Priests and Priestesses. The ancient Greeks had an extraordinary variety of priests and priestesses, each attached to a specific, localized deity. That is to say, there was no generic "priestess" or "priestess of Artemis," but rather a priestess of Artemis Laphria at Patras, and a priestess of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. Unlike many modern religions, in which rituals may only be performed by consecrated, career priests, the most important rites of the Greeks— sacrifice, libation—could be performed by anyone. The purpose of priest(ess)hoods, then, was to have an appropriate person look after the possessions of the deity in question and carry out specific rites.
The matter of who was an appropriate person varied according to the priest(ess)hood and cult in question. Each priest(ess)hood required an individual of a specific gender. Usually gods had priests and goddesses had priestesses, but there were exceptions. Zeus of Dodona had priestesses called doves, and higher officials in the Eleusinian Mysteries in honor of Demeter and Persephone were male. Age was also an issue. Aphrodite's temple at Sikyon had two cult officiants, both female. One was the neokoros, an older woman who no longer had sexual relations with men; the other was the loutrophoros ("bath-carrier"), a virgin. No other people could enter the temple, and, as Burkert remarked, "the goddess of sexual life can be approached freely only by those who are excluded from her works" (Burkert 1985, 98). As age was an issue, terms of appointment also varied. Some functionaries served for one festival or for a year. Others served for life.
Many priest(ess)hoods ran in families. The Eumolpidai family provided the hierophants at Eleusis; the Eteoboutadai provided the priestess of Athena Po-lias in Athens; Embaros's descendants served as priests of Brauronian Artemis. In other instances, the priest or priestess merely had to come from a good (i. e., upper-class) family; the young priest of Apollo Ismenios at Thebes was such a functionary, as recorded by Pausanias (9.10.4): "The following, as I understand it, still occurs in Thebes. For Ismenian Apollo a child of excellent household (and himself good-looking and sound of body) they make annual priest. And his title is Laurel-Bearer, for the children wear crowns of laurel leaves."
In other instances, the functionary was chosen by lot. An inscription from Athens dating to 450-445 b. c.e. (Meiggs and Lewis 1992, 44 [40]) decrees the appointment, for life, of the priestess of Athena Nike, to be chosen by lot from all free Athenian women (Meiggs and Lewis 1992, 108).
Of course, if the priestess did not come from a wealthy family, she was rather dependent on her paycheck, and this issue did arise for this priestess. According to a later inscription (Meiggs and Lewis 1992, 71 [73]) dating to c. 424 b. c.e., this priestess of Athena Nike was paid 50 drachmai annually for her services to goddess and city (Meiggs and Lewis 1992, 204). In other instances, priests or priestesses received different types of goods in exchange for their services. A portion of all sacrifices went to them, including, usually, the animal hide (leather). Money was paid to cults and temples for certain rituals, like initiation cults, and the cult functionaries no doubt received portions of these fees.
The functions of priests and priestesses varied as much as their individual appointments. Common duties included caring for the sanctuary, temple, and divine statue. In some cases, as with the cult of Sikyonian Aphrodite mentioned above, only the priestesses had access to these. Although it was not necessary for a sacrifice to be enacted by a priest/ess, it was usual for them to oversee such activities in their sanctuaries. At oracular shrines, the priest(ess) may have been responsible for giving or interpreting oracles, like the Delphic Pythia and her attendant priests. Different cult functionaries were also responsible for enacting various rituals within their poleis. The Athenian Basilinna, wife of the archon Basileus, had sex with a celebrant representing Dionysos during the Anthesteria Festival (see above, in the section about Dionysos). The part of Dionysos was probably played by the archon Basileus. The priestess of Artemis Orthia oversaw the flogging of Spartan youths; the Eleusinian hiero-phantes revealed the sacred things that initiated initiates into the mysteries of Demeter and Kore (Persephone). The priests of Asclepius were the earliest doctors in Greece; not only did they interpret healing dreams for their patients, but they learned quite a bit about symptom diagnosis as well (see chapter 10). Ultimately, priests and priestesses were the deities' servants, performing whatever tasks tradition required.
Oracles. The Greeks wanted to know the mind and will of the deities, especially when disasters such as a plague struck, or when an expensive new venture such as colonization was about to take place. The commonest means of consulting the deities was through oracles, people who had special access to the divine. As in the Near East, where the Greeks may have learned the "art" of divination, there were two types of human oracles—mad/possessed and sane. The sane oracles were less common and were usually male. The most famous example in literature is the Theban Teiresias, who lived in the age of Oedipus but was still prophesying from the underworld in the age of Odysseus. According to Ovid (Metamorphoses), Zeus made Teiresias a prophet after he settled a debate between Zeus and Hera. Because Teiresias sided in favor of Zeus, Hera blinded him; Zeus, unable to reverse Hera's punishment, softened it by giving Teiresias the gift of prophecy—inner sight in exchange for outer sight. Thus, Teiresias was able to know fate and the hidden workings of the world, and he was able to control his knowledge and prophecies.
