To Dare Even More Boldly: Meet the Pythia of Delphi, the world's first political risk analyst
In 480 BC, the citizens of Athens found themselves in more trouble than the modern mind can imagine. Xerxes, son of Darius the Great of Persia, King of Kings, King of the World, had some unfinished business left to him by his all-powerful father. A decade earlier, at the Battle of Marathon in August 490 BC, the impossible had happened. The little-regarded Athenian army had seen off Darius and his mighty horde, saving the fragile city-state from certain destruction. Now Xerxes had invaded the Greek mainland again, to finish what his father had started.
Judging by his past record, the Athenians knew better than to expect any mercy from the great king. Upon ascending the throne, Xerxes had savagely crushed two rebellions by portions of his empire then thought to be infinitely superior to the little city-state that was Athens. In 484 BC, Xerxes had quashed a revolt in Egypt, devastating the Nile delta. Soon after, he decisively put down efforts to throw off his yoke in Babylon, going so far as to pillage the sacred Babylonian temples. Xerxes was a man who saw every form of dissent as sacrilege; the Athenians knew they could expect no quarter from the Person king should they fail.
Just to make sure that this time that Athens did not escape the wrath of the Persian Empire, Xerxes assembled the largest invading force the world had ever seen. While the Greek historian Herodotus—typically exaggerating—put the Persian numbers at 5 million, modern-day historians still place them at an overwhelming 360,000, with a gigantic armada of 700-800 ships in support of this vast host.
Confronted with almost certain annihilation, what did the Athenian leadership do? What was their response to a problem that in terms of its size and its likely devastating impact seems insurmountable?
Simple. They requested the services of the world’s first political risk consultant.
The Pythia Masters the Persians
By 480 BC, the Pythia of Delphi already amounted to an ancient institution. Commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi (when in fact the ‘oracles’ were the pronouncements the Pythia dispensed), the Pythia were the senior priestesses at the Temple of Apollo, the Greek God of Prophecy.
The temple, sitting precariously (and beautifully—the site is still a wonder to behold), on the slope of Mount Parnassus above the Castalian Spring, had long been the centre of the Greek world, going back into the mists of time. The site may well have had religious significance as early as 1400 BC, during the forgotten days of the Mycenaeans, with devotions to Apollo being established in the eighth century BC. Delphi remained a centre of worship until 390 AD, having been in use for at least 1100 years.
During this long period, the Pythia was seen as the most authoritative and important soothsayer in Greece. Pilgrims descended from all over the ancient world to visit the temple and have their questions about the future answered. Sitting in a small, enclosed chamber at the base of the edifice, the Pythia delivered her oracles in a frenzied state, most probably imbibing the vapours rising from the clefts of Mount Parnassus.
We know a good deal about how the oracles came to pass. For a time during the period of Roman domination, the Greek historian Plutarch served as high priest at Delphi, assisting the Pythia in her mission. Perched above the major major cleft in the rock, the Pythia would be sitting in a perforated cauldron astride a tripod. It was reported by pilgrims that as the Pythia imbibed the vapours rising from the stone her hair would stand on end, her complexion altered, and she would often begin panting, with her voice assuming an otherworldly tone, not quite human. In classical days, it was asserted that the Pythia spoke in rhyme, in pentameter or hexameter.
To put it in modern terms, there is little doubt that the Pythia did see visions and underwent a dramatic transformation while in the temple; she was clearly as high as a kite. Plutarch himself believed that her oracular powers were directly associated with the vapours that emanated from the Kerna spring waters that flowed underneath the temple, vapours that may well have been full of hallucinogenic gas.
We now know that two tectonic plates intersect beneath Mount Parnassus; such a fault line creates many crevices in the earth, through which gases can rise. Recent tests have found ethylene in the spring water near the site of the Temple of Apollo. It is the most likely cause of the Delphic prophecies.
Ethylene is characterised by its sweet smell and produces a narcotic effect of floating or disembodied euphoria. As described in detail by Plutarch, the experiences of the Pythia in action match the effects of ethylene. Under the influence, a person’s tone of voice alters and speech patterns change, yet they retain the ability to answer questions logically. With exposure to higher doses of the drug, the person thrashes about wildly, groaning in strange voices, frequently falling to the ground, all behaviours tracking with eyewitness accounts of the Pythia’s behaviour.
The Greeks believed that Apollo possessed the Pythia’s spirit when she was delivering her oracles—a point at which she was intoxicated by the vapours. They saw her prophecies as religious in nature, but let’s look at them afresh. For I think the Temple at Delphi amounts to nothing less than the world’s first political risk consulting firm.
At least since the days when the Athenians consulted the Pythia during the height of the Persian Wars, political and business leaders have looked to outsiders blessed with seemingly magical knowledge to divine both the present and the future. While the tools of divination have changed through the ages, the pressing need for establishing rules of the road to manage risk in geopolitics have not. The question remains: Through superior knowledge (either intellectual or spiritual in nature), can we reliably do this?
During the period of the Pythia’s ascendance, pilgrims brought animals to Delphi for sacrifice to Apollo, as well as a monetary fee for the privilege of using the Pythia’s services. Of the petitioners who waited for the one day of the month the Pythia deigned to reply to their questions, those who brought larger donations to the god secured an advanced place in line. Political Risk has always been a business that directly links analysis to monetary rewards.
