Two main types of divination are usually distinguished. Inductive divination is based on the interpretation of signs, as in the flight of birds, which the gods have sowed in the universe to enable men to decode them. Inspired divination was delivered by prophets and prophetesses whose minds were seized directly by the gods. Inductive divination took place wherever one had need of it, from the field of battle to the ecclesia. Inspired divination was more tied to a sanctuary (chresterion, manteion). Often, the ancients devalued the first type in favor of the second.
Divinely inspired speech, just like the divine sign, needed exegetes who worked on the basis of intuition, which is mocked by Cicero (On Divination 2.30.63-5), but also within the framework of a logical, empirical, and associative process. The difficulty of this quasi-scientific approach for the believers - but for us the squaring of the circle - was increased by the varying context of each revelation, which could alter its significance. An earthquake occurred: King Agis, at the frontier with Argos, decided to return to Sparta. But in 388 BC Agesipolis was already in Argive territory and interpreted the earthquake as a favorable omen (Xenophon, Hellenica 4.7.1-3). And an identical dream gave rise to seven different futures (Artemidorus 4.67).
Inductive divination
Inductive divination identifies and decodes the well-known signs disseminated across the world by the gods and rests upon the analogical pattern of thought, inscribed into the heart of man, that wants the things down here, the microcosm, to reflect the world above, the macrocosm. Some people were more sensitive to the perception of signs and their meanings than others. To disentangle the skein of causal connections, one had recourse to a specialist, usually termed mantis, in opposition to prophetes, or a specialist in inspired divination. Each type of sign could have its own specialist diviners (Bayet 1936; Scarpi 1998).
Striking and surprising events - prodigies - are known to us from a number of examples of doubtful authenticity, but which reveal the underlying pattern of thought. Thus Herodotus speaks of statues sweating on the Acropolis at the approach of the Persians or of a priestess who grew a beard when her city, Pedasa, was threatened (7.140, 1.75). Celestial and natural phenomena, such as eclipses and comets (Pindar, Paeans 9) were amongst the most troubling signs, especially if they were unexpected, like rain or lightning from a clear sky (Demosthenes 43 [Against Macartatos] 66). Intellectuals, such as the Stoics, paid sustained attention here (Kany-Turpin 2003). The lightning bolt and thunder are the supreme signs of Zeus. Earthquakes and tsunamis, signs of Poseidon, were so terrifying as to compel armies to retreat (Cusset 2003; Lebeau 2003).
Relevant here too is the behavior of animals. The majority belonged to a god - the eagle of Zeus, the crow of Apollo, the doe of Artemis - and all could become a divine tool: a weasel on the road, an owl that hoots, a snake that disappears (Amiotti 1998;
Bodson 1978). Many cities and sanctuaries, it was said, were founded in a place indicated by an animal-guide (cf. Euripides, Phoenissae 638-44). Even in sacrificial ritual the animal had to display its acceptance of being sacrificed, whether this was by trembling or by curving its spine (Aristophanes, Peace 960). Snakes, with a venom that was sometimes lethal, lived in the crevices of the earth, and they were held to be immortal because of their slough: they were natural emissaries of the chthonic world, present in chthonic oracles and sanctuaries and also in the decorations of tombs (Bodson 1978:68-71).
Omens drawn from birds - ornithomancy - already occupied a fundamental place on some archaic vases and in Homer (Odyssey 15.154-81) and Hesiod (fr. 355 Merkelbach-West; cf. West 1978 on line 82). Birds move between the earth and the purest level of the sky, the ether, the home of the gods and the Muses, not to mention souls: accordingly they are wholly suited to the role of intermediaries (Aeschylus, Agamemnon 104-59). Plutarch admirably sums this belief up, even if the practice was more complicated than the theory: ‘‘The god presses various movements upon them and draws twitterings and cries from them. Sometimes he holds them suspended, sometimes he sends them flying at high speed, either to interrupt men’s actions or projects abruptly, or to help in their accomplishment’’ (Intelligence of Animals 22, 975ab). An inscription from Ephesus (lEphesos 5.1678), from the sixth of fifth century BC, already indicates the fundamental principles of the method based upon the opposition left/unfavorable-right/favorable. This principle was also fundamental more widely, in inductive divination (Collins 2002; Dillon 1996; Pollard 1977:116-29).
