Medize

It is sometimes said that in giving unfavourable or ambiguous responses to Athens, Delphi was medizing. But surely this view is wide of the mark. What could Delphi possibly hope to gain by siding with the Persians? If Delphi was in fact medizing, why did the Persians attempt to take it and to plunder its sanctuary? The truth is that Delphi's overriding aim was the preservation of traditional religion,

There would also have been the problems of deciding in each particular case whether the medizing had been voluntary or done under duress, and within each community whether all had been guilty or only some dominant group.