Home About Network of subjects Linked subjects heatmap Book indices included Search by subject Search by reference Browse subjects Browse texts

Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database



8590
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 14.129-14.153


Respicit hunc vates et suspiratibus haustisthe kingdom of the son of Hippotas


“nec dea sum” dixit “nec sacri turis honorein those hot regions smoking with the fume


humanum dignare caput; neu nescius erresof burning sulphur, and he left behind


lux aeterna mihi carituraque fine dabaturthe rocky haunt of Achelous' daughters


si mea virginitas Phoebo patuisset amanti.the Sirens. Then, when his good ship had lost


Dum tamen hanc sperat dum praecorrumpere donisthe pilot, he coasted near Inarime


me cupit, “elige” ait, “virgo Cumaea, quid optes:near Prochyta, and near the barren hill


optatis potiere tuis.” Ego pulveris haustiwhich marks another island, Pithecusae


ostendi cumulum: quot haberet corpora pulvisan island named from strange inhabitants.
NaN


excidit, ut peterem iuvenes quoque protinus annos.and perjuries of the Cercopian


Hos tamen ille mihi dabat aeternamque iuventamand for the crimes of that bad treacherous race


si venerem paterer: contempto munere Phoebitransformed its men to ugly animals


innuba permaneo; sed iam felicior aetasappearing unlike men, although like men.


terga dedit, tremuloque gradu venit aegra senectusHe had contracted and had bent their limbs


quae patienda diu est (nam iam mihi saecula septemand flattened out their noses, bent back toward


acta vides): superest, numeros ut pulveris aequemtheir foreheads; he had furrowed every face


ter centum messes, ter centum musta videre.with wrinkles of old age, and made them live


Tempus erit, cum de tanto me corpore parvamin that spot, after he had covered all


longa dies faciet consumptaque membra senectatheir bodies with long yellow ugly hair.


ad minimum redigentur onus: nec amata videborBesides all that, he took away from them


nec placuisse deo; Phoebus quoque forsitan ipsethe use of language and control of tongues


vel non cognoscet vel dilexisse negabit:o long inclined to dreadful perjury;


usque adeo mutata ferar, nullique videndaand left them always to complain of life


voce tamen noscar; vocem mihi fata relinquent.”and their ill conduct in harsh jabbering.


Intertexts (texts cited often on the same page as the searched text):

10 results
1. Euripides, Trojan Women, 42, 41 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)

2. Herodotus, Histories, 1.182 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)

1.182. These same Chaldaeans say (though I do not believe them) that the god himself is accustomed to visit the shrine and rest on the couch, as in Thebes of Egypt, as the Egyptians say ,(for there too a woman sleeps in the temple of Theban Zeus, and neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian woman, it is said, has intercourse with men), and as does the prophetess of the god at Patara in Lycia, whenever she is appointed; for there is not always a place of divination there; but when she is appointed she is shut up in the temple during the night.
3. Lycophron, Alexandra, 1279 (4th cent. BCE - 3rd cent. BCE)

4. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, 16.26.6 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)

16.26.6.  It is said that in ancient times virgins delivered the oracles because virgins have their natural innocence intact and are in the same case as Artemis; for indeed virgins were alleged to be well suited to guard the secrecy of disclosures made by oracles. In more recent times, however, people say that Echecrates the Thessalian, having arrived at the shrine and beheld the virgin who uttered the oracle, became enamoured of her because of her beauty, carried her away with him and violated her; and that the Delphians because of this deplorable occurrence passed a law that in future a virgin should no longer prophesy but that an elderly woman of fifty should declare the oracles and that she should be dressed in the costume of a virgin, as a sort of reminder of the prophetess of olden times. Such are the details of the legend regarding the discovery of the oracle; and now we shall turn to the activities of olden times.
5. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 14.101-14.128, 14.130-14.153 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. CE)

6. Philo of Alexandria, On The Contemplative Life, 66-70, 72, 78-79, 81, 83-89, 64 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. CE)

64. But since the entertainments of the greatest celebrity are full of such trifling and folly, bearing conviction in themselves, if any one should think fit not to regard vague opinion and the character which has been commonly handed down concerning them as feasts which have gone off with the most eminent success, I will oppose to them the entertainments of those persons who have devoted their whole life and themselves to the knowledge and contemplation of the affairs of nature in accordance with the most sacred admonitions and precepts of the prophet Moses.
7. Vergil, Aeneis, 3.443-3.445, 6.42-6.45 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)

3.443. “I live, 't is true. I lengthen out my days 3.444. through many a desperate strait. But O, believe 3.445. that what thine eyes behold is vision true. 6.42. 0 Icarus, in such well-graven scene 6.43. How proud thy place should be! but grief forbade: 6.44. Twice in pure gold a father's fingers strove 6.45. To shape thy fall, and twice they strove in vain.
8. Plutarch, On The Obsolescence of Oracles, 51 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)

