The Hidden Oracle

“‘I am Apollo,’ I announced. ‘You mortals have three choices: offer me tribute, flee, or be destroyed.’ I wanted my words to echo through the alley, shake the towers of New York, and cause the skies to rain smoking ruin. None of that happened. On the word destroyed, my voice squeaked.”

Faced by the muggers Cade and Mikey in a Manhattan alley, Apollo tries to scare them away by proclaiming his godly status. However, Apollo is now in the form of a 16-year-old human boy, and therefore his warnings have no effect on the two young men. Instead of preparing to be destroyed, they decide to destroy Apollo instead and proceed to beat him up. This passage highlights Apollo’s frailty as a mortal and his inability to accept his shortcomings.

“After everything I had done for Percy Jackson, I expected delight upon my arrival. A tearful welcome, a few burnt offerings, and a small festival in my honor would not have been inappropriate.” 

Apollo is surprised by the lukewarm reception he and Meg receive at Percy Jackson’s house. Since Apollo sees himself as a mentor to Percy, he had expected Percy to propitiate him. As the lines show, Apollo’s sense of self is still closely linked with his former godly identity, and his exaggerated expectations set him up for disappointment. Toward the end of The Hidden Oracle, Percy will help out Apollo at a time of great need, suggesting Percy is not as cold as Apollo initially perceived.

“Gods know about fading. They know about being forgotten over centuries. The idea of ceasing to exist altogether terrifies us. In fact—well, Zeus would not like me sharing this information, and if you tell anyone, I will deny I ever said it—but the truth is we gods are a little in awe of you mortals. You spend your whole lives knowing you will die. No matter how many friends and relatives you have, your puny existences will quickly be forgotten. How do you cope with it? Why are you not running around constantly screaming and pulling your hair out? Your bravery, I must admit, is quite admirable.”

On the way to Camp Half-Blood, plague spirits sent by Nero attack Percy, Meg, and Apollo. As a plague spirit engulfs Apollo, he fears he will soon die and begins to reflect on mortality. Apollo makes the important confession that even gods are afraid of death, perhaps more so even than mortals. Apollo’s confession in a moment of crisis is heartfelt and at odds with his previous mockery of human beings. These lines suggest that Apollo’s views on mortality are more complex than he lets on. They also suggest that the gods admire and even resent humans for their ability to live in the moment despite knowing of their mortality.

“‘This brings to mind an expression I coined ages ago: A peach a day keeps the plague spirits away!’

Percy sneezed. ‘I though it was apples and doctors.’

The karpos hissed.

‘Or peaches,’ Percy said. ‘Peaches work too.’

‘Peaches,’ agrees the karpos.

Percy wiped his nose. ‘Not criticizing, but why is her grooting?’” 

After Meg inadvertently summons an ancient grain demon or karpos from frozen, blackened peaches, Apollo, terrified by the babyish-looking but ferocious karpos, tries to appease him by twisting a popular adage in his favour. This passage is a good example of the humorous tone of The Hidden Oracle and Riordan’s distinctive style of melding references from mythology and pop culture. The reference to Peaches “grooting” alludes to the popular comic book character Groot, a tree-like creature whose language consists of a single word—“groot.”

“The voice spoke again: FIND ME.

This time it was so loud it stabbed through my forehead like a railroad spike. I stumbled, falling to my knees.

‘Hey!’ Meg gripped my arm. ‘Get up!’

‘You didn’t hear that?’

‘Hear what?’

THE FALL OF THE SUN, the voice boomed. THE FINAL VERSE.”

The “it” here refers to the Grove of Dodona, an ancient Oracle that has sprung up in the woods recently. Apollo is able to hear its voice because even though he may be mortal, he seems to have retained some of his powers of prophecy. Additionally, since Dodona is an Oracle inspired by a god other than Apollo, Apollo’s fall has not blocked it. “The fall of the sun” is a reference to Apollo, the sun god, falling and turning mortal, whereas the full meaning of the “the final verse” is unclear. Significantly, these prophectic phrases were first said by Ella, a clairvoyant harpy in The Blood of Olympus. Though the first part of Ella’s prophecy has come true, the second is yet to be revealed.

