Delphi by Michael Scott
It was exactly the invitation Philip had been waiting for. Fed up with Athens snapping at his heels, Philip used the invitation to sweep south with his forces. Instead of marching on Amphissa, he set up camp at Elatea, just a couple of days march from Athens. Athens’s diplomatic posturing had led to the prospect of its invasion. In desperation, Athens was forced into an alliance with the same city it had hoped to antagonize in the first place: Thebes. In late September 339 BC, Athens consulted the Delphic oracle on ill omens witnessed at their festival of the Mysteries at Eleusis. Demosthenes, Philip’s most vocal opponent, architect of the new alliance between Thebes and Athens, denounced Delphi’s response with the bitter words “the Pythia is Philipizing.” In the winter of 339–38, Athens and Thebes marched to occupy Phocis and Delphi as a brave forward move against Philip. In return, in the summer of 338 BC, Philip turned to meet them. He occupied Locris, punished Amphissa as per his original agreement with the Amphictyony, and faced Athens and Thebes on the battlefield at Chaeronea, just on the other side of the Parnassian mountains from Delphi. It was a cataclysmic event in Greek history: the forces of Athens and Thebes were decimated, leaving Philip triumphant and in charge of mainland Greece.53
So ended what became known as the Fourth Sacred War. Amphissa, terrorized into submission by Philip, promptly put up a statue of him in the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi, calling him “basileos” (“king”) (it was their first and only civic dedication in the sanctuary).54 It was a moment, finally, for the Greeks, and particularly the Delphians, to catch their breath. In a single century, their sanctuary had been used as a space in which to trumpet Athenian defeat and Spartan ascendancy, followed by Spartan defeat and Theban ascendency. It had been in ruins since 373 BC, during which time the Delphians had faced prospective takeovers from Thessaly; actual occupations by the Phocians; two Sacred Wars; the dramatic loss of many of their most precious offerings; the adrenaline shot of the Phocian fine, which had not only replenished their coffers, but had seen their sanctuary rebuilt and expanded; the articulation not only of a newly empowered Amphictyony but of a mythic history of their involvement with the sanctuary dating back to the First Sacred War; and the arrival and imposition of Philip and the power of Macedon over mainland Greece. It had been a roller coaster ride. Perhaps now, they thought, things would settle for a while? They could not have been more wrong.
One tries to imagine all these as they were when they breathed
intact. They must have looked, from a distance, like cypresses,
shiny, multicoloured, around the temple of Pythia. One just tries …
one is still trying.
—George Seferis, Dokimes vol. 2 (1981), trans. C. Capri-Karka
8
TRANSITION
In the immediate aftermath of Philip’s victory over Athens, his conquest of mainland Greece, and his conclusion of the Fourth Sacred War over Delphi, Philip’s allies continued to dedicate at the sanctuary: Daochus, a Thessalian, erected a statue group of his entire family in the Apollo sanctuary near the cult area of Neoptolemus. The temple construction also continued, indeed its organization became more professional with the instigation of a new level of financial oversight in 337 BC in the form of the tamiai (treasurers). At the same time, Philip reinforced the importance of Delphi in Greek affairs by making it one of the sanctuaries in which his Hellenic league would be based, and through which it would act. This league, which only Sparta refused to join, sought to unify Greece under Philip and to work in tandem with the one thing that had always worked best to unify the Greek city-states: an attack on Persia. Philip even returned to the Delphic oracle to ask if he would conquer the Persian king.1
