4�Drugs AnD the DelPhic orAcle*

ABSTRACT: This paper critically examines several recent studies purporting to show that the priestesses of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi were intoxi-cated on gaseous fumes emitted as a result of geological processes. The two gaseous candidates offered, ethylene and benzene, are considered. Ethylene is shown to be impossible and benzene to be crucially underdetermined. Finally, the historical evidence on which any gaseous vent hypothesis must rest is reexamined.

Anyone who works on oracles, divination, or Greek religion will probably remember a couple of years ago receiving a spate of well-meaning e-mails from friends and colleagues alerting them to the news of recent geological discoveries at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. An interdisciplinary team consisting of a geologist, an archaeologist, an oceanographer, and a toxicologist had, it seems, made the sensational find that the Pythia were, in the terminology of at least one news source, “gas huffers.” Their prophetic trances were, de Boer, Hale, Chanton, and Spiller argued, the effects of the priestesses’ intoxication by aliphatic hydrocarbon fumes, specifically the gas ethylene, which was used successfully (if a little too explo-sively) as a surgical anaesthetic in the early twentieth century.� We always knew that Delphi was a geologically interesting area, but what the de Boer team claimed to have shown was that there was not just one but two distinct fault lines crossing each other, their point of intersection very near to, and quite possibly directly underneath, the temple of Apollo.� Added to this were the team’s chemical analyses

* I would like to thank Jay Foster, Lawrence Principe, Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, and the classics department at Princeton university for their comments and criticisms; I would also like to thank The Institute for Advanced Study and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation for their financial support.

� J. Z. de Boer, J. R. Hale, and J. Chanton, “New Evidence for the Geological Origins of the Ancient Delphic Oracle,” Geology �9 (�00�) 707–�0; J. H. Hale et al.,; J. H. Hale et al., “Questioning the Delphic Oracle,” Scientific American (Aug. �003) 67–73; H. A. Spiller,; H. A. Spiller,H. A. Spiller, J. R. Hale, and J. Z. de Boer, “The Delphic Oracle: A Multidisciplinary Defense of the Gaseous Vent Theory,” Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology 40.� (�00�) �89–96.. De Boer et al. are not the first to propose a drug-addled Pythia. L. B. Holland (“The Mantic Mechanism at Delphi,” AJA 37 [�933] �0�–��4) speculates that she was smok-ing “hashish” and chewing oleander leaves, which act as a heart stimulant much like digitalis. The majority of scholars, however, have argued against intoxicating vapors. See, e.g., E. Will, “Sur la nature du pneuma delphique,” BCH 66 (�94�) �6�–75; P.P. Amandry, La mantique Apollonienne à Delphes: Essai sur le fonctionnement de l’oracle (Paris �950); H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell,; H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle (Oxford �956); J. Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley �978). H. Bowden (Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle [Cambridge �005]) is also cautiously negative.

� In two of their articles (Spiller, Hale, and de Boer [above, n.�]; Hale et al. [above, n.�]), they actually do say that it passes directly under the temple of Apollo, but this conclusion is based on the assumption that there was a gas-venting fault under the temple, which simply begs the question. When publishing for an audience of geologists (de Boer, Hale, and Chanton [above, n.�] 708), they are much more cautious: “The exact area of intersection of the Delphi and Kerna faults cannot be determined.” Indeed, a more recent study by G. Etiope et al. (“The Geological Links of the Ancient Delphic Oracle (Greece): A Reappraisal of Natural Gas Occurrence

4�

4�

of dissolved gases in the water from nearby springs that they claimed must run along one of the faults, and in calcium deposits on one of the temple’s retaining walls. The results were reported to show the presence of carbon dioxide, methane, and in one spring—crucially—ethylene. Based on this evidence, they hypothesized the presence of subterranean gases, produced and vented from time to time thanks to periodic seismic shifts. One such venting, they argued, accounted for the mantic trances of the Pythia.

The findings of de Boer et al. made all the major (and many not-so-major) media outlets, everything from the New York Times to High Times: everyone, it seems, wanted a piece of this story. In some of the shadier corners of the Internet, the Hale et al. Scientific American article has taken a place alongside Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary on the must-read lists of the chemically inclined. But what is all the fuss about? It certainly cannot be the modest conclusions, as expressed in the original Geology article of �00�, that begin “Contrary to the opinion among many archaeologists. . . .” Hallucinogens.com does not prick up its ears every time that sentence is uttered. Nor does The Guardian care overly much that “[ancient] testimony on geology is of more value than has recently been held to be the case.” No, it seems to have something to do with the drugs. The idea of an intoxicated priestess seems to be irresistible for a number of reasons. There is the popular idea that psychedelic experience and spiritual experience are closely linked, an idea that gained considerable steam in the lat-ter half of the twentieth century.3 There is also the satisfaction that comes from knowing that the otherwise strange and very foreign ritu-als and beliefs surrounding the Pythia can be reduced to something

and Origin,” Geology 34.�0 [�006] 8��–�4) seems to indicate that the Delphi fault comes no closer than about �00 meters from the temple, and that the Kerna fault is twice that far away.

