This article re-examines the account of the Delphic oracle in Phlegon of Tralles’ Olympiads (FGrHist 257 F 1). It argues that the oracular utterance is framed in an attempt to bolster the Lycurgan institution of the Olympic Games in 776 b.c. More specifically, according to Goffman's theory, the divine anger of Zeus (mênis) is keyed to the modulation of the frame, or the cognitive perspective, that has been radically changed by warfare and plague in the Peloponnese, thus serving a heuristic function in achieving political rationality. By showing the Delphic oracle to be even more dynamic than previous scholarship has suggested, frame analysis increases knowledge and understanding of the literary, social and political progresses reported in ancient sources.
