Chapter III.
§ 1. Diffusion of the worship of Apollo in Peloponnesus by the Dorians. § 2. His Introduction by the Dorians at the Olympic festival. § 3. Influence of the Delphian oracle of Apollo. Subjects of the oracle. § 4. Migrations caused by the oracle. § 5. Connexion of the temple of Delphi with the Amphictyons of Thermopylæ. § 6. Worship of Apollo in Asia Minor and the islands. § 7. In Italy and Sicily, in Apollonia and Cyrene.
1. We now come to the third epoch of the propagation of the worship of Apollo. The first embraced the earliest migrations of the Doric nation, when the great temples at Delphi, Cnosus, and Delos were founded from Tempe. The second period is that of [pg 267] the maritime supremacy of Minos, when the coasts of Asia and Greece were covered with groves and expiatory altars of this god. The third comprehends the chief migration of the Dorians, and others occasioned by it. Through these means Apollo became the principal deity in Peloponnesus, where, in early times, we find few traces of his existence. That the Carnean Apollo of the Lacedæmonians, and the Apollo Nomius of the Arcadians, form no exceptions to our assertion, will be proved in a subsequent inquiry into the nature and origin of these worships.[1065]
After the Doric conquest of Peloponnesus, the chief temples were every where consecrated to Apollo. We have already spoken of the sanctuary of Apollo Pythaëus, in which the Argive confederacy held their meetings;[1066] nor was the temple of Apollo Lyceus in the market-place less celebrated.[1067] The Spartans also worshipped this deity under the former name,[1068] and the inhabitants of Sicyon under the latter.[1069] Hecatus, it [pg 268] is pretended, was a soothsayer, who came with the sons of Aristodemus to Sparta; and his descendant, in the second Messenian war, held the same office:[1070] the name of this family refers to the worship of Apollo Hecatus (the far-darting god). At Sparta Apollo was the national deity; the kings sacrificed to him on the first and seventh days of every month;[1071] the influence of the capital city had also caused its general extension throughout the country.[1072] Corinth,[1073] Epidaurus,[1074] Ægina,[1075] and Trœzen[1076] followed the same example.
The name of the Delphian god had now attained throughout Peloponnesus the universal respect which it so long enjoyed: it had even led the way to the settlement [pg 269] and conquest of that peninsula, and hence Apollo was called by the Dorians their leader and founder.[1077] It was not till a later period that the kings of Messenia (who upon the whole adhered less strictly to the Doric customs than the Spartans) entered into a connexion with the sanctuary at Delos, which had then already fallen into the power of the Ionians. About the fifth Olympiad (760 B.C.) Eumelus, the Corinthian poet, composed an ode for a Messenian chorus to that holy island.[1078] On the other hand, it was owing to the Dorians (particularly to the Spartans) that the Pythian sanctuary remained independent, in the hands of the Delphians; to preserve it in this state was one of the duties which they inherited from their fathers;[1079] and they protected it more than once, particularly against the Athenians.
2. The political power of the Dorians over the whole of Peloponnesus necessarily ensured the preponderance of their religious institutions; nevertheless we find that the Achæans and Arcadians possessed few temples of Apollo, and those not the principal ones in their cities.[1080] The worship of Apollo was however, through Spartan influence, held in great respect at Tegea (the customs of which town had indeed become almost entirely Doric), where there was also a tribe called Apolloneatis.[1081] The country moreover being intersected in every direction by roads to Olympia and Delphi (to which place Peloponnesus despatched her [pg 270] hecatombs in the beginning of the spring),[1082] must have been by this very circumstance induced to establish temples in honour of Apollo, an instance of which appears in that at Onceum.
The principal deity of the Doric name soon obtained a conspicuous place in the national festival, held equally sacred by all Peloponnesians; I mean that of Olympia. The establishment of this festival is probably of early date; perhaps it took place during the time when the dominion of the Pelopidæ spread from Pisa and Olympia over most parts of the peninsula. Hence the Elean Ætolians, when they seized upon the presidency of these games, were, by the command of the oracle, at the same time obliged to take one of the Pelopidæ from the Achæan town of Helice for their prince.[1083] Moreover, the ancient rivalry between the Olympian and Isthmian worship, which occasioned the prohibition against any Elean contending at the Isthmus,[1084] can hardly have arisen at any other time than when (previously to the Doric usurpation) the Olympian Zeus was the chief god of the Achæans,[1085] the Isthmian Poseidon of the Ionians.