“‘Meg.’ Chiron gave her one of his heroically tolerant smiles. ‘The original site of the Oracle is like the deepest taproot of a tree. The branches and leaves of prophecy may extend across the world and Rachel Dare may be our loftiest branch, but if the taproot is strangled, the whole tree is endangered. With Python back in residence at his original lair, the spirit of the Oracle has been completely blocked.’” 

Chiron apprises Meg and Apollo of the problems plaguing Camp Half-Blood, one of which is the inability of the Oracle to prophesyze. The Oracle’s silence is linked with Python regaining access to the ancient cave of Delphi, the original site of the Oracle. In some ancient Greek texts, Python, who initially guarded the Oracle, was the monster of Gaia, the earth mother. Apollo killed Python to take control of the Oracle. After Apollo’s fall, Python has taken back his first lair. With Delphi under Python, all Oracles are blocked, since Delphi is the original source of prophecy. To save the various Oracles, Apollo will have to free Delphi from Python.

“The others seemed confused. Then the glow became brighter: a holographic golden sickle with a few sheaves of wheat, rotating just above Meg McCaffrey.

A boy in the crowd gasped. ‘She’s a communist!’” 

Meg is here revealed to be Demeter’s daughter. While Apollo is horrified that Meg is the daughter of Demeter, a goddess with whom he has a contentious relationship, a boy in the camp is equally appalled at the prospect of Meg being a communist. A sickle is a symbol of field work and communist ideology. The boy’s horror is a humorous parody of real-world exaggerated fears about people with a left-leaning outlook.

“I was tempted to laugh. How could I get used to being merely good? Why would I strain myself to get better when before I had been divine?

‘No,’ I said bitterly. ‘No, it is too painful. I swear upon the River Styx—until I am a god again, I will not use a bow or a musical instrument!’”

Apollo attends music and archery lessons at the camp. Although he is still excellent at playing music, he is dismayed to find his fingers cramping after a virtuoso performance on the guitar. During archery, he fares even worse. In a fit of self-loathing, he swears on the River Styx, the sacred river that divides the realm of the living from the underworld, to forsake music and archery as a mortal. Apollo’s rash decision shows that he aspires to impossible levels of perfection and looks down upon his mortal form as weak and falliable. Since breaking an oath to the River Styx brings its own set of punishments, Apollo’s rash promise ensures further challenges for the god.

“Had I ever been so terrified? Perhaps when Typhon raged across the earth, scattering the gods before him. Perhaps when Gaia unleashed her giants to tear down Olympus. Or perhaps when I accidentally saw Ares naked in the gymnasium. That had been enough to turn my hair white for a century.

But I had been a god all those times.” 

After the Labyrinth serendipitiously brings Apollo and Meg right under Delphi, now occupied by Python, Apollo is flooded with fear unlike he has known before. Apollo’s lack of confidence of his mortal self forms a prominent theme in the text. Unless Apollo begins to see his mortal self as capable, his quest will remain incomplete. This passage also alludes to figures and events from Greek myths as well as the Heroes of Olympus series. In Greek mythology, Typhon was an ancient, deadly monster who tried to overthrow Zeus and the other Olympians in an apocalyptic battle. In The Blood of Olympus, Gaia, the earth mother, fought the gods and demigods. Ares is the Greek god of war.

“‘It’s my fault. I got them lost. I…I’m sorry.’ He was shaking. I realized the little boy was terrifed of what I might do. For the past two days, I had yearned to cause fear in mortals again. My stomach has boiled with resentment and bitterness. I wanted someone to blame for my predicament, for the disappearances, for my own powerlessness to fix things. Looking at Harley, my anger evaporated. I felt hollow, silly, ashamed of myself. Yes, me, Apollo…ashamed. Truly, it was an event so unprecedented it should have ripped apart the cosmos.”

