Delphi Read online

  Pindar’s victory odes and hymns are also important because they give us the first evidence for the existence of a particular cult at Delphi: that of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. Pindar’s Paean 6 (117–20), produced c. 475 BC, tells of the death of Neoptolemus at Delphi (see fig. 6.1). How he died, however, is heavily disputed among the literary sources (including by Pindar, himself, who offers a different version of the story in Nemean 7.59–69). Whatever the manner of his death, the Delphians likely offered an annual sacrifice to him as a hero. In addition, according to Pausanias, the Aenianes sent a sacred embassy to Delphi during the Pythian festival to honor Neoptolemus, since he had been their king. In the following centuries, the area of the cult tomb of Neoptolemus in the sanctuary would be a popular one for dedication (just northeast of the temple of Apollo), and the dead spirit of the hero himself was later said to have fought alongside other heroes and demigods to protect Delphi against invasions in the third century BC.14

  Figure 6.1. The murder of Neoptolemus at Delphi (identified by the tripod and omphalos) represented on a volute krater by the Iliupersis painter c. 370 BC (© Intesa Sanpaolo Collection inv. F.G-00111A-E/IS)

  As the sanctuary was expanding in terms of cult locations, myths, and monumental dedications, the oracle was by no means silent: forty-five different oracular consultations are known to have occurred between 479 and 431 BC.15 The Spartans in particular continued their long tradition of consulting the oracle on a range of issues concerning military endeavors, diplomacy, and, sometimes, their own misdeeds. Pausanias, the Spartan general who had tried to hijack the Plataean serpent column as his own monument, was found guilty of treason by the Spartan elders. Pausanias fled for sacred refuge into the temple of Athena on Sparta’s acropolis. There, under the protection of the gods, the Spartans could not touch him but instead chose to starve him into submission. He died in the temple’s forecourt. Before long, Sparta was subject to a series of signs of divine disfavor and promptly consulted Delphi on what to do: they were told to bury Pausanias where he had fallen; they did, alongside putting up two statues of him in the sanctuary.16

  We also know that in 476–75 BC, the Athenians—busy building an anti-Persian alliance (the Delian league) that would before long become the Athenian empire—consulted the Pythia regarding cult practice on one of the Aegean islands, Scyros, in which they happened to have strategic interests. The result was that, in order to “follow” the “advice” of the oracle, the Athenians moved in to annex the island, discovered (as instructed) the bones of their hero Theseus, and built a temple over them.17 As well as being a useful tool in explaining Athenian expansion, the oracle at this time played an increasingly important role in the cultural mindset of Athens thanks to the development of Greek tragic theater. It is in the fifth century BC—and specifically with the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, which have survived into our time, starting with Aeschylus’s Persians in 472 BC—that we begin to gain an insight into how the Athenians conceptualized the Delphic oracle, its origins and its role in Greek society. As we saw in earlier chapters, the tragic plays from Athens are some of our most significant sounding boards for learning how the Greeks (or more specifically the Athenians) understood (the various and changing) stories regarding Delphi’s origins. But they also show us the extent to which Delphi was conceived of in this period as an enforcer of civic values, a place that was on the path toward conflict resolution and active justice: although the actual resolution and justice are themselves (perhaps unsurprisingly) eventually always to be found in Athens (e.g., Aeschylus’s Oresteia). As can be seen, Delphi is portrayed on the Athenian tragic stage as an institution for the maintenance of order in the Greek world and, at the same time, as emphasizing the special role of Athens in Greek society.18

  Thus the Delphi’s oracle was undoubtedly held in high regard in the first part of the fifth century BC. Compare this, however, with the use of the sanctuary for other purposes, particularly monumental dedication, and a picture emerges of a Delphi in which its oracle is, in reality, no longer the only prime motive for going to, and investing in, the sanctuary. We have already seen that the Pythian games attracted important and powerful individuals to invest and display their triumphs at Delphi. But in the first half of the fifth century BC, there was also a growing tendency by different dedicators to attempt a monopolization of the Apollo sanctuary through offering a series of monumental structures, often to advertise military victories, on the many terraces that comprised the Apollo sanctuary. In short, the value of having a permanent and obvious presence that advertised one’s military and cultural prowess in this sanctuary complex—firmly embedded at the very core of the Greek world, and to which more and more people were coming—was as attractive and useful as the oracle’s ability to provide guidance at moments of difficult decision.19

