Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

xi] The Oracle of Trophonios 509
with oil and bathe him. The boys are called Hermai, and they wash him
and do all necessary things for him. Then the priests take him not straight
to the oracle, but to certain springs of water which are close to each other.
Here he must drink what is called the water of Lethe, that he may forget all
he has hitherto had in mind. Next he drinks of another water, the water of
Memory, and by it he remembers again what he sees down below. Then
having seen it and worshipped and prayed he comes to the oracle itself
dressed in a tunic of linen, girded with fillets and wearing the boots of the
country.
Then follows a detailed account of the actual structure of the
oracular chasm. It is artificial and shaped like a pot for baking
bread in. It is about eight ells deep. The consultant goes down
by a ladder.
When he has gone down he sees a hole between the ground and the stonework.
Its breadth seems to be two spans and its height one. He then lays
himself down on his back, and holding in either hand barley-cakes mixed
with honey, he pushes his feet through the hole first and then follows himself,
trying to squeeze his knees through the hole. When he has got his knees
through the rest of his body is immediately pulled in, and shoots along as a
man might be caught and dragged along by the swirl of a mighty and swift
stream. The future is not revealed to all in the same way. To one it is
given by sight, to another by hearing. They return through the hole feet
foremost.
Next comes a story of the sad and instructive fate of a
sacrilegious consultant, and then Pausanias concludes
When a man has come up from Trophonios, the priests again take him
and set him on what they call the throne of Memory, which stands not far
from the shrine, and when he is seated there they ask him as to what he has
seen and heard. When he has told them they give him over to his friends,
and they carry him, still overwhelmed with fear and unconscious of himself
and where he is, to the same building where he stayed before, the house of
Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche. Later on his wits return to him and
the power to laugh will come back again. 1 do not write from hearsay. I
have myself consulted Trophonios, and have seen others who have done it.
It is important that Pausanias states what he knows from
personal experience. No one who has read Pausanias will incline
to credit him with hysteria.
(2) Plutarch's account of the experiences of Timarchos 1 adds
certain details to the picture, and greatly emphasizes the im-
portance of the revelations imparted. When Timarchos after
the accustomed preliminaries entered the chasm,
thick darkness was about him. He prayed and lay a long while upon the
ground uncertain whether he was waking or dreaming. But it seemed to him
that he felt a sharp blow on his head with a great noise, and that through the
1 De Genio Socr. xxn.
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