Delphi Read online

  As far as cult activity at Delphi goes, our evidence is based entirely on the contents of several later deposits (effectively rubbish heaps) of material found buried in different parts of the later Apollo sanctuary, which were used as packing to create a more solid floor level for building in the sixth century BC. What has been found proves cult practice at the site—pottery, charred bone, fragments of bronze tripods—but it is unlikely that this originated from any significant separate cult area. The origin of this material (particularly the pottery and tripods) reflects Corinthian interest in cult activity at the site, but also a significant Argive presence, some Thessalian, and a certain amount of (perhaps) locally made material for dedication. As for the oracle, no material find proves that it was in operation for the better part of the eighth century BC, or indeed during any time before that. Some scholars argue that the oracle was not instituted until the late eighth century, others that it may have had a much longer existence dating back into the second millennium, which is what motivated the continuation of settlement in this otherwise rather difficult physical habitat clinging to the mountainside.53

  Whenever the oracle began, however, it is crucial that, in regard to that nascent phase of Delphic development, we distinguish between a real Delphi and the early Delphi described in later literary and historical sources. The literary sources, whichever story you choose to follow, paint a picture of a Delphi born for success and international prestige. Yet the archaeology reveals a different story. A tiny, isolated community with a connection to northern Greece slowly refocused its attention south and was drawn into the trading network of Corinth, and, in turn, benefited from the more general social and political processes of eighth century development, which, at the same time, left Delphi much less elaborated than many sanctuaries more closely tied to particular political communities. Many scholars, encouraged by the literary and historical sources for Delphi’s divine origins, have taken the traditional picture of later Delphic international and Panhellenic success and transposed it back onto the site’s early history.54 In reality, Delphi, through to the last quarter of the eighth century BC, did not play anything like such a role. It was not born into success as the center of the Greek world, but struggled, for centuries, to be anything more than a small and isolated community clinging to the Parnassian mountains.

  And yet, in this formative phase of Delphic development, there are signs of the forces that will propel Delphi over the next century and a half to the forefront of the Greek political and religious world. One is the occasional glimpse of dedicated objects at Delphi that originate from much farther afield: eighth-century amber from Scandinavia, probably arriving with traders from Etruria; a Villanovian helmet from 800 BC; Italian spearheads from the mid-eighth century; tripods not only from Corinth and Argos, but also from Crete by the middle of the century.55 Another sign is not dedication, but destruction. The maison noire was burned down (hence its name “the black house”!) during the first seventy years of the eighth century BC, and rebuilt, suggesting a consistent desire for habitation at Delphi.56 A further sign comes from the references to Delphi in Homer’s Iliad (9.401) and Odyssey (8.79–81). Both these epics are thought to have coalesced into their near final forms during the course of the eighth century BC, and, while they do not refer to the oracular importance of Delphi (the references to Apollo Pythios are thought to be later interpolations in the text), they do give a sense of an acknowledgment that Delphi was (already by this time) a recognized place of wealth and importance.57 Yet perhaps the most interesting sign is that though other sanctuary sites, like Perachora, may have been showered with a far greater number of dedications than Delphi during the first half of the eighth century, the nature of most of those objects was personal and/or trade related.58 Perachora never received the kind of monumental offerings that Delphi was beginning to receive, seemingly (given their expense) from state elites.59 Delphi, which around 800 BC, had been a local and isolated settlement, was, by the last quarter of the eighth century (725–700 BC), seemingly (also) becoming a location serving the demands of (particular) emerging states and their elites. And it was thanks to the pressures, needs, and desires of those emerging communities that Delphi, from the last quarter of the eighth century BC, was to burst forth onto the international stage.

  Apollo is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel of the

  earth, and he is the interpreter of religion for all mankind.

  —Plato Republic 427B

  3

  TRANSFORMATION

  Fire is all consuming. So easily started, so often uncontrollable in the dry, hot conditions of Greece. In the late eighth century BC, c. 730, fire took hold of Delphi. It spread through the small community clinging to the Parnassian hillside, leaving destruction in its wake. As the smoke ebbed away, as the charred timbers finally began to cool, and as Delphi’s inhabitants began to come to terms with the extent of their loss, Delphi’s precarious position in the Greek world must have felt even more fragile.

