fall. He neglected to inquire whether the god meant his own.

When Cyrus the Persian conqueror spares his life, Croesus asks if he might demand an explanation of this god of the Greeks, ungrateful for all his offerings. The answer comes in prose, not verse, suggesting that it is Herodotus' own theodicy. I abridge and paraphrase: "Look, no one can escape fate. Croesus is the fifth generation since Gyges the criminal, and he has to pay. Look, I tried to put it off till the next one, but nothing doing. As it happens, I did manage to put off the fall of Sardis for three whole years--so you might as well be grateful." Like a fickle mafia boss with a soft side, Apollo apparently does care for Croesus in a way. Perhaps poor Croesus was blessed after all.

My favourite oracle in Herodotus runs:

The cast has been thrown indeed, and the net has been truly outstretched;
swoop, swoop will the tunny-fish through the moon-lighted night.

A soothsayer delivers it to Pisistratus, Croesus's contemporary, as he is encamped on a third mission to become tyrant of Athens. Herodotus makes no attempt to clear up its obscurity. "I welcome it", is all that Pisistratus says. Perhaps this is Athenian spunk. Thanks for the prophecy, mate. Damn the torpedoes.

(A.P. David is the author of "The Dance of the Muses". See his other readings of Herodotus on More Intelligent Life here, here, here and here. Translations cited here are by the late David Grene.)