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There was massive confusion between the Pythia and the Delphic Sibyl. After figuring out that these are separate figures, I moved material on the Pythia from the Delphic Sibyl page to this article on the Pythia. I add a bit of relevant material from Talk:Delphic Sibyl:
--Akhilleus ( talk) 06:33, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
There's been a lot of expansion in the past few days. It's great that this article is getting expanded, but I disagree with some of the changes. The first two points are things I edited out, the third is something I plan to deal with soon.
John, feel free to make any changes you feel are warranted. Thanks for the Mycenaean info, I wasn't aware of the sources you name specifically. But the question of religious continuity between Bronze age and iron age is very thorny, and I'm very suspicious of taking archaic foundation myths as reliable information about what was going on in the bronze age. I'm also pretty skeptical of the idea that the Mycenaean divinities were more chthonic than the classical Olympian pantheon--that seems like back-projection from classical myth. And as far as I'm aware there's a big gap in any kind of settlement activitiy at Delphi between the Bronze Age and the archaic period, and the evidence for religious activity in the temenos only starts 800 BC. I have no problem with the article mentioning the possibility of religious continuity, of course, I just want it to be specific about what evidence there is and how reliable it is--and to many classical archaeologists, it doesn't look like there's great evidence for continuity of cult from the Bronze Age. So, I think that in the introduction, we should say that there's the possibility of religious continuity from the Mycenaean era--but only the possibility--and then give a more detailed summary of the various positions in the body of the article, where we can also cover whether the legend of Apollo taking over the oracle from Gaia represents a historical memory, etc.
Re: the "vapors", let me be clear: what I'm proposing is making the section more concise, giving it a more skeptical tone, and including the work of Fontenrose. (Note that I think the article should not go into all the detail I'm about to go into.) An account of the geological discoveries belongs in the article, but it has not been proven that ethylene played a role in the oracle. Let's get one thing out of the way first: no ancient source has the phrase "the pneuma of Gaia". This phrase gives the impression that the Greeks saw Gaia as the source of prophecy: but Apollo is the oracular god at Delphi. So I've changed the article to reflect this.
The main reason why I have a problem with the idea of ethylene vapors is that the pneumata are only one of many ancient theories about the causes of the Pythia's prophecies. Furthermore, when the sources mention pneumata they are probably not talking about a physical gas, but rather a metaphysical power.
The best thing I can recommend is to read the ancient sources, not in quotation, but in full, and to read them in Greek if you are able. For instance, Plutarch, whom I agree had insider knowledge, wrote many works on the oracle, and if you read De defectu oraculorum (Moralia 432c-438d is the relevant section), you'll see that it's a dialogue, in which many speakers participate. Each speaker has a different idea of the cause of the Pythia's inspiration, which is a good indication that in Plutarch's day there were many ideas of what inspired the Pythia: the pneumata are only one of the possible causes.
Take a look at Fontenrose, too. His work has little to do with geology, but is based on a close reading of the ancient sources. We translate pneumata as "vapors", but Fontenrose argues that the ancient writers seem to be talking about something that's metaphysical, rather than chemical. Fontenrose notes that Plutarch draws upon Aristotelian and Stoic theories about the power of the earth, and says (p. 197): "These emanations from earth are physical causes of the same breed as the influences of stars and planets that astrologers postulate. This is clear from the argument in De defectu oraculorum (Mor. 432c-438d) in which the speakers do not agree on the causes of the Pythia's inspiration, and in which the earth-exalation theory is opposed to the demonic...Plainly Ammonios and other participants are unaware of any perceptible exhalations, not to mention vapors." If we translate pneumata as "spirits", we might better capture what the speaker in Plutarch's dialogue was talking about. So what about the following passage:
The Pausanias passage is 10.5.12, and doesn't tell us much about the Pythia, but note that here too there seem to be many different ideas about the cause of oracular inspiration. Elsewhere (10.24.7) Pausanias says the waters of the Cassotis spring inspire "the women within the temple", but mentions nothing there about vapors, or gases being dissolved in the spring's water.
