Delphi Read online

  For Corinth, whose economic and trading influence swept over Delphi and the surrounding region during the eighth century, the oracle provided a very different sort of management consultant role. Sometime in the first half of the seventh century BC, the Bacchiad ruling family of Corinth was confronted with a perhaps unsolicited warning from the oracle that they should take note of a “lion, strong and flesh-eating” who was to be born from an eagle. Sometime later, a man, Aetion, consulting the oracle on his inability to produce a child, was warned that his wife would conceive and that the baby would be a “rolling stone, which will fall upon the absolute rulers and will exact justice from Corinth.” In the second half of the seventh century, when that child, Cypselus, was on the brink of seizing power as tyrant of Corinth, he was greeted by the oracle with another warning: “blessed is the man who enters my house, Cypselus, son of Aetion, king of famous Corinth, he himself and his sons, but his sons’ sons [i.e., his grandchildren] no longer.”19

  Cypselus was not the first tyrant, or the last the oracle would seemingly foresee, encourage, and warn. In the late seventh century BC, the oracle was involved with a tyrannical coup in Athens by a man called Cylon. After consulting on the best way to achieve power, he was at first said to have misunderstood the oracle’s response to attack during Zeus’s great festival, which Cylon took to mean the Olympics. Eventually, however, Cylon secured power when he realized the oracle was referring to Zeus’s great festival in Athens.20

  Delphi’s relationship with tyrants within Greece is often compared to its involvement with rulers in Asia Minor at this time. This involvement dates back to the legendary king Midas of Phrygia who was said, by Herodotus (1.14), to have dedicated at Delphi the royal chair upon which he sat to give judgment. But the oracular relationship really began with the slightly later king of Lydia, Gyges, in the late eighth century BC. The oracle was said to have arbitrated a dispute over the kingship of Lydia in Gyges’ favor, again with a warning that his fifth descendant would be punished for the way in which Gyges had taken power.21 In return (or perhaps in advance of this favorable oracle), Gyges was said to have showered Delphi with rich gold and silver offerings. In the late seventh century BC, this relationship with eastern kings continued in the form of King Alyattes, who consulted the oracle after he fell ill during a military campaign; the oracle refused to help until Alyattes rebuilt a temple he had destroyed on campaign. When Alyattes complied and the oracle brought him back to good health, Alyattes thanked the oracle by showering the temple with silver and iron dedications, one of which survived long enough to be seen by Pausanias in the second century AD.22

  Delphi’s relationship with tyrants, themselves a product of the fast-changing political system of the eighth and seventh centuries BC, has caused much controversy. Some scholars query the reliability of oracular responses that seem to contain unsolicited warnings and pronouncements, in place of a direct response to a question asked.23 Others point to the way in which the literary traditions suggest a rebranding of Delphic responses over time. In later centuries, by which time tyrannical power had come to have the negative connotations it still does today, many of the ancient sources seemed keen to recategorize Delphi’s interactions with these strong-men as foreseeing their coming, but paying them scant courtesy when they did.24 However, such a changing picture of Delphic involvement does not mean we should discard the evidence for these consultations; rather, as the historian Irad Malkin has argued, we should imagine an oracle that embraced social and political change and moved (opportunistically) with the times, supporting new social and political ideas with the necessary redefining of its past involvement that this inevitably entailed as such ideas came and went out of fashion.25 That is to say, as the world changed, so did the oracle. Thus, Malkin suggests, Delphi managed to become a force for change and innovation in social and political issues, and, because it always seemed to be on the “right” side, to eventually gain a reputation as a sort of elder statesman, thereby becoming a guarantor and arbiter of social order.26

