Revisiting Delphi: Religion and Storytelling in Ancient Greece by Julia Kindt (review)

Revisiting Delphi offers a remarkably clear and concise examination of a select number of literary accounts of Delphic oracular responses. Building on her previous work on the importance of narrative in the construction and communication of religious thought in ancient Greece, Julia Kindt avoids what she characterizes as the preoccupation of previous scholars with questions of the historicity of oracle narratives to focus on how such narratives—particularly those in which ambiguous or misunderstood oracles are later proven to be correct—reveal underappreciated aspects of Greek religious thought.

Kindt structures her study upon chapters devoted to five authors: Herodotus, Euripides, Plato, Pausanias, and Athenaeus. Herodotus she rightly identifies as a pattern-setter for later authors. Focusing on episodes that are rich in oracular references, such as the Croesus story in Book 1, Kindt notes that all of Herodotus’ references to oracles are embedded in narrative and fulfill a number of narratological functions. More critically, however, she identifies the notorious ambiguity of many Herodotean oracles as a means of communicating the ontological difference between human and divine knowledge in Greek religious thought, and posits that this distinction is an important aspect not only of Herodotus’ mindset but also of Greek religion in general.

In subsequent chapters she looks for confirmation of that proposition in oracular tales told by other authors. In a chapter entitled “Euripides,” the Delphic oracle in the Ion that makes Xouthos think that Ion is his son is examined as a manifestation of the playwright’s “semantics of polyphony” (83). In “Plato,” Kindt gives similar treatment to the oracle in the Apology that declares no one to be wiser than Socrates. Socrates’ search for the meaning of that vague and seemingly dubious statement serves as a metonym for his entire philosophical project. In chapters devoted to “Pausanias” and “Athenaeus,” Kindt examines oracle narratives attested in later sources: from Pausanias, the story of the puzzling oracle received by the Thasians regarding a statue of the famous athlete Theagenes (a case of interplay between theology and Greek “object culture”); and, from Athenaeus, the ambiguous Delphic advice received by Parmeniscus of Metapontum on how to recover his ability to laugh. Though both examples surely derived from much older sources, Kindt argues that Athenaeus’ and Pausanias’ choice to narrate these stories shows the persistence into the Imperial period of a similar religious outlook to that found in earlier authors. In an appendix, she also offers a reading of Plutarch’s dialogue on the “E” in Delphi. While not an oracle narrative like the other texts, Kindt reads the dialogue’s aporetic investigation of the meaning of the enigmatic symbol as expressing thoughts congruent to those in oracular narratives on the limits of human knowledge.

Kindt’s treatment of all these narratives is thought-provoking and persuasive, but even she seems to realize that the broad claims she makes about Greek theologies require more corroboration than this volume’s brief compass can afford. She frequently refers to forthcoming work of her own that might delve into matters in greater detail, and in her conclusions she invites other scholars to investigate the usefulness of her readings in other texts. Although she frequently emphasizes the importance of context in interpreting these stories, one aspect that continually receives short shrift is the literary context. Though organized by chapters named after authors, little consideration of generic and individual literary tendencies goes into Kindt’s analysis. This is less true of Herodotus, from whose work a broad range of oracle stories is considered, but particularly true of Pausanias and Athenaeus, who are treated as little more than inert receptacles for the oracle stories Kindt focuses on. An example of where important considerations are thereby missed is the tendency of Imperial Greek authors to enact a mimesis of classical authors (for Pausanias, Herodotus above all others). This might have as much to do with why classical-style oracle stories recur in the...