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The Lost Secrets and Hidden Messages of Ancient Delphi
Penguin
February 2006
336 pages
ISBN: 1594200815
Hardcover
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Fiction | Fantasy | Historical
A renegade team of scientists discovers the truth behind the
Oracle of Delphi's mythical powers of second sight. Of all the stories of life in ancient Greece, few capture
the imagination as much as the Oracle of Delphi. Human
mistress of the great god Apollo, the Oracle had the power
to enter into ecstatic union with him and bring back his
prophecies and counsel for all who came seeking answers.
Residing in her temple on the sacred slopes of Mount
Parnassos in central Greece, she was consulted on matters
large and small. Though the air of magic that surrounds her
might cast her as a legend, the Oracle did really exist-and
her visions caused her to become the single most influential
figure in all of ancient Greece. Eyewitness accounts from Plutarch and others describe temple
practices in astonishing detail, claiming that the Oracle,
in preparing to commune with Apollo, breathed in vapors
rising from the temple floor. Modern scholars have had
rigorous debates about the reliability of the material, and
in 1892 French archaeologists unearthed the buried temple
itself. Their guide was the ancient literature, which proved
to be remarkably accurate, with one glaring, baffling
exception-the excavators could find no hint of a chasm
beneath the temple, no evidence that the rocky ground had
brought vapors of any kind. There followed nearly a century
of scholarly denouncement. Critics dismissed not only
reports of intoxicating fumes but the Oracle herself,
claiming the evidence suggested that she and her minions
were nothing but pious frauds. Then a Wesleyan geologist
named Joelle deBoer and a young archaeologist, John Hale,
decided to take up the question once more. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author
William J. Broad tells a modern-day detective story that
blends history and science to describe how a team of
scientists, working from subtle clues scattered throughout
the ancient literature, as well as from the latest findings
in geology, uncovered scientific evidence to explain the
Oracle's powers. They discovered that the vapors from the
ancient accounts were, in fact, petrochemical fumes
containing a hallucinogenic gas, rising through natural
faults hidden underneath the temple floor. Into the dramatic
account of that groundbreaking discovery Broad weaves the
fascinating story of the ancient Oracle, and her surprising
power to open a modern debate between science and religion.
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