Harley, the eight-year-old-son of Hephaesteus, apologizes to Apollo for the dark turn taken by the three-legged death race that he designed. Apollo’s demigod children Austin and Kayla disappeared in the woods during the race. Though Apollo has felt great bitterness and hatred for mortals since he fell to earth, he cannot stay angry with young Harley. Instead Apollo experiences a rare moment of introspection, managing to surprise himself. This passage is significant because it illustrates Apollo’s growing empathy. Apollo’s feelings of shame and guilt mark an important milestone in the evolution of his character.

“Not all monsters were three-ton reptiles with poisonous breath. Many wore human faces.”

Meg seems far more afraid of the Beast than she was even of the fearsome Python, which leads Apollo to reflect that not all monsters come in monstrous shapes. Apollo is alluding to the everyday, normal face of evil, which sometimes confronts humans in their own homes, neighborhoods, and cities. Because he is himself a human now, Apollo’s concept of evil is changing from ancient serpents to more wily and anonymous foes. Apollo’s statement foreshadows the ordinary appearance of Nero, the main villain of the text.

“‘The name Triumvirate…’ I tapped my forehead, trying to shake loose the information that was no longer there. ‘The last triumvirate I dealt with included Lepidus, Marc Antony, and my son, the original Octavian. A triumvirate is a very Roman concept…like patriotism, skullduggery and assassination.’

Chiron stroked his beard. ‘You think these men are ancient Romans? How is that possible? Hades is quite good at tracking down spirits from the Underworld. He would not allow three men from ancient times to run amok in the modern world for centuries.’” 

Apollo’s statement associating the triumvirate with concepts like assassination and “skullduggery,” or dishonest behavior, reflects his contempt for some of the practices of imperial Rome. The last triumvirate of ancient Rome to which Apollo refers was the historic rulling alliance between Marc Antony, Marcus Lepidus, and Octavian, Julius Caesar’s nephew. The alliance (43-32 B.C.) was formed after Caesar’s assasination and ended with Octavian’s defeat of Antony. Octavian went on to be known as Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. In the text, Octavian is imagined as Apollo’s son. Chiron cannot understand how the spirits of the ancient Roman emperors could have escaped to the contemporary world. However, Rhea will soon tell Apollo that the emperors may never have gone to the underworld, staying on earth in a limbo between life and death.

“Nothing is more tragic than loving someone to the depths of your soul and knowing they cannot and will not ever love you back.” 

Guilty that Meg was abducted on his watch, Apollo begins to recall all those whom he has failed in the past, chief among them being the nymph Daphne. Daphne begged to be turned into a tree to escape Apollo’s one-sided love. She was thereafter transformed. Apollo knows he treated Daphne shabbily but explains he was driven by unrequited love. Apollo’s confession here shows that he was capable of love even as a god. His human ability to feel complex emotions enables him to articulate that complex love. Apollo’s willingness to reveal his vulnerable self further humanizes him.

“‘After I left Kronos…well, that man was so square you could cut yourself on his corners, you know what I mean? He was the ultimate 1950s dad—wanted us to be Ozzie and Harriet or Lucy and Ricky or something.’

‘He—he swallowed his children alive.’

‘Yeah.’ Rhea brushed her hair from her face. ‘That was some bad karma. Anyway I left him. Back then, divorce wasn’t cool. You just didn’t do it. But me? I burned my apodesmos and got liberated. I raised Zeus in a commune with a bunch of naiads and kouretes. Lots of wheat germ and nectar. The kid grew up with a strong Aquarian vibe.’” 

Riordan reimagines Rhea, wife of Kronos and daughter of Gaia, as a free-spirited Bohemian with a feminist sensibility. Rhea’s burning of her apodesmos, a traditional undergarment, references the supposed symbolic burning of bras by feminists in the 1960s and 1970s (the actual events are now debated). Her distaste of characters from quotidian 1950s TV shows highlights her distaste for the illusion of a traditional, happy family. Rhea’s reference to raising Zeus in a commune with naiads alludes to some Classical accounts that describe Rhea hiding Zeus from Kronos in the region of Crete. Kronos was a titan who cannibalized his own children.

