At the chief oracular seat of the God of Prophecy antiquarian curiosity about its early legends and primitive cults makes way for the realization of Apollo, “the Far-Darter, ruling the glorious temple wherein all men find welcome.” A modern journey is a successor to the journeys and pilgrimages undertaken through many centuries by the men and peoples who sought from his omniscience foreknowledge and advice.
Even the protagonists of shadowy antiquity were brought thither by their hopes and fears. Heracles, the national hero of Greece, driven by Hera to madness and murder, asked at Delphi where he should make his home, and was sent by the oracle to begin his twelve labours. Agamemnon, anxious lord of the Greek armies, sought advice of the god. Io was started on her long wanderings over the earth and through literature because her father was commanded by Apollo’s ministers to drive her from her home and her country. Because of a Delphic response, the infant son of Laius of Thebes was exposed on Mount Cithæron. Œdipus, on the fatal day when he killed Laius, was on his way back from Delphi, whither he had gone to ask if he were son of the Corinthian king who had reared him and where he had received the ambiguous answer that he was fated to slay his father. It was when, as king of Thebes, he sent to “the Pythian house of Phœbus to learn by what deed or word he might deliver his pestilence-stricken city” that he unconsciously invoked his own doom. And it was again the Delphic oracle which closed the pitiful story by prophesying Œdipus’s final reconciliation with the eternal will.
But these ancient demigods and kings move in a world only half realized by us. Their dooms and their emotions have the remote nobility, the superb universality of the Attic drama through which chiefly they are portrayed. It is in the vivacious pages of the charmingly pious Herodotus that the desires of living men and women seem to surge, in failure or fruition, about the Delphic tripod. From the foreign kingdoms of Asia, from Greek colonies in Africa and Italy, from rock-bound island harbours, ships were constantly spreading sails at the impulse of national distress or personal ambition, to furl them in the port that lay below Delphi. From Lacedæmon, deep in the hollow of the southern hills, from Thrace’s widespread plains, swept by the northern tempests, from the wild mountains of Arcadia, from rich Corinth and bright Athens and every other city of Hellas, men made their way in chariots, on mules, and on foot, to the knees of Apollo. Mountains and rivers, rude valleys and hostile villages offered no obstacles, nor were the suppliants repelled by the “dark sayings, dim and hard to know,” which were often their only reward. Kings hurried off embassies at the first signs of rivalry. Adventurers stopped to question the god before carrying new colonies beyond the seas. Quarrelsome states and cities asked for advice in their fratricidal plots. Wealthy cities desired to know if they could always count on their revenues. Ghost-haunted towns asked the meaning of their spectres. Agricultural communities were eager to learn how to restore dying crops. Ambitious politicians sought encouragement in their pursuit of power. Sick men prayed for health, childless men for offspring. Indeed, to the irreverent the Pythian priestess must often have seemed to carry a load of oracles as jumbled as that of Aristophanes’s sausage seller who came staggering into the market-place at Athens with “responses” to sell,—
“Full of Athenians, and of lentil-porridge too;
Of Spartans; of fresh tunny fish; and of the men
Who in the market measure false the barley-groats;
Of you; of me, and of affairs in general.”
But Aristophanes himself was at heart as conservative a believer in religion as Herodotus had been. And to piety like theirs, existing from generation to generation, was due the position that Delphi held not only as a source of knowledge but as the conscience of Greece. Sometimes in public affairs this conscience seemed to recommend prudence rather than righteousness, as in the wretched advice distributed at the time of the Persian invasion. In private affairs, such as athletics or the use of trust money, the oracle was always on the side of honour.
It must be borne in mind that along with the widespread acceptance of the oracular responses went a rationalizing independence of judgment which sometimes overruled the religious instinct. Cases of obstinate self-seeking in spite of the plain injunction of the god betray the exercise of this judgment on a low plane. But, soiled though it sometimes was by ignoble use, the mental independence of the Athenians, at least, was a magnificent possession. It saved Hellas when Crete and Argos and all the lesser brood followed the prudent warnings from Delphi. It chose an uneven fight for national freedom in the very face of the accepted conscience of the whole Greek world. Only an understanding of the noblest aspects of the rôle played by the Delphic oracle in Greek history and life can throw into sufficiently high relief the splendid revolt of Athens, when Persia threatened her liberty, against an ecclesiastical authority which had become debased. The historian who is the best guide to a dutiful belief in Pythian Apollo tells the story with implicit sympathy: “Not even the terrifying oracles that came from Delphi and plunged them into fear persuaded them to abandon Hellas. They plucked up courage to await the invader of their land.”
Nor is there here any inconsistency. The faithful in all religions have refused to identify the sins and follies of the priests with the will of the gods. The Persians might intimidate or buy the ministers of Apollo. The Alcmæonidæ, exiled from Athens, might bribe them to do their selfish will. Cleomenes of Sparta might purchase his throne from them. But the pious had always the refuge created by Sophocles for Iocasta when she declared the oracle was false: “It came not from Phœbus but from his servants.” When the Persians had been defeated, Athens, on the flood tide of victory, freedom, and power, raised noble memorials of her struggle in the sacred precinct of the oracle which had advised her not to fight. When the modern traveller has brought himself to see that this was not done in grim humour but in unbewildered piety, he is ready to undertake his own journey to Delphi.