The Oracle of Delphi

THE HISTORY OF THE ORACLE OF DELPHI

Major events

• c. 1400 BC: first settlement at the site of Delphi.
• 7th century BC: the seat of the Amphictyony (an association of Greek states) was transferred to Delphi, which was now declared an independent town no longer under the control of the Phocians in whose territory the sanctuary was located.
• c. 650 BC: the first temple of Apollo was built.
• 601-591 BC: the First Sacred War: the Amphictyony declared war on the Phocians of Crisa, a neighboring town levying heavy taxes on visitors to the Delphic sanctuary. The Amphictyony defeated the Crisaians and dedicated their territory to the Delphic deities.
• 582 BC: the Pythian festival was reorganized, now being held every four years.
• 548 BC: the temple of Apollo was accidentally destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt by the Amphictyony with international contributions (including from the Egyptian king Amasis and the Lydian king Croesus). The contractors for the construction were the Alcmaeonids, a wealthy Athenian family.
• 480 BC: Xerxes' invading army headed for Delphi to plunder its rich temple, and was supposed to have been warded off by Apollo's divine intervention in the form of a rock fall.
• 447 BC: the Second Sacred War: the Amphictyony successfully fought the Phocians to restore the independence of Delphi, which had been taken over by the Phocians.
• 373 BC: the second temple of Apollo was destroyed by an earthquake. It was rebuilt with pan-Hellenic contributions (369-339 BC).
• 356-345 BC: the Third Sacred War: the neighboring Phocians once again occupied Delphi and plundered the temple of Apollo to finance their war against Thebes. The Amphictyony finally appealed to Philip of Macedon for help, who drove out the Phocians, but not without appropriating the two votes allotted to Delphi in the Amphictyonic council.
• 339 BC: the Fourth Sacred War: the Amphictyony, again led by Philip of Macedon, defeated the Locrians.
• 279 BC: Gauls plundered the sanctuary.
• 86 BC: Sulla plundered the sanctuary.
• 83 BC: Barbarians from Thrace plundered the sanctuary and set fire to the temple.
• Early 2nd century AD: The sanctuary enjoyed a brief period of renewed interest on the part of the philhellenic emperor Hadrian, who undertook some building.
• 4th century AD: Constantine's (312-337 AD) conversion to Christianity gave further impetus to the decline of Delphi's significance, a decline that couldn't be reversed by Julian's (361-363 AD) brief attempt to revive 'pagan' religion.
• 394 AD: Theodosios prohibited the cult of Apollo and the celebration of the Pythian games.

Historical significance

Delphi owed its international prominence to the famous oracle of the god Apollo, who foretold the future through his priestess, known as the Pythia. She responded to the questions of visitors while in a trance; her inarticulate cries were interpreted and written down by an official interpreter, in earlier times in hexameter verse, then later in prose. These oracular responses were notoriously ambiguous, and their interpretation was often only 'deduced' after the event to which they referred. This, however, did not deter visitors from journeying to Delphi from all over the Mediterranean. During the course of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, the sanctuary grew in prestige as it received splendid dedications from legendary kings such as Gyges and Midas. Its political role expanded in the 7th century BC, when it became the seat of the Amphictyony, and individual cities began to build along the Sacred Way leading up to the temple - treasuries in which the cities' dedications to Apollo were guarded, and monuments commemorating the cities' successes. Inter-city rivalry also played out in the Pythian games at which athletes and musicians from all over the Greek world competed. This festival, which originally took place every eight years, was expanded after the first Sacred War and held every four years on a scale that rivaled the Olympic games. Thus Delphi could rightfully sustain its mythical claim of being the navel (omphalos) of the Greek world.

Modern visitors can still follow in the steps of ancient worshippers such as the Roman emperor Hadrian, or of ancient tourists such as the Roman writer Pausanias. Visitors to Delphi would first encounter the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia in the East, which contained two temples, two treasuries, and the unusual round tholos building. They would then pass a recreational facility on the left that included a gymnasium, palaistra, running track and swimming pool. On the right they would encounter the Castalian spring in a cleft of the sheer rocks (known as the Phaidriades or "shining ones") that tower over it. Here ancient visitors would ritually cleanse themselves. They would then proceed to the sanctuary of Apollo, where they would climb the zig-zag Sacred Way lined by treasuries and monuments until reaching the temple of Apollo where the Pythia sat on Apollo's tripod to deliver her oracular responses. Further up the hillside lay the theater and stadium that hosted the Pythian festival, though the chariot races took place in the hippodrome located in the valley of Cirrha below.

Much of the splendor of Delphi survives, despite repeated raids and plundering by Roman emperors, generals and entrepreneurs. The French have conducted archaeological excavations at the site since the 1880's.

Mythology and religion

Although most of the mythology associated with Delphi is connected with Apollo, he was not its first inhabitant; this distinction belonged to either Gaia/Ge (the Earth goddess) or Themis (another primordial goddess). In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Apollo killed a monstrous snake, the Python (that gave the god his title Pythian) and left it to rot (an etmylogical play on the Greek verb pytho, "I rot"); the early name of Delphi was supposed to be Pytho. Some have seen this as representing the displacement of the site's earlier divine inhabitant. So too the name Delphi received an etymological explanation: Apollo appeared in the form of a dolphin (delphis is the Greek word for "dolphin") to sailors on a Cretan ship. Leaping on board, he brought the terrified sailors to Crisa, the coastal port near Delphi, where he transformed himself into a handsome youth and appointed the sailors as priests of his temple. Some have seen in this myth of Cretan immigration a connection with Apollo's origins in the Near East, since Crete was the main point of connection between the Levant and the Greek-speaking world. It too might explain the prominent role played by the Delphic oracle in marine expeditions, particularly when founding new colonies. Delphis is also the Greek word for "womb" (that distinguishes the dolphin as a mammal from other sea-creatures), and this is probably also connected with the ancient conception of Delphi as being the center of the world. According to other sources, Apollo had to travel to the valley of Tempe (in Thessaly) to purify himself from the blood of the slain Python, and this rite of purification was celebrated at the Pythian festival.

Apollo shared the sanctuary at Delphi with Dionysus. Every fall Apollo departed for his winter quarters in the land of the Hyperboreans (a distant fabulous land in the North), returning in the spring. During his absence the Pythia did not deliver oracles, and Dionysus ruled over Delphi.

The spring of Castalia to the East of the sanctuary proper takes its name from Castalia, a girl of Delphi, who threw herself into the spring to escape the unwelcome advances of Apollo.