Storie oracolari in contesto

This study aims to challenge the conventional wisdom about Delphic verse responses. Focusing both on a discussion of prevailing views and of specific verse oracles (especially on the foundation of Syracuse and Taras, and on the rulers of Corinth and Cyrene), it shows that those responses cannot be seen as preexisting ‘texts’ which became incorporated into narratives related to the history of the relevant poleis. Quite on the contrary, they are an integral part of the narratives accounting for them, and therefore are to be taken as originating in the context itself of the ‘oracular tales’. It was the collective traditions that made use of oracles, and not oracular texts that generated traditions. And as local knowledge is profoundly involved in many of such traditions, one should assume that the oracles originated as constituents of those traditional ‘local’ narratives, even though the network of relations between the poleis and Delphi may have contributed to shape them. Otherwise, one should rather implausibly admit that the Delphic priests fabricated all the local traditions of the Greek cities in which Delphic oracles feature.