Strabo 9.3.5 does provide better support for vapors, but notice that it's not an eyewitness account--the passage is introduced by the weaselly "they say". And as we've seen, there were many stories about how the oracle worked, so again, this is only one of the explanations the Greeks had for the oracle. I quote Strabo in part: "from which arises a pneuma enthousiastikos; and that over the mouth is placed a high tripod, mounting which the Pythian priestess receives the breath..." (translation from Perseus Project, modified by me slightly) Even in this passage, the pneuma need not be a physical gas but rather the same kind of metaphysical power of the earth seen in Plutarch's De defectu oraculorum. Strabo does not say that the Pythia "inhales" the pneuma; rather, she "receives" (δεχομένην) the breath, which is a common way of talking about divine possession.
Finally, and in my opinion most importantly, the oracle is one of the best-documented institutions in ancient Greece, playing a major role in Herodotus, Plato, and many poets of the fifth century. None of these sources mention anything like pneumata--that only shows up in Roman-era sources.
So, based on Fontenrose's reading of the primary sources, I simply don't think intoxicating gas played a role at Delphi. Therefore, I don't find the geological discoveries all that interesting. In any case, all the team has demonstrated is a possibility that ethylene was present at the shrine--it's impossible to say what the exact state of things was in antiquity, and how great the concentration of gas would have been at that time. It's an intriguing possibility, but not a proven one--and at least one scholar has forcefully argued that the ancient sources don't support it.
Why is the vapor theory so persistent? I think its popularity comes from the belief that the Pythia gave prophecies in a frenzy, and the desire to seek a cause for that frenzy--drugs, gases, whatever. As Maurizio and others have demonstrated, though, the Pythia gave prophecies herself, in an intelligible voice, and while she was in a state of divine inspiration, it's not the kind of raving lunacy often pictured. We don't need any external causes to explain that--there's plenty of cross-cultural evidence of divine possession occuring without ethylene, burning laurel leaves, cannabis, or anything else. --Akhilleus ( talk) 07:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
John, thanks for reading my comment in an open spirit, and for reading it at all, since I tend to write very long comments! I agree that incorporating disagreement into the article will make it stronger, so I'll try to get an edit done soon, and you can see what you think.
Let me just repeat that Fontenrose's argument has nothing to do with geology. It's a philological argument--it's about how we should interpret the Greek text of our ancient sources. If one is going to disagree with Fontenrose, s/he has to show that Fontenrose has understood the Greek incorrectly, or has misinterpreted the intellectual context of the writers, something along those lines. In other words, you can't disprove Fontenrose's reading of Plutarch by finding new geological data--you have to disprove his argument by providing a more convincing reading of Plutarch/Strabo/Pausanias. Fontenrose's arguments need to be in the article--if you look at the Delphic Oracle entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, it's clear that his interpretation of what Plutarch is saying commands wide agreement among classicists.
So let me make another comment on the pneuma. You're right to point out that this word can refer to something spiritual or physical. However, it's important to realize that pneuma was a key term in ancient physics, especially for the Stoics. We should also remember that the statements about the pneumata are not made by Plutarch in his own voice; rather, it's a character in the dialogue, a man named Lamprias, who clearly speaks from a Stoic perspective. For the Stoics, pneuma is a sort of matter, but one which binds other types of matter together and gives it a particular form. I quote from an online Dictionary of the History of Ideas:
Pneuma could be conceived of as the world-soul: "These things [meteorological phenomena], and the mutual harmony of the parts of the cosmos, certainly could not happen as they do unless they were bound together by one divine and continuously connected pneuma" ( Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.19).
