The Oracle of Dionysus in Ancient Thrace, Part 1: Literary Sources
In the works of some ancient writers information is found about an oracle of Dionysus in Thrace, the land of the Thracians, one of the wildest peoples of ancient Europe and “the most numerous people in the world, after the Indians” (according to Herodotus). The ancient sources on the oracle in question are as follows:
1. A Scholium to Euripides maintains that according to information from the “physicist Heraclides”: “That [oracle?] of Dionysus was built in Thrace in the so-called Haemus, where it is said that there were some writings of Orpheus on tablets”. This could be the earliest evidence of the oracle of Dionysus in Thrace. There is a clear location: on Mount Haemus.
2. Another scholium to Euripides, also by an unknown author and – in any case – later, summarizes: “Some say that the Oracle of Dionysus was in Pangeus, others – in Haemus, where there were some writings of Orpheus on tablets, on which speaks in Alcestis: “No drug on the Thracian tablets, where the sayings of Orpheus are written. The Bacchic celebrations and the madness unleash enormous prophetic power.” The anonymous author presents an interesting location of the oracle – in Pangeus or in Haemus As in the previous scholia, the location of the oracle is associated with writings on tablets, whose authorship is attributed to Orpheus.
3. Traditionally, and not without reason, when it comes to the Oracle of Dionysus in Thrace in modern historiography, most attention is paid to the statement of Herodotus (ca. 484 – 424 BC), who wrote: “The satrians, however, never made themselves obedient to any man, as far as we know, but they remain to my time still free, alone from all Thracians; because they dwell in high mountains, which are covered with forests of all kinds and with snow, and they too are very skilled in war. These are the ones who possess the Oracle of Dionysus; whose Oracle is on their highest mountains. Of the Satrians, those who act as prophets of the temple are the Besians; she is a priestess who pronounces the oracles, as at Delphi; and beyond this there is nothing more of a remarkable character.” The very general nature of Herodotus’s information has long been stated.
4. In a text attributed to Aristotle we read: “They say that the rabbits, captured in Crestonia, near the land of the Bisaltines, had two livers [two hearts] and it had a spot size about a deca, in which each animal entered, dies. There is also a large and beautiful temple of Dionysus, in which a celebration and sacrifice took place. When the god intends to make a fruitful year, a great flame of fire appeared, and all who are in the sacred place see it as on other nights.
5. Another text, also attributed to Aristotle, is preserved in the Saturnalia of Macrobius, written at the end of the 4th century or the beginning of the 5th century AD. wrote “Study of the Gods”, states that Apollo and Liber Pater are the same god, and much other evidence suggests that: even, he says, the ligires in Thrace had a temple, dedicated to Liber Pater, where the predictions are from, but They pronounced their prophecies after drinking pure wine, as those from Claros drink water”.
6. In another part of his text, Macrobius wrote: “In the same way, we know that in Thrace the Sun and Liber are considered the same: they call him Sabazius and worship him in a splendid ritual, like Alexander [Polyhistor] he writes, and on the Zilmissos hill they dedicate a round temple to him, with the center open to heaven. The round shape of the temple points to the shape of the sun, and the light is let in through the roof to show that the sun purifies all things when it shines from above, and that the whole world opens when the sun rises.”
7. Later direct evidence for the prediction, received at a Thracian oracle from Dionysus, is preserved by Suetonius: “Later, when Octavian was leading an army through remote parts of Thrace, and in the grove of Liber Pater he consulted the priests about his son with barbarian rites, made the same prediction [that the ruler of the world had been born]; since such a pillar of fire sprang from the wine that was poured on the altar, that it rose above the roof of the temple and went up to the very sky, and such an omen had not fallen on anyone except Alexander the Great, when he offered sacrifice on the same altar “.
8. Cassius Dio mentions the following: “He [M. Licinius Crassus] outperformed the rest of the country [Thrace] except the territory of the Odrysae. These he spared because they are attached to the service of Dionysius, and had come to meet him on this occasion without their weapons; and he also granted them the land in which they magnify the god, taking it from the Bessi who occupied it.
So this is what we can read in ancient literature about the enigmatic oracle of Dionysus in Thrace. But was there only one oracle? The answer is sought in the second part of this article.