  We know that the maison noire—the house recently discovered by excavators just to the east of the later temple of Apollo at Delphi—burned to the ground a second time (it definitely earned its name) in this fire.1 The French archaeologist Jean-Marc Luce, who conducted the excavation of the maison noire, ties this destruction to the accounts in later ancient sources of a raid on Delphi by the Phlegyians, whom, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (lines 277–80), were people from one of the places Apollo had visited as a potential home for his oracle, and were said in later sources not only to have raided but to have set fire to the temple of Apollo at Delphi (their name comes from the Greek verb “to burn”).2

  Even if we are not willing to make such a close link between the literature and the archaeology, it is clear that the last thirty years or so of the eighth century BC were a dynamic time in Delphi’s history, quite apart from its fiery destruction. The settlement during the eighth century had grown considerably, covering most of the area of the later Apollo sanctuary. By Iron Age standards, Delphi was, at century’s end, a large and important site in its own right. But it was not the only settlement that developed in the area at this time. In fact, in the last quarter of the eighth century BC, a number of new sites seem to have been established across the Itean plain, helping to connect Delphi—somewhat isolated high up on the mountainside—to the other old settlements along the coast (such as Medeon; see map 3).3 One of these new sites—now the modern town of Amphissa—was founded at the foot of the most easily accessible corridor through the mountains to the north. A northern presence has been noted at Delphi since its earliest history, and its links to Thessaly may have been part of the reason for Corinth’s expansion into the area at the beginning of the eighth century as it sought to exploit these connections for trading purposes. Now, in the last quarter of the eighth century, the tables were turned. The increasingly strong trading network with Thessaly and the North, fueled by Corinthian interest and facilitated by the development of new settlements along the route, acted as a catalyst for Delphic growth. Whereas Corinth may have originally come to Delphi to feed off its northern contacts, now Delphi was feeding off the increasingly strong north-south trading network. This whole area of the Phocian coast was increasingly drawn into a pattern of trading traffic, extending from across the Gulf of Corinth, through the Itean plain, north to Thessaly, and even into the Balkans (see maps 1, 2). And Delphi seems to have benefited most. By the beginning of the seventh century BC, other, previously more affluent settlements on the coast, such as Medeon, were suffering thanks to Delphic expansion. Delphi had begun to warp the local landscape, a process that would eventually lead to the total decline of its local competitors.4

  Yet Delphi was expanding not only thanks to its place in an increasingly affluent and important trading network. The excavations have revealed a vast increase in objects in the last quarter of the eighth century BC that can be securely tied to cult activity. This expansion was both in terms of type (new kinds of tripod dedicati
ons) and also origin. Attic and Cretan metalwork, for example, began to arrive at the site, and pottery, which had been overwhelmingly Corinthian, was now coming from Achaia, Attica, and Boeotia as well as from Euboea, Thessaly, and Argos. It was also in the last quarter of the eighth century BC that the Corycian cave, seemingly abandoned since the fourteenth century BC, received material again, which was increasingly votive in character, suggesting the establishment of the cave as a rural shrine.5

  Delphi at the end of the eighth century BC thus seems to have taken a quantum leap, both as a settlement on an increasingly affluent trade network, and as a place of cult activity that attracted an increasing variety of rich offerings associated with a widening number of important civic centers themselves in the throes of ever-rapid social and political change. How these two aspects affected one another, we may never know in detail. Did Delphi’s position in a trade network help bring the settlement to the attention of more long-distance civic centers that in turn began to deposit increasingly rich offerings at the sanctuary’s hitherto local (and still very much unelaborated) cult center? Or should we see the two as relatively independent, with Delphi’s increasingly international cult activity more the result of the growing fame of, and need for, its (perhaps long-established or perhaps only recently instituted) oracle?

  No archaeological evidence exists to prove there was a functioning oracle at Delphi at any time up to the late eighth century BC (and it is difficult, if not impossible, in these early periods, to distinguish between what is a “secular” and what is a “cult” object). As we saw at the end of the last chapter, some scholars argue for the possibility of a local oracle existing at Delphi all the way back into the second millennium BC. Others argue that the arrival of tripod dedications from the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the eighth signifies an oracular presence (based on the tripod as a symbol of the oracle who, in later representations, sat on a tripod when giving her responses).6 Others argue for the oracle’s inception, and certainly its growth (or rather the beginning of its use not just by locals but by elites of different states) in the last quarter of the eighth century. Their reasoning is based largely on linking the sudden increase at Delphi in this period to the many elite/state level offerings given for consultation with the oracle, although again the link is considered by some not to be without its problems.7 In short, we cannot, with the present archaeological evidence, prove the date of the origin of Delphi’s oracle, or, in more positive terms, as the French archaeologist Jean-Marc Luce has put it, the “question remains open.”8

  But the observable quantum leap that Delphi underwent in the late eighth century and on into the seventh century does coincide with a growing need identified by several scholars among the developing political communities in Greece for new ways of solving emerging community problems (which the oracle may have provided), and with the many literary and historical sources that focus on the oracle’s increasingly important role in three major aspects of the development of Greek society during the late eighth–sixth centuries BC: colonization, constitutional reform, and tyrannical power. Thus while we cannot prove when the oracle at Delphi started, we can investigate the extent to which, from the late eighth century, it seems to have acquired a new kind of purpose as well as audience.

