Oracle

An oracle can be a person or a place.

The ancient Greeks were very keen on the messages that oracles provided; political decisions were made and battles were fought according to the advice that oracles gave; the messages which oracles rendered were considered to be the words of the Immortals and were in the form of predictions or commandments.

The messages which the oracles gave were often ambiguous and incomplete and as the blind prophet, Phineus, explained to the Argonauts when describing the way Zeus imparted his guidance through revelations, “For he himself wishes to deliver to men the utterances of the prophetic art incomplete, in order that they may still have some need to know the will of heaven.”

There were numerous oracular sites in the ancient world and they were dedicated to Immortals such as Zeus and Apollon and heroes such as Amphiaraus and Trophonius; the oldest oracular shrine in ancient Greece was established in the city of Dodona by one of two Egyptian priestesses who had been carried away by Phoenicians and sold as slaves; the inhabitants of Dodona told the historian Herodotus that the first oracle arrived, not as a woman, but as a black dove with human speech; Herodotus discounted this story but did not doubt the veracity or antiquity of the oracle.

• Histories, book 2, chapter 55-59