The earliest account of the origin of the Delphic oracle is provided in the Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo, which recent scholarship dates within a narrow range, c. The 8th-century reformulation of the Oracle at Delphi as a shrine to Apollo seems associated with the rise in importance of the city of Corinth and the importance of sites in the Corinthian Gulf. There is evidence that Apollo took over the shrine with the arrival of priests from Delos in the 8th century, from an earlier dedication to Gaia. The Delphic oracle may have been present in some form from 1400 BC, in the middle period of Mycenaean Greece (1600вЂ“1100 BC).

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Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This section needs additional citations for verification. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, describes the Pythia speaking in dactylic hexameters. This idea, however, has been challenged by scholars such as Joseph Fontenrose and Lisa Maurizio, who argue that the ancient sources uniformly represent the Pythia speaking intelligibly, and giving prophecies in her own voice.

One of the main stories claimed that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapours rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies and turned them into poetic dactylic hexameters preserved in Greek literature. Those who discussed the oracle in any detail are from 1st century BC to 4th century AD and give conflicting stories. Nevertheless, details of how the Pythia operated are scarce or missing entirely, as authors from the classical period (6th to 4th centuries BC) treat the process as common knowledge with no need to explain.

Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Aristotle, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Julian, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Nepos, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides, and Xenophon. The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greeks. During this period, the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks, and she was among the most powerful women of the classical world. The Pythian priestess emerged preeminent by the end of the 7th century BC and continued to be consulted until the late 4th century AD. The Pythia was established at the latest in the 8th century BC, (though some estimates date the shrine to as early as 1400 BC ), and was widely credited for her prophecies uttered under divine possession ( enthusiasmos) by Apollo. Etymologically, the Greeks derived this place name from the verb ПЂПЌОёОµО№ОЅ ( pГєthein) 'to rot', which refers to the sickly sweet smell of the decomposition of the body of the monstrous Python after she was slain by Apollo. The name Pythia is derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. She was also referred to, historically, as Pythoness

The Pythia ( / Л€ p ЙЄ Оё i Й™/ Ancient Greek: О П…ОёОЇО± ) was the name of the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi who also served as its oracle, also known as the Oracle of Delphi.

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