The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, Vol. 1 of 2

by Karl Otfried Müller

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.