Pneuma also composes the souls of individual human beings. As Galen said:
If Lamprias is operating with these Stoic notions, he is not speaking of gases when he mentions pneumata. Rather, he's talking about something that Stoic physical theory sees as a type of matter, but something we would see as immaterial and metaphysical--"spirit" in the sense of an animating power, the "soul" that pervades the cosmos. Note that there's some imprecision in Lamprias' terminology: he calls the source of the Pythia's inspiration pneumata, dynamis (a "force" or "power"), or rheuma ("current"). Dynamis and rheuma aren't words that indicate vapors, in my opinion.
If you haven't, I strongly urge you to read all of De defectu oraculorum. If you read it in full, you'll get a much different impression of what Plutarch is saying than when passages are quoted in isolation. For instance, Lamprias says that the pneumata may have been lessened or extinguished by various changes. Usually, all that gets quoted from that section is the passage where Lamprias says that earthquakes make the pneumata shift places or stop entirely. But he also says that a plague can alter the pneumata (Plutarch Moralia 434c):
If a plague can affect the pneumata, we're not dealing with a geological theory, but something metaphysical.
Just a brief comment on Hale et al.'s articles. Obviously they've shown that there's ethylene at Delphi--but I don't find the figures presented in the Geology article helpful. There's ethylene in the water of the Kerna spring--they found 0.3 nM/L of water. Is this enough to cause any perceptible effect in someone who drinks the water? The articles don't say. To me, 0.3 nM/L doesn't seem like a very significant quantity. Let's say I drink a liter of water--that's a lot of water! And I've ingested a small quantity of ethylene--what does that do to me? Not much, I'd guess. Futhermore, they found no ethylene in the travertine of any of the sample sites, which suggests that in recent times there hasn't been much ethylene in the air.
But of course, these findings only tell us what's been going on in the recent past--it only suggests that ethylene might have been present in classical times. The articles can't tell us how much ethylene was there in classical times--and to me, at least, it seems rather doubtful that the levels of ethylene they observed were sufficient to create the 20% concentration needed to induce a euphoric state, especially since it's not all that likely that the Greeks built an airtight space in the temple.
Also, in my opinion, Hale et al. don't handle the ancient sources all that well. They never engage Fontenrose's argument, and they call Cicero a poet (technically correct, but his poetry is the least relevant aspect of his career in almost any context, including this one). In the Clinical Toxicology article, they treat Lucan as if he's writing history, although it should be obvious that Lucan is freely inventing Claudius' consultation with the oracle.
Regarding your suggestion that I look into entheogens a bit more, I think this is exactly the feature of the vapors theory I like least--the idea that an external influence has to be the cause of an altered state of consciousness. Obviously drugs play a role in some religious activity but it's quite possible to enter an altered state without any chemical influences--meditation or intense concentration can bring on an inspired state. We don't need to invoke the influence of hydrocarbon gases, especially when the ancient sources aren't telling us to look for any. --Akhilleus ( talk) 08:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
How has it been established that "major upsurges in ethylene production occrred after major earthquakes on the site"? Hale et al. propose this as a theory but provide no proof. Of course, they also propose that earthquakes reduced the production of ethylene (e.g. Geology 29.8 (2001) 707). It's reasonable enough to say that earthquakes would have varying effects, but this seems a bit too convenient--the earthquakes become a magic bullet that increases or decreases ethylene production as needed by the theorist.
This theory of earthquakes + ethylene doesn't fit very well with the oracle's history. The oracle becomes prominent in the 7th century AD, and its major period of popularity is the 5th-4th century BC. If the oracle depends on ethylene, and ethylene production is stimulated by an earthquake, we should expect that these periods began with an earthquake; but none is recorded. The only earthquake in this time frame occurred in 373 BC, in the middle of the period of the oracle's greatest prestige. The earthquake doesn't seem to have affected the oracle's functioning. This earthquake was severe--the temple was damaged or destroyed, and was rebuilt between 373 BC and 329 BC (probably nearer the end of that period), so the oracle seems to have functioned for some years in a severely damaged temple. The oracle only declines later in the 4th century, and most scholars see this not as the result of a decline in ethylene, but as the result of Macedonian domination of the Delphic Amphictyony.
