The Coming of Apollo
E bringeth to men and women cures for their grievous sicknesses, he giveth the harp, and he granteth the Muse to whomsoever he will; he ruleth his oracular shrine, bringing peace and lawful order into our hearts; he stablished the descendants of Heracles and Ægimius in Lacedæmon and Argos and most holy Pylos.” Such is the Theban poet’s summary of the attributes of the Dorian god. Healing, harp-music and lyric poetry, discipline fostered by the Delphic oracle, and the Dorian government of Sparta, Argos, and Messenia—these are the gifts of Apollo to Greece. There is nothing here to connect him with Nature-worship. He is not even connected with light or sun.
We have already seen something of the earliest strata of religious beliefs on Greek soil. The Ægean worship was principally “aniconic fetishism”—that is, the worship of inanimate, possibly symbolical, objects, such as stones, pillars, crosses, axes, horns, and trees. Then there were animal deities, possibly totemistic in origin, such as the snake-goddess, the dove-goddess, and the bull-man, or Minotaur, powers mainly representing fecundity. There was certainly also ghost-worship; for the dead in the tholos tombs were certainly honoured by sacrifices, and very likely by human sacrifices at first. There seem to have been no temples at all in these stages of religion; it was rather a system of private local cults in great and bewildering variety. But it is certain that the Ægean peoples had developed some wholly anthropomorphic deities before the end. Some of the regular Olympian deities of historical Greece seem to belong partially, and some wholly, to this earlier civilisation. Poseidon, the sea-god, Hermes, the Arcadian shepherd-god, and Demeter or Mother Earth, are of the latter class, with mysterious forms like the Fates, the Curses, the Harpies, and the Sirens. But there was little exclusiveness about ancient religion; new deities are quite readily accepted into polytheistic systems, though in some cases there was a protracted struggle to keep them out. Hesiod remarks that the deities have many names for a single shape, and often a double name reveals assimilation, such as Phœbus Apollo or Pallas Athene. In most cases, indeed, the great name of an Olympian god covers a host of minor deities with varying and sometimes quite opposite attributes. Thus the national Zeus has swallowed up countless local heroes, as when the Laconians worshipped Zeus Agamemnon.
All these processes of change are reflected in mythology. It would seem as if mythologists, or, as we should say, expert theologians, set out to reconcile the people to new forms of worship by inventing delightful stories to account for the change. Homer and Hesiod were doing precisely that sort of work. For example, the introduction of the Northern Zeus was effected by means of a curious myth. It was agreed that he had not always been King of Heaven; formerly his old father Cronos had ruled, he whose wife was the earth. Zeus was born in Crete—that is, he was attached to
Plate XIII. HERMES KRIOPHOROS: (THE LAMB-CARRIER)
an ancient Cretan story of a divine nativity in which a she-goat suckled a babe. That indicates the transition from an animal deity to an anthropomorphic one, just as does the old Mother Wolf of Roman legend. Doubtless some artistic representations of a she-goat and a she-wolf play their part in such stories. Again, Cronos is said to have tried to crush the usurper in the bud by swallowing his dangerous child, but to have swallowed a stone instead. That may cover the transition from stone-and pillar-worship. Still more instructive are the legends of contest between deities for worship at a particular shrine. The ordinary device for the introduction of Zeus was to make him the father of the local hero. “God,” says Voltaire, “first made man in His own likeness, and man has been returning the compliment ever since.” It is the secret of anthropomorphic religion that the worshipper is worshipping himself, or rather an idealised vision of himself projected upon the public conception of his god. The human heart has an unlimited power of thus adapting its faith to its habits. Anthropologists are continually telling us of the persistence of ancient cults in spite of pretended changes of faith, rituals that belong to Artemis transferred to the Virgin, dirges for Adonis transformed into mourning for Christ. Often when the polite antiquarian Pausanias asked the Greeks of his day about the objects of their worship he got conflicting answers. That is how it becomes easy to make converts if you are content to leave ritual unchanged, and that was how Apollo got himself accepted as the young man’s god all over Greece. There was, indeed, a rival young man’s god in Hermes, a very ancient deity. Remnants of antique aniconic worship attach themselves to Hermes: his statues even in classical times are three parts pillar to one part god. He is the shepherd-god of Arcady,[15] and the Arcadians represent more purely than any other peoples of Greece the aboriginal Ægean stratum. Hermes is a god of music too, but his instrument
Lyre
Cithara
is the lyre, which in shape and construction resembles the modern mandoline, for the body was made from the shell of a tortoise, an indigenous Greek creature, with a sounding-board of parchment stretched over it. Apollo properly plays on the cithara, or Northern harp. The popularity of Hermes persisted throughout because he became identified with Luck, and Luck is the one god we all worship. He is also associated with commerce; he it is who drives a sharp bargain; and, as we saw, the aboriginal stratum of Greece provided the trading element in the Hellenic races. This attribute the trade-despising warriors of the dominant race turned to his discredit, for poor Hermes in Homer, and generally in literature, becomes a sharper of the worst description. If you ask “Who stole the cows?” the answer is, “Hermes.” He is the messenger of Zeus, but he is also his spy. Hermes, then, was much too strongly planted to be uprooted by the intruding Apollo. But it seems that some male god of the older race was swallowed up and bodily incorporated under that name. For in classical Greece there are two rival Apollos, one the Delian or Cynthian Apollo, the centre of whose cult was the island of Delos, the other the true Dorian god, called Pythian Apollo, and worshipped above all at Delphi. The Delian shrine was a centre of the Ionians, and Delos afterwards became the headquarters of the maritime league of Athens and the Ionian States. Delos boasted itself to have been the god’s birthplace, and mythology presented an elaborate nativity for this Apollo and his sister Artemis. “Homeric” hymns to both Apollos are preserved, and it is interesting to notice how the Ionian bard who is praising the Apollo of Delos mentions all the centres of his worship in a longish list which tallies closely with the list of Athenian allies in the Delian confederacy. But this Delian Apollo is not the important one; in many respects he is only a pale reflection of the other, and his vogue principally depended on the extreme sanctity of the little island of Delos.
