Delphi by Michael Scott
Some of the ancient sources indicate that the Gaulish leader, Brennus, despite this divine onslaught, was still able to penetrate the Delphic defenses and enter the temple of Apollo itself. There, the ancient historian Diodorus Siculus claims, Brennus was unimpressed by all the wooden and stone images, contenting himself with carrying off gold—gold that was, as a result, it was later said, cursed and that brought misfortune and death to anyone who handled it.24 Whether or not Brennus made it into the temple, by the end of the day of their attack, the Gauls had been beaten back, and that night, Delphi was covered in snow. Now in unfamiliar territory and difficult conditions, the Gauls made easy prey for local Phocian raids. Brennus was eventually wounded and the Gauls withdrew. Soon after, the Greek forces, including the main Aetolian army, were able to regroup and comprehensively defeat the Gauls in battle and repel the invasion for good.
Most of the ancient sources for this invasion are late, and none are from before the second century BC. But we can be more confident in the nature and importance of this victory thanks to the inscriptional evidence dating from soon after 279 BC. In spring 278, the island of Cos expressed votive thanks to the gods for saving Delphi, and in the following years, a number of decrees showered honors and rewards on individuals who had given information leading to the recovery of the sacred money belonging to Apollo, presumably that taken by the Gauls. Soon after, Gaulish shields were hung on the metopes of the temple of Apollo on the sides opposite where the Persian shields had been hung (and rehung) by the Athenians.25 The desired symmetry of the two victories against the Persians and the Gauls, separated as they were by almost exactly two hundred years, was complete.
The Phocians, in thanks for their role in saving Delphi, were given back their seats on the Amphictyonic council (which they had lost to Philip of Macedon after the Third Sacred War), and their ongoing fine to Delphi (which they had in all probability stopped paying many years before) was officially canceled. In response they seem to have dedicated a statue in the sanctuary. But the real winners were the Aetolians themselves. Their occupation of Delphi had never been sanctioned, indeed they had been attacked by the Greeks for it. However, now they were no longer Delphi’s occupiers, but its saviors. This victory, this defense of Delphi, confirmed their right to occupy the sanctuary, and more importantly, confirmed them once and for all as defenders of Greece, and thus Greek. The Aetolians seem to have received their own seat on the Amphictyonic council and been recorded in the subsequent attendance records of the Amphictyonic meetings as second only to the presiding Thessalians.26 But they also ensured their victory was represented among the growing monumental history book of Delphic dedications. Stretching out from the west side of the Apollo sanctuary is Delphi’s biggest single structure bar the temple of Apollo, the West Stoa, occupying a 2,000 square meter terrace (see plate 2). Its origins are uncertain, and scholars have been unable to precisely date its construction. Yet, it is certain that in the years immediately after 279 BC, this structure became a focus for the commemoration of the Aetolian victory over the Gauls. On the back wall of the stoa was inscribed in large letters a dedication from the Aetolians offering to Apollo armor taken from the Gauls, which seems to have been displayed on long planks of wood attached to the stone back wall.27
The stoa, coupled with the hanging of Gaulish shields on the west and south faces of the temple Apollo, was not the end of Aetolian commemoration. A statue of the personification of Aetolia was erected at the west end of the Apollo temple. The female Aetolia sat triumphantly atop a carved set of Gaulish weapons and was accompanied by not only a further statue elsewhere on the temple terrace, but also, according to Pausanias, a monument with statues of all the Aetolian chiefs as well as a special monument dedicated to the general Eurydamus.28
How did the Delphians feel about this renewed (and now largely accepted, especially by the Amphictyony) imposition of Aetolian control over their sanctuary? On the one hand, of course, they and the sanctuary would benefit hugely from such a backer (and controller), especially in terms of investment in the sanctuary and its games. But the Delphians’ record of offering proxenia during the course of the third century BC gives a hint of a different story. Four hundred people were awarded proxenia by the city of Delphi during that time, and only thirteen of those were Aetolian (six of which were awarded before the Aetolian victory against the Gauls in 279 BC). It could be argued that Aetolians didn’t need grants of proxenia, such was their involvement with the sanctuary. But, on the other hand, it seems that the city of Delphi worked awfully hard to maintain its own relationships with a number of other parts of the Greek world at the same time.29
The 270s BC, as a result of the saving of Delphi from the Gauls, was a decade filled with renewed focus on Delphi as, once again, the symbol of Greece’s freedom from invasion. It is not surprising that several previous dedicators to the sanctuary saw this as a fitting time in which to return and update their monuments. The Athenian statue base, originally dedicated after Marathon, and that ran along the southern flank of the Athenian treasury, was extended in the aftermath of this new victory to include new figures paying homage to Delphi’s new rulers. The Chians returned to their great altar in front of the Apollo temple not only to repair it after almost two hundred and fifty years of use, but also to reinscribe their rights to promanetia (see fig. 1.3). And at the end of the century, inscribed steles relating to their ambassadors to Delphi were also erected as close as possible to the altar. Alongside these individual revamps, the sanctuary seems to have undergone a series of rearticulations. To the south of the central open space just below the temple terrace (known as the aire and thought to be used for religious festivals), a series of previously dedicated monuments were repositioned along a newly created pathway, which in turn led to a new flight of steps leading directly to the aire performance space (see plate 2).30 The greatest change, however, at Delphi, during these years was in its festival calendar. The saving of Delphi required a new festival celebration, and the Soteria (quite literally “the saving”) was created in response. Performed annually in the autumn, this new festival mirrored the athletic and musical contests held during the Pythian games, in addition to competitions for tragedies and comedies. Its creation also heralded the probable final completion of the new stadium at Delphi high above the temple, and ushered in a new era of popularity for Delphic games and festivals (see plate 1, figs. 0.1, 0.2).31