Yet in July 336 BC, just before setting out on his campaign and while celebrating the marriage of his daughter, Philip was murdered. Later sources commented that the Pythia had foreseen the event: her reply to Philip’s inquiry about conquering Persia had been “the bull has been garlanded, the end is come, the sacrificer is at hand.” Just who the “sacrificer” was, and why, was as much a matter of debate in the ancient sources as it is in modern scholarship. Some point to the involvement of Philip’s (recently) ex-wife, Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great. Centuries later, Olympias, using the name she had used as a little girl, Myrtale, was even said to have dedicated the sword used to kill Philip in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. Yet whoever was responsible for Philip’s death, it marked yet another sea change in the tide of Greek history, one the sanctuary authorities at Delphi were quick to respond to. The Amphictyonic accounts for autumn 336 BC contain a space meant to read “para Philip-pou” (“from Philip”) but at the last minute the stone cutters managed to squeeze “para Alexandrou” into the space instead.2
As a result of Philip’s murder, however, Greece was once again plunged into a period of high tension and instability. Alexander assumed the Macedonian throne and leadership of Greece, with only a short window of time in which to make his authority clear. Delphi’s position in this period was complex. No Delphic oracles addressed to Alexander can, according to the still preeminent volume on the Pythia by Herbert Parke and Donald Wormell, be classed as genuine, but rather seem to be later creations to suit Alexander’s future achievements.3 So, the famous story—that Alexander went to the oracle, like Philip, to ask about his campaign against Persia, but arrived on a nonconsultation day, forced the Pythia to prophesize for him, to which she replied “boy, you are invincible,” a response Alexander was happy to take and promptly left for Asia—is unlikely to be historical. Indeed it bears (a little too much) remarkable resemblance to the consultation by the Phocian general Philomelus during his occupation of Delphi in the Third Sacred War.4
At the same time, however, it does seem that Alexander was both suspicious and respectful of Delphi. He did not dedicate there (although his generals did), and this personal avoidance of Delphi stands in stark contrast to his expensive dedications at Olympia and his use of the Olympic games for the announcement of his achievements and commands. He may have held his first session of the Amphictyonic council at their other sanctuary near Thermopylae rather than at Delphi, and is said to have always dealt with embassies to him from sanctuaries in the order Olympia, Ammon (in Egypt), Delphi, Corinth, Epidaurus (see maps 1, 2). Nevertheless, Delphi seems also to have been one of the sanctuaries in which Alexander planned to construct a temple (costing fifteen hundred talents). As well, Delphi is portrayed as having been supportive of Alexander when Thebes rebelled against him, a rebellion that ended in the total destruction of Thebes by Alexander and his forces. At the time of the rebellion, the roof of the Theban treasury at Delphi was said to have become stained red with blood.5
Yet, just as Alexander seems to have shown a mix of respect and disregard for Delphi, the city of Delphi itself may not have been wholly pro-Alexander either. Indeed, it may well have been attempting to keep the good will of all sides, particularly through the awarding of civic honors (proxenia). In 335/4 BC, the year after Philip was murdered and Alexander was struggling to assert his authority, the city of Delphi offered collective promanteia to the people of Aetolia in northern Greece (see map 2). Aetolia was, despite being an ally of Philip at Chaeronia in 338 BC, now little less than a confirmed enemy of Alexander and Macedon (it sided with Thebes against Alexander). As such, the city of Delphi seems to have engaged in a serious, and potentially dangerous, game of, at best, hedging its bets over the future of Macedonian ascendancy, and, at worst, taking an openly rebellious stance against Macedon.6
Such an independent strategy continued through the rest of the 330s and 320s, with the city of Delphi awarding proxenia to Thessalians, Aetolians, and Macedonians.7 In 324–23 BC, however, as resistance to Alexander grew in Greece following the proclamation of his exiles decree (at Olympia), the stance of the Amphictyony seems to have hardened against Macedon. At the meetings of the Amphictyony in 324–23, the representatives of Alexander were “not seated.” At the same time, money that had been voted by the Amphictyony in 327/6 BC