“‘Lord Apollo, please,’ he said. ‘Even before Gaia commandeered the Doors of Death, souls escaped from Erebos all the time. It was quite easy for a god-emperor such as myself to call back my followers.’

‘A god-emperor?’ I growled. ‘You mean a delusional ex-emperor?’

Nero arched his eyebrows. ‘What made you a god, Apollo…back when you were one? Wasn’t it the power of your name, your sway over those who believed in you? I am no different.’” 

Nero’s referring to himself as a “god-emperor” shows the extent of his hubris and enrages Apollo. However, Nero asserts that godhood is not the sole right of gods. It is devotion that creates idols, and whoever commands devotion can be deified. Through Nero’s statement, the text touches upon the dangers of the cult of personality. When people unquestioningly follow megalomaniacal leaders like Nero, they empower the leader to act like gods, or in other words, without accountability.

“She stared at the ground. When she spoke, her voice was even more tortured than mine was when I sang in the anthill. ‘The Beast killed my father. This is Nero. He’s—he’s my stepfather.’

I could not fully grasp this before Nero spread his arms.

‘That’s right, my darling,’ he said. ‘And you’ve done a wonderful job. Come to Papa.’” 

At the gateway to the Grove of Dodona, Apollo finally learns that the Beast’s well-placed help in the camp is none other than Meg. Meg deliberately brought Apollo to the Grove, fulfilling her stepfather’s bidding. Terrible as this reveal is, equally horrifying is the fact that Meg considers the Beast and Nero to be two separate people. Nero has traumatized and brainwashed Meg to such an extreme that her sense of reality is fractured. Meg believes that the Beast who killed her biological father is a monster separate from Nero, the stepfather who raised and trained her. The narrative suggests Meg’s quest as an individual will involve her accepting the truth about Nero.

“‘You can’t.’ Her voice shook. ‘The woods—I’m the daughter of Demeter.’” 

Once Meg and Apollo have opened the gateway to the Grove of Dodona, the trees tell Meg that Nero plans to burn them to the ground. Nero confirms his plan; he plans to burn not just Dodona but all of Long Island to build a real-estate empire on the razed site. Meg, so far conflicted between her loyalty for her stepfather and her conscience, finally takes a stand against Nero. As a daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, Meg cannot allow Nero to destroy the woods, which symbolize nature. Meg’s statement is also an assertion of her selfhood: she may have been brainwashed by Nero, but she is also her own person.

“‘Let us do this together and not involve the Beast, shall we?’

Finally, in my mind, something clicked. I remembered how my father used to punish me centuries ago, when I was young and learning the ways of Olympus. Zeus used to say, Don’t get on the wrong side of my lightning bolts, boy.

As if the lightning bolt had a mind of its own—as if Zeus had nothing to do with the punishments meted out to me.”

After Meg learns of Nero’s plans to burn Dodona and the campers, she begins to dither from carrying out his orders. Nero warns her not to invoke the Beast through her stubbornness. Apollo has the epiphany that Nero is the classic unreasonable and cruel parent who tranfers responsibility of his own anger to his child. If Nero is enraged enough to let his Beast side show, it is only Meg’s fault, the way it was Apollo’s fault that Zeus punished him by hitting him with lightning bolts. Not only does Apollo’s realization about the terrible parenting of Nero and Zeus help him empathize with Meg, but it also fleshes out the text’s concerns about trauma caused by abusive parenting.

“As soon as the last flames were snuffed out, the dryads crumbled to ash. I wished I could crumble with them. I wanted to cry, but the fire had seared all the moisture from my tear ducts. I had not asked for so many sacrifices. I had not expected it! I felt hollow, guilty, and ashamed.

Then it occurred to me how many times I had asked for sacrifices, how many heroes I had sent to their deaths. Had they been any less noble and courageous than these dryads? Yet I had felt no remorse when I sent them off on deadly tasks. I had used them and discarded them, laid waste to their lives to build my own glory. I was no less of a monster than Nero.”