51. Whenever, then, the imaginative and prophetic faculty is in a state of proper adjustment for attempering itself to the spirit as to a drug, inspiration in those who foretell the future is bound to come; and whenever the conditions are not thus, it is bound not to come, or when it does come to be misleading, abnormal, and confusing, as we know in the case of the priestess who died not so long ago. As it happened, a deputation from abroad had arrhed to consult the oracle. The victim, it is said, remained unmoved and unaffected in any way by the first libations; but the priests, in their eagerness to please, went far beyond their wonted usage, and only after the victim had been subjected to a deluge and nearly drowned did it at last give in. What, then, was the result touching the priestess? She went down into the oracle unwillingly, they say, and halfheartedly; and at her first responses it was at once plain from the harshness of her voice that she was not responding properly; she was like a labouring ship and was filled with a mighty and baleful spirit. Finally she became hysterical and with a frightful shriek rushed towards the exit and threw herself down, with the result that not only the members of the deputation fled, but also the oracle-interpreter Nicander and those holy men that were present. However, after a little, they went in and took her up, still conscious; and she lived on for a few days. It is for these reasons that they guard the chastity of the priestess, and keep her life free from all association and contact with strangers, and take the omens before the oracle, thinking that it is clear to the god when she has the temperament and disposition suitable to submit to the inspiration without harm to herself. The power of the spirit does not affect all persons nor the same persons always in the same way, but it only supplies an enkindling and an inception, as has been said, for them that are in a proper state to be affected and to undergo the change. The power comes from the gods and demigods, but, for all that, it is not unfailing nor imperishable nor ageless, lasting into that infinite time by which all things between earth and moon become wearied out, according to our reasoning. And there are some who assert that the things above the moon also do not. abide, but give out as they confront the everlasting and infinite, and undergo continual transmutations and rebirths. 51. Whenever, then, the imaginative and prophetic faculty is in a state of proper adjustment for attempering itself to the spirit as to a drug, inspiration in those who foretell the future is bound to come; and whenever the conditions are not thus, it is bound not to come, or when it does come to be misleading, abnormal, and confusing, as we know in the case of the priestess who died not so long ago. As it happened, a deputation from abroad had arrived to consult the oracle. The victim, it is said, remained unmoved and unaffected in any way by the first libations; but the priests, in their eagerness to please, went far beyond their wonted usage, and only after the victim had been subjected to a deluge and nearly drowned did it at last give in. What, then, was the result touching the priestess? She went down into the oracle unwillingly, they say, and half-heartedly; and at her first responses it was at once plain from the harshness of her voice that she was not responding properly; she was like a labouring ship and was filled with a mighty and baleful spirit. Finally she became hysterical and with a frightful shriek rushed towards the exit and threw herself down, with the result that not only the members of the deputation fled, but also the oracle-interpreter Nicander and those holy men that were present. However, after a little, they went in and took her up, still conscious; and she lived on for a few days. "It is for these reasons that they guard the chastity of the priestess, and keep her life free from all association and contact with strangers, and take the omens before the oracle, thinking that it is clear to the god when she has the temperament and disposition suitable to submit to the inspiration without harm to herself. The power of the spirit does not affect all persons nor the same persons always in the same way, but it only supplies an enkindling and an inception, as has been said, for them that are in a proper state to be affected and to undergo the change. The power comes from the gods and demigods, but, for all that, it is not unfailing nor imperishable nor ageless, lasting into that infinite time by which all things between earth and moon become wearied out, according to our reasoning. And there are some who assert that the things above the moon also do not abide, but give out as they confront the everlasting and infinite, and undergo continual transmutations and rebirths.
9. Plutarch, Demetrius, 23.5 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)

10. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.24.1, 10.12.6 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)

2.24.1. The citadel they call Larisa, after the daughter of Pelasgus. After her were also named two of the cities in Thessaly, the one by the sea and the one on the Peneus. As you go up the citadel you come to the sanctuary of Hera of the Height, and also a temple of Apollo, which is said to have been first built by Pythaeus when he came from Delphi . The present image is a bronze standing figure called Apollo Deiradiotes, because this place, too, is called Deiras (Ridge). Oracular responses are still given here, and the oracle acts in the following way. There is a woman who prophesies, being debarred from intercourse with a man. Every month a lamb is sacrificed at night, and the woman, after tasting the blood, becomes inspired by the god. 10.12.6. However, death came upon her in the Troad, and her tomb is in the grove of the Sminthian with these elegiac verses inscribed upon the tomb-stone:— Here I am, the plain-speaking Sibyl of Phoebus, Hidden beneath this stone tomb. A maiden once gifted with voice, but now for ever voiceless, By hard fate doomed to this fetter. But I am buried near the nymphs and this Hermes, Enjoying in the world below a part of the kingdom I had then. The Hermes stands by the side of the tomb, a square-shaped figure of stone. On the left is water running down into a well, and the images of the nymphs.


Subjects of this text:

subject book bibliographic info
aeneas Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
apion Taylor and Hay, Philo of Alexandria: On the Contemplative Life: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (2020) 284
apollo Bacchi, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, and Politics (2022) 64; Taylor and Hay, Philo of Alexandria: On the Contemplative Life: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (2020) 284
apotheosis Bacchi, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, and Politics (2022) 64
archaic greek (sibyl) Bacchi, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, and Politics (2022) 64
athena Taylor and Hay, Philo of Alexandria: On the Contemplative Life: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (2020) 284
cassandra Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
chaeremon the stoic Taylor and Hay, Philo of Alexandria: On the Contemplative Life: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (2020) 284
eschatological oracles/eschaton Bacchi, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, and Politics (2022) 64
longevity Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
oracles Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
performativity Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
phaennis Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
roman libri sibyllini' Bacchi, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, and Politics (2022) 64
sibyl, sibyl of cumae Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
sibyl, sibyl of the books Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
sibyl, sibylline books Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63
sibyl Mowat, Engendering the Future: Divination and the Construction of Gender in the Late Roman Republic (2021) 63