Pithia

Pithia (,  ), yang umumnya dikenal sebagai Orakel Delphi, adalah nama yang diberikan kepada pendeta wanita Kuil Apollo di Delphi yang menjabat sebagai orakel.

Nama "Pithia" berasal dari kata Pytho, yang dikatakan merupakan nama asli dari Delphi. Dalam etimologi, bangsa Yunani memberikan nama tempat tersebut dari pengucapan, pythein (πύθειν), yang merujuk kepada bau manis menyengat dari jenazah monster Pithon setelah dipanah oleh Apollo.

Pithia didirikan pada abad ke-8 SM, dan dikenal karena nubuat-nubuatnya yang terinspirasi dari roh-rohiwa dewa (atau antusiasme), dalam hal ini Apollo. Pendeta wanita Pithia telah ada dari akhir abad ke-7 SM dan masih digunakan sebagai wadah untuk berkonsultasi sampai abad ke-4 Masehi. Pada masa tersebut, Orakel Delphi merupakan orakel paling prestisius dan otoritatif bagi bangsa Yunani, dan ia merupakan wanita paling berkuasa pada zaman klasik. Orakel tersebut adalah salah satu lembaga keagamaan yang paling terdokumentasi pada zaman Yunani klasik. Pengarang-pengarang yang menyebut orakel tersebut meliputi Aeskilus, Aristoteles, Klemens dari Aleksandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Yulianus, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Nepos, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides dan Xenophon.

Catatan

Referensi

Sumber kuno 
 Herodotus, The Histories, at the Perseus Project
 Homeric Hymn to Apollo, at the Perseus Project
 Pausanias, Description of Greece, (ed. and translated with commentary by Sir James Frazer), 1913 edition. Cf. v.5
 Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum ("On the Decline of Oracles") and De Pythiae Oraculis ("On the Oracles of the Pythia"), in Moralia, vol. 5 (Loeb Library, Harvard University Press)

Sumber modern 
 de Boer, Jelle Zeilinga, John Rigby Hale & Henry A. Spiller, "The Delphic Oracle: A Multidisciplinary Defense of the Gaseous Vent Theory." Clinical Toxicology 40.2 189–196 (2000)
 de Boer, Jelle Zeilinga, Jeffrey P. Chandon & John Rigby Hale, "New Evidence for the Geological Origins of the Ancient Delphic Oracle," Geology 29.8, 707–711 (2001)
 de Boer, Jelle Zeilinga, Jeffrey P. Chandon, John Rigby Hale & Henry A. Spiller, "Questioning the Delphic Oracle", Scientific American (August 2003)
 Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste, Histoire de la divination dans l'Antiquité, volumes I-IV, Paris (1879–1882)
 
 Broad, William J. The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets, New York, Penguin Press, ISBN 978-0-14-303859-7 (2007); hardcover edition The Oracle: the lost secrets and hidden message of ancient Delphi, Penguin Press, ISBN 1-59420-081-5 (2006)
 Burkert, Walter Greek Religion, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-36280-2 (1985); Orig. in German (1977)
 Connelly, Joan Breton Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-691-12746-8
 Courby, Fernand, Feuilles de Delphi: Tome 2, Topographie et Architecture, La Terrace du Temple (1927)
 Dempsey, T., Reverend, The Delphic oracle, its early history, influence and fall, Oxford, B.H. Blackwell (1918)
 Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, University of California Press (1963)
 Etiope, G., D. Christodoulou, M. Geraga, P. Favali, & G. Papatheodorou, "The geological links of the ancient Delphic Oracle (Greece): a reappraisal of natural gas occurrence and origin", Geology, 34, 821–824 (2006)
 Farnell, Lewis Richard, The Cults of the Greek States, Volumes I-V, Clarendon Press, (1896–1909); cf. especially, volume IV on the Pythoness and Delphi
 Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, Python; a study of Delphic myth and its origins, New York, Biblio & Tannen, ISBN 0-8196-0285-X (1959; 1974)
 Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, The Delphic oracle, its responses and operations, with a catalogue of responses, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-03360-4 (1978)
 Foster J., Lehoux D.R., "The Delphic Oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis", Clinical Toxicology, 45, 85–89 (2007)
 Golding, William, The Double Tongue, London, Faber (1995). Posthumous, fictional novel by the Nobel prize winner about a Pythia in the 1st century BCE.
 Goodrich, Norma Lorre, Priestesses, New York: F. Watts, ISBN 0-531-15113-1 (1989); Harper Collins, Perennial, ISBN 0-06-097316-1 (1990)
 Guthrie, William Keith Chambers, The Greeks and their Gods (1950)
 Hall, Manly Palmer, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Cf Chapter 14, (1928)
 Harissis H.V. 2015. “A Bittersweet Story: The True Nature of the Laurel of the Oracle of Delphi” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Volume 57, Number 3, Summer 2014, pp. 295-298.
 Holland, Leicester B., "The Mantic Mechanism at Delphi," American Journal of Archaeology 37 pp. 201–214 (1933)
 Lehoux D.R., "Drugs and the Delphic Oracle", Classical World, 101, 1, 41–56 (2007)
 Maass, E., De Sibyllarum Indicibus, Berlin (1879)
 Maurizio, Lisa, "The Voice at the Centre of the World: The Pythia's Ambiguity and Authority" pp. 46–50 in editors Andre Lardinois and Laura McClure Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society, Princeton University Press (2001)
 Mikalson, Jon D. Ancient Greek Religion. Blackwell Ancient Religions. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2005.
 Miller, Water, Daedalus and Thespis Vol 1, (1929)
 Mitford, William, The History of Greece (1784); Cf. v.1, Chapter III, Section 2, p. 177, "Origin and Progress of the Oracles"
 Morgan, Catherine. Athletes and Oracles, Cambridge (1990)
 Nilsson, Martin P. (Martin Persson). Cults, Myths, Oracles, and Politics in Ancient Greece. With Two Appendices: The Ionian Phylae, the Phratries. New York, Cooper Square Publishers, 1972.
 Parke, Herbert William, A History of the Delphic Oracle, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, ASIN B002NZWT0Y (1939)
 Parke, Herbert William, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity, Routledge, London, ISBN 978-0-415-07638-8 (reprinted 1992)
 Piccardi, Luigi, "Active faulting at Delphi: seismotectonic remarks and a hypothesis for the geological environment of a myth", Geology, 28, 651–654 (2000)
 Piccardi L., C. Monti, F. Tassi O. Vaselli, D. Papanastassiou & K. Gaki-Papanastassiou, "Scent of a myth: tectonics, geochemistry and geomythology at Delphi (Greece)", Journal of the Geological Society, London, 165, 5–18 (2008)
 Potter, David Stone, Prophecy and history in the crisis of the Roman Empire: a historical commentary on the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle, Cf. Chapter 3 (1990)
 Poulson, Frederick. Dephi Gleydenhall, London (1920)
 Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, trans. from the 8th edn. by W. B. Hillis, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, (1925); reprinted by Routledge (2000); full text in English
 West, Martin Litchfield, The Orphic Poems, Oxford: Clarendon Press ISBN 0-19-814854-2 (1983)

Pranala luar 

 "Delphic Oracle's Lips May Have Been Loosened by Gas Vapors" National Geographic August 14, 2001

Orakel klasik