3 See W. James,W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New york �90�); H.; H.H. Bergson, Les deux sources de la moralité et de la religion (Paris �93�); A. Huxley,; A. Huxley,A. Huxley, Doors of Perception (New york �954); W. T. Stace,; W. T. Stace,W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (Phila-delphia �960); T. Leary, “Religious Experience: Its Production and Interpretation,”; T. Leary, “Religious Experience: Its Production and Interpretation,”T. Leary, “Religious Experience: Its Production and Interpretation,” The Psychedelic Review � (�964) 3�4–46; J. Havens, “A Working Paper: Memo on the; J. Havens, “A Working Paper: Memo on theJ. Havens, “A Working Paper: Memo on the Religious Implications of the Consciousness-Changing Drugs (LSD, Mescalin, Psilo-cybin),” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 3 (�964) ��6–�6; H. Smith, “Do; H. Smith, “DoH. Smith, “Do Drugs Have Religious Import?” JPh 6� (�964) 5�9–�9; C. Castaneda,; C. Castaneda,C. Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (New york �968); W. H. Clark,; W. H. Clark,W. H. Clark, Chemical Ecstasy: Psychedelic Drugs and Religion (New york �969); J. M. Allegro, J. M. Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East (London �970); J. Kellenberger, “Mysticism970); J. Kellenberger, “MysticismJ. Kellenberger, “Mysticism and Drugs,” Religious Studies �4 (�978) �75–9�; L. Grinspoon and J. B. Bakalar,; L. Grinspoon and J. B. Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (New york �979); R. Forte et al.,R. Forte et al., Entheogens and the Future of Religion (San Francisco �997); and R. Fuller,; and R. Fuller,R. Fuller, Stairways to Heaven (Boulder, Colo., �000). Very recently the link between psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms). Very recently the link between psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) and spiritual experience has been given some new empirical footing in R. R. Griffiths et al., “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” Psychopharmacology �87.3 (�006) �68–83. Like de Boer et al., this study (perhaps predictably) also generated a good deal of publicity.

daryn lehoux

43

we do in fact understand quite well.4 This has the effect of making the Pythia out to be a little more like the kinds of people we might know, a little less “other.” No wonder they said strange things: they were intoxicated.

Although they attracted considerably less media attention, two more recent studies have called much of the de Boer team’s ethylene intoxication theory into question. A paper coauthored by J. Foster and myself in Clinical Toxicology5 argued that the hypothesis of a buildup of ethylene in psychoactive quantities is implausible, that ethylene does not have the properties they claim it to have, and that the de Boer team’s conclusions involved a logical fallacy (some of our arguments will be summarized below). A �006 paper by Etiope et al. in the journal Geology6 reached similar conclusions about the implausibility of ethylene, showing that its generation was not possible according to the current understanding of the geological processes hypothesized by the de Boer team. Moreover, the Zakinthos site that de Boer had used as a comparison turns out to occur “in a completely different geological context.”7 Etiope et al. also interpreted the geological evidence at the Delphi site itself differently from de Boer, arguing that the de Boer team’s placement of the two key faults was likely in error and that neither the Delphi fault nor the Kerna fault can be shown to pass under, or even very near to, the temple of Apollo. Nevertheless, the Etiope team did speculate that a third, minor fault may actually run under the temple, although the evidence is indefinite.8 That notwithstanding, Etiope et al. do point out that the limestone under the temple is very permeable, leaving open the possibility of gaseous emissions. Although they were unable to find any evidence of macroscopic emissions, they did detect microseepage of methane and carbon dioxide. unfortunately for the intoxication hy-pothesis, however, neither of these gases is psychoactive, and neither is currently seeping in significant quantities. This leads the Etiope team to speculate that “if gas-linked neurotoxic effects upon Pythia need to be invoked, they should be sought in the possibility of oxy-gen depletion due to [carbon dioxide and methane].”9 This is rather a weaker version of the originally proffered intoxication hypothesis, and one that seems prima facie unlikely given our understanding of the normal practices of mantic sessions at Delphi, which did not in-volve sealed chambers or long-term incubation prior to all responses.�0 They further add that if the historical evidence should force us to

4 For a fuller discussion of the role of positivism in the fate of such claims, see J. Foster and D. Lehoux, “The Ethylene-Intoxication Hypothesis and the Delphic Oracle,” Clinical Toxicology 45.� (�007) 85–89.

5 Above, n.4.6 Above, n.�.7 Etiope et al. (above, n.�) 8��.8 Etiope et al. (above, n.�) 8��.9 Etiope et al. (above, n.�) 8��, italics mine.

�0 See Fontenrose (above, n.�) ��5–�8.

druGS and the delPhic oracle

44

look for a sweet-smelling psychoactive gas, we may wish to consider the possibility that at one time benzene may have been produced by geological phenomena under the site. They admit that such an ef-fect would be uncommon, but not absolutely impossible. Note that they did not detect any evidence of benzene, they merely offer it as a possible candidate for the sweet-smelling gas that de Boer et al. claimed was attested in Plutarch. Thus both of these hypotheses, of possible oxygen depletion and the possible presence of benzene, are not themselves observations from the site itself, but are instead offered as possible explanations, not incompatible with current observations, for the phenomenon that de Boer et al. claimed to be attested in his-torical sources: intoxication by means of a sweet-smelling gas. It is perfectly understandable, given the scope of their study, that Etiope et al. have not revisited the historical evidence, and they offer these possibilities only because they have simply accepted at face value the de Boer team’s claim that “ancient historical references consistently describe an intoxicating gas, produced by a cavern in the ground, as the source of the power of the oracle at Delphi,”�� and they feel the need to find gases that may fit the bill. Much, then, depends on the historical evidence for gas vents.

