To the Spartans: they will plough with a silver ploughshare (PW 160)

This entry comments on the Delphic oracle ordering the Spartans to recall the exiled Agiad king Pleistoanax, lest they “plough with a silver ploughshare” (PW 160; Fo. H7), transmitted by Thucydides (5.16.2–3) within a hostile tradition accusing Pleistoanax and his brother Aristokles of having suborned the Pythia. Preserved in a mixed register – an elevated, seemingly hexametric injunction to restore the seed of Herakles followed by a non-hexametric Doric clause (αὐλάκᾳ αὐλαξεῖν) – the response is examined both textually and in its reception, including the ancient readings of the image and its extension to military ineffectiveness. The entry reconstructs the oracle as the Pythia’s recurring answer to repeated Spartan enquiries during the Archidamian War’s early reverses, and shows how the accompanying narrative of Pleistoanax’s return – staged through the rites of Sparta’s foundation – recasts his restoration as a refoundation of the dyarchic order.