  Western dedicators were at the forefront of this trend. The Liparians, just off the coast of Sicily, erected vast numbers of Apollo statues on both the temple terrace and in the lower half of the Apollo sanctuary, perhaps deliberately opposite dedications by their frequent enemy, the Etruscans.20 The Tarentines, in southern Italy, who had been among the first to use Delphi to announce military victory through a monumental sculptural dedication at the very beginning of the fifth century (and in doing so had bagged the first spot visitors saw as they entered the Apollo sanctuary at its new southeastern entrance) now returned in the 460s BC to erect another sculptural group on the temple terrace to commemorate military victory, placing it just in front of the already well-known Plataean serpent column (see fig. 1.3).21

  But this new trend of “spatial monopolization” was not only practised by Western dedicators. Cnidus, on the coast of Asia Minor, having dedicated a marble treasury in the sixth century BC, returned in the fifth century to offer not only a group of statues squeezed in next to the Siphnian treasury in the new lowest terrace of the sanctuary, but also to take advantage of the newly laid-out northern part of the sanctuary above the temple terrace to offer a cultural tour-de-force in the form of a lesche (see plate 2). A lesche was a place for meeting, conversation, and contemplation, and the Cnidian lesche at Delphi, constructed in the 460s BC, provided ample material for discussion since its walls were covered in paintings by the famous artist Polygnotus, none of which have survived, but all of which were described in exacting detail by Pausanias in his second century AD tour of the site. The paintings described numerous Greek myths and stories, offering a space for visitors to contemplate the mytho-history of the Greek world, having just walked up through a sanctuary that was itself increasingly stuffed with monuments to moments in Greek history, and over which the lesche (and its attached terrace) provided one of the most unobstructed views.22

  Yet no one monopolized the Apollo and Athena sanctuaries in the period 479–460 BC more than the Athenians. Already well represented in the sanctuary with a new treasury, shields and inscription on the temple, as well as in the Persian War dedications, the Athenians scattered-bombed Delphi with dedications to their military and cultural prowess in this period. They likely erected a treasury in the Athena sanctuary in the 470s BC; built Delphi’s first-ever stoa along the bottom of the polygonal wall as a shelter for the display of booty from naval and land victories; and constructed a bronze palm-tree dedication with a golden statue of Athena in its branches on the temple terrace in the 460s BC to commemorate Athens’s military victory at the battle of Eurymedon (see plate 2, fig. 1.3). Finally, the Athenians supplanted the Tarentines as the first to be seen by visitors entering from the southeast with a new monument that restated the importance of their victory at Marathon in 490 BC. This new monument mixed the eponymous heroes of Athens, whose names had been chosen by the Pythia in 508 BC, with figures more closely connected to the battle of Marathon itself (plate 2, fig. 6.2).23

  Delphi was not the only place in which Athens commemorated its prowess in this period, but, in comparison with the other major sanctuaries of Greece, it received far more insistent and visible attent
ion than any other (except of course for the acropolis in Athens itself). Such domination at and of Delphi is not unexpected as this was the period in which Athens moved to dominate the Greek world with its great empire. But Athenian monumental presence at Delphi also underscores a crucial point for understanding the changing perception of Delphi within the Greek world, and the motivation for what would happen next in Delphi’s life story. Take away the popular participation of western and eastern dedicators in the first half of the fifth century BC, and, in the period 479–60, we are left with almost no one except Athens. While Sparta and a host of other cities and individuals continued to consult the oracle, the physical space of the Apollo and Athena sanctuary was unmistakably dominated by Athens at this time because Athens had created for itself an empire within the Greek world, and had, almost mirrorlike, created a similar hold over the microcosm of the Greek world that was Delphi. It was unlikely that other powers in Greece would put up with either for long.

