Oracle Trees in the Ancient Hellenic World
Luís Mendonça de Carvalho,1, 2
Francisca Maria Fernandes,2 and Hugh Bowden3
In the past, many European cultures inter-
preted forests as a home for the gods and some
deities had their own sacred grove or a special
tree which was worshiped as a powerful reli-
gious symbol. Being the largest of all plants,
trees presented a bewildering aspect and must
have inspired humans to see them as earthly
embodiments of supernatural forces. As in other
classical civilizations, ancient Greeks identified
certain trees to specific gods but just two groups
of trees were elevated to a higher level of con-
secration, becoming associated with oracles and
predictions: the oak (Quercus sp.) and the laurel
(Laurus nobilis L.).
Eleven species of Quercus L. (Fagaceae) are
native to Greece where they are still used to
ornament church yards as in the past they had
adorned ancient temples (Baumann, 1993; Strid
& Tan, 1997); the genus Laurus L. (Lauraceae)
has three species but only one is native to
Greece, Laurus nobilis L., the other two—
Laurus azorica (Seub.) Franco (Azores), and
Laurus novocanariensis Rivas Mart., Lousã,
Fern.Prieto, E.Días, J.C.Costa & C.Aguiar—
are endemic to Macaronesia (Capelo, 2004;
Mabberley, 2008).
In Greece, oracles were religious institutions
represented by priests and priestesses, where
mortals expected to receive wise answers from
the gods in response to their questions about
state or private affairs. Dispersed throughout the
Panhellenic world of city-states, many oracles
flourished and vanished but two left records that
placed them in a special position among ancient
oracles: the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona and the
Oracle of Apollo at Delphi.
In his book Metamorphoses the Roman poet
Ovid (1955) recounted how Daphne, a nymph
pursued by Apollo, flew from his advances and
was transformed into a laurel tree. From that
moment on, laurel became sacred to Apollo, the
We are grateful to Professor Costas Thanos (University of Athens, Greece)
1 Author for correspondence: museu@ipbeja.pt
2 Museu Botânico, Instituto Politécnico de Beja, Rua Pedro Soares, 7800 Beja, Portugal
3 Department of Classics, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom
Harvard Papers in Botany, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2011, pp. 425– 427.
© President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2011.
god of music, poetry, and, above all, prophecies
and oracles. The most prestigious oracle was
located at Delphi, in mainland Greece. In some
Greek traditions, Delphi was literally the centre
of the world; the meeting place of the two eagles
released by Zeus from opposite ends of Earth.
After impaling one another with their beaks,
they fell to the ground and the site was marked
by the sacred omphalos, or navel stone. Apollo
was said to have established himself at Delphi
after killing the serpent Python, guardian of
the Castalia Spring, and there he provided
counsels through the voice of his priestess, the
Pythia. Supplicants, carrying laurel branches,
approached the Temple of Apollo along a
sacred way and, after a preliminary selection,
were granted the opportunity to consult the
oracle. During her prophetic trance, the Delphic
Pythia always held firm a laurel branch in her
consecrated hands (Plutarch, 1936) (Fig. 1). At
Delphi, laurel branches were used for symbolic
reasons only; the prophetic trance of the priestess
may have been caused by inhaled ethylene
vapors released from the geological faults found
near and underneath Apollo’s temple (Hale et
al., 2003; Spiller et al., 2008). The oracle issued
politically important prophecies, was consulted
about democratic reforms in Athens and laws
in Sparta, and made pronouncements that led
to freeing of slaves and the foundation of new
city states (Fontenrose, 1978). Laurel trees were
also depicted in the inner sanctuary of Apollo
at Didyma (the Didymaion), which had a very
active oracle and where one Greek tradition
claimed that Leto and Zeus conceived Apollo
and his twin sister Artemis.
The oak (Quercus sp.) was among the most
widely venerated trees, and mythological beliefs
associated it with the creation of humans. To
the Greeks, oaks were dedicated to Zeus; to the
Romans it was Jupiter’s sacred tree, and to the
426 Harvard Papers in Botany Vol. 16, No. 2

Figure 1. The only surviving image of the Delphic Pythia. Aegeus, the mythical king of Athens, consulting the
oracle. Attic red-figure kylix, c. 440–430 BC, Berlin Museum, inv. 2538.

Teutonic tribes in Northern Europe, the oak was
Thor’s tree. It was the celestial tree of the Celtic
Druids (druid etymology comes from the Celtic
word for oak) and all Druid ceremonies and
rites took place under it or in its vicinity.
In Epirus (Greece), a region famous for its
violent storms, dendromancy—the ability to
decipher celestial advices using trees—was
practiced at the Dodona oracle. There, Zeus
was said to speak through the voices of the
priestesses, the Peleiades, who would interpret
the rustlings made by the sacred Valonia
oak leaves (Quercus ithaburensis Decaisne
subsp. macrolepis (Kotschy) Hedge & Yalt.)
(Thanos, 2005; Herodotus, 2008). The god
also spoke through the wood taken from one of
his Dodonian oaks, as stated in the first book
of the Argonautica (Apollonius of Rhodes,
2009), when a talking beam that Athena had
made from a Dodonian oak and fitted in the
middle of Argo’s keel, spoke with a terrible
voice that frightened the Argonauts. In his
Histories, Herodotus (2008) asserted that the
Dodona Oracle was founded by one of the
two sacred black doves (priestesses) that left
Thebes, in Egypt. The second priestess went to
the Siwa Oasis, in the Libyan Desert, where she
founded the famous oracle of Ammon. Greeks
also visited the oracle of Ammon, including
Alexander the Great, who consulted it after
conquering Egypt to understand his past and
forecast his future.
2011 Carvalho et al., Oracle Trees 427

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