For their part, de Boer et al. think they are in perfect agreement with the ancient sources (which for them primarily means Plutarch) “in virtually every detail.”�� But what they mean by this is that they are in agreement not just about what was fuelling the Pythia, but also in the methodological framework of their project in general. They point out that their research team for this project “approach[ed] problems with the same kind of broad-minded and interdisciplinary attitude that the Greeks themselves displayed.” Indeed the project itself, in good Greek fashion, was conceived over a bottle of wine. But perhaps most importantly, we see de Boer and company being credited in the media with taking steps to unify religion and science, steps de Boer et al. see as being mirrored by Plutarch, who was interested, in their words, in “reconciling religion and science,” an interest that comes as a bit of a surprise to me, who did not realize that there had even been a falling-out of the two in Plutarch’s day.�3

In the last few decades, historians of science and medicine of a particular methodological stripe—one I share—have become leery of the kind of explanation offered by de Boer. At best, such retrospective explanations add little, if anything, of value to our understanding of the workings of the oracle. One of the major flaws with such ac-counts is that rather than trying to explain things, they try to explain them away. If we are interested in contextually rich understandings of ancient science and religion, then it is not clear that the qualification she-was-high-on-drugs-but-no-one-at-the-time-knew-it does anything

�� Spiller, Hale, and de Boer (above, n.�).Spiller, Hale, and de Boer (above, n.�).�� De Boer et al. (above, n.�) 7�0.�3 Hale et al.Hale et al. (above, n.�) 69. 69.

daryn lehoux

45

but muddle our efforts to see ancient divination in the fullest rich-ness of its own contexts. This is not unreflectively to haul up de Boer et al. up as whipping boys, however, because in this instance, there may be more to what they are putting forth than just the claim that the Pythia was drug-addled. On the face of it, at least, theirs is not quite just another case of the medical historian who tries to convince us that Ivan the Terrible suffered from mercury poisoning (hence his moods), or worse, the debate in the back pages of medical journals about whether the Greek god Hephaestus “really” suffered from bilateral congenital clubfoot, achondroplastic dwarfism, or (my favorite) “chronic arsenic poisoning causing peripheral neuritis with weakness and lameness of one or both lower extremities.”�4

No, there was something a little more complex going on in de Boer et al. They thought they had both geological and historical evidence for the presence of a psychotropic gas at the site. Had they been cor-rect, this would have been an important claim indeed—perhaps akin to finding actual samples of Napoleon’s wallpaper.�5 As I mentioned above, however, the presence of ethylene is now not credible (more on this below). So what about the historical evidence? This needs to be handled with some care.

On a quick reading, it may seem to be the case that some ancient sources are saying that the adyton is in fact located over a fissure in the earth out of which pneumata emerge, pneumata that cause the Pythia to go into a trance.�6 If Plutarch, for example, is attesting as an eyewitness that there is both a crack in the floor and intoxicating pneumata, and the de Boer team is arguing that in fact there is a geological fault directly under the adyton, that the fault discharged gaseous vapors, and that these in turn contained significant levels of psychoactive gases, then de Boer et al. are not doing undue violence to ancient accounts, no more than if they had verified Pausanius’

�4 For the range of these claims, see E. Bazopoulou-Kyrkanidou, “What makes Hephaestus Lame?” American Journal of Medical Genetics 7�.� (�997) �44–55; K. Aterman, “From Horus the Child to Hephaestus who Limps: A Romp Through His-tory,” American Journal of Medical Genetics 83.� (�999) 53–63. For attempts to do something parallel with the identification of the plague described by Thucydides, see, e.g., the truly delightful H. Zinsser, Rats, Lice, and History (Boston �935); A. Langmuir et al., “The Thucydides Syndrome: A New Hypothesis for the Cause of the Plague at Athens,” New England Journal of Medicine 3�3 (�985) �0�7–30; D. Mo-rens, “Response to Langmuir,” New England Journal of Medicine 3�4 (�986) 855; J. A. H. Wylie and H. W. Stubbs “The Plague of Athens, 430–4�8 b.c., Epidemic and Epizootic,” CQ 33 (�983) 6–��. Contra this approach, see J. C. F. Poole and A. J. Holladay, “Thucydides and the Plague of Athens,” CQ �9 (�979) �8�–300; J. Longrigg, “The Plague of Athens,” History of Science �8 (�980) �09–�5. For a nicely balanced and very well argued look at the issues at stake, see A. Karenberg and F. P. Moog, “Next Emperor, Please! No End to Retrospective Diagnostics,” Journal of the History of the Neurosciences �3 (�003) �43–49.

�5 See D. E. H. Jones and K. W. D. Ledingham, “Arsenic in Napoleon’s Wall-paper,” Nature �99 (Oct. �98�) 6�6–�7.

�6 Good summaries of the evidence are in Fontenrose (above, n.�) �97–�03 and Will (above, n.�).

druGS and the delPhic oracle

46

description of the road to Delphi as being very steep and difficult. So the question becomes this: how much does the de Boer team’s explanation map onto Plutarch’s, and how do they differ, if at all? This point is doubly important in light of Etiope et al.’s paper, which accepts de Boer’s reading of Plutarch and other ancient sources and consequently feels the need to continue to offer gaseous explanations for divination, even if the particular gas originally offered by the de Boer team has now been discredited.�7

Let us then have a closer look at the ancient evidence. The framing question for Plutarch’s dialogue On the Obsolescence of Oracles is why the oracles have become weak: δι’ ν aτaν οτως ξησθνηκε (4��E). In asking the question, there is a danger that all of Plutarch’s interlocutors are acutely conscious of: if the oracles have failed because the gods who caused them have now forsaken them, or if they have failed because some degenerative or opposing force has overpowered the gods’ ability to maintain them, then we have an image of the deities as either too fickle or too weak for any of the interlocutors to accept.

