Croesus tests the oracles: an experiment told by Herodotus
The Lydian king Croesus and the test of the oracles told by Herodotus: the tortoise cooked in bronze, the golden gifts to Delphi and the “great empire” reply.
Around the middle of the sixth century BC, Croesus, king of Lydia, faced a crucial decision: whether or not to confront the growing power of Cyrus' Persia. Before asking the gods for advice, however, he wanted to know which oracle was truly trustworthy. Herodotus, in the first book of the Histories, tells of the experiment that followed, one of the most celebrated episodes in all of ancient historiography.
A hundred days and one question
According to Herodotus, Croesus sent messengers to several sanctuaries: Delphi, Abae in Phocis, Dodona, the oracles of Amphiaraus and of Trophonius, Didyma near Miletus and Ammon in Libya. The envoys were to count the days from their departure from Sardis and, on the hundredth day, ask the oracle what the king was doing at that moment. The answers were to be written down and brought back to court.
That day Croesus did something deliberately unthinkable: he cut up a tortoise and a lamb and had them boiled together in a bronze cauldron covered with a lid of the same metal. No one, he thought, could guess this by human means. Only an oracle able to see at a distance, and therefore truly inspired, would pass the test and deserve his trust.
The Pythia's answer
Herodotus gives Delphi's reply in verse. The Pythia began by declaring that she knew the number of the grains of sand and the measures of the sea, that she understood the mute and heard those who do not speak. Then she said she could smell a hard-shelled tortoise boiling in bronze together with lamb's flesh, with bronze beneath and bronze above.
Croesus judged only Delphi's answer to be exact, while also acknowledging the oracle of Amphiaraus as truthful, whose reply Herodotus says he does not know. A series of extraordinary gifts followed: three thousand sacrificial animals, gold ingots, a lion of solid gold, mixing bowls of gold and silver. Herodotus states that many of these objects could still be seen at Delphi in his day.
The great empire
Croesus then asked the decisive question: should he march against the Persians? Delphi and the oracle of Amphiaraus answered in the same way: if he attacked, he would destroy a great empire. They also advised him to seek the alliance of the most powerful Greeks. The king, convinced of victory, asked further whether his reign would last long, and the Pythia replied that he should flee when a mule became king of the Medes.
Croesus crossed the river Halys and fought Cyrus, but was defeated and Sardis fell. The great empire destroyed was his own. When, according to Herodotus, the king reproached Apollo for deceiving him, the Pythia replied that he should have asked which empire was meant. The mule was Cyrus himself, born of a Median mother and a Persian father, that is, of two different stocks.
The episode has been analysed for centuries as an example of oracular ambiguity and of the danger of interpreting prophecies according to one's own wishes. Its historical accuracy in detail is uncertain, but the wealth of Croesus' gifts to Delphi is confirmed by several sources, and Herodotus' account remains a profound reflection on the limits of human knowledge.