The cave of Trophonius at Lebadea, the oracle that changed its visitors

Among the Greek oracles, none had so unsettling a reputation as that of Trophonius at Lebadea, in Boeotia. Those who consulted it did not merely listen to a prophetess, but went down in person beneath the earth, into a dark cave from which they emerged shaken. In ancient Greece people would say jokingly of a gloomy, frowning person that he “had been to Trophonius”. Unlike many other oracles, we know this sanctuary from a direct witness: Pausanias, who consulted it himself.

The builder and the treasure

According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Trophonius and his brother Agamedes laid the foundations of the first temple at Delphi. A legend recorded by Pausanias adds a less noble episode: the two also built the treasury of King Hyrieus, leaving a movable stone through which they entered at night to steal. When Agamedes was trapped, Trophonius cut off his head to avoid being recognised, and soon afterwards was swallowed by the earth near Lebadea.

From then on, according to tradition, Trophonius became an underground power able to reveal the future. Pausanias relates that the oracle was discovered during a drought, when the Boeotians, on the advice of the Pythia, followed a swarm of bees to a cleft in the ground. The bees, linked in many Greek traditions to prophecy, thus pointed out the place where the underground hero awaited his visitors.

Lethe and Mnemosyne

Pausanias describes the consultation in the ninth book of his work. The visitor spent several days in a sacred building, offered sacrifices to various deities and purified himself in the river Hercyna. Before the descent he drank from two springs: that of Lethe, forgetfulness, to forget his previous thoughts, and that of Mnemosyne, memory, to remember what he would see.

The cave was an artificial chamber shaped like an oven, reached by a light ladder. From there one passed through a narrow opening, sliding feet first and holding honey cakes in one's hands. What happened in the dark was perceived in different ways: some saw, others heard. On returning, the consultant, still dazed, sat on the throne of Mnemosyne and reported his experience to the priests.

A literary fame

The cave appears in many authors. Herodotus records that King Croesus included it among the oracles he put to the test and that Mys, envoy of the Persian general Mardonius, went there before the battle of Plataea. In Aristophanes' Clouds, Strepsiades, before entering Socrates' school, confesses that he feels like someone about to go down into the cave of Trophonius.

Plutarch, in the dialogue On the Daimonion of Socrates, attributes to a young man named Timarchus a long vision experienced in the cave, in which the soul, detaching itself from the body, contemplated the cosmos and the fate of souls. It is a philosophical tale, not historical testimony, but it shows how Lebadea had become a symbol of direct encounter with mystery.

In Plutarch's time, though he elsewhere laments the silence of many Boeotian oracles, the sanctuary of Trophonius was still active. Its unique character, made of trials, waiting and descent into darkness, brings it closer to the mystery cults than to other oracles, and explains why its memory has survived to our day.