This document discusses how ancient Greeks navigated uncertainty through oracles and narratives. It explores how oracles did not make predictions, but offered alternative stories that allowed people to create meaning and motivation. By generating potential stories for the future, oracles helped ancient Greeks navigate risk and make decisions. The document presents examples of oracle sites in Greece, the types of questions Greeks asked oracles, and images that help illustrate oracle practices.

1. Navigating Futures,
Navigating Narratives
Esther Eidinow
University of Nottingham

3. • How did ancient Greek
men and women deal
with the uncertainty and
risk of everyday life?
• What did they fear most,
and how did they
manage their anxieties?
• What were their implicit
models of fate, luck and
fortune?

4. “The revolutionary idea that
defines the boundary between
modern times and the past is the
mastery of risk: the notion that the
future is more than the whim of
the gods and that men and women
are not passive before nature. Until
human beings discovered a way
across that boundary, the future
was a mirror of the past or the
murky domain of oracles and
soothsayers who held a monopoly
over knowledge of anticipated
events.”
Peter L. Bernstein,
Against the Gods: The
Remarkable Story of
Risk (New York: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1996), p. 1.

6. Circe & Odysseus'
men, Athenian red-figure
pelike
C5th B.C.,
Staatliche
Kunstammlungen,
Dresden
Seer, from the east pediment of
the Temple of Zeus,Olympia,
Greece, ca. 470–456 BCE.
Odysseus and
Tiresias in the
Underworld. South
Italian Red-figure
bowl. Bibliothéque
Nationale, Paris.
Dolon painter.
Ajax taking Cassandra,
tondo of a red-figure
kylix by the Kodros
Painter, c. 440-430 BC,
Louvre

7. Oracle Sites Across Greece and
Western Turkey

8. Sortes Astrampsychi
Papyrus fragment,
Oxyrychus, Egypt
http://sortesastrampsychi.voila.net/
‘Pocket’ Oracles
Faience polyhedron inscribed with
letters of the Greek alphabet
Roman, 2nd-3rd century AD;
Metropolitan Museum of Art
[Accession # 37.11.3]
Black-figured amphora
c.520 BCE. Inv. 100
Chateau-Musee, Boulogne-sur-
Mer, France

9. Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greek-Persian_duel.jpg
Greeks vs. Persians

11. http://faculty.saintleo.edu/williamse/questforwisdom.htm
JOHN COLLIER’S ‘PRIESTESS
OF APOLLO’
1891
• Oracle of Apollo
• ‘Pythia’
• Priestess of the
Greek god Apollo

12. Athenian Consultation
Oh no! Can I
have another
FLEE FOR one?
YOUR LIVES!
Attic red-figure kylix; Kodros painter; ca. 440-430 BCE;
Berlin Mus. 2538

13. Athenian Consultation
HUH?!
Attic red-figure kylix; Kodros painter; ca. 440-430 BCE;
Berlin Mus. 2538
Trust in your
wooden walls!

15. 1. Oracles are not predictions, they offer
alternative stories

16. MYSON (attributed to) Attic Red-Figure
Amphora, c. 500-490 BC; Louvre Museum
Croesus on the Pyre
‘If you make war
on the Persians,
you will destroy a
mighty empire!’

17. 1. Oracles are not predictions, they offer
alternative stories
2. Through a process of creating meaning,
story-making creates motivation.

18. DODONA
Site of Dodona

19. Inquiries from Dodona
Whether it would be better for me if
I go to Sybaris and if I do these
things?
Lysanias asks Zeus Naios and Dione
whether or not the child with which
Annyla is pregnant is from him.
She asks by sacrificing and praying to which of
the gods would she do better and be released
from this disease?
God, good fortune, Razia asks whether
she will attain an agreement from
Teitukos while he lives and a place of
safety?
Whether it will be useful
for me, if I work as a
bronze smith?
Klemedes asks Zeus and Dione,
whether it will happen that
Olympias, daughter of Nikarchos,
will be given to him?

20. Question Structures
• Did x do y or not? Did x do y or z?
• Should I do x or y? Should I do x or not?
• Will it be better and more good if…
– if I pray to such and such a god?
– if I take this woman to be my wife?
– if I travel to this destination/buy that piece of
land.
• To which god should I pray and make
sacrifice to, in order that…

22. Navigating Between Narratives
1. Oracles are not predictions, they offer
alternative stories.
2. Through a process of creating meaning, story-making
creates motivation.
3. These stories don’t just describe possible
futures, they generate them