the hands of the god, or of the cure, which would comprise ritual medical procedures,
or both. The lists of miracles reminds us how complex belief can be, and invites us,
five-year pregnancies aside, to accept the reality of psychosomatic cures (LiDonnici
1995). Asclepius was representative of the type, but he was not the only one. From
across the Roman empire alone we may mention Amphiaraos at Oropus, Heracles at
Hyettos, Amphilochos at Mallos, Sarpedon at Seleucia on the Calycadnos, and Sarapis
at Memphis. The response glimpsed in a dream could be clarified, for priests,
consultants, and doctors had a sufficiently similar conception of medicine: the
vision could accordingly be realigned without being corrupted and, in fact, oracles
reinforced medicine and vice versa.
Inspired divination through the mediation of a religious ‘‘magistrate’’
For the Greeks, ‘‘enthusiasm’’ was an abnormal state of the soul, in which it was
possessed by the divine will and introduced by this ‘‘divine gift’’ to the truth. After
the revelation, the medium is in a very upset psychic state, unaware of himself, like the
epileptic, whose condition was long held to be ‘‘sacred’’ (Laskaris 2002). To what did
such possession correspond according to our categories?
The debate has been compromised by an undue focus on the Delphic ritual, which
was the subject of vigorous literary elaboration in antiquity. Still today views range
from a gentle degree of inspiration, due to the solemnity of the circumstances, to
ecstasy or a sexual union between the Pythia and Apollo. The ancients had believed
that a divine breath (pneuma) emanated from a crevice to inspire the prophetess,
whence the hypothesis of hallucinogenic emanations, recently revived: ethylene or
methane could have provoked a medium trance (Spiller, Hale, and De Boer 2002). As
with the psychotropic drug hypothesis, this hypothesis seems to me, at least in part,
to be a crutch for our ignorance, reassuring because ‘‘based’’ on chemistry. Before we
can subscribe to it, we need a complete study that the context of each literary
testimony takes into account.
Psychological investigation into the preliminary rituals is called for (Maurizio
1995). Numerous ordeals were required of the prophets and consultants of Asclepius:
fasting (24 hours at Claros, 72 hours at Didyma) and/or special diets, cold baths,
abstinences, disturbance of the sleep routine, the taking of auspices, physical efforts,
obsessive meditation. Icy water, with a chthonic significance, had to be drunk. The
destabilization of the body and the spirit was a form of purification desired by the
oracular deity. The best-known preparation in the Greek world, that at the oracle of
Trophonius, took several days. At the end of an exhausting process, the direct, but
alarming, approach to the god and the condition of fear must have given a dispro-
portionate impact to the slightest stimuli, by autosuggestion. Divination by ‘‘enthu-
siasm’’ would therefore have depended upon a ‘‘modified state of consciousness,’’
even if this term is often a loose one (Bonnechere 2003).
There was no need for the seer to have an advanced education: the Pythia at Delphi
just had to have, like children used as mediums in magic, a pure soul, one that was
not too much bogged down in the passions (Plutarch,On Socrates ’ Daimon20,
588d–589d). If prophets were numerous, prophetesses were also respected, perhaps
particularly for tangible factors, such as an emotional condition better adapted to the
psychic demands of possession.
154 Pierre Bonnechere