Altogether few places in Greece surpass Daulis in romantic beauty of situation and the wealth of historical and legendary memories which the landscape, both near and far, is fitted to evoke. Standing on the brow of its precipices we feel that this mountain fastness, frowning on the rich champaign country below, was well fitted to be the hold of a wild wicked lord like Tereus, of whose bad deeds the peasants might tell tales of horror to their children’s children. But now all is very peaceful and solitary in Daulis, for the tide of life has long rolled away from it. Parnassus still looks down on it as of old; but ivy mantles the ruins, the wild thyme smells sweet on the hill, and the tinkle of goat-bells comes up musically from the glen. Only the shadow of ancient crime and sorrow rests on the fair landscape.
LXXXVI. The Cleft Way.—About five miles to the south-west of Daulis the road, after skirting the eastern foot of the mighty mass of Mount Parnassus, turns sharply to the west and begins to ascend through the long, narrow, and profound valley which leads to Delphi. Just at the point where the road turns westward and before it begins the long ascent it is joined from the south-east by the direct road from Lebadea and Thebes. The meeting of the three roads—the road from Daulis, the road from Delphi, and the road from Thebes—is the Cleft Way or Triple Road, the scene of the legendary murder of Laius by Oedipus. It is now known as the Cross Road of Megas, after the gallant Johannes Megas, who met his death here in July 1856, while exterminating a band of brigands with a small troop of soldiers. His monument, on a rock at the meeting of the roads, bears a few verses in modern Greek. Apart from any legendary associations the scene is one of the wildest and grandest in Greece, recalling in its general features, though on a vastly greater scale, the mouth of Glencoe. On both sides of the valley the mountains tower abruptly in huge precipices; the cliffs of Parnassus on the northern side of the valley are truly sublime. Not a trace of human habitation is to be seen. All is desolation and silence. A more fitting spot could hardly be found for the scene of a memorable tragedy.
LXXXVII. Delphi.—The site of Delphi, till lately occupied by the modern village of Kastri, is in the highest degree striking and impressive. The city lay at the southern foot of the tremendous cliffs of Parnassus, which form a sheer wall of rock, about eight hundred feet high. Over these frightful precipices Philomelus drove some of the defeated Locrians. Just at the angle where this vast wall of rock bends round towards the south it is rent from top to bottom by a deep and gloomy gorge, some twenty feet wide, where there is a fine echo. Facing each other across this narrow chasm rise two stupendous cliffs, whose peaked summits tower considerably above the rest of the line of cliffs. They are nearly perpendicular in front, and perfectly so where they fall sheer down into the gorge. The eastern of the two cliffs was called Hyampia in antiquity; from its top Aesop is said to have been hurled by the Delphians. It has been suggested, though perhaps without sufficient reason, that when the later writers of antiquity, especially the Roman poets, speak of the two summits of Parnassus, they are really referring to these two cliffs. In point of fact the cliffs are far indeed from being near the summit of Parnassus; but seen from Delphi they completely hide the higher slopes of the mountain. In winter or wet weather a torrent comes foaming down the gorge in a cascade about two hundred feet high, bringing down the water from the higher slopes of the mountain. At the mouth of the gorge, under the eastern cliff, is the rock-cut basin of the perennial Castalian spring, a few paces above the highway. The water from the spring joins the stream from the gorge, which, after passing over the road, plunges into a deep rocky lyn or glen, which it has scooped out for itself in the steep side of the mountain. Down this glen the stream descends to join the Plistus, which flows along the bottom of the Delphic valley from east to west, at a great depth below the town.
From the cliffs at the back of Delphi the ground slopes away so steeply to the bed of the Plistus that it is only by means of a succession of artificial terraces, rising in tiers above each other, that the soil can be cultivated and made fit for habitation. There are about thirty of these terraces, supported by stone walls, mostly of polygonal masonry. The sanctuary of Apollo occupies only the five or six highest terraces at the foot of the cliffs, on the western side of the Castalian gorge. So high does it stand above the bottom of the valley that twenty minutes are needed to descend the steep terraced slope to the bed of the Plistus. Corn is grown on the terraces below the sanctuary; and the slopes on the eastern side of the Castalian gorge are wooded with fine olive and mulberry trees. Across the valley, on the southern side of the Plistus, rise the bare precipitous cliffs of Mount Cirphis, capped with fir-woods. From the western end of the precipices which rise at the back of Delphi a high rocky ridge projects southward toward the bed of the Plistus. This ridge closes the valley of Delphi on the west, shutting out all view of the Crisaean plain and the gulf of Corinth, though a glimpse of the waters of the gulf is obtained from the stadium, the highest part of Delphi.
Thus, enclosed by a rocky ridge on the west, by tremendous precipices on the north and east, and faced on the south, across the valley of the Plistus, by the lower but still precipitous sides of Mount Cirphis, Delphi lay in a secluded mountain valley; and rising on terraces in a semicircular shape, it resembled an immense theatre, to which it has justly been compared by ancient and modern writers. The whole scene is one of stern and awful majesty, well fitted to be the seat of a great religious capital. In respect of natural scenery no contrast could well be more striking than that between the two great religious capitals of ancient Greece, Delphi and Olympia—Delphi clinging to the rugged side of barren mountains, with frowning precipices above and a profound glen below; Olympia stretched out on the level margin of a river that winds in stately curves among the corn-fields and vineyards of a smiling valley set between soft wooded hills.
