Delphi Read online

  Raising such a huge amount of money, even with gifts like those of Amasis, must have taken a considerable amount of time. It is no surprise that, given also how complicated a building project this was, the construction of the new temples and sanctuary boundary walls was not completed until 506 BC, over forty years after the fire.8 On the one hand, this left Delphi as a building site for the second half of the sixth century BC. It has been argued that, as a result, dedicators keen to continue their relationship with Apollo during this period went elsewhere, particularly to the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoios not that far from Delphi. Apollo Ptoios saw a leap in dedications of kouroi statues in exactly this period, which faded away in the early years of the fifth century BC as Delphi came back online.9 Yet, on the other hand, this process of fund-raising and rebuilding ensured that, for the first time, all the Amphictyonic members, as well as the inhabitants of Delphi and the wide range of people they tapped for money from all over the Mediterranean world, now had a financial stake in the fabric of Delphi.

  Even more interestingly, despite the initial impression that Delphi was out of action at this time, the truth seems to have been quite the opposite. In the second half of the sixth century BC, Delphi, for better or worse, was becoming more and more deeply involved with the politics of ancient Greece. The oracle, despite the fact that the temple from which the Pythia made her responses was in ruins and under reconstruction, continued to prophesize (we have no idea where or how). In part, the questions put to her were business as usual. Questions about the founding of new settlements continued to come to Delphi (e.g., Abdera in 544 BC, Cyrnos in 545 BC); tyrants continued to consult and were (later) recorded as being given the brush off: Polycrates of Samos consulted about whether his new festival on the sacred island of Delos should be called Delia or Pythia, and was told it didn’t matter (he died soon after). Equally important for Delphi’s continued success was that settlements with which Delphi had been involved at the time of their foundation continued to return to the oracle for advice. When Cyrene in Libya suffered political unrest in the second half of the sixth century, it consulted Delphi on how best to manage it, and was instructed to appoint a mediator, Demonax of Mantinea. A little later, King Archesilaus III of Cyrene, keen to reclaim complete control of Cyrene following the process of mediation, consulted Delphi on how best to do so and was told not to attempt to gain too much power. Ignoring the advice of the oracle, he was eventually assassinated.10

  Indeed, scholars have noted an increasing boldness of oracular responses in this period (even allowing for their recalibration in later sources), borne out in the oracle’s response to the residents of the city of Cyme in Asia Minor, when they, just after the middle of the century, consulted as to whether or not they should hand over Pactyes, a man who had taken refuge in the city after having betrayed his Persian masters. The oracle is said to have replied that they should hand him over (because that’s what they wanted in reality to do), but that the city itself would be punished for having even considered asking the oracle about breaking such a fundamental rule of the rights of a refugee suppliant. Underlying this chastisement, however, is a sense of Delphi’s understanding of the changing balance of power in Asia Minor, and particularly the growing dominance of Persia after its defeat of Croesus of Lydia. Delphi, after all, told Cyme to give in to Persian demands even though it meant breaking a fundamental tenet of Greek society. Similarly, the oracle is recorded as responding to the Cnidians in Asia Minor, who consulted on how best to fight against the Persians (they planned to dig a canal through the landscape to make their city an island), that it would be best if they not resist.11

  Delphi was thus, despite being a building site, still fundamentally active in the affairs of North Africa and Asia Minor in the second half of the sixth century BC. As well, it was consulted several times by settlements in the West during this period, particularly about public and private matters concerning the inhabitants of Croton in southern Italy.12 But it was Delphi’s involvement with the politics of mainland Greece that would be of crucial importance for its immediate future. More specifically, it would be Delphi’s involvement (and noninvolvement) with two rival aristocratic families in Athens that would define the political landscape not only in Athens, but also at Delphi and set the stage for future events.

