“819. THE PYTHONESS—ACTS 16:16-19”

The Pythoness—Act_16:16-19

Paul and his associates seem during their stay in Philippi to have frequented the place of prayer beside the river very constantly. On the way thither from Lydia’s house, where they lodged, they were followed by a “certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination,” who, in the excited manner of her sort when under what was regarded as their inspiration, kept crying out, “These men are the servants of the most high God, who show unto us the way of salvation.” But Paul did not like to have attention called to them in this manner, or to receive even a true testimony from a source so suspicious, and on which damaging misconceptions might be founded. He was, besides, wearied out with this continual interruption; and from all these causes, as well, probably, from compassion for the girl’s state, and to show the dominion which his Lord exercised over all the powers of darkness, he commanded the spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ, to depart from her. The spirit left her immediately; and, being restored to her right mind, she no longer conceived herself possessed of prophetic gifts.

It has been much questioned what was the nature of this “spirit of divination” which possessed her. In the original it is called “a spirit of Python.” We shall therefore endeavor to ascertain what this form of possession distinctively was, without entering here into general inquiries as to the nature of possession, or as to forms and species of divination, merely referring to what has been lately stated as to the prevalence of multiplied forms of divination in this age.

Python was a name of Apollo; and as the Pythian Apollo, the chief seat of his worship was at Delphi, and his oracle there was the most famous in the world, and the last that lost its credit. At this place was the famous tripod, seated on which over an opening to a cavern below, the priestess became inspired, and delivered responses and prophecies. The tripod, when not in use, was elevated upon an altar in the shape of a pillar, as represented in the engraving, where also a priest and priestess of Pythian Apollo are seen. Note: From one of the sculptured faces of an ancient trilateral pedestal; copied from Creuzer’s Symbolik, plate lxxv., fig. 280, a. The well-known Apollo Belvidere represents the Pythian Apollo.

Delphic Tripod, with Priest and Priestess of Apollo

The Delphic priestess was the proper Pythia, as receiving the inspiration of the Pythian Apollo in the highest and most orthodox form. But the Pythian inspiration was not supposed to be limited to this form, to the Delphic priestesses, nor to Delphi. Cassandra was inspired by Apollo apart from any of these conditions and it occurs to us that it may be far the best course to glance through her case, as represented (in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus) in an age in which this species of inspiration was fully credited, in order to learn the nature of this delusive inspiration in an instance which, like the one before us, is not involved in Delphic rites. The peculiarity in the case of Cassandra was not in the aspects of her possession, but in the doom that her true prophecies should not be believed.

Cassandra is not always in this state of possession, but the spirit takes possession of her for a time, and, when the occasion occurs, with painful force and constraining violence, extorting agonizing cries—

“O! O! hu! hu! alas!

The pains again have seized me! my brain turns!

Hark to the alarum and prophetic cries!

The dizziness of horror swims my head!” Note: All the extracts are from the translation of the Agamemnon, published by Mr. Symmons in 1824.

Again—

“O what a mighty fire comes rolling on me!

Help! help! Lycean Apollo! Ah me! ah me!”

The future which she foretells seems to her a visionary present, while yet known to be and declared to be a future. So thus Cassandra sees and proclaims the future coming of Orestes, which did not happen till eight years after her own death—

“Who’s at the gates? a young man, fair and tall,

A stranger by his garb, from foreign parts;

Or one who long since has been exiled here:

A stripling, murderer of his mother’s breast!

Brave youth, avenger of his father’s death!

He’ll come to build the high-wrought architrave,

Surmounting all the horrors of the dome.

I say, the gods have sworn that he shall come.”

In like manner she sees her own death represented to her before it occurs. But besides this, she, as in what is called second sight, or in the alleged visions of the mesmeric trance, beholds and describes, at the time then present, what is transacting elsewhere. Thus she sees and describes, while she is without, the murder taking place in the palace of Agamemnon, through every step of its progress—

“Alas! ah wretch! ah! what art thou about?

A man’s in the bath—beside him there stands

One wrapping him round—the bathing clothes drop,

Like shrouds they appear to me, dabbled in blood!

O for to see what stands there at the end!

Yet ’twill be quick—’tis now upon the stroke!

A hand is stretched out—and another too!

As though it were a-grasping—look, look, look!”

As a prophetess of Apollo, Cassandra wears a distinctive dress, although a slave, that is, a captive of the sword. So when she becomes aware that Clytemnestra is designing her death, she lets us know—

“She there, that two-legged lioness….

Will kill me! woeful creature that I am!

……

O why then keep this mockery on my head?

Off with ye, laurels, necklaces, and wands!