  There was a tremendous amount of change and growth in Greek society during the eighth century. By its end, the resultant increased opportunity and dynamism within the organization of different communities had created a significant amount of social instability. The seventh century would provide no letup. Fundamental to the process was the continued development of community self-definition, which led, in turn, to a variety of changes in the nature of warfare (the development of the hoplite phalanx based on cohesive group attack rather than on individual elite warriors); the nature and regulation of power exercised within political communities (the development of civic constitutions as an attempt to referee the power play between community elites and the emergence of an individual elite, tyrannical ruler); the expansion of communities into new landscapes (through trade, force, and active foundation); and a more clearly articulated set of relationships between the human and the divine (the development of identifiable myths, the investment in sanctuaries, the development of human figure sculpture and stone temples).9

  Surviving within this increasingly dynamic and unstable melting pot often required a response from developing communities to problems not encountered before. Within a world that was, at the same time, firmly of the belief that the gods were in charge of everything, the attraction of a system of oracular consultation, which allowed for divine confirmation of community decisions, and therefore the ability to ensure the development of a consensus of opinion for particular courses of action, is eminently understandable.10 That is, the oracle at Delphi—whether a longtime local practice or a recent institution—came into focus and importance at this time because it provided a new solution ideally suited to the particular and unfamiliar circumstances created by Greek social and political development. Not as an instrument simply for “revealing the future,” but rather as an instrument for the adjudication of civic problems and the authorization of new solutions. As argued in the last chapter, we thus need to see the oracle at Delphi as more of a management consultant than a fortune-teller.

  But before we look at the literary and historical evidence for consultation of the Delphic oracle during the late eighth and seventh centuries BC, we need once again to turn our attention to the warning label that comes with it. In most cases, the evidence for a particular consultation comes from sources dated several centuries after the consultation took place. At the same time, the events with which a consultation is associated are often themselves unclear and subject to metamorphosis in the different sources over time. As a result, a lake of scholarly ink has been spilled over the question of which consultations are “real” and which “fake,” or which have been expanded and reworked over time. Some scholars go so far as to judge as false all accounts of oracular consultation from this period. Others are happy to accept some but not all. In what follows, this middle course has been adopted, with the understanding that all the evidence, just as with Delphi’s earliest foundation myths, tells us as much about how Greeks of later centuries sought to understand Delphi’s early history than it does about the early history itself.11

  Strongly supporting the picture of the Delphic oracle coming to international attention when it did as a new way of resolving new community problems and tension is the fact that the first communities posited in the literary sources (and which we can be fairly sure are historical) to consult the oracle were all in regions that were in some way exceptional in the pace and nature of their development and the circumstances they had to confront: Sparta, Corinth, and Chalcis in Euboea.12

  Sparta has often been highlighted for its close connection with the Delphic oracle. Herodotus (6.57.2) tell us that Sparta had special advisors to its kings, called pythioi, who were responsible for the relations between the city and the oracle. At some point between the late eighth and mid-seventh century BC (the date is the subject of much dispute), a new constitution came into force in Sparta; known as the Great Rhetra, this constitution was, by the fifth century BC, associated directly with Sparta’s infamous lawgiver Lycurgus. This constitution is fundamental to understanding the unique nature of Spartan society: it regulated everything from the setting up of new temples, to the division of the Spartan population, the regulations of its council, and the power of its kings. Its adoption by Sparta, according to the later evidence for oracular consultation, was directly linked to approval from the Delphic oracle (who, in some versions, is even said to have dictated the constitution herself).13 But while we cannot know exactly the extent to which Delphi was involved, we do know, thanks to a surviving fragment of the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus from the mid-seventh century BC, that, already by this time, the Spartan link with Delphi was strong:

  They heard the voice of Phoebus Apollo and brought home from Py
tho the oracles of the god and words of sure fulfilment, for thus the lord of the silver bow, Far Shooting Apollo of the golden hairs, gave answers from out his rich sanctuary … for this has Phoebus declared unto their city in these matters.14

  Indeed Sparta, it seems, from the evidence for further oracular consultations, was somewhat obsessed with the oracle, using it to confirm its social and political process, its pattern of oath swearing, and its system of land allotment. The oracle had even supposedly warned Spartans about their public morality and that their love of money would one day destroy them.15 Yet the sources also indicate that Sparta had involved the oracle in its decision to expand its territory through conquest in what have become known as the first and second Messenian Wars (the second half of the eighth century through the first quarter of seventh century BC), resulting in the annexation of Messenia by Sparta and the subjugation of its native population as Spartans slaves, or helots. The surviving sources tell of oracular consultations at key points in the campaign: on the justification for its commencement, and on how best to improve their fortunes during (both the first and second) war.16 Yet what is fascinating here is that Delphi also seems to have been consulted by the other side, Messenia, in both of these conflicts: on how best to maximize its chances of victory, on how to conduct itself during the war, and with desperate requests for tips on salvation as the end drew near (such help was not forthcoming).17 The association between Sparta and the oracle about the former’s expansion plans continued during Sparta’s later attempt to take all of Arcadia, with the oracle consulted at the outset of the campaign and throughout, regarding revision of its goals and the best ways to proceed.18