  The first of those families were the Alcmaeonids. Back in the late seventh century BC the would-be tyrant Cylon, having consulted (and misunderstood) the Delphic oracle on how to take control of Athens, had been killed by the Alcmaeonid family. However, after performing such a service for their city, the Alcmaeonids dragged him out from the sacred refuge of a temple to Athena, their family thereby cursed forever because they had not respected Cylon’s protected status while in the religious sanctuary. Despite this curse, however, the family continued to gain in wealth and importance. In the first half of the sixth century BC, Alcmaeon, had, it is claimed by Herodotus, helped the ambassadors of King Croesus of Lydia during their frequent trips to Delphi for consultation and dedication, and had gained great wealth as a result.13 His son, Megacles, married the daughter of Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon (who, too, was very active at Delphi). Their son, also called Cleisthenes, was the famous Cleisthenes of Athens, who would eventually be fundamental in founding democracy in that city at the end of the sixth century.

  Yet for most of the second half of the sixth century, the position of the Alcmaeonid family at Athens was far some stable, thanks to the emergence of another powerful family in Athens, the Peisistratids. Peisistratus, the head of this family, emerged in Athens as a powerful commander in the 570s and 560s. In time, he challenged the traditional power blocs in Athens (the “men of the coast” led by Megacles the Alcmaeonid and the “men of the plain” led by Lycurgus) by creating and harnessing the loyalty of a third group, the “men over the hills.” His attempt at taking tyrannical power over Athens in the late 560s eventually ended in his exile. But in 556 BC he returned and married the daughter of Megacles the Alcmaeonid. This time, through trickery (according to Herodotus) or popular support (according to Aristotle), Peisistratus achieved tyrannical power over Athens.14 The result of his ascension to power seems to have been the exile of the Alcmaeonid family (on the grounds of the curse that still hung over them from the seventh century BC), thus conveniently ridding himself of powerful political opponents.

  In later times, the Alcmaeonids often claimed they were exiled from Athens for most of the rest of the sixth century BC (a claim important to their eventual antityrannical and pro-democratic credentials). But the inscriptional evidence demonstrates without doubt that their exile was much patchier than that: in 525/4 BC we know that Cleisthenes held the important civic position of eponymous archon in Athens (only possible with Peisistratus’s favor).15 Yet, despite their on-off appearances in Athens, the Alcmaeonids were also increasingly present at Delphi and the surrounding area in the middle and second half of the sixth century BC. In the early days of Peisistratus’s tyranny, Herodotus reports that the Delphic oracle responded to the Dolonchi of the Chersonesus (near the Hellespont in the northeastern Aegean), who had asked a question about being hard-pressed in war, that they should persuade the first man who gave them hospitality to found a colony among them. That man turned out to be Miltiades the Elder, a member of the Alcmaeonids, who had been “disgruntled” with Peisistratus’s tyranny. And in the 540s, BC, the early days of the Alcmaeonid exile, the brother of Megacles dedicated a victory monument for their win in a chariot victory (in Athens) at the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoios.16

  Most crucially, however, it has long been argued that, during the second half of the sixth century BC, the Alcmaeonids increasingly built up their influence at Delphi. This picture of their influence is partly based on an argument from silence: Delphi never has anything to do with Peisistratus. Given Delphi’s involvement with tyrants across Greece, the complete absence of any oracle to do with Peisistratus (for or against him) is surprising. More noteworthy is that even though Peisistratus was a grea
t builder and founder of important events in Athens, he did not dedicate a single offering at Delphi. Indeed, he even founded (what many think was a rival) cult of Apollo Pythios in Athens, which would be continued and enlarged by his descendants who also ruled as tyrants. Moreover, according to some late sources, Peisistratus may have hated Delphi so much that he himself engineered the fire that burned the temple of Apollo to the ground in 548 BC.17

  Yet the most positive proof of Alcmaeonid influence at Delphi comes in the last quarter of the sixth century. In 514 BC the new temple still lay uncompleted. The long process of securing the money, and then undertaking such a complex working project, had seemingly come to a halt, with the initial contractors responsible for the temple unable to finish the job. In 514 BC the Alcmaeonids stepped in and were awarded the contract to finish the temple.18 This they did, according to Herodotus, not only completing it as required by 506 BC, but indeed going beyond their contract and paying themselves to adorn the east end of the temple (that facing toward the altar) in Parian marble rather than the prescribed poros limestone (fig. 5.1).19 This was a grand gesture—the procuring, shipping, and sculpting of Parian marble was not a cheap undertaking.