Plate 14. PANORAMA OF DELPHI ([See p. 69])
The true Apollo is the Northern god who had his home at Delphi. He and his worship play such a prominent part in the making of classical as distinct from prehistoric and heroic Greece that I put him in the forefront of this age of transition. Delphi is one of the most impressive sites in Greece, lying high in a narrow glen with precipitous and almost awe-inspiring crags on every side.[16] Several times in Greek history rash invaders failed to penetrate into this mysterious shrine. The god’s majesty and the terrors of his abode were sufficient protection. It is clear from the mythological presentation of his coming that before Apollo there was already an ancient oracle at Delphi, the source of which was a snake called Pytho. Snakes figure largely in the animistic worship of the old race, as typifying the spirits of the dead issuing from the earth. The myth described how Apollo came and conquered this serpent. He built a great temple in this valley of Parnassus, and took the place of Earth, or Themis, as Pythian Apollo, lord of the Delphic oracle.
Apollo is the most virile god on Olympus, as he is the representative god of the most manly race in Hellas, the Dorians. He is the young athlete god. If we trace the history of his type in art we see him at first a rudimentary male figure, only just evolved out of the pillar shape. He is always nude in these early statues, and it is not easy to say how many of the so-called early Apollos represent the god, and how many are simply statues of male athletes. It makes little difference, for the god and his worshipper are one. At first there is little expression, as in the “Apollo of Orchomenos,”[17] for the artist is still struggling with his stubborn material, happy if his chisel can get the semblance of human shape out of the marble. In the next stage, represented by the “Tenean Apollo,” the sculptor has attained considerable mastery over his tools, and has succeeded in his main object, namely, a faithful expression of the muscles of the male body.[18] The reader will notice “the archaic grin” on the faces of all gods and goddesses of this period. This is probably an attempt to indicate the benevolence of the deity; the god smiles when he intends to grant the prayer of his suppliant. Apollo was always the god of healing; Æsculapius was his son and Hygiæa his daughter. By-and-by the artists learn how to express benevolence less crudely,[19] and all the time they are learning more anatomy and a fuller mastery over their tools, until in the glorious fifth century Alcamenes (who, by the way, was an Athenian) could make a noble figure such as stands calm and powerful, every inch a god, in the midst of battle on the West Pediment of the great temple at Olympia.[20] Study this god. If you can love him you will have learnt the secret of Dorian greatness. He is very simple, serious, and severe; he has the asceticism of a good athlete who knows what discipline means for the sake of his club or country. You must judge him as archaic work, you must allow, when you criticise the stiffness of his hair, for the use of tinting and the crown of gilt bay-leaves which once passed through the hollow underneath his hair. You will perceive that there is something wrong with the angle of his eyelids, which meet without overlapping. Sculptors of the next generation learnt to correct that, but they never conceived a grander figure of the sort of god that a gentleman and a Spartiate might fitly worship. Of course this is not a temple image; it is only one detail of a piece of ornament under the gable at the back of a temple, but it is the conception of a great artist. After that they began to think too much about the beauty of Apollo and young athletes in general, worshipping both with extravagant devotion. Hermes as a more graceful and sensuous young god began to supplant Apollo in the favour of Art. At last we get to the dandified young swell with the elaborate coiffure and the studied
Plate XV. “APOLLO,” FROM ORCHOMENUS
English Photo Co., Athens
theatrical pose, the Apollo Belvedere, who seemed to our great-grandfathers the most perfect of Greek statues, though he was carved to suit a decadent taste in the days when Greece had lost the very memory of manliness. Another conflicting, but, I believe, equally Dorian type of Apollo represents him in the flowing and almost feminine robes of a musician. This is Apollo the artist, not the athlete, the Apollo who leads the choir of Muses on Parnassus.