  In the late eighth century BC, Chalcis is said to have been involved in the Lelantine War with its nearby rival Eretria, on the island of Euboea (see map 2). The duration, nature, and even historicity of this war is open to debate, but, by the fifth century BC, Thucydides (1.15.3) marked it as the only conflict between the Trojan and Persian Wars in which Greeks came together to fight in multicommunity groups, that is to say, as larger unified elements. This seemingly epic struggle by eighth-century standards, over the boundaries of the Chalcidian and Eretrian communities and thus the ownership of the fertile Lelantine plains, may be seen as a result of processes of community self-definition, internal political instability, and population pressure omnipresent in the eighth century, and may help explain why Chalcis was said to have been drawn to consulting the oracle at Delphi over the question of founding new settlements elsewhere by the end of the eighth century (that of Rhegion and slightly later of Zankle in southern Italy; see map 1).27

  The involvement of the oracle at Delphi with this process of “colonization,” during the eighth–sixth centuries BC, has been the subject of more intense discussion than perhaps any other aspect of the oracle’s business (see map 1). At stake has been everything from the form of oracular involvement to the existence of the process of colonization itself. Scholars, particularly historian Robin Osborne, have been at pains to stress the problem of using the term “colonization,” which suggests the nature of the Greek experience as akin to British colonial colonization. In place of such an organized territorial land grab, Osborne advocates seeing the number of new foundations around the Mediterranean in this period as “a manifestation of an exceptional degree of restlessness and ambition among individual Greeks. Some settlers will have been pushed by poverty, unpopularity, crime, or scandal; some will have jumped to get land, a foothold in foreign mineral resources, or just a new life free of irksome relatives.”28

  Such a variety of motivation is clearly crucial for understanding this complex process, as is, once again, the mutability of the literary record, which often offers not only a changing history of Delphic involvement, but also multiple, sometimes conflicting, versions of the responses, alongside a number of, famous, ambiguous riddlelike answers. The oracle is said to have suggested that a fish would point the way, and a boar lead the way, to those founding Ephesus. Aegae, the old capital of Macedon, was to be founded on the spot where its founder first saw goats. Over the foundation of Gela in Sicily, the record is split between an oracle that told a consultant who laughed to found a place called Gela (linked to the Greek for “to laugh”), and another source suggests the oracle told them to settle near a river called Gela. When Archias of Corinth consulted the oracle on the subject of founding a new settlement (Syracuse) c. 735 BC, it is said he was told to find Ortygia, which “lies in the sea on Trinakria, where Alpheius gushes forth mingling with the spring Arethusa.” Such a reply, preserved in Pausanias (5.7.3), requires the belief that the river Alpheius in the Peloponnese somehow flows under the ocean all the way to Sicily to mix with the waters of the local spring. But yet another source (Strabo 6.2.4) suggests that the founders of Croton and Syracuse were allotted their locations on the basis of one prioritizing health and the other money.29

  Herodotus gives two different versions of oracular involvement in the founding of Cyrene in North Africa at the end of the seventh century BC—one emphasizes the role of the inhabitants of the island of Thera (and is believed by the Therans), and the other attributes the founding to the individual Battus (seemingly preferred by the Cyreneans).30 Further versions are found in other authors as well, and the story is complicated even more by the epigraphic evidence, as the Cyreneans in the fourth century BC erected steles relating to the granting of citizenship to Therans and to the institutionalization of their sacred laws, both of which were tied to the original founding and to the involvement of the oracle.31

  The difficulty in assessing this complex and conflicting mass of evidence has led t
o some deep divisions over the nature of Delphi’s involvement in colonization, and thus the nature, development, and importance of the Delphic oracle in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. What is indisputable, however, is that, by the last third of the eighth century, the pace of Greek cities and individuals establishing settlements around the Mediterranean had increased substantially. In southern Italy and Sicily during this period, a new settlement was founded about every other year. The cities already involved in different ways with Delphi, like Chalcis, Corinth, and Sparta, all appear to have consulted on such settlements (including a lengthy to-ing and fro-ing between the Spartans and the oracle on the foundation of Taras and its subsequent health and political organization).32 But what also seems clear is that the history of the establishment of such settlements was an issue of recurring importance to both the new community, and its mother city, throughout their histories. It is, thus, no surprise that, as each developed, and the relationship between them changed, the foundation stories followed suit. In the sixth century BC, for example, intercolonial rivalry had developed to such an extent that colonies competed to have grander, older foundation stories and closer involvement with what was, by then, the prestigious institution of the oracle at Delphi. Croton, for example, even went so far as to put the oracular tripod on their first coinage.33 And in the fifth century BC, many mother cities seem to have wanted closer, more colonial-style ties to their communities, which resulted in a rebranding of their heavier involvement in the settlement and thus their interaction with the oracle.34

