Ancient oracles

For more than a thousand years, in the ancient Mediterranean, kings, cities and ordinary citizens turned to oracles to learn the will of the gods. This section traces the most famous prophetic sanctuaries and the sources that describe them. At Delphi the Pythia spoke in Apollo's name, while the maxims of the Seven Sages were carved on the temple; at Dodona Zeus expressed himself through the rustling of an oak; in the oasis of Siwa Alexander the Great questioned Ammon. From Ionian Claros and Didyma to the Sibyl's Cumae, from the Sibylline Books kept on the Capitol to the lots of Praeneste, from the cave of Trophonius to the oracle of the dead at Ephyra, and on to Buto and the Apis bull in Egypt, each chapter draws on ancient authors such as Herodotus, Pausanias, Plutarch and Cicero and on the findings of archaeology. Legends and beliefs are presented as such, to understand what the ancients sought in the prophetic word and why, at a certain point, the oracles fell silent.