On the other hand, another earthquake happened around 23 AD, a period when the oracle was at a relatively low ebb. Again there doesn't seem to be a change in the operation of the oracle; when Plutarch writes De defectu oraculorum near the end of the 1st century or beginning of the 2nd, the topic of discussion is why the oracle has declined compared to its glory in centuries past; the 23 AD earthquake clearly did not spur an increase in the oracle's popularity (which still functioned, even in this period when the ethylene emissions were supposedly at a low level). And of course the cessation of the oracle in the 4th century AD has nothing to do with an earthquake, but everything to do with religion.
The more serious problem, I'll repeat, is that it's unknowable how much ethylene was present in antiquity. Hale et al. say so:
We can't really know how strong hydrocarbon emissions were in antiquity. But we can measure what's there now, and from the figures given in de Boer et al. (the Geology article) it only looks like there are trace amounts of ethylene--not enough to cause a trance state. But I can't be sure, because the authors never tell us how significant the amounts of ethylene they detected are! I really don't think it's too much to ask that a scientific article explain the significance of the data it presents, but we don't get that analysis in the Geology article. The authors are certainly asking us to believe that ethylene levels were much higher in classical times, but it's not clear why that would be the case.
On the sweet smell of Apollo, you might want to look at my comment below, which quotes other passages where sweet smells are associated with divine presences. Apollo smelled sweet when he was born, and I really doubt that was because of the presence of ethylene. Moreover, in the same Plutarch dialogue we've been discussing, a sweet smell is said to come from a prophet's mouth as he speaks, and I really don't think Plutarch means that the prophet is exhaling ethylene.
The piece of the floor with the cuttings for the tripod is quite interesting, but no one really knows what's going on with it. However, a fairly wide range of explanations has been put forward, many of which have nothing to do with vapors--for instance, Roux (Delphes, pp. 110-117) proposes it was used in a chthonic ritual. --Akhilleus ( talk) 05:33, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
There was massive confusion between the Pythia and the Delphic Sibyl. After figuring out that these are separate figures, I moved material on the Pythia from the Delphic Sibyl page to this article on the Pythia. I add a bit of relevant material from Talk:Delphic Sibyl:
--Akhilleus ( talk) 06:33, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
There's been a lot of expansion in the past few days. It's great that this article is getting expanded, but I disagree with some of the changes. The first two points are things I edited out, the third is something I plan to deal with soon.
John, feel free to make any changes you feel are warranted. Thanks for the Mycenaean info, I wasn't aware of the sources you name specifically. But the question of religious continuity between Bronze age and iron age is very thorny, and I'm very suspicious of taking archaic foundation myths as reliable information about what was going on in the bronze age. I'm also pretty skeptical of the idea that the Mycenaean divinities were more chthonic than the classical Olympian pantheon--that seems like back-projection from classical myth. And as far as I'm aware there's a big gap in any kind of settlement activitiy at Delphi between the Bronze Age and the archaic period, and the evidence for religious activity in the temenos only starts 800 BC. I have no problem with the article mentioning the possibility of religious continuity, of course, I just want it to be specific about what evidence there is and how reliable it is--and to many classical archaeologists, it doesn't look like there's great evidence for continuity of cult from the Bronze Age. So, I think that in the introduction, we should say that there's the possibility of religious continuity from the Mycenaean era--but only the possibility--and then give a more detailed summary of the various positions in the body of the article, where we can also cover whether the legend of Apollo taking over the oracle from Gaia represents a historical memory, etc.
Re: the "vapors", let me be clear: what I'm proposing is making the section more concise, giving it a more skeptical tone, and including the work of Fontenrose. (Note that I think the article should not go into all the detail I'm about to go into.) An account of the geological discoveries belongs in the article, but it has not been proven that ethylene played a role in the oracle. Let's get one thing out of the way first: no ancient source has the phrase "the pneuma of Gaia". This phrase gives the impression that the Greeks saw Gaia as the source of prophecy: but Apollo is the oracular god at Delphi. So I've changed the article to reflect this.