At the same time as Delphi was playing the odds creating (and denying) relationships with Macedon and Aetolia in the 330s BC, Athens was demonstrating its independence once again at Delphi. The city had suffered under Philip and, as a result, boycotted the Pythian games at Delphi because of Macedonian involvement with the sanctuary. Yet Athens now celebrated its return to competition at the Pythian games with statues and precious dedications in honor of its victors, and as active dedicators in the Athena sanctuary. Crucially, it was perhaps the Athenians who dared to cut off access to the not-long-dedicated statue group of Philip’s ally, the Thessalian Daochus, with their own dedication of a high acanthus column topped by dancers and a copy of the sanctuary’s holiest of holies: the omphalos, marker of the center of the world (see fig. 1.3).10 This bold statement did not, however, mean that Athens exerted the kind of influence at Delphi it had done in the early fifth century: in 332 BC, its failure to pay a fine on behalf of its athletes who had cheated at Olympia was taken up by the oracle at Delphi, with the result that the Athenians were instructed by the Pythia to set up six golden statues of Zeus at Olympia as recompense.11
The Greek world was re-formed fundamentally by Alexander’s conquests, but it was subsequently torn apart by Alexander’s death in 323 BC. He left no adult male heir, but a host of competing generals and a pregnant (foreign) wife. The resulting power struggle lasted for the remainder of the century and saw Alexander’s empire carved up into numerous new kingdoms, his mother Olympias and his young son eventually killed, and his generals beginning their own dynasties in his place. Delphi was not immune to these seismic events and the uncertainty they created. It is to this period at the end of the fourth and beginning of the third centuries BC that a number of watchtowers have been dated; constructed across the landscape around Delphi, they ensured their users the ability to survey (not to mention control) the valley east and west of Delphi. Who built and used these towers, and why, is uncertain, but it is not without importance that such a surveillance/defensive network came into operation at this unstable time in Greek history.12
Despite the apparent dangers in traversing the wider landscape around Delphi at this time, the ritual use of the Corycian cave seems to have continued unabated. Indeed, it is during the end of the fourth century BC, and particularly during the third, that a number of inscriptions (some on elaborate marble bases and some cut directly into the rock of the cave) were set up in honor of Pan and the Nymphs, including one in the third century BC by a patrolman from the Phocian city of Ambryssus who seems to have been tasked with keeping watch in this area of the Parnassian mountains.13
Moreover, despite the fact that Herbert Parke and Donald Wormell have argued that in the fifty years after Alexander’s death, there is no evidence for the oracle’s being consulted on anything but local matters, it is clear that the sanctuary was not abandoned in this period.14 The building of the new stadium, for example, continued through to its completion c. 275 BC (see plate 1, figs. 0.1, 0.2). Equally the Phocians, so long damned by their actions during the Third Sacred War, seem to have returned to the sanctuary to dedicate for victory in the Pythian games and in thanks for victory on the battlefield. The sanctuary, it seems, was also becoming something of a subject for study. Just as Aristotle had written a study of the constitution of the Delphic polis earlier in the century, now, at the end of the fourth century BC, the first books specifically about the vast numbers of Delphic dedications seem also to have appeared. In fact, as knowledge and interest in Delphic dedications spread, dedicators were becoming more and more sophisticated in their manipulation of the dedicatory landscape within the sanctuary. The Orneates of the Argolid, at the end of the fourth century BC, dedicated a statue group to a military victory they had won back in the sixth century BC, which had now become an important part of their civic identity. To make it look like this dedication had been at Delphi all the time, and thus a marker which the Orneates could point to as symbolic of their long-term importance and affinity with Delphi, the monument was sculptured in an archaic style, reminiscent of that from the sixth century, and placed in an area of the Apollo sanctuary that had been popular in the early fifth century for military dedications.15 Delphi had become a place studied for its history, but was also, at the same time, a place that offered the perfect story board through which to retell history.
