8. It has appeared incomprehensible to many, why Apollo should be a god of prophecy, and how this office can be reconciled with his other attributes. Many have been satisfied with supposing an accidental association of music, prophecy, and archery, without being able to discover any principle of union. In the following pages we shall endeavour to account for the combination [pg 345] in the same deity of attributes apparently so unconnected.
Prophecy, according to the ideas of the ancients, is the announcement of fate (of μοῖρα, αἶσα). Now fate was considered to be the right order of things, the established physical and moral harmony of the world, in which every thing occupies the place fitted for its capacities and function. Fate therefore coincides with supreme Justice (Θέμις); which notion Hesiod expressed by saying that Zeus married Themis, who produced to him the Fates. The pious, religious mind could not separate Zeus and Destiny: Fate was the will and thought of the highest of the gods. A man whose actions agreed with this established harmony, and who followed the appointed course of things, acted justly (κατ᾽ αἶσαν, ἐναίσιμα); the violent and arrogant man endeavoured at least to break through the laws of Fate. Now it was this right order of events which the ancient oracles were supposed to proclaim; and hence they were called θέμιστες, ordinances or laws of justice.[1399] They were not imagined to be derived from a foreknowledge of futurity; but merely to declare that which, according to the necessary course of events, must come to pass. It cannot indeed fail to surprise us that the oracle was delivered by a woman in a state of ecstasy, and not as the result of serious reflection. But do we not find in the earlier period of Grecian philosophy (especially in the Ionic school) every new and profound discovery [pg 346] appearing as the work of sudden illumination and ecstasy, and indeed often accompanied with miraculous circumstances? And would not the mind in that age have naturally been raised to such an excited and rapturous state, when, endeavouring to escape from the narrow bounds of daily life, it recognised in the general course of events the influence of the gods? The means adopted to promote this inspiration, the vapour of the chasm, the chewing of the laurel-leaves, the drinking of the water of the well, are of the most innocent description. We do not however mean to deny that these ceremonies soon became an unmeaning form, the oracle being made subservient to political purposes.
The custom of a woman giving utterance to the decrees of the god originated partly from the peculiar estimation in which women were held by the Dorians, and partly from the natural tendency of the female sex (so often remarked by the ancients) to fits of ecstasy. Prophetesses were elsewhere also frequently connected with temples of Apollo; as, for instance, Manto, during the fabulous age, with the Ismenian and Clarian temples, and Cassandra with that of Thymbra, whose nature was nearly allied to that of the sibyls, who likewise were always connected with temples of the same god. As to the manner in which the responses of the Pythian priestess were delivered, Heracleitus of Ephesus says, that “the god, whose oracle is at Delphi, neither utters nor conceals any thing, but gives signs;”[1400] which at least serves to contradict [pg 347] the common idea of the designed ambiguity of this oracle.
This temple must however have lost much of its dignity, when it condescended, for the sake of rich offerings from the Lydian monarch, to answer enigmatically the insidious questions which Crœsus put to the Grecian oracles. In earlier times a Greek would not have dared, without the greatest faith in its responses, to approach the temple, which had regulated almost the whole political state of Greece, conducted its colonies, instituted the sacred armistices, and established by its authority the legislation of Lycurgus. For in general the god had not to announce what would, but what should take place; and he frequently declared events not as to happen independently of his injunction, but as the consequence of his answers. All Dorians were in a certain state of dependence on the Pythian temple; and as long as that race possessed the ascendency in Greece, the hearth in the centre of the earth (μεσόμφαλος ἑστία), with its eternal fire, at Pytho,[1401] was considered as the Prytaneum and religious centre of the whole of Greece.[1402]
9. In ancient Greece, however, prophecy was by no means derived altogether from Apollo, but merely that species of it which proceeded from a rapturous and entranced state of the soul. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic and imaginative frame of mind, in which cool grottos, with their flowing waters and hollow echoes, seemed to transport the votary into a former world, was derived from the Nymphs: and the Bacidæ, who were considered as under the influence of the Nymphs [pg 348] (νυμφόπληκτοι), have no more to do with Apollo than the σεληνιακοὶ, among whom Musæus is reckoned.
Of the various modes of divination from omens,[1403] only two or three were referred to this god, and that rather accidentally than in accordance with any fixed principle:[1404] for example, divination from lightning,[1405] from birds,[1406] from sacrifices,[1407] and from the drawing of lots, which, however, was either disdained by him, as below his dignity, or transferred to Hermes.[1408]
Connecting the idea of Apollo, which we have now acquired, with our preceding inquiries, we find the whole combine in an easy and natural manner. Apollo, as a divine hero, overcomes every obstacle to the order and laws of heaven; and those are heavenly regulations and laws which he proclaims as the prophet of Zeus. By these, also, tranquillity, brightness, and harmony, are every where established, and every thing destructive of them is removed. The belief in a fixed system of laws, of which Apollo was the executor, formed the foundation of all prophecy in his worship.