  Figure 6.2. A reconstruction of dedications by Athens and Sparta at the entrance to the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi. 1 Fourth century BC Argive semi-circle dedication. 2 End fifth century BC Spartan stoa. 3 Fourth century BC Arkadian dedication. 4 Fifth century BC Athenian statue group dedication. 5 End fifth century BC Spartan dedication to victory at Aegospotamoi. 6 Later Roman agora. 7 Entrance to Apollo sanctuary.

  By 457 BC, Athens’s influence had extended from dominating the Delphic complex through dedications to political dominance and control over all its nearest neighbors.24 As a result, when Athens decided to support Phocis in its claim to incorporate Delphi within its political territory (since the time of the arrival of the Amphictyony in the early sixth century BC, Delphi had had a position of independence from any regional political unit), there was little the citizens of Delphi could do about it. Athenian domination of the sacred space of the Delphic complex through monumental dedications to the gods in honor of its own military victories had been transposed into, by proxy, control over Delphi itself. It is no surprise that many scholars date two preserved oracular responses, which encouraged and justified growing Athenian power, to exactly this time when Athens was effectively the master of Delphi.25

  In 449 BC, however, the balance of power began to change in Greece and at Delphi. The first hint of this change was perhaps Sparta’s decision to make monumental dedications in the Apollo sanctuary. Despite being a long-term and constant user of the oracle, and despite a presence in terms of small dedications for much of Delphi’s history, Sparta had never invested much in monumental artistic and architectural offerings (except of course for the Spartan general Pausanias’s attempt to hijack the Plataean serpent column). This is perhaps not unexpected: Sparta was, after all, famously Spartan in its approach to such projects. Which makes it all the more interesting that, at the midpoint of the century, Spartan monumental dedications begin to arrive at Delphi. This statement of dedicatory presence within the sanctuary was accompanied by a military presence: Sparta sent troops to Delphi to champion the cause of the city, remove its Phocian overlords, and return Delphi to its (historic) independent state.26 In honor of which, the Delphians granted Sparta promanteia and had the decree inscribed on the brow of a bronze wolf statue that the Delphians themselves had dedicated in the sanctuary (in honor of the story of a wolf who had helped defend the site). The symbolism of placing this inscription of thanks for Spartan defense of the sanctuary on this monument originally made to commemorate the defense of the sanctuary must have been palpable to sanctuary visitors. The Delphians may have gone even further to please their Spartan saviors: Herodotus reports that one of Croesus’s precious metal offerings that survived the great fire of 548 BC, was now reinscribed to make it look as if the Spartans had dedicated it.27

  Yet, before long, Athens, under the leadership of Pericles (another Alcmaeonid—their involvement with Delphi never ceased), went back to Delphi with its own military force so as to return Delphi to the Phocians once more. In response, the Athenian accepted a grant of promanteia from the Delphians (as if the Delphians had any choice but to offer it) and inscribed their acceptance of this honor on the same bronze wolf dedication that had recently been inscribed with the same honor for the Spartans.28

  By 445 BC, Delphi had once again been freed from Phocian control and returned to independence. This almost slapstick era of repeated Athenian and Spartan attempts to control and free Delphi, and their blatant one-upmanship in representing each stage of that struggle in the sanctuary (on different sides of the same wolf statue), is often referred to as Delphi’s Second Sacred War. Scholarship is split about how it ended. The debate focuses around reports in the later historian Diodorus Siculus that the Delphians laid a compensation claim against the Phocians for their take-over of the city before the Amphictyonic council, who resolved to fine the Phocians, the proceeds of which went into making a colossal bronze Apollo statue for the sanctuary.29 Yet whether or not the Amphictyony was strong enough in the fifth century BC to impose such demands, it is clear that the atmosphere at Delphi changed drastically in the first decades of the second half of the century. For it was during the 440s and 430s BC that not only did Sparta begin to dedicate in the sanctuary, but many other mainland Greek cities and states also returned to dedicate to Apollo. In particular Thessaly (closely associated with the sanctuary’s long-term development, and heavily involved in the Amphictyonic council as its permanent president), and Thessalian cities like Pherai, returned to the sanctuary to offer monuments to their military victories over none other than Athens.30 The age of Athenian dominance—at Delphi at least—was over. Indeed, Athens, in contrast to the monopolization of the sanctuary space it exacted in the first half of the century, would not offer a monumental dedication there again during the fifth century BC.

