Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

The researches of M. A. Lebègue, at Delos, have given us another instance. He found that the old shrine of Apollo has been made in imitation of a cave, and that in the recess of the shrine, made with large slabs of stone forming a gable over a natural fissure in the rock, there was an ancient, rude, sacred stone, on which were remaining the feet of the statue, which had afterward been added to give dignity to the improved worship. M. Lebègue’s work at Delos has been completed and superseded by M. Homolle.

Homer speaks in the Iliad of the great wealth of the Pythian shrine; and the Hymn to the Pythian [pg 285]Apollo implies that its early transformations were completed. But seeing that the god Apollo, though originally an Ionian god, as at Delos, was here worshipped distinctively by the Dorians, we shall not err if we consider the rise of the oracle to greatness coincident with the rise and spreading of the Dorians over Greece—an event to which we can assign no date, but which, in legend, comes next after the Trojan War, and seems near the threshold of real history. The absolute submission of the Spartans, when they rose to power, confirmed the authority of the shrine, and so it gradually came to be the Metropolitan See, so to speak, in the Greek religious world. It seems that the influence of this oracle was, in old days, always used in the direction of good morals and of enlightenment. When neighboring states were likely to quarrel, the oracle was often a peacemaker, and even acted as arbitrator—a course usual in earlier Greek history, and in which they anticipated the best results of our nineteenth-century culture. So again, when excessive population demanded an outlet, the oracle was consulted as to the proper place, and the proper leader to be selected; and all the splendid commercial development of the sixth century B. C., though not produced, was at least sanctioned and promoted, by the Delphic Oracle. Again, in determining the worship of other gods and the founding of new services to great public benefactors, the oracle [pg 286]seems to have been the acknowledged authority—thus taking the place of the Vatican in Catholic Europe, as the source and origin of new dogmas, and of new worships and formularies.

The Temple of Apollo, Delphi

At the same time the treasure-house of the shrine was the largest and safest of banks, where both individuals and states might deposit treasure—nay, even the states seem to have had separate chambers—and from which they could also borrow money, at fair interest, in times of war and public distress. The rock of Delphi was held to be the navel or centre of the earth’s surface, and certainly in a social and religious sense this was the case for all the Greek world. Thus the priests were informed, by perpetual visitors from all sides, of all the last news—of the general aspect of politics—of the new developments of trade—of the latest discoveries in outlying and barbarous lands—and were accordingly able, without any genius or supernatural inspiration, to form their judgments upon wider experience and better knowledge than anybody else could command. This advice, which was really sound and well-considered, was given to people who took it to be divine, and acted upon it with implicit faith and zeal. Of course, the result was in general satisfactory; and so even individuals made use of it as a sort of high confessional, to which they came as pilgrims at some important crisis of their life; and finding by the response that the god seemed to [pg 287]know all about the affairs of every city, went away fully satisfied with the divine authority of the oracle.

This great and deserved general reputation was not affected by occasional rumors of bribed responses or of dishonest priestesses. Such things must happen everywhere; but, as Lord Bacon long ago observed, human nature is more affected by affirmatives than negatives—that is to say, a few cases of brilliantly accurate prophecy will outweigh a great number of cases of doubtful advices or even of acknowledged corruption. So the power of the Popes has lasted in some respects undiminished to the present day, and they are still regarded by many as infallible, even though historians have published many dreadful lives of some of them, and branded them as men of worse than average morals.

The greatness and the national importance of the Delphic Oracle lasted from the invasion of the Dorians down to the Persian War, certainly more than three centuries; when the part which it took in the latter struggle gave it a blow from which it seems never to have recovered. When the invasion of Xerxes was approaching, the Delphic priests informed accurately of the immense power of the Persians, made up their minds that all resistance was useless, and counselled absolute submission or flight. According to all human probabilities they were right, for nothing but a series of blunders could pos[pg 288]sibly have checked the Persians. But surely the god ought to have inspired them to utter patriotic responses, and thus to save themselves in case of such a miracle as actually happened. I cannot but suspect that they hoped to gain the favor of Xerxes, and remain under him what they had hitherto been, a wealthy and protected corporation.[112] Perhaps they even saw too far, and perceived that the success of the Greeks would bring the Ionic states into prominence; but we must not credit them with too much. The result, however, told greatly against them. The Greeks won, and the Athenians got the lead,—the Athenians, who very soon developed a secular and worldly spirit, and who were by no means awed by responses which had threatened them and weakened their hands, when their own courage and skill had brought them deliverance. And we can imagine even Themistocles, not to speak of Pericles and Antiphon, looking upon the oracles as little more than a convenient way of persuading the mob to follow a policy which it was not able to understand. The miraculous defeat of the Persians by the god, who repeated his wonders when the Gauls attacked his shrine, should be read in Herodotus and in Pausanias.

It is with some sadness that we turn from the splendid past of Delphi to its miserable present. The sacred cleft in the earth, from which rose the cold vapor that intoxicated the priestess, is blocked up and lost. As it lay within the shrine of the temple, it may have been filled by the falling ruins, or still more completely destroyed by an earthquake. But, apart from these natural possibilities, we are told that the Christians, after the oracle was closed by Theodosius, filled up and effaced the traces of what they thought a special entrance to hell, where communications had been held with the Evil One.

The three great fountains or springs of the town are still in existence. The first and most striking of these bursts out from between the Phædriades—two shining peaks, which stand up one thousand feet over Delphi, and so close together as to leave only a dark and mysterious gorge or fissure, not twenty feet wide, intervening. The aspect of these twin peaks, so celebrated by the Greek poets, with their splendid stream, the Castalian fount, bursting from between them, is indeed grand and startling. A great square bath is cut in the rock, just at the mouth of the gorge; but the earthquake of 1870, which made such havoc of Arachova, has been busy here also, and has tumbled a huge block into this bath, thus covering the old work, as well as several votive niches cut into the rocky wall. This was the [pg 290]place where arriving pilgrims purified themselves with hallowed water.

In the great old days the oracle gave responses on the seventh of each month, and even then only when the sacrifices were favorable. If the victims were not perfectly without blemish, they could not be offered; if they did not tremble all over when brought to the altar, the day was thought unpropitious. The inquirers entered the great temple in festal dress, with olive garlands and stemmata, or fillets of wool, led by the ὅσιοι, or sacred guardians of the temple, who were five of the noblest citizens of Delphi. The priestesses, on the contrary—there were three at the same time, who officiated in turn—though Delphians also, were not frequently of noble family. When the priestess was placed on the sacred tripod by the chief interpreter, or προφήτης, over the exhalations, she was seized with frenzy—often so violent that the ὅσιοι were known to have fled in terror, and she herself to have become insensible, and to have died. Her ravings in this state were carefully noted down, and then reduced to sense, and of old always to verses, by the attendant priests, who of course interpreted disconnected words with a special reference to the politics or other circumstances of the inquirers.