The explanation offered by Lamprias, the main interlocutor in the dialogue, is that the gods do create oracles but that the oracles, like everything else created, are not imperishable: πολλ κaλ το θεο διδντος νθρποις θνaτον δε μηδν (“Many good things are given to mankind by the gods, but none of them are immortal,” 4�4D), and this almost by definition. For matter in itself is always, by its very nature, degenerative. The gods are still credited with creating the oracles, but it is important that they create them as destructible matter. Nature, φσις, no slouch of a mover herself in Hellenistic philosophy, is credited with the dissolution of the oracles: what god giveth, Nature taketh away. As Lamprias sees it, the greatness of the gods necessitates that they do not intercede on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis with their creations (indeed, this agrees with one of the major theological positions of Carneades, the founder of the New Academy to which Lamprias subscribed).�8 τ μaντικν (“the divina-tory”), then, becomes for Lamprias a physical faculty of the physical soul, one that, like our other faculties, waxes and wanes depending on external and internal circumstances. Thus the prophetic faculty can be aided by a μaντικν εμa (“divinatory current”), which can come to us through the airs or waters that the earth produces. The analogy Lamprias offers is of an air that heats and spreads out “certain pores” into which the images of the future, ο φaντaστικο το μλλοντος, can enter. Provocatively, for our purposes, he then likens this effect to that of wine, which can reveal hidden things when it gets into the body, and to that of a φρμaκον (“drug”), which requires a certain readiness of the body to receive it. Or perhaps, he continues, a heat-ing or cooling of τ πνεμa (internal? external?) makes it purer and

�7 Etiope et al. (above, n.�); Foster and Lehoux (above, n.4).�8 Cic. Div. �.7.

daryn lehoux

\

47

better suited to prophecy. Or maybe, like an alloy, small amounts of this εμa might have major effects if combined in just the right ways with the stuff of our souls. In short, the prophetic faculty of the soul takes advantage of something to inflame it (συνεξπτω) and sharpen it, just as the sun (Apollo) kindles (ξπτω) the light that enables the eye to see. Bringing all of these chickens home to roost, then, Lamprias reminds us that the sun, in heating and cooling the earth, causes the arrangement and mixture (διθεσις κa κρσις) in the earth, from which the exhalations (νaθυμισεις) come (433D–E).

As anyone familiar with Hellenistic philosophy will recognize, the invocation of “exhalations” and pneumata is not straightforwardly equatable with an invocation of gaseous vapors.�9 Indeed, πνεμa is a standard explanation in Hellenistic physics for a very wide range of phenomena. In organisms, πνεμa in the nerves allows the transfer of sensation and motor function between the limbs and the brain. In the arteries it is used to explain the puzzling fact that the arteries seem empty in dissection subjects, and yet they bleed so copiously when pierced in live animals. The idea was that they must normally have been full of some subtle and imperceptible substance, πνεμa, which, on severing an artery in a living subject, evacuated instanta-neously, thereby drawing blood—unnaturally—over into the arterial system from the venous system by the mechanism of the horror vacui.�0 What is most telling about the nerve and artery examples is that neither system contains gases. What the ancients were doing was correlating theory and observation: we see something happening, but cannot see a physical mechanism underpinning it, so we hypothesize the existence of an imperceptible substance that is responsible for the effect we have observed. Let us call this substance πνεμa. Indeed, πνεμa becomes so rarified in Hellenistic philosophy as to come to mean, for one school, “the divine ‘active principle’ of the world in its entirety”��—a meaning quite a long way from our mundane “gas,” “wind,” or “breath.” Even when what appears prima facie to be more concrete terminology is used—words like ρ—we frequently have

�9 As Will (above, n.�), Parke and Wormell (above, n.�), and Fontenrose (above, n.�) all point out, Plutarch’s testimony is far from uncontroversial for a number of reasons, not least of them the particular philosophical commitments he is attempting to push in the dialogue. Moreover, although de Boer et al. want to conflate the two, ancient testimony about a chasm at Delphi on the one hand and testimony about the presence of vapors at Delphi on the other are two quite distinct issues in most sources, and virtually all of the testimony is fairly late (post-first century b.c.). For a very good treatment of the issues, see Fontenrose (above, n.�) �99–�03. On problems with pneuma in particular, see Parke and Wormell (above, n.�) �3; Fontenrose (above, n.�) �97; L. Maurizio, “Anthropology and Spirit Possession: A Reconsideration of the Pythia’s Role at Delphi,” JHS ��5 (�995) 76–79.

�0 See D. Lehoux, “All Voids Large and Small, Being a Discussion of Place and Void in Strato of Lampsacus’s Matter Theory,” Apeiron: Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 3� (�999) �–36.