The spasms of the human body are similarly significant, and caution against or forbid an action or a project in the course of realization. These are kledones, whence cledonomancy (Peradotto 1969). Sneezing is the best known, from Homer (Odyssey 17.541-8) to Plutarch (Themistocles 13.2-5). The kledon can also be an involuntary utterance or action (such as a fart: Homeric Hymn to Hermes 294-6), a double entendre, or a proper name which acts as an omen, a coincidence, in fact any sign that confers a different meaning in the normal course of things (cf. Callimachus, Epigrams 1). Although an excessive belief in klodones was considered absurdly superstitious, a reasoned approach to them was held to be appropriate: for Theophrastus, the Squalid Man ‘‘blasphemes when his mother has gone to the specialist in ornitho-mancy. And, amongst worshipers praying and offering a libation, he drops the cup and laughs as if the thing were a joke in good taste’’ (Characters 19.8-9). One could also provoke kloedones in some established oracles, such as at Pharae in Achaea, where the consultant whispered his question into the ear of the statue of Hermes and left the agora plugging his ears. Then, removing his hands, he received the response in the first voice heard (Pausanias 7.22.2-3).
Cleromancy is divination by drawing a lot. An easy method, of course, it could be used anywhere, even at Delphi (Cordano and Grottanelli 2001; S. I. Johnston 2003). It resolves a question posed in the form of an alternative and it is ideal, accordingly, for the choice between solutions in a pre-established list. Already found in Homer, cleromancy in a broad sense extended to the level of the city itself, in the case of Athens, which chose its magistrates in this way, with the exception of stratoegoi and treasurers, a practice that scandalized Socrates. Some oracles, such as that of Heracles at Boura in Achaea, delivered their responses through the medium of knuckle-bones, and others again with dice, the rolling of which referred to pre-established sentences in a list of predictions (Brixhe and Hodot 1988:134-64; Donnay 1984).
Hieroscopy, the examination of hiera, consisted of inspecting the signs left in the entrails of sacrificed animals. Although absent from Homer, it was widespread from the archaic period. Sacrifice was omnipresent, and hieroscopy made its impact upon daily life and on politics (Brisson 1974; Burkert 1992:46-53; Lissarrague 1990a:55-69). The liver was the chief part, and every irregularity in it was significant. In Euripides Electra (826-33), Aegisthus is terrified: ‘‘A lobe was missing from the liver: the portal vein and the adjacent vessels of the gall bladder displayed projections of doom.’’ It is imminent death that is announced to him, a topos of Greek literature, found in Plutarch’s Lives of Cimon, Alexander and Marcellus. Ordinary men would usually turn to a specialist seer, but they could sometimes know about omens from their own experience. The speed of the procedure was ideal during battle. Many tales, some of them historical, show diviners repeatedly sacrificing until they obtain a favorable sign (Jameson 1991).
Empyromancy, the method employed by the oracle of Zeus at Olympia, consisted of observing the fashion in which the sacrificial parts were consumed on the altar (Parke 1967:164-93). One could practice it after each sacrifice, and literature is packed with examples: ‘‘The diviners... observed the flames of the fire, splitting and flickering against each other, and the point of the flame where the double omen of victory or defeat was determined,’’ says Euripides (Phoenician Women 1254-8). The accumulation of bad omens in the tragedies should not make us forget the current and less dramatic practice, presented by Xenophon or Plutarch and on ancient vases. The animal’s tail could also straighten out in the fire and furnish a favorable omen (Van Straten 1995:118-41).