And yet, despite this outpouring of celebration, renovation, and innovation at Delphi, it would have been impossible not to notice Delphi’s more lackluster place in a changing wider Greek world during this period and over the next thirty years. Many scholars have noted that while the Aetolian dedications, both public and private individual offerings, continued to flow at Delphi, most of the Hellenistic kingdoms and their ruling monarchies were dedicating not at Delphi, but at Apollo’s other well-known sanctuary on the island of Delos, the place of his birth, as well as at sanctuaries like those on Samos (see map 2). The Ptolemies of Egypt were absent from Delphi, so were the Seleucids, so too the kings of the Black Sea, as well as Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, despite his constant campaigns against the Romans. The Greek cities of the Western Mediterranean—so long the dependable stalwart of Delphic dedications and oracular consultation—were also largely absent at this time.32 Walking around the sanctuary in the middle of the third century BC, it must have felt like Delphi had in some way slipped from being an international sanctuary to a regional one, and this was, to some extent, the reality. It was no longer a sanctuary whose independence was jealously guarded in peace treaties and fought over in sacred wars. It was now a sanctuary under the increasingly strong control of the Aetolians, which meant that dedicating great monuments at Delphi no longer served predominantly to glorify the dedicator as much as it glorified the owners of the sanctuary.33 Coupled with the fact that this was now a world in which monarchical rule already had much less use for a conflict-resolving mechanism like the Delphic oracle and thus less reason to come to
But the story is not one of total decline. Several city-states continued to dedicate, particularly in order to celebrate their victories in the Pythian games or to honor particular Aetolians (e.g., Abydos, Clazomenai, Cnidus, Cyzicus, Elatea, Boeotia, Eretria, Megara, and Erythrai near Thermopylae), as well as particular associations like the Pylaioi (thought to be linked with the Amphictyony’s other sanctuary of Demeter at Anthela). In the second quarter of the century, one king, Dropion of Paeonia, a region above Macedon in Thrace, was attracted to dedicate at Delphi first a statue of his grandfather and subsequently a statue portrait of the head of a bison.34 In 260 BC the Aetolians celebrated their latest victory over the Archarnians with a new victory monument, representing victorious Aetolian generals alongside Apollo and Artemis.35 Athens too had recovered from the banning of its ruler from competing in the Pythian games in 290 BC and was now in a much closer relationship with the sanctuary: not only had it updated its statue group monument to victory against Persia, which lay alongside its treasury (which also began in this period to be used as a notice board for recording Athenian victories in the Pythian games), but the Delphic Amphictyony had publicly granted ateleia (exemption from oracular consultation taxes) and asylia (religious sanctuary) to the Dionysiac artists of Athens. In addition, the close connection between Athens and Delphi was symbolized by the synchronization of the worship of Apollo Patroos and Apollo Pythios in Athens during the course of the century, rendering Apollo Pythios the paternal god of the Athenians.36 Rome also returned to dedicate during the First Punic War (when it was itself fighting the Gauls in northern Italy), with one of its generals, Claudius Marcellus, copying the act of his predecessor Camillus in the previous century and sending a golden mixing bowl to Delphi as a symbol of the plunder taken in the battle.37
Despite growing Aetolian control over the sanctuary (the Aetolians took over from the Thessalians as president of the Amphictyony in this period), and despite their developing military power, particularly in contrast to that of Macedon, the Aetolians seem to have been keen to avoid confrontation on the international stage. They avoided any conflict with Macedon, refused to take sides when Pyrrhus of Epirus turned his attentions from Rome to invade Macedon in 274 BC, and despite a possible alliance with Athens in the 260s, seem to have kept clear of a resurgent Macedon’s attempts, following the defeat of Pyrrhus’s invasion, to take control of Athens and much of central Greece during the 260s.38 Yet from 262 BC, there was also a significant shift in Aetolian attitudes at Delphi toward a much more public degree of control over the sanctuary, a move not perhaps unwelcomed by the local Delphians who must have been excited by the prospect of some stability after so much change. In 243 BC, the Aetolians felt confident enough in their position to relaunch the Soteria festival not simply as an annual Delphian festival, but as their own festival dedicated to Zeus Soter. Scholars often refer to “Aetolian audacity” in this period, both at Delphi as they took over more and more of what had traditionally been Amphictyonic and Delphic business, and also on the international stage as Aetolia started to exercise greater dominance at sea and become more aggressive on land.39