But it was not till the Dorians, for the purpose of assembling all the Peloponnesians, at least every four years, under the protection of their god, had taken possession of the temple at Olympia; nor till Iphitus the Ætolian, and Lycurgus the Dorian, had renewed these contests, or given them a greater degree of importance, that Apollo and Zeus are found in connexion with each other, and even contending in the course at [pg 271] Olympia. And as a further instance of change, the sacred armistice of Olympia went by the local name of Therma;[1086] and hence Apollo, as the patron and guardian deity of the institution, was called Thermius, and worshipped under that title in the grove of Altis.[1087] At this time Hercules (whose worship, once entirely unknown in Elis, was introduced by Iphitus)[1088] is also reported to have brought the wild olive-tree from the Hyperboreans to the Alpheus, and planted the sacred grove of Altis with it.[1089] The important influence of the Delphian oracle on the Olympian games also occasioned the time of their celebration to be regulated by the Pythian cycle of eight years.[1090] For whereas the whole cycle of eight years consisted of ninety-nine lunar months, at the expiration of which time the revolutions of the moon and sun again nearly coincided; this period was at Olympia divided into two unequal parts of fifty and forty-nine months, so that the festival took place sometimes in the month of Apollonius, sometimes in Parthenius.
The introduction of the worship of Apollo must have had no less influence on the families of the soothsayers, who ministered at the altars of the Olympic deities. These were the Clytiadæ, Iamidæ, and Telliadæ;[1091] of which the Clytiadæ considered themselves as belonging to a clan, which produced very many soothsayers, viz., the Melampodidæ.[1092] This explains the fable that Melampus received the gift of prophecy from Apollo on the banks of the Alpheus,[1093] in the place where it was exercised by his descendants the Clytiadæ.
3. The Doric migration gave rise to many others, which spread the worship of Apollo in various directions; no longer, however, as a peculiar deity of the Dorians and Cretans, but, in a more extended sense, as the national god of the Greeks. This was chiefly occasioned by the influence of Delphi, which seems to have given the chief stimulus to that great migration. In fact, it became from this time invested with a power which hardly belonged to any subsequent institution. Apollo is represented as governing nations with an arbitrary power, compelling them, however unwilling, to undertake distant expeditions, and pointing out the settlements which they are to occupy. In order to convey a more distinct idea of this singular phenomenon, it is necessary that the condition of the immediate subjects of the Pythian temple should be more closely examined.
When the district of the Cirrhæans had, by the Amphictyonic war, become forfeited to the temple of [pg 273] Delphi, the sacred lands belonging to it formed a very considerable territory. Two inscriptions contain surveys of the Hieromnemons respecting its boundaries: one relating to those towards Anticirrha in the east, the other to those in the direction of Amphissa to the west.[1094] Now it certainly appears that in ancient times, when Cirrha was in existence, none of these lands belonged to the temple, which must therefore have possessed little or no territory. But in spite of the generally received accounts of the Amphictyonic war, it can be satisfactorily proved, that in earlier times Cirrha and the temple, with its appendages, formed one state.[1095] Their territory indeed consisted for the most part of rock, mountain, and narrow glens;[1096] yet towards the south it embraced the spacious plain of Crissa, and in the north at least the luxuriant vineyards of Parnassus. By whom then was this territory cultivated? certainly neither by the Doric nobles nor the Cretan colonists, who in the Homeric hymn are derided by the god for thinking of the labours of agriculture, and commanded to employ themselves merely in sacrificing victims.[1097] Thus it is evident, that there were subjects of the temple, who, besides the humble employment of cultivating the soil, were also obliged to tend the herds belonging to the temple. These were the servants of the temple whom we so frequently find mentioned.[1098] The same class also existed in Crete, as we have before proved from the tribute sent by Athens; and Crete, in its turn, as well as Eretria and [pg 274] Magnesia,[1099] sent such “human firstlings” to the temple of Pytho. Mention is also made of a town in Crete composed of a thousand men, all sacred slaves.[1100] Now these slaves of Delphi may have been procured in different ways, either as tribute (and that either of a city or of individuals), as voluntary bondsmen, or by purchase:[1101] the latter mode was probably of rare occurrence in early times. There still remain a considerable number of Delphian monuments, in which private individuals present or sell to the god those slaves whom they wish to favour.[1102] The condition of these vassals corresponds to that of the Doric bondsmen;[1103] but their servitude was probably of a milder nature; for we find it frequently stated that the sacred slaves lived inviolate under the protection of the god, although (at least in early times) they were entirely dependent on the sacred council of the temple. Originally, a great part consisted of prisoners taken in war. We collect from ancient epic poems that [pg 275] Manto the daughter of Tiresias was, after the war of the Epigoni, sent to the Pythian god as a share of the spoil[1104] (ἀκροθίνιον): one individual, as is usual in the language of mythology, standing for many. The Gephyræans also are said to have been at that time decimated, sent from Thebes to Delphi, and thus to have arrived at Athens.[1105] After the Persian war, an idea was actually entertained of reviving this punishment against the Thebans, whose enemies considered them, at a still later period, as in the eye of justice decimated, and given as slaves to Apollo.[1106]
