The three priestesses of Dodona with their venerable oak, and the priestess of Delphi sitting on her tripod under the influence of a certain gas or vapor exhaling from the rock, were alike competent to determine these difficult points: and we shall have constant occasion to notice in this history with what complete faith both the question was put and the answer treasured up—what serious influence it often exercised both upon public and private proceeding. The hexameter verses in which the Pythian priestess delivered herself were indeed often so equivocal or unintelligible, that the most serious believer, with all anxiety to interpret and obey them, often found himself ruined by the result. Yet the general faith in the oracle was no way shaken by such painful experience. For as the unfortunate issue always admitted of being explained upon two hypotheses—either that the god had spoken falsely, or that his meaning had not been correctly understood—no man of genuine piety ever hesitated to adopt the latter. There were many other oracles throughout Greece besides Delphi and Dodona; Apollo was open to the inquiries of the faithful at Ptoon in Boeotia, at Abæ in Phocis, at Branchidæ near Miletus, at Patara in Lycia, and other places: in like manner, Zeus gave answers at Olympia, Poseidon at Tænarus, Amphiaraus at Thebes, Amphilochus at Mallus, etc. And this habit of consulting the oracle formed part of the still more general tendency of the Greek mind to undertake no enterprise without having first ascertained how the gods viewed it, and what measures they were likely to take. Sacrifices were offered, and the interior of the victim carefully examined, with the same intent: omens, prodigies, unlooked-for coincidences, casual expressions, etc., were all construed as significant of the divine will. To sacrifice with a view to this or that undertaking, or to consult the oracle with the same view, are familiar expressions embodied in the language. Nor could any man set about a scheme with comfort until he had satisfied himself in some manner or other that the gods were favorable to it.
The disposition here adverted to is one of these mental analogies pervading the whole Hellenic nation, which Herodotus indicates. And the common habit among all Greeks of respectfully listening to the oracle of Delphi will be found on many occasions useful in maintaining unanimity among men not accustomed to obey the same political superior. In the numerous colonies especially, founded by mixed multitudes from distant parts of Greece, the minds of the emigrants were greatly determined toward cordial coöperation by their knowledge that the expedition had been directed, the oecist indicated, and the spot either chosen or approved by Apollo of Delphi. Such in most cases was the fact: that god, according to the conception of the Greeks, "takes delight always in the foundation of new cities, and himself in person lays the first stone."
These are the elements of union with which the historical Hellenes take their start: community of blood, language, religious point of view, legends, sacrifices, festivals, and also (with certain allowances) of manners and character. The analogy of manners and character between the rude inhabitants of the Arcadian Cynætha and the polite Athens, was, indeed, accompanied with wide differences; yet if we compare the two with foreign contemporaries, we shall find certain negative characteristics of much importance common to both. In no city of historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, feet, etc.; or castration; or selling of children into slavery; or polygamy; or the feeling of unlimited obedience toward one man: all customs which might be pointed out as existing among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, etc. The habit of running, wrestling, boxing, etc., in gymnastic contests, with the body perfectly naked, was common to all Greeks, having been first adopted as a Lacedæmonian fashion in the fourteenth Olympiad: Thucydides and Herodotus remark that it was not only not practised, but even regarded as unseemly, among non-Hellenes. Of such customs, indeed, at once common to all the Greeks, and peculiar to them as distinguished from others, we cannot specify a great number, but we may see enough to convince ourselves that there did really exist, in spite of local differences, a general Hellenic sentiment and character, which counted among the cementing causes of a union apparently so little assured.
During the two centuries succeeding B.C. 776, the festival of the Olympic Zeus in the Pisatid gradually passed from a local to a national character, and acquired an attractive force capable of bringing together into temporary union the dispersed fragments of Hellas, from Marseilles to Trebizond. In this important function it did not long stand alone. During the sixth century B.C., three other festivals, at first local, became successively nationalized—the Pythia near Delphi, the Isthmia near Corinth, the Nemea near Cleone, between Sicyon and Argos.
