Her answers guided the civilized world for the timing of wars, the establishment of new settlements, and wisdom to appease the gods. 371), the Oracle of Delphi would serve as the most prestigious and revered fortune teller in the world. Amazed at the Oracle of Delphi's prescience, Croesus sent emissaries back to Delphi with gifts of gold and silver for the oracle and they asked additional questions.įor the next one thousand years (560 B.C. This dish was not typical cuisine for kings, especially one as rich as Croesus. To eat turtle soup mixed with lamb's meat prepared in a bronze pot was exactly what Croesus was doing on that particular day.
The smell has come to my sense of a hard shelled tortoise boiling and bubbling with a lamb's flesh in a bronze pot: the cauldron underneath it is of bronze, and bronze is the lid." "I c ount the grains of sand on the beach and measure the sea I understand the speech of the dumb and hear the voiceless. Of the seven oracles consulted, only the Oracle at Delphi (Greece) accurately described what Croesus was doing on the day the question was asked. The Oracle of Delphi said: Croesus sent his emissaries on a 100 day journey to the seven most popular oracles in the world with a question: What is King Croesus doing today?Ĭroesus kept a diary during those 100 days and when his messengers returned to Smyrna, he compared notes in his diary to what the oracles said. During the time Israel was in Babylonian captivity (6th century B.C.), a ruler in Smyrna, Lydia (modern Turkey) named King Croesus wanted to find the best oracle in the world, one with powers to divine the future better than all others. An oracle was a person who spoke (orated) for the gods in various temples. When the ancient peoples around the Mediterranean Sea basin wanted wisdom from the gods they went to oracles.
"The greatest blessings come by way of madness, indeed of madness that is heaven sent." - Socrates on the Oracle of Delphi.