The methods of inductive divination were very varied. We may also cite hydro-mancy, which looked at the way water moved, or the floating of objects or liquids poured onto its surface, and catoptromancy, which exploited the properties ofreflect-ing surfaces (Delatte 1932). A chapter could be devoted to astrology and magical varieties of divination, but there is no room for this here (see Chapter 23).
The diviner who uses the inductive method is the mantis, an elusive term. In myth Tiresias, Melampous, Calchas, Iamos, and Amphiaraos are not reduced merely to the interpretation of signs. That they access a kind of inspiration is undeniable (cf. Pindar, Olympic Odes 6.12-17; Luraghi 1997). To varying degrees, they are also doctors and purifiers, and they are often associated with mystery cults. Historical diviners offer less of the marvelous: the oldest, Manticles, is known from a statuette of around 700 BC from Thebes (Boston MFA 03.997 = LIMC Apollon 40). Famous is Megistias, who remained with Leonidas at Thermopylae after having forecast their defeat (Simonides, Epigrams 6 Campbell = Herodotus 7.228: is this prophecy authentic?). Lampon, an ally of Pericles, was a great public personage. Sthorys, who came from a Thasian family, received Athenian citizenship for his services in the battle of Cnidus (IG ii2 17). However, there was no shortage of peculiar figures in Greece to confuse the categories. Empedocles presented himself as an itinerant ‘‘mage,’’ an inspired poet and thaumaturge capable ofentering and returning from Hell, in short a diviner in the great mythic tradition (Kingsley 1995). Finally, like many other ‘‘professional bodies,’’ diviners constituted themselves into clans (which conferred upon them a knowledge that was partly innate), as in the case of the lamids and the Clytiads at Olympia.
For an unknown reason, the interpretation of signs seems to have been almost alien to women, for all that they were inclined to magic and its terrible forms of knowledge. We know of Diotima at Mantinea, around 420 BC, represented as a priestess, a liver in her hand, and a mantis, Alcibia, of the family of the lamids (Mantis 1990:51-2, pl. 18; IG v.1, 141).
Inspired divination
In inspired divination a god enters into direct contact, sought for or otherwise, with a human soul (Aeschylus, Agamemnon 179-80). He can take possession of an intermediary, who will reveal his will to the consultant - this is ‘‘enthusiasm’’ (which properly means ‘‘with a god within’’) - or he can manifest himself in a dream or a mantic vision (onar-hypar. Hanson 1980). The more the soul is detached from the body, the more efficacious the revelation: the Pythia is dispossessed of her consciousness (ekphron), and one who has a dream vision is in a state in which his soul loosens its bonds with the body to the maximum. This is why a dying person, when his soul is definitively separated from the body, becomes infallible. This idea opened onto a strange variety of divination about which little is known, divination by means of the evocation of the dead, or necromancy, practiced, for example, at Cape Tainaron (S. I. Johnston 1999a; Ogden 2001).
Oniromancy
Oniromancy tackled the natural ambiguity of dreams, whether they were unexpected or solicited in sanctuaries (Holowchak 2001). Dreams, which addressed the dreamer directly without any intermediary are mentioned in a great many inscriptions. They experienced an uninterrupted success even if an interpreter was sometimes required (cf. IKnidos 131). In logical terms, since the time of Homer (Iliad 1.63) dreams could be either apotreptic or protreptic, or again descriptive and inspirational. But the majority of dreams transmitted in literature are, like literary oracles, bogus ones (Levy 1982).
Theophrastus’ Superstitious Man (16.11) consults several specialists about the most trivial dream: these are the people like those who facilitated the compilation of works such as The Interpretation of Dreams of Artemidorus. This text’s codification is far from simplistic. It is aware of scientific developments, and accordingly distinguishes truthful dreams from dreams the roots of which are to be found directly in one’s daily preoccupations (Prologue). Only a systematic catalog of dreams could, in Greek eyes, permit a mantic understanding of them. Even Galen decided upon a certain operation after a dream of Asclepius (Boudon 2004). And the orator Menander advised that one should always claim that a dream had inspired a speech (Peri epideiktikon 3.344).