4. When the Pythian god was either unwilling or unable to retain within his territory the crowds who had been collected in this manner, he sent them out as colonists; without, however, entirely giving up all claim to their obedience. The early Grecian history affords several examples of this proceeding: the earliest is a Doric tradition respecting the Dryopes, which differs in some respect from their own account. Hercules, here represented as a Doric hero, had subjugated the Dryopes, and brought them to Delphi as an offering to Apollo, by whom he was commanded to settle them on the southern coast of Argolis.[1107] That this nation, probably of Pelasgic origin, did not in early times worship the Doric god, is evident from the tradition that Leogoras the Dryopian violated the temple of Apollo.[1108] But it is equally certain that they were henceforth compelled to serve Apollo as their [pg 276] chief deity, especially in his character of Apollo Pythaëus at Argos.[1109] A part of this nation however remained at Delphi, where it is frequently mentioned in later times under the name of Craugallidæ, who, together with the Cirrhæans, appear as enemies to the temple;[1110] from which circumstance it may be inferred that most of these Cirrhæans were revolted subjects of the temple.
The migration of the Magnesians approaches rather nearer to the historical age. This race, dwelling under mount Pelion, felt itself, about the time of the Thessalian migration, so pressed for want of territory, that it had recourse to the Delphian oracle, by whose advice it decimated its numbers; that is, it sent off a tenth part of the young male population, who (like a ver sacrum in Italy)[1111] renounced their native land.[1112] These young colonists were mostly despatched to the worshippers of Apollo in Crete, where they founded the town of Magnesia, which Plato speaks of as a place that had been destroyed, and considers as a prototype of his ideal state, Apollo having been its only [pg 277] legislator.[1113] The intercourse of Crete with the coast of Asia Minor soon carried over these sojourners to the banks of the Mæander and the Lethæus, at the confluence of which rivers they had been settled some time before the Ionic migration;[1114] being, as was afterwards declared by a Panhellenic decree, the first Greeks who settled in Asia Minor.[1115] Still, although thus separated from their mother country, they maintained, as sacred colonists (ἱεροὶ ἄποικοι), a perpetual connexion with Delphi, and were bound, in ancient times, to provide all travellers with food and lodging.[1116] The Delphians could expect a similar reception at Delos:[1117] and indeed an extended exercise of the duties of hospitality formed one of the principal objects of this worship. Pausanias[1118] gives an account of this very important worship of Apollo in Magnesia as follows:[1119] “At Hylæ, a place in the territory of the Magnesians,[1120] is a cavern consecrated to Apollo; [pg 278] not, indeed, remarkable for its size; but it contains a statue of Apollo of great antiquity, and which confers strength for every kind of work. Certain devotees throw themselves, by the assistance of this image, from steep and lofty precipices; or tearing large trees up by the roots, walk with their burden down the steepest paths.” We would attempt to trace more minutely the connexion of Magnesia with Crete and Delphi, had not all clue to history been necessarily broken off by the conquest of this proud and prosperous city by the Ephesians, and its complete destruction by the Treres, a Cimmerian tribe, in the time of the Lydian monarch Ardys.[1121]
We have only time to notice some few other events of a similar nature. Thus the Ænianes came to the oracle about the same time, and on a similar emergency as the Magnesians; dwelt for some years in the territory of Cirrha, and were afterwards sent to the banks of the Inachus in southern Thessaly.[1122] An example of historical authority is furnished by the Chalcideans in Eubœa, the youthful part of whose population was despatched by Apollo to Rhegium in Italy;[1123] hence this town also celebrated the worship of the god with expiatory rites and festivals,[1124] to which the Messenians of Sicily sent choruses of thirty-five boys across the straits.[1125]
5. These events, which from their connected form cannot be poetical fictions, give some idea of the extensive influence of the temple of Delphi, the power of which was probably at its highest pitch in the time immediately succeeding the Doric migrations. Hence also this was the epoch of the greatest influence of the Amphictyons of Thermopylæ;[1126] which confederation of Thessalian tribes, and of tribes derived from Thessaly, united the worship of the Doric temple of Apollo with that of Demeter at Thermopylæ, and thus an Hellenic and ancient Pelasgic worship were combined together,[1127] probably not without a view of forming a more intimate union between the different races of Greece. The assembling in the spring of the year at Delphi was probably copied from the meeting of the neighbouring towns, in the spring festival, at Tempe, at which business of a political kind was sometimes transacted.[1128] The power, however, of the Amphictyons of Thermopylæ was at no time actually political, and, with a very few exceptions, all their regulations and undertakings concerned the protection of the two temples in their rights and possessions, the rights of other temples in Greece, and the maintenance of some principles of international law (νόμοι Ἀμφικτυονικοὶ), founded upon religious notions.