�� A. A. Long, “Stoic Psychology,” in K. Algra et al., eds., The Cambridge His-tory of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge �999) 569.

druGS and the delPhic oracle

48

cause to be cautious. Plutarch, for example, cites Hesiod to claim that it is ρ that demigods are made of.�� It is also ρες that are said to cause epidemic diseases. But we should not be tempted to infer anything from this claim about the air quality in ancient cit-ies at the outsets of epidemics. And if we were to follow Plutarch unquestioningly, we should be led to believe not only that ρες are the cause of epidemic disease, but that those ρες are produced and vented by the earth itself. We also know from elsewhere that Plutarch thinks that earthly νaθυμισεις (“exhalations”) cause all kinds of other things with which we would certainly not find gases involved. The presence and exhaustion of minerals in mines, for example, are caused by them. Are we to suppose he has any observational evidence for gaseous causation of metals here? Or is he simply extrapolating from theory and tradition? Keep in mind that in another dialogue, Plutarch has one character claim expressly to have observed that contact with garlic will cause magnets to function no longer and that a single remora can bring a speeding ship to a grinding halt.�3

There are further problems with the testimony for mantic vapors.�4 Far from being the testimony of Plutarch-the-eyewitness, as the de Boer team presents it, the case for exhalations in the De defectu oraculorum is made by the fictionalized character Lamprias. There are four main problems that this presents: (�) as is standard in the genre, Lamprias stands as the representative of a particular philo-sophical school and his opinions about the oracle are always meant to be biased in a particular direction; (�) he is not an eyewitness (we know from a separate dialogue that he is expressly contrasted with τος φ’ ερο, “those associated with the temple,” De E apud Delphos 385A); (3) claims that Lamprias has made about the oracle in another dialogue are said to have contradicted, possibly to the point of angering, those who actually lived in and worked at Delphi; and, perhaps most crucially, (4) he is accused by an interlocutor on at least one occasion of deliberately falsifying data (πλττεσθaι δ’ στορaν κa κον τρων, “changing data and reports,” 386A) to suit his argument. Finally, the case as presented by Lamprias is clearly offered in De defectu oraculorum as a speculation. Lamprias knows that his story may seem implausible to his audience, following it with a qualifying ε δε τοτο μ δοκε πιθaνν . . . (“if this seems implausible . . .”), and he closes the dialogue by conceding to his interlocutors that his account has been both speculative and provoca-tive, ς χοντa πολλς ντιλψεις κa πονοaς πρς τονaντον (“such“such that there are many objections and suspicions that contradict it,” Def. Or. 438D).

�� De def. or. 43�B. Compare Hes. Op. ��5.�3 See D. Lehoux, “Tropes, Facts, and Empiricism,” Perspectives on Science ��

(�003) 3�6–45.�4 J. Foster and D. Lehoux, “A Mighty Wind?” Clinical Toxicology, forthcom-

ing.

daryn lehoux

\

49

Finally, de Boer et al. and Plutarch are not making compatible claims: they disagree on the explanandum. The de Boer team’s vapors are mephitic. Plutarch’s pneumata are mantic. Plutarch is not using his pneuma to explain intoxication, but to explain prophecy, and these are emphatically not the same thing.�5 Not even if we allow de Boer the extra implied assumption that there may well be an overlapping of psychedelic and spiritual experience, do we get to Plutarch. All we would have at this point is a Pythia of the in vino illuminatio school, not one with any pretence to speaking the future. Remember that the Greeks built a temple to Apollo on the site where de Boer has subterranean anaesthetics bubbling to the surface. They did not build a temple to Asclepius. This point is crucial, because it means that even if the de Boer team were right about the ethylene—and there are good reasons to suppose that they are not—then they still have not explained the oracle. They have only classified Plutarch’s pneuma. And remember that even on de Boer’s account, the people who sent embassies to, consulted, and believed in the oracle, the citizens from Delos and Athens, were not incubated in the anaesthetic fount of the Pythia. They were not intoxicated. Ethylene does not do any epistemological work for us at all in this respect.

So where does this leave de Boer and co.? Let us at least do them the favor we are asking they do Plutarch, to understand them in their own particular context. If we do this, then we must remember that their work was not primarily meant as a contribution to classi-cal scholarship. The main publications of the team were exclusively in scientific journals: Geology, Scientific American, and Clinical Toxicology. Indeed, one of their main claims was strictly geological: their contention that there is a second fault, the Kerna fault, that crosses the familiar Delphi fault somewhere in the vicinity of the temple of Apollo. They are contributing to a long-standing geological research program that uses ancient records, among other things, to try to reconstruct the geological history of Delphi, a particularly ac-tive and interesting area from a seismological point of view, as well as a particularly well-documented historical location.�6 If we want to understand seismic activity over time, then historical descriptions of what the earth was doing at these times become an important (if not entirely unproblematic) piece of evidence. In this context, history is a very different animal from what professional historians think of it

�5 On the problems with imposing “frenzy” on the Pythia, see Will (above, n.�); Amandry (above, n.�) 4� f., ���; Fontenrose (above, n.�) �04 f.; Bowden (above, n.�) �� f.

�6 See, e.g., L. Piccardi, “Active Faulting at Delphi, Greece: Seismotectonic Re-marks and a Hypothesis for the Geologic Environment of a Myth,” Geology �8 (�000) 65�–54; N. Ambraseys, “Material for the Investigation of the Seismicity of Central Greece,” in S. Sitros and R. E. Jones, eds., Archaeoseismology (Exeter �996); L. C. Polimenakos, “Thoughts on the Perception of the Earthquake in Greek Antiquity,” in Sitros and Jones; B. Bousquet and P. y. P�choux, “La seismicit� du bassin �g�enB. Bousquet and P. y. P�choux, “La seismicit� du bassin �g�en“La seismicit� du bassin �g�enLa seismicit� du bassin �g�en pendant l’antiquit�,”” Bulletin de la société géologique de France �9 (�977) 679–84..

druGS and the delPhic oracle

50

as being. The geologist Luigi Piccardi, for example, is able to talk of the oracle as “a myth,” and none of his referees or intended readers is fazed by this. Historians may thump the table at this point, but whatever corrections we may offer, whatever nuances we may want to call into play, we are not really offering anything crucial to Piccardi’s discussion of the geology of the Corinth rift zone.