We have great difficulty reconstructing a history of oracular consultation in the centuries after Alexander’s death, with some of the stories of consultations memorably labeled by Herbert Parke and Donald Wormell as “sanctimonius humbug.” In many cases oracles said to have been given to the Hellenistic kings who came to Delphi seem to be simple rehashings of oracles given to the tyrants and kings before them. In any event, many scholars have argued that Hellenistic monarchs were not interested in a decision-making mechanism like the oracle. After all, they alone, and not a complex civic system of government, now called the shots. In fact we hear that rulers like Demetrius Poliorcetes (Demetrius “the Beseiger”) in Athens, were themselves treated as oracles.16 Yet the oracle continued to be useful to many Hellenistic city-states, particularly in providing them with a rich and varied historical record (as it did for Messenia), or in securing a grant of sacred protection (asylia) for their sanctuaries, or indeed in the process of founding new sanctuaries.17 In one case, it also continued to be the bearer of bad tidings. The Locrians, who abandoned, after a thousand years, the tradition of sending to Troy human tribute (in the form of Locrian maidens) as a recompense for the rape of Cassandra by the lesser Ajax, were beset by disasters in the first part of the third century BC. They returned to the Pythia, who informed them that there was nothing to do but resume sending human tribute, and to continue this indefinitely.18
More importantly, across the Mediterranean to the west, there was another society whose leaders continued to engage with the oracle throughout the third century BC: that of Rome (see map 1). It is reported in the ancient sources that Rome’s first consultation at Delphi dated back as far as its last king, Tarquinius Superbus; and we know that two centuries later, Rome consulted Delphi during the fourth century BC in regard to its military expansion into northern Italy; and that its victorious generals, like Camillus, even vowed dedications to Delphi during that time. In the late fourth and early third centuries BC Rome was back to consult Delphi during the course of the Samnite Wars, when it was told by the Pythia to put up statues of the bravest and wisest of the Greeks in the Roman forum. Delphi seems to have been involved also in the Roman efforts to bring the cult of Magna Mater to Rome, and Ovid reports that the Pythia was involved as well in the transfer of the cult of Asclepius to the city.19
In time, Rome would come not only to consult the oracle, but to “free” Delphi—and Greece—from its “oppressors,” and eventually (not to mention ironically), to turn Greece into the Roman province of Achaea. But such a fate was far from the minds of Delphians at the beginning of the third century BC because a much closer power was in the process of taking over the sanctuary, the Aetolians, the same group to which Delphi had offered a collective grant of promanteia as part of their rebellious stance against Macedon in the 330s BC. The Aetolians were a koinon, a grouping of tribes in northern Greece. They were, like their Macedonian neighbors, something of an enigma to the southern Greeks, who would have had a hard time understanding their dialect and cultural priorities, and who would have considered them something of a backward federation. But, despite this reputation, and despite the fact that the Aetolians had had little to do with Delphi
In the years immediately after 290 BC, that control only strengthened. An Aetolian governor was installed at Delphi along with a garrison of soldiers, and though Aetolia was never a member of the Amphictyony per se, it came to control enough of the members to ensure it could control the council. By 280 BC, Aetolian control over Delphi was strong enough to precipitate a war to free Delphi in the spirit of the four Sacred Wars already fought over the sanctuary during its history. The king of Sparta rallied a group of city-states to repel the Aetolians, claiming that the sacred land around Delphi, which should not be cultivated, had been occupied. The force perished miserably and, with it, the cultivation of sacred land as a cause for war. The Aetolians erected a victory offering in the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi in honor (ironically) of their victory. It was the Aetolians’ first civic offering at Delphi.21
But the following year, in 279 BC, Greece faced a much bigger threat: an invasion of Gauls from the North. At first it seemed their advance was unstoppable. The Macedonian king was killed in battle, and the Gauls reached Thermopylae. Fighting their way past this narrow gateway into central Greece, they headed to Delphi. The Greek army was in tatters, and the only people who stood against them as they approached Delphi were a small contingent of combined Phocian, Amphissan, and Aetolian forces: at most a few thousand men.22
The ancient sources are quick to make this standoff over Delphi echo that of the Persian invasion and attack on Delphi two hundred years before. The Delphians, just as they did then, were said to have consulted the oracle on what to do, and, just as then, were told to leave everything as it was. As the Gauls began their attack, they were met, just as the Persians had been, with earthquakes, thunderbolts, and rockslides. Some of the same mythical heroes, like Phylacus, who defended the sanctuary against the Persians appeared again alongside the Aetolian forces, and were joined by a range of other heroic figures associated with the sanctuary including Neoptolemus. The priests of Apollo from the Delphic temple proclaimed joyfully that even Apollo, Athena, and Artemis had joined in the fray.23