In autumn 242 BC the first Aetolian Soteria festival was celebrated at Delphi in honor of Zeus Soter and Apollo. The Aetolians had proclaimed the festival isoPythian—equal to the Pythian games—and changed the timing of its celebration so that it coincided with the Pythian games to produce, in effect, one large and long festival. In the years preceding this new celebration, the sanctuary at Delphi seems to have been spruced up considerably. More work was done to the stadium, and inscriptions record that twenty-three contractors undertook to complete about forty different projects around the Delphic complex, from clearing plant growth around the gymnasium and stadium to plowing and leveling the competition surfaces and fixing wooden seating apparatus.40 The Aetolians also seem to have asked other cities in the Greek world to recognize their new festival. We have surviving inscribed records of affirmative replies from five cities including (perhaps predictably) Athens and Chios, but also Tenos, another Cycladic city, and Smyrna. Chios was so keen on the idea that their inscription also records that they immediately picked three individuals to be sent to represent them at the celebrations (and no doubt to admire their still new-looking altar).41
In response to this new phase of Aetolian domination at Delphi, individual Aetolians seem to have been encouraged to dedicate increasingly ornate and immense dedications in the sanctuary. In fact, they began an entirely new artistic and architectural style for individual dedications at Delphi. The Aetolian Aristaineta was the first to erect a statue resting on a piece of architrave that was supported by two columns, a style that would prove to be the Aetolian monument style of choice. It was soon followed by a statue of the Aetolian general Charixenus in a similar fashion atop two columns.42 The power of the Aetolians over the sanctuary in this period is indicated by the fact that a number of these dedications from individuals (in particular those of Aristaineta and Charixenus) began to encroach on what had hitherto, throughout Delphi’s history, been the open, almost reserved, space around the Chian altar in front of the temple. But individual Aetolians also chose to honor other rulers of the Hellenistic world (even though they had ignored Delphi). Lamius the Aetolian, for example, erected a long line of statues to the Egyptian royal family (the Ptolemies).43
The sanctuary was not, however, playing host only to Aetolians in the second half of the third century BC. Cities in Western Locris also dedicated (even if one of their dedications was a statue in honor of an Aetolian), as well as cities in Boeotia and Epirus. Yet by far the most striking dedication in this period—not only in its form, size, and extravagance, but also in the identity of its dedicator—was the stoa of Attalus (see plate 2, fig. 1.3). King Attalus I of Pergamon in Asia Minor was the first of the Attalid dynasty, which was in turn the only Hellenistic dynasty to pay close attention to Delphi at this time. Erected between 241–26 BC, this stoa summed up the way in which Delphi was now more at the mercy of the rulers of the Greek world than it had ever been. It broke through the eastern boundary wall of the Apollo sanctuary on the level of the temple terrace, something not done by any dedication (apart from the monumental west stoa) since the walls had been constructed in the second half of the sixth century BC; and, in fact, this was something that would never be done again. The stoa was accompanied by its own terracing wall to ensure a large courtyard space outside it, and completed with a monumental offering just in front of the stoa, as well as a statue base in the courtyard terrace.44
The Amphictyony were clearly keen to keep the Attalids on their side. In 223–22 BC they issued a law, inscribed in the sanctuary, that no other dedications were to be put within the Attalid stoa complex except those from the Attalids themselves.45 Why was Attalus, and the Attalids, so keen to dedicate at Delphi when the other Hellenistic ruling families had snubbed it? Partly it was to do with cultural identity. The Attalids modeled themselves on Athenian artistic and architectural supremacy. They built in Athens and copied Athens in Pergamon, so it was only natural that they should dedicate where once Athens had been so dominant. Yet it was also to do with current politics. Attalus was an ally of the Aetolians, and would be fighting his own war against the Gauls in the period 238–27 BC, a war that eventually brought him mastership of much of Asia Minor. As a result it was natural for Attalus to turn to Delphi, place of his allies’ victory against the Gauls (and its celebration), and in particular to create a monument that demonstrated his newfound power (by breaking through the boundary wall), and mirrored the west stoa that was (or had been turned into) the Aetolians’ own monument to victory over the Gauls after 279 BC.46
In 239 BC, Antigonus II, king of Macedon, died at the age of eighty. He had been a fearsome warrior, and the Aetolians had shied away from open con
The other outcome of the war was that the city of Athens regained its independence, which had been lost to Antigonus II in 268 BC. As a result, the 220s saw a renewed closeness between Athens and Delphi. There was a steady stream of proxeny decrees between Delphians and Athenians, indicating regular Athenian consultations with the oracle and interactions with the sanctuary. More interestingly, the Athenians seem to have returned to the sanctuary once again to update a previous dedication. This time their focus was on the statues of Eponymous and Marathon heroes that had been erected at the southeastern entrance to the sanctuary in 460 BC, where they had been spatially opposed, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, by Spartan monuments (see plate 2, fig. 6.2). The Athenians extended this now centuries-old dedication to include statues of the new tribes it had established in Athens in honor of its own recent rulers and those of the Hellenistic monarchies whom it was impossible to ignore.48 Once again, a Delphic dedication had been rearticulated to keep pace with current events.