The Oracular Tale

The idea that the literary depiction of oracular divination was different from how the ancient Greeks practiced it has haunted scholarship since Fontenrose’s study of Delphic oracles. This book challenges that notion and offers a new perspective on the relationship between literature and lived religious experience. Using narratological theory, it analyzes reports of oracles from Herodotus, Thucydides, and inscriptions and theorizes a narrative schema for such stories—the oracular tale. The comparison reveals detailed agreement in the sources and explains differ-ences as the result of the varying interests and genres of authors. The agreement also vindicates Delphic verse oracles and their conjectural interpretation as cultural expectations. Further, it argues that the engagement of narrators and characters with oracular tales models how the schema structures audience understanding and belief. Finally, it shows how conjectural interpre-tation connected enigmatic oracular words to circumstances through the telling of oracular tales. These tales were then used as frames of reference for understanding the past and planning for the future. Thus, the oracular tale is key to understanding oracular divination in ancient Greece.