  Alcmaeonid largess toward Delphi came at the same time as the Athenians were becoming more and more resentful of the Peisistratid tyranny over their city and particularly their current tyrant, a descendent of Peisistratus, called Hippias. And it was also at this time that Herodotus records how the Spartans, every time they came to consult the oracle at Delphi on any matter, were told by the Pythian priestess that, before they did anything else, they must free Athens.20 Alcmaeonid generosity had coincided with the Pythia’s active support for regime change in Athens, a change that could not but benefit the Alcmaeonids. Is this a case of coincidence or the first attested case of bribery of the oracle at Delphi?

  It is irresistible to think that Alcmaeonid beneficence did indeed incline the Pythia toward ensuring Spartan help to “free” Athens from the tyranny of the Peisistratids, even if the Pythia’s intervention was only the cherry atop a much longer-lasting series of negotiations between the Spartans and the Alcmaeonids, and something that, thanks to the increasing importance and potential of Sparta’s own political network in the Peloponnese by the last quarter of the sixth century BC, was actually rather attractive to the Spartans themselves. But “freeing” Athens was no easy task: it took four separate campaigns by the Spartans to achieve Hippias’s removal.21 As a result, however, Delphi, more than ever, became an integral player in Athenian and Spartan politics and relations.

  Figure 5.1. A reconstruction of the east front of the sixth century temple of Apollo in the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi, with Apollo’s arrival via chariot at Delphi represented in the pedimental sculpture (© EFA [Plate xxii Lacoste/Courby FD II Terrasse du Temple 1920–29])

  But while Delphi had become an integral part of the cut and thrust of Athenian politics, and Athenian/Spartan relations, how had Delphi itself been transformed? A visitor to Delphi in 506 BC, at the time of the completion of the temple, would have been hard-pressed to recognize the sacred complex in relation to what it looked like before the fire. In the Apollo sanctuary a gigantic terracing wall had been created to ensure a solid flat foundation for the new temple (see plate 2), and this wall towered over the sanctuary; it is known as the polygonal wall because this was the shape of the blocks of stone that composed it. Such a shape was preferred because the Greeks understood that such blocks would give the wall greater strength than square ones (polygonal-shaped blocks lock together in more complex ways). This new terrace also destroyed and swallowed up many of the old, unidentified structures (often associated with the cult of Gaia) that had surrounded the earlier temple, many of which had been built in the period 580–548 BC (see fig. 3.2).22

  On top of this massive new terrace, a new temple was laid out, resplendent in Parian marble at its eastern end with entirely new pedimental sculpture at both east and west. Carved on the western end was a scene of Gigantomachy—the gods fighting the giants; and on the eastern side, the arrival of Apollo in a horse-drawn chariot (fig. 5.1). It has long been debated whether this should be seen as Apollo’s arrival from the Hyperboreans as he returned to Delphi each year, or, more specifically, Apollo’s arrival from Athens, surrounded by Athenians and welcomed by citizens of Delphi. If the latter, then the Athenians, or more specifically the Alcmaeonids, had successfully placed Athens at the very heart of Delphi’s story and cemented their own special relationship with Apollo, in a temple they had completed and that would remain standing for over one hundred years.23

  Those responsible for the rebuilding chose carefully: archaeologists have noted that blocks of stone from the pre-548 BC temple (built just after the First Sacred War) were often reused, but only in the “official” new temple complex: the temple, its polygonal wall and associated water conduits. And material from the old sanctuary boundary walls was also utilized to create the Apollo sanctuary’s new perimeter walls, expanded to the south, east, and west by an exact 13.25 meters to create a perimeter some 3 kilometers long (making the Apollo sanctuary alone equivalent in size to a small polis, see plate 1). A new, major entrance to the sanctuary was created in the southeast, at the bottom of what would become the Apollo sanctuary’s sacred way, and followed today by visitors to the site (see plate 2, fig. 0.1). But we should not be led into thinking that the sacred way itself was laid out at this time. In fact, the path taken today is a creation of the last phase of Delphi’s ancient existence in the fifth–sixth centuries AD (see later chapters).24 In the late sixth century BC, in contrast, while the sanctuary’s major entrance was where it is today in the southeast area, there were several other entryways in the new boundary walls at each of the terracing levels of the sanctuary, with short staircases and pathways leading between these terraces inside the sanctuary (see plate 2). Rather than only one path of movement, we thus need to imagine a more complex sequence of movement in and around the Apollo sanctuary for much of its history, allowing visitors more flexibility to engage with and admire the increasing number of monuments that filled it.25