The crown of the prophetic maiden’s gone.

[Tearing her robes.

Away, away! die ye, ere yet I die!

I will requite your blessings thus, thus, thus!

Find out some other maiden, dight her rich,

Ay, dight her rich in miseries like me!

And lo! Apollo, himself, tearing off

My vest oracular! Oh, cruel god!

Thou hast beheld me, e’en in these my robes,

Scoff’d at when I was with my kinsmen dear,

And made my enemies’ most piteous despite,

And many a bad name had I for thy sake;

A Cybele’s mad woman, beggar priestess,

Despised, unheeded, beggared, and in hunger;

And yet I bore it all for thy sweet sake.”

The estimation of her to which she thus painfully alludes, indicates the existence, even thus early, of a lower class of soothsaying women, by some deemed crazed, by others regarded as impostors, with whose claims hers were confounded. Indeed, at times she inclines to doubt whether this is not indeed the case with herself—

“Or rave I, dreaming of prophetic lies,

Like some poor minstrel knocking at the doors?”

The same estimate, varying somewhat, appears in the remarks of the chorus upon her impassioned utterances—

“God dwells within her, though she be a slave.”

Again—

“We have heard, O prophetess, of thy great name.”

And further on—

“O sure thou art one of a deep-raging soul,

Driven mad by a god, crying out.”

And still more pointed:

“’Tis some god who has put that bad spirit in my mind,

With the power of a demon, and a strong heavy spell.”

Yet afterwards the chorus admits:

“To us thy words seem worthy of belief”

We are thus enabled to discern that contemporary opinion was nearly as varied and uncertain with regard to the Pythian inspiration as is our own; and the explanations of it embraced all the alternatives which different commentators have applied to the case of the Pythoness of Philippi.

She also was a slave, for it is stated that she “brought her masters much gain by sooth-saying.” Anciently, and indeed at present in the countries where slavery exists, the money value of a slave was greatly affected by the profession or trade he had acquired, by the accomplishments he had been taught, or by his capacity in any way of earning money for his master. Some possessed such qualities that when they fell into slavery (a large proportion of the slaves being prisoners of war), and some acquired them in slavery, the masters being watchful to cultivate for their own profit any special aptitudes their slaves manifested. Hence the ancient Greeks and Romans possessed slaves of all professions—not only men bred to the various mechanic arts, but philosophers, rhetoricians, grammarians, dramatists, physicians. Those also who made a trade of the arts of divination, were watchful after individuals who manifested qualities, aptitudes, or even infirmities, which might prove advantageous to them in their business, and sought to gain possession of them by purchase or otherwise. Those who, like this damsel, possessed the “spirit of divination,” were doubtless rare, and their value correspondingly high. The value of the girl to her owners seems to be shown by the fact that she had a plurality of “masters;” either because her price had been too great to be advanced by a single person, or such as no one person had cared to risk upon the uncertainty of her life.

The deliverance of this damsel by Paul from the spirit that possessed her, at once divested her of this rare value as a slave, and deprived the masters of the current gains from her services. She was no longer of any more value for sale or service than any other female slave. They were not likely to regard this serious loss, “the loss of their gains,” with complacency. They were indeed greatly enraged. But as they could not well urge what had been done to their private loss as an offence against the public peace, and as they were doubtless unwilling to call attention to the real nature of the transaction, lest it should have redounded to the credit of the apostle, they found it convenient to assume a wondrous zeal for the public religion; and seizing Paul and Silas, who appeared as the leading persons of the missionary party, they hauled them before the magistrates, then sitting in the court or forum, held in the market-place, as a place of the greatest concourse, just as in many of our own old towns the courthouse is in or over the market. In a colony like this, the magistrates were chosen by the inhabitants, were necessarily Romans, holding generally military commands, and had a wholly independent jurisdiction, being in no way responsible even to the governor of the province, who could not come into the colony to exercise any authority in it. This peculiarity is, with his usual precision, indicated by Luke, by the use of the peculiar and proper title (στρατηγός) not elsewhere used in Scripture except to denote a military command, being, in fact, the Greek for praetor. He uses the plural number, the magistrates being usually two, and hence also frequently called duumviri. Cicero mentions it as an innovation in this time that the duumviri of Capua had assumed the title of praetors, and had lictors going before them, not with sticks or staves, but with fasces, or bundled rods, like the praetors at Rome; and he thought that in a few years they might affect the title of consuls. The example did in fact spread; and these magistrates were everywhere praetors, and had their fasces borne before them, in nearly all the Roman colonies.

Roman Lictor with Fasces

Autor: JOHN KITTO