I would like a collection of oracular utterances (examples of the
narratives/utterances themselves or contemporaneous imagined
utterances as in the plays by Aeschylus et al, in English with the
citation or url) or descriptions of utterances that I can quickly sort
through and select from for a composition. A collection that consists
of only those from Herodotus' The Histories is not useful, as I have
those (a larger collection that includes Herodotus is fine).
Descriptions of oracles such as the following are also useful.
:'The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed
at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her
voice by aid of the god.' (Heraclitus, fragment 12)
http://copernicus.subdomain.de/Sibyl
One major scholarly source, but not on line as far as I know, is:
Fontenrose, J. The Delphic Oracles (Berkeley, 1978)
Parke, H.W. & Wormell, D.E.W. The Delphic Oracles (Oxford, 1951).
Acceptable also are utterances from the Greek playrights as in the
opening of Eumenides by Aeschylus. This, the Delphic oracle (the Pythia) is the
most referred to and there must be more in the plays.
Names by which she is known (most often a woman and the utterances in
which I am interested as these will be used in a musical setting for a
soprano ) are Pythia, Pythoness, Dodonna, Sybil or Sibyl and some
locations are Delphi, Dodonna, Cumae, the Peloponnesus (from which I
have found none).
The oracle has three meanings, the place (Delphi), the person (Pythia)
and the actual utterance.
The following account by Pulcher I would like to find
"A detailed account of the frenzy or mania of the Pythia is presented
when Appius Claudius Pulcher visits the oracle at Delphi in Lucan's
Civil War (5.64-236)." from
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/pythia.html
Some of the other sources and search paths I have found:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
http://copernicus.subdomain.de/Sibyl
http://www.digitalbookindex.com/_search/search010litancientgreeka.asp
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:7EAlPMuEDq4J:www.grazian-archive.com/quantavolution/QUANTAVOL/ka_docs/ka_1.pdf+archaeological++finds+in+the+corycian+cave&hl=en
The form of the answer would be a list of utterances and the source as:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Paus%2e+10%2e12%2e1%2d9
"Dress up the girl for her wedding now
Take her to a mountain's lofty brow.
No mortal man will Psyche wed
An evil beast shall claim her bed.
This devil's winged and carries arms
Not even the gods escape his charms.
Jupiter loathes this flying blight
And Hell itself can't stand the sight."
Pausanias, Description of Greece
I will finish the music if you can help me find sources from which I
can select the text.
I hope that you are interested in classics.
Thanks. |
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
29 Jan 2005 13:10 PST
Turns out it's a lot easier to find utterances about oracles than it
is to find things the oracles actually said.
Here's an example from Milton:
?The oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Rings through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.?
and one from Shelly, along with a pretty cool scene description:
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/shelley/percy_bysshe/s54cp/section72.html
OEDIPUS TYRANNUS
OR
SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
ACT 1, SCENE 1.1.? A magnificent temple, built of thigh-bones and
death?s-heads, and tiled with scalps. Over the altar the statue of
Famine, veiled; a number of boars, sows, and sucking-pigs, crowned
with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging
round the altar of the temple.
...
Now if the oracle had ne?er foretold
This sad alternative, it must arrive,
Or not, and so it must now that it has;
And whether I was urged by grace divine 120
Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,
Which must, as all words must, he false or true,
It matters not: for the same Power made all,
Oracle, wine, and me and you?or none?
?Tis the same thing. If you knew as much 125
Of oracles as I do?
==========
Would excerpts like these meet your needs, or are you solely
interested in ancient sources of actual lines spoken by the oracles
themselves?
Let me know.
pafalafa-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
johnchowning-ga
on
29 Jan 2005 14:28 PST
Yes, there is much more about than actual supposed utterances.
Basically after the 3rd or 4th century no one believed in oracles any
longer, therefore the view as in the examples Milton and Shelly. So
yes, I would like to constrain the search to the utterances from
antiquity including those clearly "made up" as in the plays of
Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripedes and Sophocles. Many of their works
are available on line through
http://www.digitalbookindex.com/_search/search010litancientgreeka.asp.
I haven't time to scour them all, thus the need for help. The
classics.mit are easier to search as the verses are all contiguous, as
is the following from the same site-
http://drama.eserver.org/plays/classical/aristophanes/lysistrata.txt
LYSISTRATA
You wicked women, have done with your falsehoods! You want your
husbands, that's plain enough. But don't you think they want you
just as badly? They are spending dreadful nights, oh! I know that well
enough. But hold out, my dears, hold out! A little more patience,
and the victory will be ours. An oracle promises us success, if only
we remain united. Shall I repeat the words?
THIRD WOMAN
Yes, tell us what the oracle declares.
LYSISTRATA
Silence then! Now-"Whenas the swallows, fleeing before the
hoopoes, shall have all flocked together in one place, and shall
refrain them from all amorous commerce, then will be the end of all
the ills of life; yea, and Zeus, who doth thunder in the skies,
shall set above what was erst below...."
In this case the oracle is not a character in the play, as she is in
the Eumenides, so the search 'oracle' found this one.
Care to pursue? ... and Thanks for trying.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
29 Jan 2005 20:38 PST
John,
This is a tough challenge, from a searching point of view. I know the
material's out there, but I've not had much luck in pinning it down
yet.
I'll keep looking, but there may be other researchers out there with a
trick or two I haven't tried yet. If so, I hope they'll take a crack
at it as well.
Cheers,
pafalafa-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
johnchowning-ga
on
29 Jan 2005 23:15 PST
Thanks Pafalafa.
Yes, it is a tough one ... all in the academic arena, I suspect. The
digital book index, that I noted earlier, at least has a lot of the
plays on line in addition to Homer, the philosophers, etc.
Maybe there are some tricks that some oracle out there will give us a hint about.
John
|
