環(huán)球英語 — 105：Delphi Oracle
Voice 1
Hello, I’m Mike Procter.
Voice 2
And I’m Rebekah Schipper. Welcome to Spotlight. This programme uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 3
‘Soon you will go on a long trip. This week, do not wear the colour red. It will bring you bad luck...’ I wonder if this will come true?
Voice 1
People have invented many wonderful things. They have created technology for space travel. They have developed cures for terrible diseases. But there is one discovery that is still a mystery. All through history people have wanted to know the future. But there is no machine to inform us about what will happen.
Voice 2
Today, people use different methods to try to discover their future. Some people read horoscopes. You see horoscopes in newspapers and magazines. But some people pay for a personal horoscope. Astrologers write horoscopes. Astrologers claim that the positions of each planet and star group affect what happens to us. So astrologers study these positions, and they claim to tell the future.
Voice 1
In some cultures people believe that dreams can show the future. Every part of a dream has its own meaning. For example, colours. People may say that the colour blue represents truth - or that black can signal death or danger.
Voice 2
In some African and Asian cultures, people believe that animals give signs about the future. These people believe that animals have a sixth sense - the animals can feel when important natural events are going to happen. This would explain something that happened during the Asian tsunami in 2004. Before the wave came, many wild animals acted strangely. They ran up on to high ground. As a result, very few of them died.
Voice 1
However this ‘sixth sense’ is not a mystery to wildlife experts. For them, the explanation is simple. Animals have much better hearing than people. They can also feel changes in air pressure. They believe that the animals escaped because they could hear the wave coming.
Voice 2
In the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, people would seek the future in an ‘oracle’. An oracle was a message about the future. The same word could also mean the person, place, or voice that brought the message. The most famous oracle was Delphi, in Greece. Its story dates back over three thousand [3000] years.
Voice 1
One day, a young sheep farmer lost one of his sheep. He went up a mountain looking for it. After some time, he found it near a large chasm - a deep break in the rock. The sheep was acting very strangely. The boy decided to look into the chasm. He began to smell some gases. The boy also started to feel very strange. He felt like he was dreaming. He got up quickly and took his sheep home. The boy told everyone what had happened at the chasm.
Voice 2
The people in Delphi wondered where the gases came from. Some of them went up to the chasm. They breathed in the gases. Then, they started to speak about all kinds of subjects. These people appeared to have special knowledge. Everyone listening thought that such knowledge must come from their gods. They believed that a mountain god must have sent up the gases. These gases contained his messages. And so, people called this place ‘the oracle at Delphi.’
Voice 1
The ancient Greeks had invented many different gods. They believed that these gods spoke to them through priests. So at Delphi, there were also priests. One female priest was very special. People called her the “Pythia”. The Pythia would sit on a special seat over the chasm. Then she would breathe in the gases from the chasm. The gases made her enter a dream-like state. She then spoke the words that came into her mind.
Voice 2
However, much of what the Pythia said did not make sense. So some male priests listened to her words. Then they turned the words into a message that people could understand. However, some people claimed that the priests invented these messages. They said that the priests had spies. These spies informed the priests about the current political situation. So the priests only told people what they thought the people wanted to hear. Or they gave general advice that people could use in any situation.
Voice 1
True or not, many visitors still came to the oracle at Delphi. Kings came to find out if they should go to war. Farmers asked when they should plant their seeds. Women wanted to know which man they would marry. One famous visitor was King Croesus. He was a king in the fifth century BC. He ruled ancient Lydia, now western Turkey. He went to the oracle at Delphi.
Voice 4
“Now, tell me: should I march against the King of Persia? He has a large army.”
Voice 5
“Yes, King Croesus, you should march. Cross the River Halys. After that you will destroy a large kingdom.”
Voice 1
King Croesus did march to war with the King of Persia. But King Croesus lost. A kingdom was destroyed. But it was King Croesus’s kingdom!
Voice 2
The oracle at Delphi lasted until the fourth century AD. By then, Greece was under Roman rule. By that time, Christianity was the official religion of the Romans. Christian teaching is that there was only one true God. The Delphi oracle did not honour God. So the Roman emperor closed it down.
Voice 1
However in recent years, scientists re-opened the oracle. They wanted to investigate how the oracle could have worked. They examined the geology, or rock structure, of the chasm. And they discovered something very interesting. It had to do with the outer shell, or crust, of the earth. The earth’s crust is divided into different pieces, or plates. These plates can move. When they do, they cause breaks in the rock. These breaks permit gases and ground water to pass through the rock.
Voice 2
At Delphi, there were two major breaks in the earth’s crust. These breaks formed a cross. Gases entered the chasm through this cross-shaped break. Scientists identified the gases as methane, ethanol and carbon dioxide. One of the scientists, Doctor Papatheodorou, said:
Voice 4
“These gases all reduce the amount of oxygen in the air. This could change someone’s idea of what is real and what is not.”
Voice 1
So, the gases affected the minds of the Pythia, the female priests. They did not always know what they were saying. So it seems that the oracle was simply the result of drug-affected minds. But what about the male priests? Did they truly report the Pythia’s words? Or did they invent the messages themselves?
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