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Situated on mount Parnassus in central Greece lies the city of Delphi. While the city now is mostly ruins, for over a thousand years the ancient world referred to it as the Center of the World. Millions from around the ancient world would flock to the city to inquire of the Oracle. To a select few, the Oracle would sit in the temple of Apollo and give prophecies or answer questions of business, trade, and war. Alexander the Great was said to have visited the Oracle to inquire as to whether he would conquer the world. While modernity can scoff...

The most famous oracle in ancient Greece was undoubtedly the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi. However, Greek sources also mention another oracle active in the distant past, one who has mostly been forgotten today but was said to have predicted the Trojan War. This was the Erythraean Sibyl. Much confusion surrounds this legendary figure. So what do we know about her? The source for the Erythraean Sibyl Information for the Erythraean Sibyl, the oracle who predicted the Trojan War, primarily stems from a single source. This is Pausanias’s Description of Greece 10.12. Pausanias, a second-century AD geographer, offers detailed accounts...

...the rituals and divine utterances of Apollo's oracle at Delphi were subjects recorded and commented upon by numerous ancient writers through the centuries, including Pliny the Elder, Diodorus Siculus, Plato, Aeschylus, Cicero, Strabo and Plutarch, a Boeotian native who gained fame in late 1st century AD Rome for his essays and biographies, provides a firsthand account of the oracle at Delphi. As a senior priest who long served in the sanctuary, Plutarch recorded detailed observations of the Pythian priestess's trance-like, occasionally erratic behavior during sacred rituals... a multidisciplinary team of specialists in the late 20th century uncovered tangible proof that...

A sculpture found in Greece in 1939 may have been part of King Midas' lost throne, an archaeologist has said. The 23cm-tall ivory sculpture, known to scholars as The Lion Tamer, has puzzled historians of classical Greece since its discovery... Keith DeVries, of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, said there are signs that it once adorned Midas' royal throne... Mr DeVries said the sculpture appears to be Phrygian and to have been produced around the time that Midas was alive... According to Mr DeVries, Midas donated his throne as a gift to Delphi, where it was...

Archaeologists found a significant discovery at a Celtic sacrificial place near the village Slatina nad Bebravou. They discovered relief-decorated shoulder boards made from bronze that were part of a breastplate of a prominent Greek warrior. "It is the oldest original Greek art relic in the area of Slovakia," said deputy of director of Slovak Archaeological Institute in Nitra, Karol Pieta, as quoted by the SITA newswire. The relief was made in the Greek colony of Taranto in southern Italy in the middle of the fourth century BC. It came to Slovak territory about one hundred years later. "There is a...

Archaeologists are good at recovering things left behind by the past, such as buildings, incense altars, tools and relief carvings. What they are not so good at recovering are the ideas, feelings and emotions—the innerness—of sentient ancient beings. It’s one thing to examine a temple’s holy of holies; it’s another thing to understand what went on there and what people experienced. Sometimes, however, there’s an exception to the rule.

An Indiana jury on Monday afternoon reached a verdict for double murder suspect Richard Allen for the February 2017 killings of two girls who had been walking on a hiking trial in Delphi, known as the Delphi murders. The verdict will be announced in a Carroll County courtroom. The case had been more than seven years in the making since Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, and Liberty "Libby" German, 14, disappeared during their walk on Feb. 13, 2017, and investigators found them both brutally murdered the next day, with sticks covering their bodies in a wooded area near the High Monon...

In a recent meeting of the Board of Education in the city of Artichoke, Alabama, it was decided to ban the reading of Homer's Illiad and Odyssey in the classroom. The grounds given for the exclusion of these towering masterpieces of ancient literature is that reading them in a public school violated the first amendment's guarantee of the separation of church and state. Wallace Nobrainer, the attorney for the Artichoke school system, explained that "the Homeric texts are obviously designed to promote the polytheistic view of the Greeks," and hence they should be looked upon in the same light as...

Richard Allen told his wife and mother he killed the girls. No transcript available, that I could find on this site. Only video.

Pet owners who love to travel, as well those that live in Greece, will soon have a lot more places to take their beloved animal companions. This week, the country’s Culture Ministry announced that pets will soon be allowed into more than 120 archaeological sites—but not some of the most popular locations for tourists. The policy change was unanimously approved by Greece’s Central Archaeological Council. But pet owners shouldn’t rush to make plans, as the organization did not specify an implementation date for the new regulations. Pets still won’t be allowed at popular sites like the Acropolis in Athens, Knossos...

