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Go to Delphi Apollo Temple at Greece Slides

Gnōthi Sauton, "Know thyself !"

THE DELPHIC ORACLE drew visitors from all over the Greek world and beyond. They came seeking the wisdom of Apollo, whose priestess, the Pythia, served as mouthpiece for the god's prophetic utterances.

Gnōthi Sauton - These words, chiseled into the wall of the pronaos, the front porch, of Apollo's temple, would have greeted you as you made your way into the sanctuary dramatically situated on the sheer slope of Mount Parnassus in central Greece.

Gnōthi Sauton means "Know thyself," fit advice for those who would understand how to apply Apollo's riddling prophecies to their own lives. Yet it might as well serve as a motto for ancient Greek literature in general. For self-knowledge was fundamental not just to the philosophizing of a Socrates or Plato. Think of Greek tragedy - Oedipus, whose life-and-death struggle was ultimately with the truth of his identity and of his past. Think too of the historian Thucydides, who explored the ways that human nature shapes historical events.

The earliest Greek literature dates from nearly three thousand years ago. Yet ancient Greek still lives for us, whether we read it in translation or in the original, but especially if we read it in the original. Indeed, by studying and reading Greek, we gain unique insight not just into the literature of the Greeks, but also into the mindset of a people so different yet so close to us in so many ways.

As the Greeks themselves recognized, by knowing the "other" we shall better know ourselves.

Links to . . .

• more on gnōthi sauton . . .
• start of Delphi at Greece slideshow
• Elementary Greek I homepage
• course descriptions for Greek

This page was last updated August 3, 2001