6. The Dorian colonies introduced Apollo into Asia Minor as the principal deity of their national and federal festival on the promontory of Triopium,[1129] where [pg 280] they probably first planted his worship, without, however, excluding the more ancient Pelasgic rites of Demeter and the infernal gods, which, although of a different nature, were united in the ceremonies at Triopium with those of Apollo.[1130] In the same manner the twelve towns of the Æolians, with whom Apollo was by no means so nearly connected, celebrated in his honour, as it seems, their federal festival in the grove of Gryneum near Myrina.[1131] And though when the Ionians crossed over from Athens to Asia Minor they remained so constant to the worship of Poseidon that they consecrated to him their national festival at Mycale, and also built in the island of Tenos a splendid temple of Poseidon and Amphitrite, honoured with festivals and sacred embassies;[1132] yet the Cretan worship was so prevalent at Delos, when first overrun by the Ionians, that this island was itself the religious metropolis of the Cyclades,[1133] at whose festivals and contests the higher classes of the islanders attended with their families, even in ancient times; which naturally gave rise to the establishment of temples to [pg 281] Apollo, the principal deity, in the rest of the Cyclades; as Cythnus,[1134] Siphnus,[1135] Ceos,[1136] Naxos,[1137] &c.
7. The principal places to be mentioned in Italy besides Rhegium are Croton and Metapontum. The former was an Achæan and Lacedæmonian colony; in the founding of which, according to tradition, the oracle had an important share;[1138] the memory of which is preserved by temples of Apollo Pythius, Hyperboreus,[1139] and Alæus,[1140] within, and close to the town. Croton was peculiarly subject to the influence of Apollo, whose worship operated to an unusual extent on the character and customs of its inhabitants. On the founding of Metapontum our information is scanty. The inhabitants generally supposed themselves to be of Achæan origin; yet Ephorus has preserved a remarkable, though confused tradition, that Daulius the tyrant of Crissa was the founder of that town.[1141] It [pg 282] seems, then, that inhabitants of Daulis, in the narrow valley of Parnassus, and Crissæans, from the coast, had passed over to Italy in very early times. The inhabitants of Metapontum, as ancient subjects of Apollo, sent him golden ears of corn (χρυσοῦν θέρος) as a tithe of their harvest; we find on their coins the full ears of barley, which were paid as tribute, and on the reverse the god himself, armed with his helmet, arrow and bow, as a conqueror, and holding a branch of laurel; exactly coinciding with the symbols used in the temple of Delphi.[1142] Thus historical tradition and religious symbols both point to the same conclusion.[1143]
During the period of which we are treating, the regulation of colonies by the Delphian oracle was the chief instrument which extended the worship of Apollo on the coast of the Mediterranean. In honour of this deity the Chalcideans who founded Naxos, the first Greek colony in Sicily (Olymp. 5. 2. 759 B.C.), erected on the coast an altar of Apollo Archegetas, upon which the Sicilian Theori always sacrificed when they sailed to the temple of Apollo in their mother-country.[1144]
Apollonia, the Corinthian settlement on the Ionian sea, was also supposed to have been founded by Apollo;[1145] hence the above-mentioned custom of sending “the golden summer” to Delphi prevailed in this town.[1146] We have in a former work[1147] shown that the worship at Thera and Cyrene was paid to the deity of the Theban Ægidæ, viz., the Carnean Apollo; who, however, at the founding of the colony (Olymp. 37), was already considered as the same with the Dorian god; hence the fountain of Apollo at Cyrene, its colony of Apollonia, &c. Mythology, which often first clothes the events of history in a fabulous garb, and then refers them to an early and unknown time, expressed the founding of Cyrene, under the guidance of the temple of Apollo, in the following elegant personification—That Cyrene, a Thessalian nymph, the favourite of Apollo, was carried by her divine lover to Africa, in his chariot drawn by swans.[1148]
We shall abstain from bringing down the colonization of this religion to a later period, since in after-times the lively principle which at first actuated the worshippers of Apollo was lost; and, instead of considering their actions as the effect of supernatural compulsion, men were rather disposed to regulate their conduct according to the dictates of reason and free-will.