  So, how much can we see through this haze of changing priorities and changing stories to understand the place of the oracle in this process of expanded settlement during the eighth and seventh centuries? Opinions are still divided. On the one hand, scholars like the historian Jean Defradas have argued that we cannot be sure of any role for the oracle in colonization before the sixth century BC.35 On the other hand, scholars like the historian George Forrest and the archaeologist Anthony Snodgrass have argued that the oracle acted from its inception as a clearing-house for the dissemination of geographical and political information to the widest possible audience, and was fundamental to the process of colonization.36 In between them is a whole spectrum of viewpoints.37 Yet I think we can sketch a timeline for the development of awareness across the ancient Greek world of the oracle’s importance to the colonial process, as well as a timeline for the development of its actual involvement. For the latter, it seems probable that the oracle was involved in questions of new settlement foundation from the mid-late eighth century BC, particularly settlements founded in Sicily and southern Italy by Greek cities such as Corinth, Chalcis, and Sparta. During the seventh century, the range of Greek cities and individuals consulting the oracle on such issues widened to more of mainland Greece and spread east through the Cyclades to Paros, Thera, and Rhodes. Similarly the location of the resulting foundations also spread to North Africa and, very infrequently, the Hellespont. By the late seventh century, inquiries about foundations were even coming from Asia Minor, although it has long been noted that the number of such inquiries at Delphi (as well as resulting foundations in the Hellespont and Black Sea area) were always low, perhaps because there was a closer oracular sanctuary (in Miletus) for consultation.38

  In terms of the progression of Delphi’s reputation for involvement in this key process, scholars argue that a surviving fragment from the poet Callinus of Ephesus, of the first half of the seventh century BC, discussing the involvement of Pythian Apollo with the foundation of Colophon, suggests a recognition of Delphi’s place in the process by this time. In 734 BC, a shrine to Apollo Archegetos (Apollo “the Founder”) was established in the colony Naxos in Sicily. By the fifth century at the latest, this shrine was recognized (see Thucydides 6.3.1) as the place where all Sicilian cities were supposed to worship before setting out on their adventures. As a result, many have argued that the importance of Apollo as a god of “colonization,” and the connection between Apollo’s oracle at Delphi and colonization, at least for the Western Greek world, was assured by this time. In fact, we can be pretty sure such a connection was well known across the Greek world earlier in the sixth century BC. Herodotus (5.42) tells the story of Dorieus of Sparta who failed in his attempt to found a colony at Heracleia in Sicily. The failure was the result, everyone realized according to Herodotus’s narrative, of Dorieus’s having neglected to consult the Delphic oracle properly first.39

  The picture painted here is of a Delphi gradually becoming involved in the ongoing process of new settlement foundation that gripped and expanded the Greek world in the eighth–sixth centuries BC. But it is, at the same time, also a picture of the reinforcement and expansion of that role for Delphi in the foundation process from the sixth century BC onward, as colonies and mother cities sought increasingly to reframe and often aggrandize their foundations and relationships by according often greater roles to a Delphi, which was, by that time, fully immersed in the center of the Greek world. Nothing breeds success like success. As the historian George Forrest put it, colonization thus did more for the spread of Delphi’s influence and prestige than Delphi did for colonization.40

  As a result of these developments, the oracle at Delphi, by the end of the seventh century BC, was, with very little doubt, an increasingly crucial institution for an increasingly wide circle of Greek cities and their new foundations spread out across the Mediterranean world. The oracle had been consulted by kings in the East and by tyrants in mainland Greece, and by communities and individuals on issues as diverse as constitutional reform, war, land allotment, oaths, purification, and the avoidance of famine (and many more issues if you are inclined to believe all the stories).41 And yet, there is no evidence for any form of permanent temple of Apollo at Delphi for most of this time. The earliest possible date for such a structure at Delphi (the evidence for which is a few surviving roof tiles, and a couple of stone blocks) is 650–600 BC, with most scholars preferring the lower end of that register (approximately contemporary with the construction of the first temple of Hera at Olympia), although recent excavation has indicated we must revise that date even further, to the beginning of the sixth century BC (see the next chapter).42 This is to say, throughout this crucial period of development for the oracle, and for Delphi, we have no real idea where, and in what circumstances, the oracle was consulted.