By saying this I do not want to be seen as simply dividing up the sandbox—you folks play over there and we’ll play over here—but to emphasize the different uses to which history can and is being put, and to sketch a way in which these different uses can cohabitate.

Where does this leave the gas-huffing priestess? Out in the cold, as it turns out. If we take the de Boer team to be claiming that they have found a plausible geological mechanism for Plutarch’s pneuma, both its presence and its obsolescence, and that Plutarch helps them to locate the exact point of intersection of the two faults, then the high priestess has not yet made an appearance. When de Boer says that they have found trace amounts of ethylene in the Kerna spring, then we can take it as possible that there may be, or may have been, some ethylene in any vapors escaping from the fault on which the spring sits. To put the volumes of ethylene we are talking about here into context, however, let me point out that the Kerna spring, the one and only site yielding any detectable ethylene at Delphi, showed concentrations of only 0.3 nanomoles per liter of water.�7 An aver-age-sized undergraduate class will collectively exhale several thousand times this amount of ethylene into the classroom over the course of a one-hour lecture.�8 People driving in traffic or operating gas-powered lawnmowers are also regularly exposed to significantly higher levels of ethylene than this.�9 In short, ethylene is a fairly common atmospheric compound, produced by all plant tissue (ripening bananas are particu-larly productive), microorganisms, and by many other common sources (including wood, petroleum, diesel, jet fuel, and tobacco smoke).30 And indeed, concentrations on the order of magnitude measured at the Kerna spring are not atypical for water samples.3�

But to knock someone unconscious, it requires a minimum �0 percent concentration of the gas in the air they are breathing (the

�7 De Boer, Hale, and Chanton (above, n.�) 709. �8 J. P. Conkle, B. J. Camp, and B. E. Welch, “Trace Composition of Human

Respiratory Gas,” Archives of Environmental Health HealthHealth 30 (�975) �90–95..�9 u. Östermark and G. Pertersson, “Volatile Hydrocarbons in Exhaust from

Alkylate-Based Petrol,” Chemosphere �7 (�993) �7��–�3. In lawnmower and moped applications, the ethylene content was slightly higher for alkylate-based than for re-formate-based fuels.

30 T. E. Graedel, D. T. Hawkins, and L. D. Claxton, Atmospheric Chemical Compounds: Sources, Occurrence, and Bioassay (Orlando �986)..

3� See, e.g., C. R. Plass, C. R. Koppmann, and J. Rudolph, “Light hydrocarbonsC. R. Plass, C. R. Koppmann, and J. Rudolph, “Light hydrocarbons in the surface water of the mid-Atlantic,” Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry �5 (�99�) �35–5�; B. Bonsang et al., “The Marine Source of C� – C6 Aliphatic Hydrocarbons,”; B. Bonsang et al., “The Marine Source of C� – C6 Aliphatic Hydrocarbons,”B. Bonsang et al., “The Marine Source of C� – C6 Aliphatic Hydrocarbons,” “The Marine Source of C� – C6 Aliphatic Hydrocarbons,” Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry 6 (�988) 3–�0; Etiope et al. (above, n.�) 8��.; Etiope et al. (above, n.�) 8��.

daryn lehoux

5�

optimum being a mixture of 70 to 80 percent ethylene and 30 to �0 percent oxygen3�), not the trace amounts the de Boer team is talking about. Even if we concede that historical levels may have been higher than they are now (and we should keep in mind that they may also have been lower as well),33 then we need to remember that above a local atmospheric concentration of �.7 percent, ethylene is highly explosive.34 Are we to believe that there was an 800-year gas leak in the adyton that was never sparked by a lamp, a brazier, or a stone in someone’s shoe?35

Moreover, as much as de Boer et al. have tried to whitewash this, ethylene does not even give us the right effects. The Spiller, Hale, and de Boer (�00�) description of the one ancient visual im-age we have of a Pythia, where the priestess Themis is seated atop a tripod in a low-ceilinged room and looks down into a bowl she holds in her hand (see fig. � on p. 56),36 as being “slumped over, as one would expect from a mildly anesthetized woman,” simply strains credibility. “Slumped over” as a description of her posture is already to beg the question, and we could point out that her posture is perfectly natural for a woman looking down into a bowl held in her hand, or for a woman sitting on a high stool under a very low ceiling, both of which we can clearly see her doing in the image. Her posture may well simply be contemplative or ritualistic, or very likely simply fancy on the part of the illustrator. After all, we know that the particular scene depicted is not meant to be documentary. We should also point out that on the intoxication theory, Aigeus, the man standing opposite the Pythia in the illustration, should also “slump” from anaesthesia, which he shows no signs of at all, and he should do so within seconds of entering the adyton since ethyl-ene is particularly fast-acting, which is one of its chief virtues as an anaesthetic.37

Spiller, Hale, and de Boer offer a comparative table that sets known effects of two anaesthetics in parallel with attested behaviors of the Pythia. At first glance this may seem compelling, but if we examine the chain of evidence more closely, it becomes difficult to

3� At 70 or 80 percent the gas must be mixed with pure oxygen to prevent asphyxiation.

