The democracy that we love today may be traced back to a crazed woman stuffed in a cave and zonked on hydrocarbon gases.
Ancient history says the Greeks defended Athens against the mighty Persian Empire based upon a prophecy from the Pythia of the Oracle of Delphi.
The Pythia was a priestess through whom the god Apollo spoke. The Greeks believed she derived her prophetic power through the Oracle, the Greeks' most sacred shrine.
Athens defeated the Persians and became a model for democracy.
Hydrocarbons influenced the prophecy, which set in motion a sequence of events resulting in the freedoms that western civilization enjoys today.
Visitors to the Oracle of Delphi entered a chamber where they found the priestess in a trance, making inarticulate cries that priests interpreted. Sometimes the prophecy came in hexametric verse and sometimes in prose.
Despite the ambiguity, people solicited this advice from 1400 BC to AD 381.
Ancient writings say the Greeks consulted the oracle on various topics, including military tactics. The Athenians' interpretation of her cryptic prophecy led them to defeat Persian King Xerxes' navy at the battle of Salamis in 480 BC.
Some ancient authorities suggested the Pythia's trance stemmed from gaseous emissions coming from a fissure in bedrock and from a spring.
Modern history
French archaeologists excavated the Oracle site but failed to find these features, so they dismissed the idea of intoxicating vapors as the source of the Pythia's revelations.
But not everyone has given up on probing geological forces behind the Oracle.
The latest theory is that light hydrocarbon gases from bituminous limestone triggered the Pythia's revelations.
Geologist Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, an earth sciences professor from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and his colleagues have found ethane, methane, and ethylene in spring water near the Oracle.
The findings were published in the August 2001 issue of Geology, a journal of the Geological Society of America. Archaeologist John Hale of the University of Louisville and geochemist Jeffrey Chanton of Florida State University coauthored the report.
De Boer's interest in Delphi started 10 years ago while he worked for the Greek government studying the geology of the Corinth rift zone. He discovered fault traces below the sanctuary and about 5 years ago, he and Hale set off on a 4-year, interdisciplinary study.
Ethylene is known to have euphoric efforts and has been used as anesthesia. Its narcotic influence matches the ancients' descriptions of gas that Pythia inhaled, said a news release from the Geological Society of America. De Boer's team included a poison center physician from Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, Ky.
Ancient history
The Persians were bent on enslaving Greece, with Athens the main target. The Athenians, in fear of the Persians, sent envoys to Delphi, where the priestess forecast calamity in a rambling answer advising them to flee their homes.
But the Athenians approached her a second time. She then said, "a wall of woodellipseshall abide unsacked by the foemen," according to David Grene's translation of The History by Herod- otus.
So, the envoy returned home, where Athenians argued about the prophecy's meaning.
The Acropolis of Athens had been fenced by a thorn hedge, which some elder men took to mean the wall of wood. They believed the Acropolis would be saved.
Others believed the wooden wall referred to ships, suggesting the fleet should be readied for battle.
Eventually, a man named Themistocles, who previously had persuaded the Athenians to make 200 ships, swayed the majority of Athenians that they should prepare for a battle at sea.
The women and children of Athens were taken to the island of Salamis to wait out the battle and their fate: either return to their homes or die as Persian slaves.
Meanwhile, citizens remaining in Athens died when the Persians besieged them and set the Acropolis ablaze.
The Athenians on Salamis were dismayed. Already badly outnumbered by the Persians, some generals hoisted sail to run away. Others went to their ships and awaited battle.
During the night, an advisor had convinced Themistocles to stage the battle in the narrow strait near Salamis rather than going out to sea where the Athenian forces would be scattered and likely defeated.
The strategy worked, and the rest is history. Had it not been for the Athenians' victory, the autocratic Persians would have conquered Greece and gone into Europe. Socrates would have been forgotten, and the Golden Age of Greece would have been a dream.
Democracy and western civilization as we know it can be traced, in part, to a prophecy prompted by a gaseous "divine breath."