  So just what was it like to visit Delphi during this period? We left the sanctuary in the late eighth century as a place of significant settlement, having recently suffered fire destruction, and yet with increasing numbers of expensive metal (particularly) tripod dedications associated with cult activity arriving from a widening circle of Greek communities as far away as Crete. During the seventh century, the site continued as a place of settlement, mixed in with increasing cult activity. Over the burned remains of the maison noire, the maison jaune (the “yellow house”) was constructed. By the last quarter of the seventh century, this was replaced by the maison rouge (the “red house”) which seems to have been one of several in the area. This house was comprised of three rooms, one of which was used for cooking. The nature of the finds suggests a wealthy owner (bronze vessels, golden rivets for some objects), but also cult activity (libation phiale [small vessels] have been found).43 This house sat across what was later the boundary of the Apollo sanctuary, and its mixed sacred and secular use seems to sum up the indeterminate, unarticulated nature of what scholars presume was an early sacred area at the heart of the settlement that would later become the Apollo sanctuary.

  As such, the settlement at Delphi, right through to the end of the seventh century BC (the house was not destroyed until the first quarter of the sixth century), seems to have been a melting pot of secular and sacred activity, with no properly defined or separated cult space (there is no evidence for a temenos wall marking out a sanctuary until the sixth century—see the next chapter). As Delphi’s oracle continued to grow in importance through the century, even allowing for much of that early reput
ation only having been generated in later centuries, consultants and dedicators, on making their way up the Parnassian mountainside to Delphi, may well have been surprised to find such an unelaborated cult site for such an (increasingly) important institution, especially in comparison with the many sanctuaries in different cities and civic territories, which had been monumentalized from the late eighth century onward (e.g., at Corinth, Perachora, and Argos, and on Samos).

  This lack of monumental elaboration, even articulation, of Delphi’s sacred space through the seventh century is a crucial marker of three things. First, it underscores the importance of handling the literary sources with care to work out what Delphi was, as opposed to what it was later constructed to have been. Second, it reveals an important insight into the experience of early visitors to the site, especially in contrast to the sanctuaries at home. Third, it acts as crucial evidence for the generally late elaboration of sanctuaries, which would eventually become “Panhellenic”—sanctuaries common to all Greeks. These sacred spaces were less elaborate than sanctuaries within defined political territories because they were not the sole responsibility and territory of one community. But it was also precisely because of their indeterminacy of ownership, their “neutrality,” that scholars argue they were able to grow as spaces for use by a much wider range of Greek cities and states.44 This is to say, Delphi’s late elaboration was a(nother) sign of its crucial impending significance.

  Despite that Delphi could offer little in the way of articulated or monumental sacred architecture through the seventh century (and, as it has been argued, to some extent, because it could not), it was the recipient of increasing numbers of offerings from number of individuals and cities. We have already seen how Kings Midas, Gyges, and Alyattes from the East were said to have dedicated at Delphi a throne as well as a series of gold, bronze, and iron vessels and objects. Yet what is fascinating is what the dedication of these objects tells us about how different contributors interacted with the sanctuary. As far as we can tell, for example, all the monumental dedications coming from the East (from this period and on into the sixth century) were located on the eastern side of the (later temple of Apollo), in contrast to most other (monumental) dedications during the seventh and early sixth century, which gravitated toward the West (see plate 2). This has been explained as an eastern preference for the East, but also as a continuation of their traditional practice when making dedications at other sanctuaries (that is to say these eastern dedicators did what they were used to doing, without being influenced by what others were doing at Delphi).45