Secrets of the Oracle of Delphi.

• Position: Brief Article

THERE IS VERY LITTLE NEW UNDER THE SUN

IN ANCIENT GREECE, THERE WERE A couple of interesting careers which we don't have available to us anymore. At least in the same form.

I bring them up now because they offer modern-day lessons in life, and because my wife and I learned about them during a recent vacation trip to Turkey, Greece and the Greek islands, enabling us to cross off one of the top 20 items on our lifetime wish list.

The first career was that of runner. There just was no easy way to get information from one place to another. Many towns built towers on which the townspeople would start fires to warn the next group down the line of oncoming danger. But the most common way of communicating was through the runner.

When an unexpected boat docked in Piraeus, someone fleet-footed ran to Athens with the news. Only the swift and fit could make a career out of running; but those who did were well paid and an admired group in the Greek culture, often called on to do heroic service for their country.

When the Phoenicians invaded Greece in 490 B.C., they did so along the north coast, at a town called Marathon. After the Greeks managed to defeat the Phoenicians, they sent a runner 26.2 miles to Athens with the news. He ran as fast as he could. When he reached his goal he managed to say, "We won the battle!" Then he collapsed and died.

A heroic effort. Yet later, it wasn't the messenger who was remembered in the naming of an Olympic event, but the town from which he ran! That's one lesson.

The other impressive career path from antiquity was that of an oracle.

An oracle was a "seer," one who could give advice, tell the future and get paid in return. A common behavior for would-be oracles was to go barefoot in order to more clearly pick up vibrations of future events passing through the earth.

The most successful and well-known oracle was the priestess of Apollo called Pythia, who was located at Delphi. The ruins at Delphi today indicate that this oracle was successful indeed. Kings and princes from all over the world came to...