Abstract
The ancient Greek historian Herodotos relates how, on three successive occasions, King Kroisos of Lydia questioned the god Apollon at his oracle at Delphi. Apollon's responses were slyly indirect in that the first described a phenomenon in terms of olfactory perception, the second was ambiguous, and the third depended upon the apprehension of a metaphor. The international folktale known as The King and the Farmer's Son (ATU 921) similarly features a king who asks a series of straightforward questions, and a youth who responds with slyness and often metaphoric indirection. I compare the classical narrative and the folktale, discussing the apparent assimilation of the international tale to ancient Greek traditions about the kingdom of Lydia and the Delphic oracle.
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