Greece had incubation sanctuaries, where one slept in the hope of dreaming: they were almost exclusively dedicated to heroes, popular from the end ofthe fifth century BC until the fall of paganism, and often connected with healing. Asclepius in particular experienced a lightning expansion (Gorini and Melfi 2002; Graf 1992b). His huge sanctuary at Epidaurus, with its famous theater, was something to incur the envy of the Olympians. The consultant dreamed of an act of healing, sometimes at the hands of the god, or of the cure, which would comprise ritual medical procedures, or both. The lists of miracles reminds us how complex belief can be, and invites us, five-year pregnancies aside, to accept the reality of psychosomatic cures (LiDonnici 1995). Asclepius was representative of the type, but he was not the only one. From across the Roman empire alone we may mention Amphiaraos at Oropus, Heracles at Hyettos, Amphilochos at Mallos, Sarpedon at Seleucia on the Calycadnos, and Sarapis at Memphis. The response glimpsed in a dream could be clarified, for priests, consultants, and doctors had a sufficiently similar conception of medicine: the vision could accordingly be realigned without being corrupted and, in fact, oracles reinforced medicine and vice versa.
Inspired divination through the mediation of a religious ‘‘magistrate’’
For the Greeks, ‘‘enthusiasm’’ was an abnormal state of the soul, in which it was possessed by the divine will and introduced by this ‘‘divine gift’’ to the truth. After the revelation, the medium is in a very upset psychic state, unaware of himself, like the epileptic, whose condition was long held to be ‘‘sacred’’ (Laskaris 2002). To what did such possession correspond according to our categories?
The debate has been compromised by an undue focus on the Delphic ritual, which was the subject of vigorous literary elaboration in antiquity. Still today views range from a gentle degree of inspiration, due to the solemnity of the circumstances, to ecstasy or a sexual union between the Pythia and Apollo. The ancients had believed that a divine breath (pneuma) emanated from a crevice to inspire the prophetess, whence the hypothesis of hallucinogenic emanations, recently revived: ethylene or methane could have provoked a medium trance (Spiller, Hale, and De Boer 2002). As with the psychotropic drug hypothesis, this hypothesis seems to me, at least in part, to be a crutch for our ignorance, reassuring because ‘‘based’’ on chemistry. Before we can subscribe to it, we need a complete study that the context of each literary testimony takes into account.
Psychological investigation into the preliminary rituals is called for (Maurizio 1995). Numerous ordeals were required of the prophets and consultants of Asclepius: fasting (24 hours at Claros, 72 hours at Didyma) and/or special diets, cold baths, abstinences, disturbance of the sleep routine, the taking of auspices, physical efforts, obsessive meditation. Icy water, with a chthonic significance, had to be drunk. The destabilization of the body and the spirit was a form of purification desired by the oracular deity. The best-known preparation in the Greek world, that at the oracle of Trophonius, took several days. At the end of an exhausting process, the direct, but alarming, approach to the god and the condition of fear must have given a disproportionate impact to the slightest stimuli, by autosuggestion. Divination by ‘‘enthusiasm’’ would therefore have depended upon a ‘‘modified state of consciousness,’’ even if this term is often a loose one (Bonnechere 2003).
There was no need for the seer to have an advanced education: the Pythia at Delphi just had to have, like children used as mediums in magic, a pure soul, one that was not too much bogged down in the passions (Plutarch, On Socrates’ Daimon 20, 588d-589d). If prophets were numerous, prophetesses were also respected, perhaps particularly for tangible factors, such as an emotional condition better adapted to the psychic demands of possession.
The terminology was rather imprecise. Prophetes (feminine prophetis) could signify either the man who entered into contact with the deity or the one who, after listening to words uttered by a medium (such as the Pythia), proclaimed them or gave them form. In both senses, this ‘‘magistrate’’ served a specific oracular deity, while the mantis was more of a generalist. In addition, the twelve sibyls, prophetesses lost in the mists of myth, formed a counterpart to the legendary diviners (Parke 1988).
World History