And since the days of the classical Greeks, such special knowledge and policy advice have always been essential for governments and businesses, as well as individuals. At the time of the Battle of Salamis in Greece, no expedition was undertaken, no new colony established, and no major event involving distinguished individuals went by without the Pythia being consulted.
The Pythia (three of them were ‘on call’ at any one time) gave advice to shape future actions, practical counsel that was to be implemented by the questioner. This is exactly what political risk analysts do today, though we’d use modern jargon and call it ‘policy’ in the public sphere and ‘corporate strategy’ in the business world. But what the Pythia was doing is recognisably the same thing my political risk firm does today, save for the substance abuse.
Given the pharmacological basis for the Pythia’s special insights, it is amazing how good a political risk record the priestesses actually had. Between 535-615 of the oracles have survived to the present day, and well over half of them are said to be historically correct. I can name a goodly number of modern firms that would kill for that ‘call record,’ high or not.
Crucially, on the biggest political risk question Delphi was ever presented with—the invasion of Xerxes—the Pythia came through with flying colours. When the Athenians first asked the Pythia what to do, she gave them the foreboding reply: ‘Drown your spirits in woe.’ In other words, there was nothing to do, as Xerxes was unstoppable.
When persuaded to see them a second time, the Pythia outlined a policy that would provide the Athenians with a way to practically escape from their impending doom. She recounted that when Athena—the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and the patron of her namesake city—implored her father Zeus, the King of the Gods, to save her city, Zeus replied that he would grant that ‘a wall of wood shall be uncaptured, a boon to you and your children.’
Back in Athens, Themistocles, the paramount Greek leader in their fractious democracy, successfully argued that a wall of wood specifically referred to the Athenian navy, and he persuaded the city’s leaders to adopt a maritime-first strategy. This policy—concocted by the Pythia and put into concrete action by the decision-maker Themistocles—led directly to the decisive naval Battle of Salamis, the turning of the tide that brought about the end of the Persian threat to Athens’s survival. To put it mildly, the Pythia had proven to be well worth her political risk fee.
Back to the past of the Pythia’s lair to glean the future of political risk analysis
The three aphorisms carved in rock in the Pythia’s stronghold, deep in the crevices underneath Mount Parnassus, provide the keys to unlocking the secrets of political risk analysis. The first—the most important and the trunk of the tree for all advanced political risk thinking—is perhaps the Greeks’ greatest philosophical contribution to Western thought itself, the simple but overwhelming imperative to ‘know thyself.’ In the context of political risk analysis, this means knowing in precise detail the sort of world in which we find ourselves, in terms of its global power structure and, more specifically, the place of one’s own country in that world. This, then, is the trunk of the tree for political risk analysis, the one key insight upon which everything else rests.
Any successful political risk analysis must correctly assess the broad power structure of the world as well as its polarity—the major centres of power that characterise global politics at any given time. Whether you are studying the unipolar Mediterranean world of the Pax Romana, the complex multipolarity of post-Napoleonic Europe, or the bipolar US-Soviet competition of the Cold War, getting this overarching structure right is absolutely necessary for any incisive analysis that might follow. This is because the power structure of the world sets the rules and parameters for every state’s actions within it, allowing the analyst to game out likely outcomes.
The second philosophical imperative found in the Pythia’s dank lair—is ‘nothing in excess.’ However clever or compelling an idea or insight is, without the Greek notion of balance being ever present, such monomania is bound to lead to overwhelming failure. We will encounter the failure to abide by this precept over and over again in our historical journey, seeing that wilful blindness to heed the Pythia’s sage warning almost always lead to analytical and political disaster.
The final inscription on the Pythia’s bleak walls was ‘Make a pledge and mischief is nigh.’ Roughly translated into modern foreign policy-speak, this means that analysts, however formidable, must never be too sure of their effectiveness. Instead of indulging in the ancient Greek sin of hubris, they should constantly check and re-check what they have asserted against the forward movement of events, of time altering preconceived notions.
The end of the Pythia and the beginning of Political Risk Analysis
As every able political risk analyst knows, eventually history changes all things. Ironically, the world’s first political risk firm was undone by structural changes in global politics, as Rome supplanted Greece as the ordering power in the Mediterranean and the Empire itself transitioned from paganism to sponsoring Christianity.
Eventually, these global shifts spelled the end for even the first and most long-lived political risk firm. Late in the reign of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, in 390 AD, militant Christian monks—emboldened by the emperor’s decision a decade earlier to end official state support for polytheist religions and customs—stormed and destroyed the complex at Delphi, after over 1100 years of worship.
The last Pythia, a position that without doubt had been the most powerful held by a woman in the classical world, fled in terror in the face of these anti-pagan zealots. The first successful political risk consulting firm tumbled into the beautiful, poignant state of disrepair that we see today.
Yet her influence remains, as does the suddenly trendy modern iteration of what she attempted to do so long ago—using special advantages (then spiritual, now intellectual) to divine the future for her anxious clients.
Just as in ancient Greece no event of consequence was undertaken without consulting the Pythia, today the world’s leading businesses and governments tread carefully to the major political risk firms to get the best independent, outside advice they can find on managing the vagaries of the world, avoiding the pitfalls, and creatively taking advantage of changing global circumstances.
In other words, little has really changed.