33 De Boer’s saying that the instability of ethylene explains its absence in the travertine deposits is only to assume the presence of ethylene in the first place, which is, of course, still to be proved.

34 To be sure, it ceases being explosive above 35 percent, but only because there is no longer enough oxygen in the air to support combustion. But if levels in the adyton were this high, the Pythia would have been unable to breathe.

35 Indeed, we are even told by Plutarch (De Pyth. or. 397a) that the burning of incense was part of the ritual of the oracle.

36 Currently in the Pergamonmuseum, Berlin, Inv. �538. Reproduced with permis-sion of the Bildachiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

37 L. S. Goodman and A. Gilman, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 5th ed. (New york �975) 83.

druGS and the delPhic oracle

5�

see what value many of the paralleled pieces of evidence are sup-posed to have. Their complete table runs as follows:38

Description of Pythia at Delphi from a ‘Normal’ Mantic Session

Description of Mild Anesthesia with Ethylene or Nitrous Oxide

Rapid onset of trance state Full effects in 30 seconds to � minutes (Borne)39

Calm response, willingly entered the adyton. Remained there for hours

Pleasant state of being, no sense of anxiety or asphyxiation. Happy to stay under influence of gas for long periods of time (Lockhardt)40

Remain conscious Remain conscious (Lockhardt)

Able to maintain seated posi-tion

Able to maintain seated position (James)

Can see others and hear ques-tions

Responds to questions and write [sic] answers (James)

Tone and pattern of speech al-tered Pattern of speech altered

Describe out of body experi-ence—feeling of being possessed by the god Apollo

Altered state—experienced reli-gious revelations (James)

Free association—images not ob-viously connected to questions

Free association—random thought pattern not obviously connected to initial question (James)

Recovers rapidlyComplete recovery in 5–�5 min-utes from full operable anesthesia (Herb)

Amnesia of events while under influence

Amnesia of events while under influence (Lockhardt, James)

38 Table in Spiller, Hale, and de Boer (above, n.�) �93. “Herb” is I. C. Herb,I. C. Herb, “Ethylene: Notes taken from the clinical record,” Current Researches in Anesthesia and Analgesia � (�9�3) �30–3�. For “Borne” and “Lockhardt” see below, nn.39 and 40.

39 Sic. Should read “Bourne” (see J. G. Bourne, “uptake, Elimination, and Potency of the Inhalational Anaesthetics,” Anaesthesia � [�964] ��–3�; J. G. Bourne, Nitrous Oxide in Dentistry: Its Danger and Alternatives [London �960]).

40 Sic. Should read “Luckhardt,” or even better, “Luckhardt and Carter.” See A.Sic. Should read “Luckhardt,” or even better, “Luckhardt and Carter.” See A. Should read “Luckhardt,” or even better, “Luckhardt and Carter.” See A. B. Luckhardt and J. B. Carter, “Physiological Effects of Ethylene,” Journal of the American Medical Association 80 (�9�3) 765–70.

daryn lehoux

53

A good number of these points of comparison can be dismissed out of hand as meaningless. If we formalize particular pairs, we can see this most dramatically. Take row three, for example:

A: The Pythia remained conscious.B: People high on small doses of ethylene or

nitrous oxide remain conscious.therefore C: The Pythia’s behaviour is consistent with

ethylene intoxication.“Able to maintain seated position” and “[c]an see others and hear questions” are similarly trivial. The biggest problem here is that any behavior of the Pythia in any of these three categories would turn out to be consistent with ethylene intoxication. If she remains conscious, seated, and communicative, that is consistent with intoxication. If, on the other hand, she loses consciousness, falls off her seat, and is uncommunicative, that is also consistent with intoxication. Likewise any stages between these two extremes, where variations depend on both the dose and the individual.4� Although not quite so empty as the conscious/sitting/communicative triumvirate, “[c]alm response, willingly entered the adyton. Remained there for hours,” paired with “Pleasant state of being, no sense of anxiety or asphyxiation. Happy to stay under influence of gas for long periods of time,” is again subject to the problem that an aggravated and panicky “response” is also consistent with ethylene intoxication.4� The Pythia simply can’t win here—she is deemed intoxicated no matter what the evidence. These appositions are no evidence whatsoever, neither on their own, nor in combination or concert with the other supposed parallels offered.

Other pairings fall prey to different problems. One rather insidious problem with the table as a whole is the use to which the evidence from the psychologist and philosopher William James is put. James is cited as the source for fully half of the relevant effects in the “mild anesthesia” column. Although James carefully describes the effects of a great number of drugs (opium, morphine, hashish, atropine, mescaline, ether, chloroform, and [most prominently] nitrous oxide) nowhere—no-where—in his voluminous writings is there a single reference to the effects of ethylene. To gloss this inconvenience, Spiller, Hale, and de Boer hedge their column title as follows: “Description of Mild Anesthesia with Ethylene or Nitrous Oxide.” Or nitrous oxide? They decline to justify freely interchanging the effects of ethylene, C�H4, and nitrous oxide, N�O, two different gases whose properties cannot simply be intersubstituted without further study.43 And look at the

4� See, e.g., B. H. Rumack, ed.,See, e.g., B. H. Rumack, ed.,B. H. Rumack, ed., Poisindex System, Micromedex, vol. ��� (Engle-wood, Colo., �004)..

