Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

A vigorous blowing of the whistle roused the ship’s company at dawn. The vessel was at anchor off Itea, a starveling village not at all praised by those who have been forced to sample its meagre accommodations for a night. Fortunately it is no longer necessary to rely on these, for one may drive to Delphi in a few hours, and on a moonlight night the ride, while chilly, is said to be most delightful. Arriving as we did at early dawn, we were deprived of this experience, and set out from the village at once on landing to cover the nine miles to Kastri, some riding in carriages or spring carts,—locally called "sustas,"—some on mules, and others proceeding on foot. From afar we could already see the village, perched high on the side of the foothills of Parnassus, which rise abruptly some three miles away across a level plain. The plain proved to be delightful. Walled in on either hand by rocky cliffs, its whole bottom was filled with olive trees, through which vast grove the road wound leisurely along. Brooks babbled by through the grass of the great orchard, and the green of the herbage was spangled with innumerable anemones and other wild-flowers in a profusion of color. Far behind us in the background towered the Peloponnesian mountains, and before rose the forbidding cliffs that shut in Delphi. Above the distant Kastri, there was always the lofty summit of Parnassus, somewhat dwarfed by proximity and therefore a trifle disappointing to one whose preconceived notions of that classic mountain demanded splendid isolation, but still impressive.

THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI

Naturally on this long, level plain the carriages soon passed us, and disappeared in the hills ahead, while the footpath left the highway and plunged off boldly into the olive grove in the general direction of Delphi. When it attained the base of the sharp ascent of the mountain-side, it went straight up, leaving the road to find its more gradual way by zigzags and détours,—windings so long that it soon developed that the carriages which so long ago had distanced us were in turn displaced and were later seen toiling up the steep behind us! The prospect rearward was increasingly lovely as we climbed and looked down upon the plain. It resembled nothing so much as a sea of verdure, the olive trees pouring into it from the uplands like a river, and filling it from bank to bank. No wonder this plain was deemed a ground worth fighting for by the ancients.

Despite the fact that the snows of Parnassus were apparently so near, the climb was warm. The rocky hillside gave back the heat of the April sun, although it was cloudy, and progress became necessarily slow, in part because of the warmth and in larger part because of the increasing splendor of the view. The path bore always easterly into a narrow gorge between two massive mountains, a gorge that narrowed and narrowed as the climb proceeded. Before very long we passed through a wayside hamlet that lies halfway up the road, exchanged greetings with the inhabitants, who proved a friendly people anxious to set us right on the way to Delphi, and speedily emerged from the nest of buildings on the path again, with Kastri always ahead and above, and seemingly as distant as ever. It was Palm Sunday, we discovered, and the populace of the tiny village all bore sprigs of greenery, which they pressed upon us and which later turned out to be more political than religious in their significance, since it was not only the day of the Lord’s triumphal entry but the closing day of the general elections as well.

Admiration for the green and fertile valley far behind now gave place to awe at the grim gorges before and the beetling cliffs towering overhead, up through which, like dark chimney flues, ran deep clefts in the rock, gloomy and mysterious, and doubtless potent in producing awe in the ancient mind by thus adding to the impressiveness of god-haunted Delphi. On the left the mountain rose abruptly and loftily to the blue; on the right the cliff descended sharply from the path to the dark depths of the ravine, while close on its other side rose again a neighboring mountain that inclosed this ever-narrowing gulch.

At last after a three-hour scramble over the rocks we attained Kastri, and found it a poor town lined with hovels, but, like Mount Zion, beautiful for situation. A brawling brook, fed by a spring above, dashed across the single street and lost itself in the depths of the ravine below. On either hand towered the steep sides of the surrounding cliffs, while before us the valley wound around a shoulder of the mountain and seemingly closed completely. Kastri did not always occupy this site, but once stood farther along around the mountain’s sharp corner, directly over the ancient shrine itself; and it was necessary for the French excavators who laid bare the ancient sites to have the village moved bodily by force and arms before any work could be done,—a task that was accomplished with no little difficulty, but which, when completed, enabled the exploration of what was once the most famous of all Pagan religious shrines. Curiously enough the restoration of the temples at Delphi fell to the hands of the French, the descendants of those very Gauls who, centuries before, had laid waste the shrines and treasuries of Loxias. We stopped long enough at Vasili’s to sample some "mastika,"—a native liqueur resembling anisette, very refreshing on a warm day,—and then walked on to the ruins which lie some few minutes’ walk farther around the shoulder of the mountain.

