Greece / Painted by John Fulleylove; described by J.A. McClymont

by J. A. M'Clymont

The scarped vertical face of rock, which may be seen above the figure of the shepherd, shows the recently excavated site of the Place for the Lustration of Pilgrims, to which the water of the Castalian spring was carried by an artificial channel in the rock. The masonry to the left of the drawing is part of a modern reservoir.

It seems to have been almost the invariable practice for Greeks to consult the oracle before resolving to plant a colony, so much so that Delphi is declared to have been “the best-informed agency for emigration that any State has ever possessed.”

Its prestige declined owing to several causes. The priests were not always proof against bribery; and when it became known at any time that they had thus abused their office, it produced a deep feeling of indignation and distrust. There are several well-attested cases of corruption, chiefly on the part of Spartans. One of their kings, Cleomenes, procured the deposition of his brother-king Demaratus by bringing private influence to bear at Delphi. When the facts of the case came to light, the prophetess was deposed from her office, and her chief adviser at Delphi had to take to flight. Another Spartan king, Pleistoanax, who had been exiled for accepting bribes from Pericles, succeeded, after eighteen years’ residence in Arcadia (where, for safety, half of his dwelling-house was within the enclosure of a temple), in obtaining his recall to Sparta with great honour, owing to the injunctions to this effect, which were repeatedly given by the oracle as the result of bribes. Lysander, the great Spartan general, after he was deprived of his command, concerted a scheme with the authorities at Delphi for getting himself recognised as king through the publication of fabricated records, alleged to be of great antiquity, and only to be opened by a genuine son of Apollo. Such a pretender they secured, but the scheme broke down owing to the timidity of one of the conspirators.

Another drawback was that the growing power of rival states rendered it increasingly difficult for the oracle to hold the balance with any fairness between them, and at the same time maintain its old and intimate relations with Sparta. Its dignity was also lowered when, instead of being open for consultation for a month once a year, more frequent opportunities were afforded and trivial questions entertained. But perhaps the most serious difficulty they had to contend with was the growing intercourse and correspondence of the different cities of Greece, both with one another and with foreign cities, and the general spread of knowledge, which tended to impair the reverence in which the oracle had been held, and deprived its priests of the monopoly of general information which they seem to have at one time virtually enjoyed. By the time the Christian era began, the Greek oracles had been practically superseded by the Chaldæan astrologers; and when Julian the Apostate in the fourth century tried to revive the glory of Delphi, he received the answer, “Tell the king the earth has fallen, the beautiful mansion; no longer has Phœbus a home, nor a prophetic laurel, nor a font that speaks: gone dry is the talking water.” It was finally suppressed by the Emperor Theodosius towards the end of the fourth century.

Like the still older sanctuary of Dodona (where revelations were supposed to be given through the rustling of a sacred oak), Delphi was, alternately with Thermopylæ, the seat in historic times of an Amphictyony or union of states, which existed for the worship of the deity whose shrine they were pledged to defend, as well as for mutual friendship and protection. Unfortunately the history of the oracle, although a national institution, was marked at various times by deadly strife among the different Hellenic tribes whose interests were involved. At first the management of the oracle seems to have been in the hands of the people of Crisa, who were Phocians, but after the protracted war waged by the Amphictyony against the natives of Cirrha, the adjacent sea-port, on account of the extortions they practised on the pilgrims to the shrine and the outrages they sometimes perpetrated on them, the trust was committed by the federation to the inhabitants of Delphi, who were of Dorian extraction. Cirrha was laid waste, the whole Crisæan plain was dedicated to Apollo, and the spoils of Cirrha were used to establish the Pythian games on a more ambitious footing than had been possible when they were held in the limited space available at Delphi.

A second Sacred War, as it was called, broke out in 357 B.C., when the Amphictyonic Council, after imposing a fine on the Phocians at the instigation of their enemies the Thebans, which remained unpaid, proceeded to confiscate their territory. The Phocians offered a long and desperate resistance, asserting their old right to administer the affairs of the sanctuary. In the course of the war their leaders had recourse to the treasures of the temple again and again, melting and coining the precious metals, and turning the brass and iron into arms. Altogether they are said to have appropriated no less than £2,300,000, which was required to keep up their large mercenary army.

The fabulous wealth of the place had often tempted the cupidity of foreign foes, but on every occasion the god had been found able to protect himself. When Xerxes sent a detachment of his huge army to despoil the shrine, his soldiers were thrown into a panic and put utterly to flight by great rocks tumbling down upon them from the cliffs of Parnassus in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm. The rocks were shown to Herodotus in the precincts of the temple of Athena,—perhaps the same as are still to be seen in the low ground to the south of the public road. A similar experience is said to have befallen the Gauls under Brennus about two hundred years afterwards. At an intermediate date (370 B.C.), when Jason of Pheræ, the powerful ruler of Thessaly, set out for Delphi with, as it was believed, a hostile intent, under colour of sacrificing to the god a thousand bulls and ten thousand sheep, goats, and swine, he was suddenly cut off in the prime of life by a treacherous band of assassins.

There was yet a third Sacred War, a few years afterwards. The objects of Amphictyonic wrath on this occasion were not the Phocians but the Locrians of Amphissa (now Salona), who had taken possession of Cirrha and repeated the old offence of using part of the consecrated ground for their own secular purposes.