The main reason why I have a problem with the idea of ethylene vapors is that the pneumata are only one of many ancient theories about the causes of the Pythia's prophecies. Furthermore, when the sources mention pneumata they are probably not talking about a physical gas, but rather a metaphysical power.
The best thing I can recommend is to read the ancient sources, not in quotation, but in full, and to read them in Greek if you are able. For instance, Plutarch, whom I agree had insider knowledge, wrote many works on the oracle, and if you read De defectu oraculorum (Moralia 432c-438d is the relevant section), you'll see that it's a dialogue, in which many speakers participate. Each speaker has a different idea of the cause of the Pythia's inspiration, which is a good indication that in Plutarch's day there were many ideas of what inspired the Pythia: the pneumata are only one of the possible causes.
Take a look at Fontenrose, too. His work has little to do with geology, but is based on a close reading of the ancient sources. We translate pneumata as "vapors", but Fontenrose argues that the ancient writers seem to be talking about something that's metaphysical, rather than chemical. Fontenrose notes that Plutarch draws upon Aristotelian and Stoic theories about the power of the earth, and says (p. 197): "These emanations from earth are physical causes of the same breed as the influences of stars and planets that astrologers postulate. This is clear from the argument in De defectu oraculorum (Mor. 432c-438d) in which the speakers do not agree on the causes of the Pythia's inspiration, and in which the earth-exalation theory is opposed to the demonic...Plainly Ammonios and other participants are unaware of any perceptible exhalations, not to mention vapors." If we translate pneumata as "spirits", we might better capture what the speaker in Plutarch's dialogue was talking about. So what about the following passage:
The Pausanias passage is 10.5.12, and doesn't tell us much about the Pythia, but note that here too there seem to be many different ideas about the cause of oracular inspiration. Elsewhere (10.24.7) Pausanias says the waters of the Cassotis spring inspire "the women within the temple", but mentions nothing there about vapors, or gases being dissolved in the spring's water.
Strabo 9.3.5 does provide better support for vapors, but notice that it's not an eyewitness account--the passage is introduced by the weaselly "they say". And as we've seen, there were many stories about how the oracle worked, so again, this is only one of the explanations the Greeks had for the oracle. I quote Strabo in part: "from which arises a pneuma enthousiastikos; and that over the mouth is placed a high tripod, mounting which the Pythian priestess receives the breath..." (translation from Perseus Project, modified by me slightly) Even in this passage, the pneuma need not be a physical gas but rather the same kind of metaphysical power of the earth seen in Plutarch's De defectu oraculorum. Strabo does not say that the Pythia "inhales" the pneuma; rather, she "receives" (δεχομένην) the breath, which is a common way of talking about divine possession.
Finally, and in my opinion most importantly, the oracle is one of the best-documented institutions in ancient Greece, playing a major role in Herodotus, Plato, and many poets of the fifth century. None of these sources mention anything like pneumata--that only shows up in Roman-era sources.
So, based on Fontenrose's reading of the primary sources, I simply don't think intoxicating gas played a role at Delphi. Therefore, I don't find the geological discoveries all that interesting. In any case, all the team has demonstrated is a possibility that ethylene was present at the shrine--it's impossible to say what the exact state of things was in antiquity, and how great the concentration of gas would have been at that time. It's an intriguing possibility, but not a proven one--and at least one scholar has forcefully argued that the ancient sources don't support it.
Why is the vapor theory so persistent? I think its popularity comes from the belief that the Pythia gave prophecies in a frenzy, and the desire to seek a cause for that frenzy--drugs, gases, whatever. As Maurizio and others have demonstrated, though, the Pythia gave prophecies herself, in an intelligible voice, and while she was in a state of divine inspiration, it's not the kind of raving lunacy often pictured. We don't need any external causes to explain that--there's plenty of cross-cultural evidence of divine possession occuring without ethylene, burning laurel leaves, cannabis, or anything else. --Akhilleus ( talk) 07:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
John, thanks for reading my comment in an open spirit, and for reading it at all, since I tend to write very long comments! I agree that incorporating disagreement into the article will make it stronger, so I'll try to get an edit done soon, and you can see what you think.