More common were the mad/possessed prophets, usually female. As the Greeks understood the female body to be squishy and hollow, they believed women had a greater potential for possession than men (Padel 1983, passim). With prophetesses, Zeus or Apollo took possession of the woman and, through her, spoke their will. The prophetesses therefore did not know fate, nor were they able to control their prophecies. The two most famous prophetesses in Greece were the Trojan princess Cassandra and the Delphic Pythia, both possessed by Apollo. According to Aeschylus's Agamemnon, Cassandra received the gift of prophecy from Apollo in exchange for agreeing to have sex with the god. However, she reneged on her promise after she received her gift. Even though she denied the god sexual access to her body, Apollo "entered" her in a violent fashion when he gave her his prophecies. Screaming "O, Apollo! Apollo!" as the god seized her body and mind, she cried (Agamemnon, ll. 1214-1216):
Ay! Ay! Oh! Oh! Evils!
The dread pain of true prophecy whirls again beneath me
And drives me mad with its onset, horrid beginnings!
The scenario with the Pythia was slightly less violent. Although Apollo did not "rape" this priestess, she did give her prophecies under the spell of madness. According to Greek tradition, the inquisitor underwent rites of purification, after which he/she might direct a question to Apollo through the Pythia. Upon receipt of the question, the Pythia put herself into a trance, sitting before a smoking tripod in the inner sanctum of Delphi. Then Apollo filled her mind with the answer, which the Pythia expounded as mad ravings. A handful of priests who accompanied the priestess translated her ravings into Greek hexameter for the petitioner. The Pythia was functionally mad while she prophesied, and there is no evidence that she understood, or even remembered, what she spoke. For years, there has been a debate among modern scholars about whether the Pythia was under some manner of chemical influence or drug-induced high during her ravings. It now appears that the site of the inner sanctum of Delphi is located right over two fault lines running under Greece, and that the chemical composition of the underlying geology is such that fumes escaping out through the faults in the rocks have a narcotic effect on someone located above who inhales them (Hale et al. 2003, passim). The fact that the Pythia was seated right over the literal exhaust vent for these fumes does suggest that there was a chemical element to her madness.
Zeus's prophetesses underwent less physical/mental violation in their work. Zeus's prophetess at Patara was understood to be the god's concubine; she received her oracles when shut up for the night with the god in his temple, as recounted by Herodotus. Priestesses called doves at the sanctuary of Zeus and Dione at Dodona in northern Greece, said to be the oldest of the Greek oracles, went into a state of divine madness in Zeus's sacred oak grove, and in this state they delivered his messages. Once again, though, like the Pythia, these prophetesses were understood to be in a state of ecstasy (literally, standing outside of themselves) when they spoke, and afterward they had no knowledge of their experience. "It was when they were mad that the prophetesses of Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona achieved so much for which both states and people in Greece are grateful: when sane they did little or nothing" (Plato, Phaidros, 244).
For the more do-it-yourself inquisitor, there were oracles of the dead and dream oracles, cults in which the petitioner could consult with the deities semidirectly. An example of the former is the oracle of Trophonios at Lebadeia in Boiotia. Trophonios, reputedly a son of Apollo, was an architect until, as punishment for a crime, he was literally swallowed up by the Earth. Afterward, the site of his swallowing became the focus of an oracle, where, after several purification rituals a petitioner could enter (Pausanias 9.39):
Going down there is an opening between the floor and the structure; the width is 2 spans, the height appears to be 1 span. The descender lay himself down on the floor holding barley cakes mixed with honey; and first he inserts his feet into the opening, and he himself follows, trying to get his knees into the opening. The rest of the body immediately trails after and follows the knees, just as the greatest and swiftest of rivers might subsume a man under a whirlpool. Then, for those in the sacred interior, there are different means of learning the future: one sees while another hears. The descender leaves again by the same route, feet emerging first.
Concerning dream oracles, the petitioner would go to an incubation sanctuary, perform purification rites, and sleep. The deity would send dreams, which the priests would help the petitioner to interpret. Dream oracles were prominent in the cult of Asclepius, the healing god; the sick would go to the oracles to have dreams about how to cure their illnesses.
World History