On an unknown date around the 560s B.C.E., the storyteller Aesop is supposed to have been executed in Delphi by being hurled from the Hyampeia rock. The semi-legendary fable-fashioner is not quite so irretrievable to history as, say, Homer, although assuredly many or all of the tales that have accrued under the heading “Aesop’s Fables” trace to origins other than this man. Supposed to have lived from the late 7th to mid 6th centuries B.C.E., Aesop is first referenced by history’s first historian, Herodotus. But by way of summation, we cannot improve upon Plutarch‘s succinct description of Aesop’s fate in...

A 50-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the Delphi murders of Libby German and Abigail Williams. Richard Allen, 50, was taken into custody in Indiana on Friday. It remains unclear what exactly he has been charged with. The girls were murdered in 2017 after arranging to meet a man on abandoned train tracks in the town of Delphi. Their murders remained unsolved for five years. Allen's arrest is the first time his name has been publicly associated with the case. Allen's connection to the girls remains unclear, and police say they will not hold any kind of press...

DELPHI, Ind. — Indiana State Police is expected to give a news conference announcing an arrest in the murders of Abby Williams and Libby German. Anna Williams, Abby's mother, confirmed the information to 13News. Police said they would give an update on the case during the news conference. Kelsi German, Libby's older sister, said the news conference would be Monday at 10 a.m. on Twitter. She ended the tweet saying, "Today is the day."

FAKE SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILE Last December cops revealed they were investigating the fake “anthony_shots” social media profile created by Kegan Kline in connection with the case. The 27-year-old, who is currently in jail awaiting trial over child sex abuse allegations, has not been charged over the Delphi murders and denies any involvement. But transcripts of a police interview with Kline showed that the catfish account he created was in touch with Libby the day she and Abby were killed. And according to the transcripts, whoever was using the “anthony_shots” account was supposed to meet Libby and Abby on the trails...

Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Leazenby said there are 'several factors' leading investigators on the cold case to look at a possible connection James Chadwell II, 42, is accused of luring a 9-year-old girl into his home in Lafayette on April 19 to pet his dogs He then allegedly attacked, strangled and assaulted her in his basement Lafayette is just 20 miles from Delphi where the two teens were murdered Abigail 'Abby' Williams, 13, and Liberty 'Libby' German, 14, were murdered back in February 2017 while hiking along the Monon High Bridge Trail in Delphi More than four years on, very...

PROTECTING AMERICAN AUTOWORKERS: President Donald J. Trump is taking action to address the Obama administration’s decision to terminate the pension plans of non-union and salaried autoworkers of the Delphi Corporation. Today, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum directing his Administration to review the Obama administration’s decision to terminate the pension plans of Delphi Corporation’s non-union and salaried workers. When Delphi Corporation spun off from General Motors (GM) in 1999, its union workers received a deal from GM to protect their pensions, while non-unionized and salaried workers did not.After both companies went bankrupt, Delphi’s union pensions were fully protected while its...

Numerous classical authors report that natural phenomena played an essential part in one of their most sacred religious rituals: the oracle at Delphi. According to the geographer Strabo (c. 64 B.C.–25 A.D.), for example, "the seat of the oracle is a cavern hollowed down in the depths … from which arises pneuma [breath, vapor, gas] that inspires a divine state of possession" (Geography 9.3.5). Over the past five years, a team of researchers -- a geologist, an archaeologist, a chemist and a toxicologist -- has put that claim to the test, making it much more likely that we will actually...

As a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army and currently serving as a Sergeant Major in the Special Operations community, Joey D'Alessio knows firsthand what shooters want in a firearm: a high-quality product at an affordable price with unparalleled customer service. Which is exactly what he offers at his Raeford, North Carolina-based company, Delphi Tactical. Founded in 2012, Joey and his wife initially sold tactical gear and accessories to generate funding to launch their own custom firearms brand. "Delphi Tactical is a true example of the American dream, and how a few dedicated folks can bring something incredible to bear...

A Washington Post article about banning laptops in the classroom claims that professors have found themselves losing to the “cone of distraction” generated by these devices. It’s ironic because the universities themselves exerted strenuous efforts to ensure that every student had a laptop only to find them a nuisance. They mandated them only to ban them. > Julian Jaynes in his “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” claimed that men once heard different parts of their brain as distinct voices. “According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state would experience the world in a...

Researchers at the University of Leicester have unravelled a 2,700 year old mystery concerning The Oracle of Delphi -- by consulting an ancient farmer's manual. The researchers from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History sought to explain how people from across Greece came to consult with the Oracle... on a particular day of the year even though there was no common calendar... celestial signs observed by farmers could also have determined the rituals associated with Apollo Delphinios. Postgraduate student Alun Salt said: ..."I was playing around with a planisphere while suffering from insomnia. This is when I noticed that...