Nothing could well be more impressive than the prospect that opened out as we came down to the famous site itself. No outlet of the great vale was to be seen from this point, for the gorge winds about among the crags which rise high above and drop far below to the base of the rocky glen. Human habitation there is none. Kastri was now out of sight behind. On the roadside and in the more gradual slopes of the ravine below one might find olive trees, and here and there a plane. Beyond, through the mysterious windings of the defile runs the road to Arakhova. It was on this spot that Apollo had his most famous shrine, the abode of his accredited priestesses gifted with prophecy; and no fitter habitation for the oracle could have been found by the worshipers of old time than this gloomy mountain glen where nature conspires with herself to overawe mankind by her grandeur.

The legend has it that Apollo, born as all the world knows in far-off Delos, transferred his chief seat to Delphi just after his feat of slaying the Python. He is said to have followed that exploit by leaping into the sea, where he assumed the form of a huge dolphin (delphis), and in this guise he directed the course of a passing Cretan ship to the landing place at Itea, or Crissa. There, suddenly resuming his proper shape of a beautiful youth he led the wondering crew of the vessel up from the shore to the present site of Delphi, proclaimed himself the god, and persuaded the sailors to remain there, build a temple and become his priests, calling the spot “Delphi.” Tradition also asks us to believe that there then existed on the spot a cavern, from which issued vapors having a peculiar effect on the human mind, producing in those who breathed them a stupor in which the victim raved, uttering words which were supposed to be prophetic. Over this cave, if it existed, the temple was erected; and therein the priestess, seated on a tripod where she might inhale the vapors, gave out her answers to suppliants, which answers the corps of priests later rendered into hexameter verses having the semblance of sense, but generally so ambiguous as to admit of more than one interpretation. All sorts of tales are told of the effect of the mephitic gas on the pythoness—how she would writhe in uncontrollable fury, how her hair would rise on her head as she poured forth her unintelligible gibberish, and so forth; stories well calculated to impress a credulous race “much given to religion” as St. Paul so sagely observed. If there ever was any such cavern at all, it has disappeared, possibly filled with the débris of the ruins or closed by earthquake. Perhaps there never was any cave at all. In any event the wonders of the Delphic oracle were undoubtedly explicable, as such phenomena nearly always are, by perfectly natural facts. It has been pointed out that the corps of priests, visited continually as they were by people from all parts of the ancient world, were probably the best informed set of men on earth, and the sum total of their knowledge thus gleaned so far surpassed that of the ordinary mortal and so far exceeded the average comprehension that what was perfectly natural was easily made to appear miraculous. To the already awed suppliant, predisposed to belief and impressed by the wonderful natural surroundings of the place, it was not hard to pass off this world-wide information as inspired truth. Nor was it a long step from this, especially for clever men such as the priests seem to have been, to begin forecasting future events by basing shrewd guesses on data already in hand—these guesses being received with full faith by the worshiper as god-given prophecy. As an added safeguard the priests often handed down their predictions in ambiguous form, as, for example, in the famous answer sent to Crœsus, when he asked if he should venture an expedition against Cyrus—“If Crœsus shall attack Cyrus, he will destroy a great empire.” Such answers were of course agreeable to the suppliant, for they admitted of flattering interpretation; and it was only after trial that Crœsus discovered that the “great empire” he was fated to destroy was his own. At other times the guesses, not in ambiguous form, went sadly astray—as in the case where the Pythian, after balancing probabilities and doubtless assuming that the gods were always on the side of the heaviest battalions, advised the Athenians not to hope to conquer the invading Persians. This erroneous estimate was the natural one for informed persons to make,—and it is highly probable that it was influenced in part by presents from the Persian king, for such corruption of the oracle was by no means unknown. In fact it led to the ultimate discrediting of the oracle, and it was not long before the shrine ceased to be revered as a fountain of good advice. Nevertheless for many hundred years it was held in unparalleled veneration by the whole ancient world. Pilgrims came and went. Cities and states maintained rich treasuries there, on which was founded a considerable banking system. Games in honor of Pythian Apollo were celebrated in the stadium which is still to be seen high up on the mountain-side above the extensive ruins of the sacred precinct. Temple after temple arose about the great main shrine of the god. Even distant Cnidus erected a treasury, and victorious powers set up trophy after trophy there for battles won by land or sea—the politeness of the time preventing the mention of any Hellenic victim by name.