LXXXVIII. Aeschines at Delphi.—That the place of assembly of the Amphictyonic Council at Delphi must have been situated near the chapel of St. Elias is shown by a passage of Aeschines, in which he says that the Cirrhaean plain lay spread beneath and in full view of the meeting-place of the Amphictyonic Council. The orator himself, he tells us, was one of the Athenian representatives at a meeting of the Council. Addressing it he pointed to the smiling and peaceful plain stretched at their feet, with its olive-groves and corn-fields, its cottages and potteries, and in the distance the shining waters of the gulf, with the port-town visible beside it. “You see,” he cried, “yonder plain tilled by the men of Amphissa and the potteries and cottages they have built. You see with your eyes the fortifications of the cursed and execrated port. You know for yourselves that these men levy tolls and take money from the sacred harbour.” He then reminded his hearers of the oath sworn by their ancestors that this fair plain should lie a wilderness for ever. His words were received with a tumult of applause, and next day at dawn the men of Delphi, armed with shovels and mattocks, marched down into the plain, razed the fortifications of the port to the ground, and gave the houses to the flames. It is refreshing to know that on their way back they were hotly pursued by the Amphissaeans in arms and had to run for their lives. This was the beginning of the chain of events which in a few months more brought Philip at the head of a Macedonian army into Greece and ended in the overthrow of Greek freedom at Chaeronea.
The view described by the orator, whose ill-omened eloquence brought all these miseries and disasters in its train, is to be obtained, not from the platform on which the chapel of St. Elias stands, but from a point a little way to the south-west of it, where the traveller coming from Delphi reaches the end of the high ridge that shuts in the valley of Delphi on the west. Here as he turns the corner the whole Crisaean plain, now covered with luxuriant olive-woods, comes suddenly into sight. The scene is again as rich and peaceful as it was before Aeschines raised his voice, like the scream of some foul bird snuffing the carrion afar off, and turned it into a desert. We may suppose either that in his time the Amphictyonic Council met at this point, or, what is far likelier, that the orator’s description of that day’s doings is more graphic than correct.
LXXXIX. The Pythian Tune.—Sacadas was said to be the first who played the Pythian air on the flute at Delphi. The tune has been described for us by Pollux and Strabo. The melody, intended to represent musically Apollo’s combat with the dragon, was played by a single flute, but now and then the trumpets and fifes struck in. First Apollo was heard preparing for the fight and choosing his ground. Then followed the challenge to the dragon, then the battle, indicated by an iambic measure. Here probably the music imitated the twanging of the silver bow and the swish of the arrows as they sped to their mark. It is expressly said that the gnashing of the monster’s teeth was heard, as he ground them together in his agony. Here the trumpets came in, not in long-drawn winding bouts, but in short single blasts, one perhaps for each arrow-shot, every flourish marking a hit. The shrill wailing notes of the fifes mimicked the dragon’s dying screams. Then the flute broke into a light lilting air, beating time to the triumphal measure trodden by the victorious god.
XC. The Lacedaemonian Trophy at Delphi.—The many statues of gods, admirals, and generals which formed the proud trophy of the Lacedaemonians at Delphi appear to have stood like soldiers in stiff formal rows at different heights on the steps of the pedestal, scowling at the Athenian trophy which probably faced them on the opposite side of the road.
This Lacedaemonian trophy, commemorative of the great naval victory of Aegospotami, is repeatedly referred to by Plutarch. He says that from the spoils of the battle Lysander set up bronze statues of himself and of all the admirals, together with golden stars of the Dioscuri; and elsewhere he tells us that in his time these old bronze statues of the admirals were covered with a beautiful blue patina, the growth of ages, so that people spoke of them as being true blue salts. Cicero specially mentions the statue of Lysander at Delphi. The reason for dedicating golden stars of the Dioscuri would seem to have been that Castor and Pollux were said to have appeared on the side of the Lacedaemonians at the battle of Aegospotami, just as they appeared on the Roman side at the battle of Lake Regillus. It is related that after the battle of Leuctra, which gave the death-blow to Spartan prestige and power, the golden stars disappeared from Delphi and were never seen again, as if in token that the star of Sparta’s fortunes had set. The dedication of the stars in memory of the appearance of the Dioscuri is an interesting confirmation of the view that the twins Castor and Pollux were the Morning and Evening Star, the equivalents of the Sanscrit Aśvins. It is notable that in Roman history the appearances of the Dioscuri as messengers of victory seem always to have taken place in the same season of the year, namely at the summer solstice or the first full moon after it. By a curious coincidence the old chronicler Holinshed reports that on the eve of the battle of Bannockburn, which was also Midsummer Eve, two men appeared at Glastonbury saying they were going to help the Scots in a battle next day; and a single knight in bright armour rode into Aberdeen on the afternoon of the battle and was seen to pass over into the Orkneys in the evening.[[9]]