  At the same time, Delphi seems to have begun to receive offerings from parts of the Greek world that had never been connected with Delphi, like the Greek colonies of the Black Sea (in whose original settlements Delphi had not played a role) and from Sardinia. Aegean islands, like Andros, arrived to offer monuments to their original founders, and even professional associations put up monuments to Apollo, which simultaneously advertised their skills. And it is at this time that we find the first hard evidence for a cult of the old mother goddess Gaia at Delphi: the Delphians erected statues to Gaia and Themis by the Castalian spring (see plate 1, fig. 0.2), a symbol of a gathering sense of the ancient lineage of this sanctuary, and, no less important, the need to demonstrate that lineage publicly in an age of increasing competition among the many important oracular sanctuaries of Greece.31

  Amid this renewed enthusiasm for Delphic dedication from around the Greek world, the oracle continued its traditional role in the founding of new settlements, even for Athens, who was advised by the Pythia on how and where to settle what would become the colony of Thurii on the southern Italian coast. The oracle was also likely involved in Athenian settlement in Amphipolis in northern Greece.32 In addition, the oracle was said to have been involved in the appointment of religious officials in Athens in the 430s, and, most famously, gave support to Athens’s Imperial First Fruits Decree (argued to be c.435 BC). Repeated twice in the inscribed text of this decree is a report of an oracle from Delphi encouraging that “first fruits” (a percentage of revenue) be dedicated to Demeter at the Athenian sanctuary of Eleusis by the Athenians, by their allies, and indeed by everyone.33 At the same time, the oracle remained of use to settlements as they continued to develop: in the 430s BC, Epidamnus was torn apart by stasis (civil unrest) and appealed to its original founder, Corcyra, for help. None was forthcoming, so the Epidamnians approached the oracle at Delphi for guidance on whether they should appeal instead to Corinth (the city that had founded Corcyra).34 The oracle, it seems, despite the intensifying political and military disagreements over the sanctuary itself, was still a useful port of call in times of tricky international Greek diplomacy.

  Yet, at the same time, the new ascendency, and physical presence through its
dedications, of Sparta at Delphi meant that the sanctuary was now an attractive place in which to hammer home military victories over that city too. Argos constructed no less than four different offerings at Delphi in this period, all of which celebrated victory over Sparta. It is most fascinating that experimentation with different sculptural and architectural styles of monument at Delphi seems to have helped crystallize the city’s identity at home. The Argives erected a semicircular statue base in the lower half of the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi, complete with statues of the seven Argive heroes who had fought against Thebes, an almost identical copy of which was later erected in Argos itself (see plate 2).35 Delphi had become not just a place in which to tell (and retell) a (monumental) version of history, but an incubator for emerging identities within a constantly shifting world, of which Argos, developing its own democracy in the period after 460 BC, seems to have taken full advantage.36

  The second half of the fifth century BC was thus critical for Delphi. On the one hand, it bore witness to the development of the many stories that surrounded Delphi’s origins, which pushed its ancient lineage further and further back into mythical time (as we saw in earlier chapters). On the other hand, it bore witness to the development and widening of its role within the contemporary Greek world, both as a sanctuary that was decidedly international, and as a space that offered a range of opportunities for individuals, cities, and states to consult on difficult issues, tell and retell the past, as well as crystallize their own identities. As tensions in the Greek world continued to grow—as its city-states hardened in their attitudes to one another; as what was once, albeit only briefly, a united Greece fractured into two competing superpower blocs that would, in the following thirty years, tear the Greek world apart—Delphi stood as a mirror of the history that had brought Greece to this point. It was a religious space and institution to which access for all was jealously guarded, but also a small, unprotected city whose inhabitants, the Delphians, would once again have to strain every muscle and sinew to navigate the treacherous waters of Greek politics in the tumultuous years ahead.