4� Luckhardt and Carter (above, n.40).43 The two gases are rated by Bourne (above, n.39) as having the same conventional

potency for anaesthetic purposes, but they differ markedly in their intrinsic potencies. More importantly, their effects, toxicity, etc. are not simply interchangeable.

druGS and the delPhic oracle

54

following (notwithstanding that it is an effect of nitrous oxide rather than ethylene): “Altered state—experienced religious revelations.” This is paired in the table with the Pythia who “[d]escribe[s] out of body experience—feeling of being possessed by the god Apollo.” Here we should point out two things: no ancient source describes an “out of body experience” on the part of the Pythia, nor does anyone say that the Pythia had a feeling of being possessed by Apollo. She spoke as Apollo, but it cannot be overemphasized that we know nothing of her inner mental states, which are, after all, the entire substance of James’ reported parallel.44 There is a similar problem with the claim of “free association.” The fact that the priestesses gave cryptic (but in the ancient testimony always relevant) responses is not even the same kind of thing as James’ “random thought patterns,” let alone the sticky question of who is deciding what ideas count as “not ob-viously connected.”

What are we left with, then? (�) “Rapid onset of trance state,” (�) “pattern of speech altered,” (3) “Recovers rapidly,” and (4) “Amnesia of events while under influence.” In (�) and (3), the talk of trance and recovery is both loaded and contentious. (�) is a common part of most ritual behaviour, religious and otherwise, and in any case the generalization is broad to the point of disingenuousness: it sets the slurred and intoxicated speech patterns of people under the influence of ethylene (or nitrous oxide) in parallel with the sometimes system-atically complex speech patterns of the Pythia, such as speaking in third-person, highly allusive hexameter verse. Arguably, this is very like classing a staggering drunk with a competitive sprinter under the category of “abnormal perambulation.” Finally, (4) is a very common claim among enthousiasts, ancient and modern alike, and says nothing for or against ethylene. And one should also point in the context of (4) that the phrase “while under the influence” applied to the Pythia only begs the question yet again.

In short, sleepiness and memory loss are not enthousiasm, and the small handful of modern patients who have been observed, at high concentrations of ethylene, to have “more violent reactions” still do not accord with any description of the day-to-day behavior of the Pythia. Nor do the Pythia show many of the common side effects of ethylene intoxication: there are no reports of the characteristic cyanosis (blue lips and skin) which is reported as an “unavoidable accompaniment” of the use of ethylene as an anaesthetic.45 Nor do we hear of the Pythia complaining of the unpleasant aftertaste that often lingers for hours after the effects of ethylene have worn off.46

44 On the problems with attempts to reconstruct the Pythia’s mental states, see Maurizio (above, n.�9).

45 C. Thienes and T. J. Haley, Clinical Toxicology, 5th ed. (London �97�) 53.46 American Medical Association, Division of Drugs, AMA Drug Evaluations,

2nd ed. (Acton, Mass., �973) ��7.

daryn lehoux

55

There is no indication that the Pythia were prone to hyperglycemia,47 fatigue, tunnel vision, or frothy mucous.48

Finally, consider de Boer, Hale, and Chanton’s extreme case, where they claim in the �00� Geology article that the dramatic inci-dent of the death of a Pythia, vividly described by Plutarch (De def. or. 438A–C), may have been due to an “overdose” of ethylene. They are forced to backpedal on this claim in the �003 Scientific American article, since it turns out that it is probably impossible to inhale a lethal dose of atmospheric ethylene.49 Instead, they try to keep the ethylene hypothesis alive by suggesting that if she had “vomited dur-ing [her] frenzy [sic] and ingested some of the vomit into the lungs, pneumonia and death would inevitably have followed.”50 Indeed. And Hepahestus may have suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning caus-ing peripheral neuritis with weakness and lameness of one or both lower extremities.

So where does this leave us? As presented, the toxicological case will not stand: the Pythia’s behavior cannot be accounted for by ethylene intoxication, neither in whole nor in part. The hypothesis of the presence of ethylene in significant quantities poses irremedi-able difficulties, and Etiope et al. have further shown that there is no plausible geological mechanism for ethylene production at Del-phi. They also call into question the de Boer team’s location of the two main geological faults. Nevertheless, Etiope et al. do still posit gaseous candidates as causes of oracular trances at Delphi, simply because they do not question the historical evidence presented by de Boer et al. It has been shown above that the ancient testimony does not lead to the conclusion of a gaseous vent and that the testimony of Plutarch is a particular problem when used as historical evidence for geological phenomena.

But we should not lose sight of the larger methodological point either: that the intricate complex of religion, ritual, politics, theology, geography, and philosophy that we find at play in Delphi simply cannot be reduced to any one causal agent, be it physical, cultural, biological, psychological, or pharmacological. The oracle needs to be understood within all of these contexts if it is to be understood at all.

University of Manchester DARyN LEHOuxClassical World �0�.� (�007) daryn.lehoux@manchester.ac.uk

47 American Medical Association (above, n.46) ��7.48 Rumack (above, n.4�).49 Indeed, according to most Material Safety Data Sheets, there is no known

rat LC50 or LD50 (the dosage at which 50 percent of rats in a sample set die). See also American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists, Documentation of Threshold Limit Values and Biological Exposure Indices, 6th ed. (Cincinnati) 598.

50 Hale et al. (above, n.�) 73.

druGS and the delPhic oracle

56 daryn lehoux

Fig. �: Anaesthetized or contemplative? Photo courtesy of the Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz.