hang in there...., page-50

re: read...sparticist pythia The Pythia.....lol...good read though...
The Pythia was the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited with giving prophecies inspired by Apollo, giving her a prominence unusual for a woman in male-dominated ancient Greece. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BCE.[1] Its last recorded response was given in 393 CE, when the emperor Theodosius I ordered pagan temples to cease operation. During this period the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle in the Greek world.

The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greek world. Writers who mention the oracle include Herodotus, Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Pindar, Xenophon, Diodorus, Strabo, Pausanias, Plutarch, Livy, Justin, Ovid, Lucan and Julian.

The name of the Pythia derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. The Greeks derived this place-name from the verb pythein (ðýèåéí, "to rot"), used of the decomposition of the body of the monstrous serpent Python after she was slain by Apollo.[2]

It is often said that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapors rising from the ground, and that she spoke gibberish which priests reshaped into the enigmatic prophecies preserved in Greek literature.[3] This picture has been challenged by scholars such as Joseph Fontenrose and Lisa Maurizio, who show that the ancient sources uniformly represent the Pythia speaking intelligibly, and giving prophecies in her own voice.[4] Recent geological investigations have shown the possibility that ethylene gas caused the Pythia's state of inspiration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia