In 356BC, the site of the Delphic oracle, hidden in the folds of Mount Parnassus, between the Corycian cave and the Castalian spring, was invaded by the army of neighbouring Phocis and placed under military occupation. The Phocians had been provoked to this intervention by ruinous fines imposed by the administrators of the shrine for alleged crimes against religion. So began the Third Sacred War, waged principally by Thebes, which at the time enjoyed the status of top nation in Greece. The Thebans had achieved this hegemony by ending centuries of Spartan supremacy in one decisive battle at Leuctra. But the Phocians, a community of goatherds and sheep farmers, proved more resilient. Somehow or other they hung on at Delphi for 10 years while the Thebans wore themselves out trying to knock them off their sacred perch.
One of the reasons the Phocians were able to resist for so long is that they were sitting on an enormous pile of treasure. It had been acquired by the sanctuary over many centuries as gifts from visitors grateful for (or hopeful of) divine favour and/or anxious to impress other visitors to the shrine with monuments to their piety and wealth. Around 550BC, Croesus, the king of Lydia, in western Turkey, had, it was said, ordered a gigantic bonfire of vanities – couches inlaid with silver and gold, goblets, fancy cloaks and so on – and turned the precious alloy into ingots that he shipped to Delphi to provide a shiny pedestal for a statue of a solid gold lion weighing 240kg. To this he added two gigantic urns of precious metal – one gold, one silver (with a capacity, we are reliably informed, of 5,000 gallons) – that were placed on either side of the entrance to the temple, and various other items of gold and silver plate, a golden statue of a woman over five foot high, said to be an image of a cook who had saved him from poisoning, and his wife's elaborate necklaces and girdles. The administrators were careful to maintain catalogues of the properties with which they had been entrusted, with details of weights and measurements inscribed on stone for all to see.
Almost exactly 200 years later, the Phocians melted and minted Croesus's golden offerings to fund war-machines – battlefield catapults – and an army of mercenaries to man them. A contemporary pamphlet, "On the Treasures Plundered from Delphi", gives a sense of the outrage felt by the rest of the Greeks at the Phocian occupation. The pamphlet's author accuses Phocian generals of using these precious objects given to Apollo by cities whose years of grandeur were now a distant memory, some of them actually extinct, to buy sexual favours: "to the flute-girl Bromias, Phavullos gave a silver tankard, a votive offering of the people of Phocaea; to Pharsalia the dancing-girl, Philomelus gave a crown of golden laurel, a gift of the people of Lampsacus".
Some cities had paid for elaborate temple-like treasuries to try to guard their precious gifts from thieves like this. The earliest was built in about 650BC by the Corinthians; one of the most ornate and spectacular was erected by the people of Siphnos, an Aegean community of a couple of thousand people. They had discovered a rich seam of silver on their tiny island and decided it might be worth investing in a little Apollonian insurance. By the time of Herodotus, even Croesus's spectacular golden gifts were locked away in the treasuries of the Corinthians and the Clazomenaeans.
And so the material fabric of the sanctuary burgeoned, until it came to look like a fantastic mountain village where the houses were of marble and the inhabitants an assortment of images and objects in bronze and silver, ivory and gold.
As well as temple-like treasuries there were also temples proper, of which the most important was the temple of Apollo himself. This was the symbolic hub of the entire complex and contained within it the omphalos, or umbilicus, the mysterious belly-button stone, said to be the stone swallowed by Cronus in the belief that it was his son Zeus, and placed by Zeus, it having been in the meantime regurgitated, in a position of honour at the point at which two eagles sent in opposite directions had met: the perfect centre of the world. It was also the place from which the Pythia, the oracle priestess, spoke, perched on a tall bronze cooking pot, her legs dangling over the edge.
In fact nobody is sure exactly how Delphi produced its oracles. Pious discretion may have inhibited close description, or the process may have been too banal to bother with. Most of our evidence comes from the Roman period, centuries after the oracle's heyday, or from hostile Christian sources anxious to differentiate pagan prophecy from their own divine revelations. But a number of things are clear: Apollo was the "seer" (mantis), the Pythia was a vessel through whom Apollo spoke, the "seer's representative or stand-in" (promantis).