Let me just repeat that Fontenrose's argument has nothing to do with geology. It's a philological argument--it's about how we should interpret the Greek text of our ancient sources. If one is going to disagree with Fontenrose, s/he has to show that Fontenrose has understood the Greek incorrectly, or has misinterpreted the intellectual context of the writers, something along those lines. In other words, you can't disprove Fontenrose's reading of Plutarch by finding new geological data--you have to disprove his argument by providing a more convincing reading of Plutarch/Strabo/Pausanias. Fontenrose's arguments need to be in the article--if you look at the Delphic Oracle entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, it's clear that his interpretation of what Plutarch is saying commands wide agreement among classicists.
So let me make another comment on the pneuma. You're right to point out that this word can refer to something spiritual or physical. However, it's important to realize that pneuma was a key term in ancient physics, especially for the Stoics. We should also remember that the statements about the pneumata are not made by Plutarch in his own voice; rather, it's a character in the dialogue, a man named Lamprias, who clearly speaks from a Stoic perspective. For the Stoics, pneuma is a sort of matter, but one which binds other types of matter together and gives it a particular form. I quote from an online Dictionary of the History of Ideas:
Pneuma could be conceived of as the world-soul: "These things [meteorological phenomena], and the mutual harmony of the parts of the cosmos, certainly could not happen as they do unless they were bound together by one divine and continuously connected pneuma" ( Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.19).
Pneuma also composes the souls of individual human beings. As Galen said:
If Lamprias is operating with these Stoic notions, he is not speaking of gases when he mentions pneumata. Rather, he's talking about something that Stoic physical theory sees as a type of matter, but something we would see as immaterial and metaphysical--"spirit" in the sense of an animating power, the "soul" that pervades the cosmos. Note that there's some imprecision in Lamprias' terminology: he calls the source of the Pythia's inspiration pneumata, dynamis (a "force" or "power"), or rheuma ("current"). Dynamis and rheuma aren't words that indicate vapors, in my opinion.
If you haven't, I strongly urge you to read all of De defectu oraculorum. If you read it in full, you'll get a much different impression of what Plutarch is saying than when passages are quoted in isolation. For instance, Lamprias says that the pneumata may have been lessened or extinguished by various changes. Usually, all that gets quoted from that section is the passage where Lamprias says that earthquakes make the pneumata shift places or stop entirely. But he also says that a plague can alter the pneumata (Plutarch Moralia 434c):
If a plague can affect the pneumata, we're not dealing with a geological theory, but something metaphysical.
Just a brief comment on Hale et al.'s articles. Obviously they've shown that there's ethylene at Delphi--but I don't find the figures presented in the Geology article helpful. There's ethylene in the water of the Kerna spring--they found 0.3 nM/L of water. Is this enough to cause any perceptible effect in someone who drinks the water? The articles don't say. To me, 0.3 nM/L doesn't seem like a very significant quantity. Let's say I drink a liter of water--that's a lot of water! And I've ingested a small quantity of ethylene--what does that do to me? Not much, I'd guess. Futhermore, they found no ethylene in the travertine of any of the sample sites, which suggests that in recent times there hasn't been much ethylene in the air.
But of course, these findings only tell us what's been going on in the recent past--it only suggests that ethylene might have been present in classical times. The articles can't tell us how much ethylene was there in classical times--and to me, at least, it seems rather doubtful that the levels of ethylene they observed were sufficient to create the 20% concentration needed to induce a euphoric state, especially since it's not all that likely that the Greeks built an airtight space in the temple.
