Did you know that ancient Greek priestesses were the world’s first political risk consultants? Of course, they were. They sat in ancient temples and oracled about the future: political or economical. The most famous of all being the Pythia of Delphi.
In the crucial year 480 B.C. when the citizens of Athens were confronted with the invading army and the armada of Xerxes, “Confronted with an insurmountable foe and almost certain destruction, the hard-pressed Athenian leadership requested the services of the world’s first political risk consultant,” an article originally posted in aeon, a digital magazine for ideas and culture, notes.
Already, by 480 B.C., the Pythia of Delphi was an ancient institution. Now commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi — when, in ancient Greek, the oracles were the pronouncements that the Pythia dispensed — the Pythia were the senior priestesses of the temple of Apollo, the Greek god of prophecy.
For more than 1,100 years (until 390 CE, when radical Christians chased the last Pythia out of Parnassus), they were viewed as the most authoritative soothsayers in Greece. Pilgrims descended from all over the ancient world to the temple on the slope of Mount Parnassus to have their questions about the future answered. From the small, enclosed chamber at the base of the shrine, the Pythia (there were three priestesses on call at any time) delivered her oracles in a frenzied state — the likely result of imbibing the hallucinogenic vapors rising from the clefts in the rock of Mount Parnassus, which we now know sits atop the intersection of two tectonic plates.
The Pythia would be sitting in a perforated cauldron astride a tripod. Pilgrims reported that as she inhaled the strange vapors her hair would stand on end, her complexion altered, and she would often begin panting, her voice assuming an otherworldly tone. In classical days it was said that the Pythia spoke in rhyme, in pentameter or hexameter. To put it in modern terms, the Pythia was clearly as high as a kite. But let’s look at the Pythia afresh, for I would argue that the Temple at Delphi was effectively the world’s first political risk-consulting firm.
Since the height of the Persian Wars, political and business leaders have looked to outsiders blessed with seemingly magical knowledge to divine both the present and the future. While the tools of divination have obviously changed, the pressing need for establishing the rules of the road for managing risk in geopolitics have not. The question for political risk analysis remains the same as it was during the heyday of the Pythia: With superior knowledge (spiritual or intellectual), can we reliably do this?
The Pythia’s prognosticating advantages, not least her outsider status, curiously track the qualities that political risk firms look for in their best analysts today. In their isolation at Mount Parnassus, the Pythia were not in danger of elite capture, and the curse of analytical groupthink that so often follows, in terms of what they predicated.
This is the curse that doomed so many modern-day analysts to be so very wrong about the Brexit vote because they didn’t bother to look outside the hermetically sealed elite shell of London, or the startling advent of Donald Trump because they never left the East Coast corridor. Physical, intellectual, and emotional distance have great analytical value.
Over time, the priestesses at the Temple of Apollo came to understand what it was their clients wished to know, and how to provide exactly what they lacked; independent, outside, authoritative advice. It should be noted that the Pythia were chosen from a group of highly educated women, well-acquainted with the world. It is this strange and unique mix of special knowledge, education, distance from (and yet connection to) the centers of corruption and power, that describes the ideal background for political risk analysts today.
The Pythia offered practical counsel that could shape future actions, just as political risk analysts do today — though we’d use modern jargon and call it “policy” in the public sphere, and “corporate strategy” in the business world. – full article in theweek