She made her divine connection only once a month, only nine months a year and only if the omens were good. Since consultation took place on only nine days a year at most, there must have been long queues and disappointments before the priestess had spoken a word. This would explain the fierce rivalries and jealousy surrounding the honour of queue-jumping.
One of the reasons the Phocians were able to resist for so long is that they were sitting on an enormous pile of treasure. It had been acquired by the sanctuary over many centuries as gifts from visitors grateful for (or hopeful of) divine favour and/or anxious to impress other visitors to the shrine with monuments to their piety and wealth. Around 550BC, Croesus, the king of Lydia, in western Turkey, had, it was said, ordered a gigantic bonfire of vanities – couches inlaid with silver and gold, goblets, fancy cloaks and so on – and turned the precious alloy into ingots that he shipped to Delphi to provide a shiny pedestal for a statue of a solid gold lion weighing 240kg. To this he added two gigantic urns of precious metal – one gold, one silver (with a capacity, we are reliably informed, of 5,000 gallons) – that were placed on either side of the entrance to the temple, and various other items of gold and silver plate, a golden statue of a woman over five foot high, said to be an image of a cook who had saved him from poisoning, and his wife's elaborate necklaces and girdles. The administrators were careful to maintain catalogues of the properties with which they had been entrusted, with details of weights and measurements inscribed on stone for all to see.Almost exactly 200 years later, the Phocians melted and minted Croesus's golden offerings to fund war-machines – battlefield catapults – and an army of mercenaries to man them. A contemporary pamphlet, "On the Treasures Plundered from Delphi", gives a sense of the outrage felt by the rest of the Greeks at the Phocian occupation. The pamphlet's author accuses Phocian generals of using these precious objects given to Apollo by cities whose years of grandeur were now a distant memory, some of them actually extinct, to buy sexual favours: "to the flute-girl Bromias, Phavullos gave a silver tankard, a votive offering of the people of Phocaea; to Pharsalia the dancing-girl, Philomelus gave a crown of golden laurel, a gift of the people of Lampsacus".
Some cities had paid for elaborate temple-like treasuries to try to guard their precious gifts from thieves like this. The earliest was built in about 650BC by the Corinthians; one of the most ornate and spectacular was erected by the people of Siphnos, an Aegean community of a couple of thousand people. They had discovered a rich seam of silver on their tiny island and decided it might be worth investing in a little Apollonian insurance. By the time of Herodotus, even Croesus's spectacular golden gifts were locked away in the treasuries of the Corinthians and the Clazomenaeans.
And so the material fabric of the sanctuary burgeoned, until it came to look like a fantastic mountain village where the houses were of marble and the inhabitants an assortment of images and objects in bronze and silver, ivory and gold.
As well as temple-like treasuries there were also temples proper, of which the most important was the temple of Apollo himself. This was the symbolic hub of the entire complex and contained within it the omphalos, or umbilicus, the mysterious belly-button stone, said to be the stone swallowed by Cronus in the belief that it was his son Zeus, and placed by Zeus, it having been in the meantime regurgitated, in a position of honour at the point at which two eagles sent in opposite directions had met: the perfect centre of the world. It was also the place from which the Pythia, the oracle priestess, spoke, perched on a tall bronze cooking pot, her legs dangling over the edge.
In fact nobody is sure exactly how Delphi produced its oracles. Pious discretion may have inhibited close description, or the process may have been too banal to bother with. Most of our evidence comes from the Roman period, centuries after the oracle's heyday, or from hostile Christian sources anxious to differentiate pagan prophecy from their own divine revelations. But a number of things are clear: Apollo was the "seer" (mantis), the Pythia was a vessel through whom Apollo spoke, the "seer's representative or stand-in" (promantis).
She made her divine connection only once a month, only nine months a year and only if the omens were good. Since consultation took place on only nine days a year at most, there must have been long queues and disappointments before the priestess had spoken a word. This would explain the fierce rivalries and jealousy surrounding the honour of queue-jumping.
by James Davidson, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Getty
