I admit that I was disappointed when good old Joshua didn't bring home the bacon for me - although perhaps that's not the right phrase to use for an Israelite leader. I decided that I should follow Jeeves' advice and study the psychology of the individual. After drinking far too many cups of tea and thinking so hard about small carnivores that I found myself counting meerkats when I wanted to go to sleep, I was still making no progress.
I thought to myself - there is only word for this conundrum, it is Delphic. ZooChatters who have not suffered a classical education may not know this word, which comes from the Ancient Greek oracle at Delphi. The prophecies from the oracle were always so vague and ambiguous that no-one really understood them and so no-one could ever prove that they were wrong.
And then in one glorious moment, the light bulb glowed over my head. If the question was Delphic, the answer had to be Delphic too
The way the oracle worked was that the priestess of Apollo was asked a question and then she would go down into the sacred cave, like a troglodyte Mystic Meg. However fractures in the rock connected the cave to a subterranean pool of bitumen, so the air in it contained volatile hydrocarbons and the priestess was effectively solvent sniffing. This was supposed to be the breath of Apollo inspiring her answer, but it explains why some of the prophecies were obscure almost to the point of incoherence. Many of the oracle's most famous prophecies involved walls, notably about the destruction of cities and the falls of kings and tyrants (too many to mention, read Herodotus if you want all the details); although the most famous one praised the wooden walls of Athens, which was interpreted as meaning their war galleys, and inspired the Athenian's famous naval victory at Salamis.
Now the crucial point is that the official title of this priestess was the Pythoness, and of course Chester has its own pythoness, 'Bali' the big retic
What has this got to do with Rome? One of the most famous of all classical statues shows Laocoon and his sons struggling with an enormous snake, which is obviously a python. This was discovered and excavated 500 years ago, and has been on display in the Vatican ever since.
I know this is a complex argument, but fortunately it can be summed up in a single line.
Delphic oracle (antiquity + breath + walls) + Rome = Chester reticulated python
Alan
I thought to myself - there is only word for this conundrum, it is Delphic. ZooChatters who have not suffered a classical education may not know this word, which comes from the Ancient Greek oracle at Delphi. The prophecies from the oracle were always so vague and ambiguous that no-one really understood them and so no-one could ever prove that they were wrong.
And then in one glorious moment, the light bulb glowed over my head. If the question was Delphic, the answer had to be Delphic too
The way the oracle worked was that the priestess of Apollo was asked a question and then she would go down into the sacred cave, like a troglodyte Mystic Meg. However fractures in the rock connected the cave to a subterranean pool of bitumen, so the air in it contained volatile hydrocarbons and the priestess was effectively solvent sniffing. This was supposed to be the breath of Apollo inspiring her answer, but it explains why some of the prophecies were obscure almost to the point of incoherence. Many of the oracle's most famous prophecies involved walls, notably about the destruction of cities and the falls of kings and tyrants (too many to mention, read Herodotus if you want all the details); although the most famous one praised the wooden walls of Athens, which was interpreted as meaning their war galleys, and inspired the Athenian's famous naval victory at Salamis.
Now the crucial point is that the official title of this priestess was the Pythoness, and of course Chester has its own pythoness, 'Bali' the big retic
What has this got to do with Rome? One of the most famous of all classical statues shows Laocoon and his sons struggling with an enormous snake, which is obviously a python. This was discovered and excavated 500 years ago, and has been on display in the Vatican ever since.
I know this is a complex argument, but fortunately it can be summed up in a single line.
Delphic oracle (antiquity + breath + walls) + Rome = Chester reticulated python
Alan
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that answer is arguably more well-thought through than the correct answer is!
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