Oracles and Seers: A Hero's Inevitable Path to Revelation in Ancient Greek Literature

Oracles and seers are prominent figures in both historical works, such as Herodotus' Croesus and poetic works, such as Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos. The hero usually asks for an oracle's guidance before he makes a major decision on behalf of his nation, such as going into a war or saving his people from a plague, but he also consults the oracle for personal or familial issues, such as the fate of a son. Oracles' words are taken for granted because they bring a message from the gods, hence they are conceived as the infallible agencies of truth. Yet in both of the aforementioned works, the oracles mislead our heroes, Croesus and Oedipus. This is not due to the oracles' failures though; the heroes misinterpret or avoid their messages. Both Croesus and Oedipus are self-obsessed with their kleos that they choose not to contemplate their telos. They also choose to disregard and, to an extent, decry seers (men of wisdom [sophia]) Solon and Teiresias, who come to warn them of their fates in advance and whose words are complementary to those of oracles. Employment of both oracles and seers in these works is interesting; one can think that oracles bring the message from gods and thus represent the divine law whereas seers think within human limits; and they complement each other in waking the hero to his fate. The distinction is that the oracles, although they are capable of convincing the heroes of the truth, choose not to do so and keep the ambiguity of their messages, whereas the seers, at any cost, warn the heroes of their fate.

To understand how oracles and seers' words lead to the eventual, but not immediate, awakening of the heroes, one should look at what the klea of the heroes are and how blinded they are that they can misinterpret or avoid these words of wisdom. Croesus' kleos is his empire and his treasures. When Solon the Athenian, one of the wisest man of Hellas visits Croesus in Sardis, Croesus shows him his treasures, and asks him who is the most olbios man in the world, expecting the answer to be himself. Solon tells him of people who have reached their telos instead. He reiterates his question but Solon's reply does not change, then he gets angry and he sends Solon away. He is blinded by his treasures to such an extent that he does not bother to give a thought on one of the wisest man's words, he thinks he knows the ultimate truth and those ideas against his are of "despise". He even finds the courage to regard Solon to be "a great fool."(Croesus 33) Immediately following this incident, he sees that his son is going to be murdered in a battle in his dream. Instead of contemplating what might have let to this vision, he tries to prevent his son from getting killed by not letting him fight at battles. What he does not realize, though, is that every person has a telos that needs to be fulfilled anyhow. He then dares to test the oracles to see to what extent they are accurate, and chooses Pythia as the best. Even though he believes he found the best oracle; his obsession with his authority and prosperity leads him to think he is simply invincible, so he greets every message by Pythia to be a promising one. His misinterpretation of oracle's words, caused by his obsessions that hinder his mind from reaching the truth leads to the fate he does not expect. He attacks Cappadocia because of his "desire for land he wished to add to his own territory, but chiefly he trusted in the oracle" (Croesus 73) His misinterpretation of oracle's words, caused by his obsessions that hinder his mind from reaching the truth leads to the fate he does not expect; Cyrus captures him. Only when he is about to be killed he remembers Solon's words, and now that his treasures are lost, he understands what the oracle actually said and confesses that he was mistaken, not the god.

Oedipus goes through a quiet similar sequence of events. When his polis is suffering from a plague, he consults the oracle and learns that he has to kill the slayer of Laios. He finds out that investigation following Laios' murder was not adequately efficient, and asks for the help of a seer. Since he was the one to solve the riddle of Sphinx and hence become the turannos to his polis, he has enough reason to believe he is the only one capable of taking revenge for Laios' murder, and he will certainly do it. Now that he is blinded by his kleos, he does not bother to give a thought on Teiresias' words that he is the one who slew Laios, which reminds us of Croesus' attitude towards Solon. Oedipus had been warned of the truth [alÐ"ЄthÐ"Єs (the unforgettable)] twice before: when "at a banquet a man drunk with wine cast it at [him] that [he] was not the son of [his] father" and when Phoebus told him "[he] was fated to defile [his] mother's bed and that [he] would slay the father that sired [him]." However, he seems to forget the unforgettable, and that is because of his obsession with his kleos. He even accuses Creon of setting a plot against him; that is the only thing that comes to his mind. His obliviousness persists until his conversation with the messenger from Corinth. The messenger first tells him that Polybos, his false father, is dead; but instead of realizing the message (that if he did not kill his father by his hands, then that is not his real father) sent to him, Oedipus deceives himself saying "he was killed by longing for me; thus I would be the cause of his death" (Oedipus Tyrannos, 965-970), analogous to when Croesus deceives himself by Pythia's words and is convinced that he can conquer the land of Cyrus. Only after he encounters the servant that gave him away at his mother's will, and sees his mother die, he realizes that he cannot escape the truth and he accepts his telos by asking to be banished from his polis.

Besides these striking resemblances in how oracles and seers' words foreshadow the heroes' telos, there is yet another common element: the concept of vision. Both Oedipus and Croesus are blinded, they can see with their eyes, but they cannot see with their mind. When Teiresias confronts Oedipus, he says "And I tell you, since you have taunted my blindness, that though you have sight, you do not see what evil you are in, nor where you dwell, nor with whom." (Oedipus Tyrannos, 410-415) When Oedipus finally realizes his fate and what he has been through, he strikes his eyes until they bleed so that he can let the evil out, enlighten himself and be open to the truth. This is a reference to Teiresias' words; now that Croesus has seen what evil he