  Attention was also paid in this period to the Athena sanctuary, which, despite being undamaged by the fire, perhaps represented the Amphictyony’s first attempt to exercise control over this sanctuary as well as Apollo’s. The Athena sanctuary’s boundary walls were expanded and rebuilt to treble the size of the sanctuary, incorporating what were probably unofficial cult locations to several other deities, including Artemis (see plate 3). A monumental entrance to this newly expanded sanctuary was added in its northeast corner and may have doubled as the official entrance to the Delphic polis (see plate 1). A new temple to Athena was built, and a carbon copy of the pedimental sculpture from the new Apollo temple was probably given to it.26 As a result, Delphi grew in international appeal during this period, and seems also to have expanded not only the number of gods within it, but also the respect with which they were worshiped.

  It is almost impossible to map this landscape of divine worship at Delphi with any precise detail, even less to give it a solid chronology. But it is crucial to realize that, by the end of the sixth century BC, and increasingly rapidly from then on throughout Delphi’s long history, Delphi was home to the worship of a large number of gods, goddesses, demigods, and heroes. Alongside Apollo Pythios, Athena Pronaia, Artemis, Dionysus, and Poseidon, inscriptions attest to the worship in and around the Apollo and Athena sanctuaries (as well as at the port of Cirrha, which served Delphi, and in the Corycian cave) of Hermes, Gaia and the Muses, Zeus Machaneus (the artisan), Moiragetus (the master of fate), Polieus (the protector of the city), Soter (the savior), Athena Ergone (the workman), Zosteria (the warrior), Artemis Eucleia (of marriage), Leto, Aphrodite Epiteleia (of birthing), Harmonia (of harmony), Epitymbia (goddess of tombs), Demeter Hermouchus (the carrier of Hermes), Amphictionis (of the Amphictyony), Core, Asclepius, Hygaia, Eileithyia, the Dioscuri, Pan, the Nymphs, the Thries (the nymphs of Parnassus), and, later, Roma.27
In addition to this is the attested worship of a host of demigods, personifications and heroes developed over Delphi’s history: Heracles, Delphus, Castalius, Parnassus, Amphiction, Phylacus, Neoptolemus, Aigle (the cult of the winds), and a later Imperial cult dedicated to Antinous Propylaius (Guardian of the Gates).28 Delphi, as it grew in international appeal, was a place of worship for a relative pantheon of divinities and heroes, reflecting not only its own history and focus, but also that of those who went there. Over the following chapters, we will examine some of the known occasions when these different divinities and heroes came to the fore of Delphic history. In addition, the many festivals associated with them, and that created a packed sacrificial calendar for the city of Delphi (it was a well-known joke in ancient Greece that Delphians always had a sacrificial knife in their hands), will be examined in the context of the time period in which the evidence for their existence derives (most of which comes from the writings of Plutarch in the first century AD).29

  What happened to those wanting to dedicate monuments in these sanctuaries during this period of rebirth and expansion? Some, as we have seen, may have rerouted to other nearby sanctuaries, like that of Apollo Ptoios. But many seem to have recognized the opportunity this rebuilding presented. In the Athena sanctuary, the Massalians, from the Greek colony at modern-day Marseilles, used the remnants of the old boundary wall in the Athena sanctuary, along with bits of the old Athena temple, as “ready-made” foundation material for a new treasury building (see plate 3). It was a fascinatingly cosmopolitan structure: Delphi’s most western dedicator building an Ionic, eastern-style, treasury at the center of the ancient world, perhaps reflecting the eastern origins of its settlement founders (the Phocaeans), as well as perhaps commemorating a recent Massalian battle victory over the Carthaginians.30