To return to the god and his oracle: the Dorians had planted him at Delphi on their way south about 1000 B.C., and when they had overrun the whole Peloponnesus, except Arcadia and Achaia, occupying the southern islands, including Crete, and overflowing even into the south of Asia Minor, Delphi became their central shrine and oracle. So cleverly was that oracle managed by the Delphic priests that it became the common centre for advice to all Greece, until it formed a sort of focus of Greek nationality. Even semi-barbarian monarchs like Crœsus of Lydia applied to it for advice, and paid for its oracles with lavish dedications. As ambassadors kept coming to Delphi from all parts of the Greek world, the priests had good opportunity of collecting information. They were especially strong in geography, and if a city found its population increasing beyond the extent of its wall space, or if there were a gang of mischievous young nobles to be got rid of, or if the city sought new commercial openings, it would send an embassy to Delphi to consult Apollo about a suitable site for a new colony. After due sacrifices and oblations and various mysterious rites to ensure the proper reverential spirit, they would be introduced into the inmost shrine, where a priestess sat upon a tripod over the identical crack in the ground where the old serpent Pytho had once made his den. Here was a conical stone representing the omphalos or navel of the earth. Then the inspiration would seize the Pythian priestess, she would fall into a kind of fit or trance, caused, they say, by burning leaves of laurel, and in the course of it she uttered wild and whirling words. Before you left the priests would hand you the substance of her remarks neatly composed in rather weak hexameter verses. Very often the advice would turn out excellently, for the priests knew their business. If it did not they could usually point out that their words bore quite a different interpretation if you had had the sense to understand them. Thus Crœsus asked whether he should make war on the growing power of Persia; he was told that if he did he would destroy a mighty empire. After the success of Cyrus, the oracle, of course, explained that Crœsus had in fact destroyed a mighty empire—namely, his own.
The supple intelligence of the Greeks devoted a good deal of its ingenuity to inventing smart double-entendres like this, but I am afraid that the Delphic priests were actually guilty of a good deal of low trickery, though they would hardly have won the national confidence, as they did, if that sort of answer had been their ordinary practice. In politics they played a very important part until the Persian wars, when their more accurate knowledge of external affairs led them to overrate the power of Darius and Xerxes and to counsel submission, whereby they somewhat injured their credit. They formed a sort of international bureau, a sort of Hague, though not always on the side of peace, for the statesmen of Greece. Two institutions in particular made them a much-frequented shrine; one was the Pythian Games, the second in importance of the four great religious and athletic festivals of Greece, and the other was the Delphic Amphictyony. The latter was an international league for religious worship which looked, at times, as if it were going to develop into a real Panhellenic confederacy. Delphi had crept in here, supplanting a much older religious union of neighbours at Anthela. Even in historical times the Amphictyons or their delegates met alternately at the shrine of Demeter at Anthela and at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The meeting was mainly for common worship, but some of the proceedings touched international politics, and there was an old Amphictyonic oath
Plate Plate 16.—Apollo of Tenea.
Hanfstaengl.
resembling the Geneva Conventions, in which the members bound themselves not to cut off running water from any other city of the league. Unfortunately, the inveterate feuds of the Greeks often led to the abuse of this league for political ends, and, instead of enforcing holy peace, we often find it waging sacred wars.
We saw that Pindar placed eunomia—good order—among the gifts of Apollo. Like Athena, Apollo was greatly interested in political and constitutional systems. In the course of the seventh century, which is the period when Delphi first began to extend its influence, we find the oracle deliberately claiming the authorship of some of the most celebrated legal and constitutional systems of the day. Sparta was not only the chief Dorian State, with a preponderant influence or hegemony over all Southern Greece, but the possessor of the most elaborate and successful political system in the whole country. We can see the Delphic oracle deliberately inserting itself as the founder of this good order. The historian Herodotus got much of his information from the oracle, and he tells us its version, how a certain Lycurgus had come to Delphi to ask for laws and a constitution, and had received it from the god. But the Spartans themselves had not yet been convinced. They still believed that theirs were the true Dorian institutions—as, in fact, they mostly were—dating back to their original leaders, “the sons of Heracles,” and closely resembling those of Dorian Crete. A generation or two after Herodotus the Delphic claim was admitted, for constitutional writers of all parties were glad to accept the sanction of the god for the constitution as they severally interpreted it. Thus Lycurgus, who had originally been an obscure hero with a half-forgotten cult, came to rank as the Spartan law-giver and the author of the remarkable system of life and government which we shall presently describe. They did the same for the famous legal systems of the West, claiming to have inspired Zaleucus, the law-giver of Locri, and Charondas of Catane with their codes. There is some indication of similar proceedings with regard to Solon of Athens, but they met with little success among the rationalistic worshippers of Athena, who was as much a patron of law and order as Apollo himself. Delphi endeavoured to appropriate the wisdom of the Seven Sages, mostly early historical philosophers who belong to these ages of transition. Apollo even claimed the philosophy of Pythagoras, whose name lent itself peculiarly to a supposed Delphic origin. By such means as these the Delphic oracle became the chief sanctuary in Greece, and exerted a very great influence, which, however, some modern scholars have tended to exaggerate.