Apollo’s remorse at the noble sacrifice of the dryads is emblematic of his human conscience. As a god, Apollo was free of introspection. He could send heroes off to perform deadly tasks without guilt. However, as a human Apollo finally sees the cost others have paid for his ego and indifference. Slotting others as monsters is easy, Apollo realizes, whereas the truth is even he has performed monstrous acts. Nero serves as a mirror for Apollo’s failures. Despite the grim events in the passage, the lines also contain a note of hope. Apollo is undergoing a purge of the spirit, accepting his past mistakes. The fire which consumes the dryads also cleanses Apollo’s ego. From here on, Apollo can begin making amends for the hurt he has caused.

“There once was a god named Apollo

Who plunged in a cave blue and hollow

Upon a three-seater

The bronze fire-eater

Was forced death and madness to swallow.” 

Inside the Grove of Dodona, after the chimes pick up the wind, the trees deliver their prophecy in the form of a limerick. Apollo, the god of poetry and the subject of the prophecy, is horrified that the form the trees chose is the humble limerick, rather than an exalted ode or panegyric. The comic predicament is symbolic of Apollo’s ability to laugh at himself, as well as his growing comfort with his ordinary, human existence. The blue and hollow cave of the prophecy refers to the Oracle of Trophonius, which in Greek myths is shrouded in mystery. Generally considered a frightful and arcane Oracle, Trophonius is the object of Apollo’s next quest. “Three-seater” suggests Apollo will have two other companions on the quest, while “bronze fire-eater” is an allusion to the bronze metal dragon of Leo Valdez. The prophecy’s last line suggests Apollo’s quest will be perilous, forcing him to confront death and mental trauma.

“Then, from somewhere above us, a voice yelled, ‘Hey, Bronze Butt!’

Over the Colossus's head, a cloud of darkness formed like a cartoon dialogue bubble. Out of the shadows dropped a furry black monster dog—a hellhound—and astride his back was a young man with a glowing bronze sword.

The weekend was here. Percy Jackson had arrived.” 

Percy’s arrival signals a new infusion of hope. It also eases Apollo’s former suspicions that Percy had abandoned him and the camp. Further, Percy’s dramatic appearance is well in the tradition of a deus ex machina, a plot device in which an act of providence rescues a hopeless situation. As Percy distracts the giant, he buys Apollo time to enchant and shoot the arrow. Percy’s arrival bolsters Apollo’s spirit, proving the power of camaraderie and teamwork.

“I ran down the beach until I had a line of sight on the statue’s left ear.

Looking up at that regal profile, I did not see Nero. I saw myself—a monument to my own conceit. Nero’s pride was no more than a reflection of mine. I was the bigger fool. I was exactly the sort of person who would construct a hundred-foot-tall naked statue of myself in my front yard. I pulled the plague arrow from my quiver and nocked it in the bowstring.” 

Since the Colossus is built in Apollo’s likeness, Apollo can see his face reflected in the visage of the bronze giant. However, to Apollo the likeness between him and Nero is more than superficial. In the face of the Colossus, he can see the face of his own hubris. Like Nero, Apollo, too, has favored gigantic monuments to himself. He can now see the narcissism that would inspire such a desire. Shooting at the face of Nero’s Colossus, Apollo would symbolically also be killing his own Nero-self. The idea fills Apollo with new resolve, and he unleashes the arrow confidently, soon defeating the bronze giant.

“Things can turn out differently Apollo. That's the nice thing about being human. We only have one life, but we can choose what kind of story it's going to be.”

The morning after defeating the Colossus of Nero, Apollo is in a pensive mood, overhwhelmed by the terrible fates that most of his loved ones have suffered in the past. Rachel Dare reminds Apollo that unlike immortal life, which repeats patterns, mortal life is full of strange and wonderful twists. The past need not repeat itself. Apollo can indeed rescue Meg so that she doesn’t suffer a fate similar to Daphne and Hyacinthus. He can create a new narrative. Because Apollo has the human ability to try, change, and grow, he is not stuck in a one-dimensional existence. Rachel’s important statement sums up the book’s message about the beauty of mortal life.