10. We have next to consider for what reason and to what extent music was included among the solemnities (τιμαὶ) in honour of Apollo. On this point, however, [pg 349] we must guard against inferring too much from the poets. By the ancients he was represented as playing on the cithara (φόρμιγξ), frequently in the midst of a chorus of Muses, singing and dancing;[1409] whose place in the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo is filled by ten goddesses, among whom “Ares and Hermes vault and spring” (perhaps like Cretan tumblers or κυβιστητῆρες), “whilst Apollo, in a beautifully woven garment, plays, and at the same time dances with quick motion of the feet;” for Apollo was not considered as merely a god of music; thus Pindar addresses him as the god of dance.[1410] But we are not warranted from this poetical fiction to infer a religious union of the Muses and Apollo, nor can such a connexion be any where traced; indeed the worship of these goddesses was, both in origin and locality,[1411] entirely different from that of Apollo. Besides, amongst the early writers, Apollo is never considered as the patron of poets, or invoked, as the Muses are, to grant poetical inspiration: players on the cithara alone were under his protection. The cithara was his attribute, both in many ancient statues[1412] and also on the coins of Delphi; it is his ancient and appropriate instrument; the deeper-toned lyre, with its arched sounding-board, Apollo received from Hermes:[1413] [pg 350] the instances in which he is represented as bearing it are very rare.
11. But for what reason is Apollo described as playing upon the cithara? for no other, assuredly, than that the music of the cithara was from times of remote antiquity connected with his worship; and that, because it appears best fitted to express a tranquil and simple harmony; the worship of Apollo, as we have frequently remarked, always endeavouring to produce a solemn quiet and stillness of the soul. Pindar beautifully says of this god that he “invented the citharis and bestows the muse on whom he wills, in order to introduce peaceful law into the heart.”[1414] To this also refer the golden κηληδόνες, which, according to the account of the same poet,[1415] were suspended from the roof of the brazen temple at Delphi; and they were without doubt intended as emblems of the mild and soothing influence of the god. This was naturally the chief object of music when used in purifications, and as an incantation (ἐπῳδὴ); when passions were to be overcome, and pain soothed; and in ancient times this was one of its most important applications.[1416] Chrysothemis, an ancient Pythian minstrel of mythology, was hence called the son of Carmanor, the expiatory priest of Tarrha;[1417] as also Thaletas, the Cretan poet, purified Sparta by music, when attacked with [pg 351] the plague.[1418] The Pythagoreans, who paid an especial honour to Apollo, went still further, and employed music as a charm to soothe the passions, attune the spirit to harmony, and cure both body and mind. Hence they much preferred the cithara to the flute,[1419] as, according to Grecian ideas, there was something in the sound of the flute wild, and at the same time gloomy; this, too, is the reason why Apollo disliked the music of that instrument.[1420] This also explains his contest with Marsyas, the Phrygian Silenus and flute-player, whose tough skin, having been stript off by the conqueror, always moved (according to the report of the inhabitants of Celænæ), with joy, as was believed, at the sound of flutes.[1421]
The flute was not an instrument of much antiquity among the Greeks; Homer only mentions it as used by the Trojans.[1422] In the time of Hesiod it had been introduced at the comus, the band of noisy revellers.[1423] But the cithara alone for a long time kept its place as the instrument for the chorus: even in the time of Alcman flute-players came mostly from Asia Minor; and their names (Sambas, Adon, Telos[1424]) frequently had, from this circumstance, a barbarous sound. This kind of music was principally adopted in places where [pg 352] Dionysus was worshipped; for instance, in Bœotia. It was of course also much used in the rites of the Phrygian Magna Mater, and of the Phrygian Pan:[1425] hence Pindar, who inherited the character of a flute-player from his father, dedicated a shrine to the mother of the gods, and to Pan.[1426] When, however, it had become common throughout Greece, it could not be excluded from a place so celebrated for music as Delphi, and Apollo's ear became less fastidious. Alcman and Corinna, indeed, were too partial to that art (the former as being a Lydian, the latter a Bœotian), when they represented Apollo himself playing on the flute.[1427] This instrument, however, had at that time been adopted even in the sacred exhibition of the Delphian worship: a dirge on the death of the Python[1428] (nominally the production of Olympus a Phrygian musician, contemporary with, or somewhat later than, Terpander),[1429] was played on the flute in the Lydian strain, and probably formed a part of that dramatic representation. Moreover, this instrument was used to accompany Prosodia (songs which were sung on the way to a temple) in the procession to Tempe, and in the Pentathlon at the gymnastic contests.[1430] A peculiar species of flute, from being used in pæans, obtained the name of the Pythian:[1431] yet the music of the flute, combined with singing (αὐλῳδία), in lyric and elegiac [pg 353] measures, was excluded from the Pythian games, after it had once been heard, as making too gloomy an impression:[1432] for all sadness, and therefore all plaintive strains, were every where excluded from the worship of Apollo; and the music in his temples was always intended to have an enlivening and tranquillizing effect upon the mind.