Also, in my opinion, Hale et al. don't handle the ancient sources all that well. They never engage Fontenrose's argument, and they call Cicero a poet (technically correct, but his poetry is the least relevant aspect of his career in almost any context, including this one). In the Clinical Toxicology article, they treat Lucan as if he's writing history, although it should be obvious that Lucan is freely inventing Claudius' consultation with the oracle.
Regarding your suggestion that I look into entheogens a bit more, I think this is exactly the feature of the vapors theory I like least--the idea that an external influence has to be the cause of an altered state of consciousness. Obviously drugs play a role in some religious activity but it's quite possible to enter an altered state without any chemical influences--meditation or intense concentration can bring on an inspired state. We don't need to invoke the influence of hydrocarbon gases, especially when the ancient sources aren't telling us to look for any. --Akhilleus ( talk) 08:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
How has it been established that "major upsurges in ethylene production occrred after major earthquakes on the site"? Hale et al. propose this as a theory but provide no proof. Of course, they also propose that earthquakes reduced the production of ethylene (e.g. Geology 29.8 (2001) 707). It's reasonable enough to say that earthquakes would have varying effects, but this seems a bit too convenient--the earthquakes become a magic bullet that increases or decreases ethylene production as needed by the theorist.
This theory of earthquakes + ethylene doesn't fit very well with the oracle's history. The oracle becomes prominent in the 7th century AD, and its major period of popularity is the 5th-4th century BC. If the oracle depends on ethylene, and ethylene production is stimulated by an earthquake, we should expect that these periods began with an earthquake; but none is recorded. The only earthquake in this time frame occurred in 373 BC, in the middle of the period of the oracle's greatest prestige. The earthquake doesn't seem to have affected the oracle's functioning. This earthquake was severe--the temple was damaged or destroyed, and was rebuilt between 373 BC and 329 BC (probably nearer the end of that period), so the oracle seems to have functioned for some years in a severely damaged temple. The oracle only declines later in the 4th century, and most scholars see this not as the result of a decline in ethylene, but as the result of Macedonian domination of the Delphic Amphictyony.
On the other hand, another earthquake happened around 23 AD, a period when the oracle was at a relatively low ebb. Again there doesn't seem to be a change in the operation of the oracle; when Plutarch writes De defectu oraculorum near the end of the 1st century or beginning of the 2nd, the topic of discussion is why the oracle has declined compared to its glory in centuries past; the 23 AD earthquake clearly did not spur an increase in the oracle's popularity (which still functioned, even in this period when the ethylene emissions were supposedly at a low level). And of course the cessation of the oracle in the 4th century AD has nothing to do with an earthquake, but everything to do with religion.
The more serious problem, I'll repeat, is that it's unknowable how much ethylene was present in antiquity. Hale et al. say so:
We can't really know how strong hydrocarbon emissions were in antiquity. But we can measure what's there now, and from the figures given in de Boer et al. (the Geology article) it only looks like there are trace amounts of ethylene--not enough to cause a trance state. But I can't be sure, because the authors never tell us how significant the amounts of ethylene they detected are! I really don't think it's too much to ask that a scientific article explain the significance of the data it presents, but we don't get that analysis in the Geology article. The authors are certainly asking us to believe that ethylene levels were much higher in classical times, but it's not clear why that would be the case.
On the sweet smell of Apollo, you might want to look at my comment below, which quotes other passages where sweet smells are associated with divine presences. Apollo smelled sweet when he was born, and I really doubt that was because of the presence of ethylene. Moreover, in the same Plutarch dialogue we've been discussing, a sweet smell is said to come from a prophet's mouth as he speaks, and I really don't think Plutarch means that the prophet is exhaling ethylene.
The piece of the floor with the cuttings for the tripod is quite interesting, but no one really knows what's going on with it. However, a fairly wide range of explanations has been put forward, many of which have nothing to do with vapors--for instance, Roux (Delphes, pp. 110-117) proposes it was used in a chthonic ritual. --Akhilleus ( talk) 05:33, 23 May 2006 (UTC)