In regard to the Pythian festival, we find a short notice of the particular incidents and individuals by whom its reconstitution and enlargement were brought about—a notice the more interesting inasmuch as these very incidents are themselves a manifestation of something like pan-Hellenic patriotism, standing almost alone in an age which presents little else in operation except distinct city interests. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to the Delphinian Apollo was composed (probably in the seventh century B.C.), the Pythian festival had as yet acquired little eminence. The rich and holy temple of Apollo was then purely oracular, established for the purpose of communicating to pious inquirers "the counsels of the Immortals." Multitudes of visitors came to consult it, as well as to sacrifice victims and to deposit costly offerings; but while the god delighted in the sound of the harp as an accompaniment to the singing of pæans, he was by no means anxious to encourage horse-races and chariot-races in the neighborhood. Nay, this psalmist considers that the noise of horses would be "a nuisance", the drinking of mules a desecration to the sacred fountains, and the ostentation of fine-built chariots objectionable, as tending to divert the attention of spectators away from the great temple and its wealth. From such inconveniences the god was protected by placing his sanctuary "in the rocky Pytho"—a rugged and uneven recess, of no great dimensions, embosomed in the southern declivity of Parnassus, and about two thousand feet above the level of the sea, while the topmost Parnassian summits reach a height of near eight thousand feet. The situation was extremely imposing, but unsuited by nature for the congregation of any considerable number of spectators; altogether impracticable for chariot-races; and only rendered practicable by later art and outlay for the theatre as well as for the stadium. Such a site furnished little means of subsistence, but the sacrifices and presents of visitors enabled the ministers of the temple to live in abundance, and gathered together by degrees a village around it.
Near the sanctuary of Pytho, and about the same altitude, was situated the ancient Phocian town of Crissa, on a projecting spur of Parnassus—overhung above by the line of rocky precipice called the Phædriades, and itself overhanging below the deep ravine through which flows the river Peistus. On the other side of this river rises the steep mountain Cirphis, which projects southward into the Corinthian gulf—the river reaching that gulf through the broad Crissoean plain, which stretches westward nearly to the Locrian town of Amphissa; a plain for the most part fertile and productive, though least so in its eastern part immediately under the Cirphis, where the seaport Cirrha was placed. The temple, the oracle, and the wealth of Pytho, belong to the very earliest periods of Grecian antiquity. But the octennial solemnity in honor of the god included at first no other competition except that of bards, who sang each a pæan with the harp. The Amphictyonic assembly held one of its half-yearly meetings near the temple of Pytho, the other at Thermopylæ.
In those early times when the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was composed, the town of Crissa appears to have been great and powerful, possessing all the broad plain between Parnassus, Cirphis, and the gulf, to which latter it gave its name—and possessing also, what was a property not less valuable, the adjoining sanctuary of Pytho itself, which the Hymn identifies with Crissa, not indicating Delphi as a separate place. The Crissæans doubtless derived great profits from the number of visitors who came to visit Delphi, both by land and by sea, and Cirrha was originally only the name for their seaport. Gradually, however, the port appears to have grown in importance at the expense of the town, just as Apollonia and Ptolemais came to equal Cyrene and Barca, and as Plymouth Dock has swelled into Devonport; while at the same time the sanctuary of Pytho with its administrators expanded into the town of Delphi, and came to claim an independent existence of its own. The original relations between Crissa, Cirrha, and Delphi, were in this manner at length subverted, the first declining and the two latter rising. The Crissæans found themselves dispossessed of the management of the temple, which passed to the Delphians; as well as of the profits arising from the visitors, whose disbursements went to enrich the inhabitants of Cirrha. Crissa was a primitive city of the Phocian name, and could boast of a place as such in the Homeric Catalogue, so that her loss of importance was not likely to be quietly endured. Moreover, in addition to the above facts, already sufficient in themselves as seeds of quarrel, we are told that the Cirrhæans abused their position as masters of the avenue to the temple by sea, and levied exorbitant tolls on the visitors who landed there—a number constantly increasing from the multiplication of the transmarine colonies, and from the prosperity of those in Italy and Sicily. Besides such offence against the general Grecian public, they had also incurred the enmity of their Phocian neighbors by outrages upon women, Phocian as well as Argian, who were returning from the temple.
Thus stood the case, apparently, about B.C. 595, when the Amphictyonic meeting interfered—either prompted by the Phocians, or perhaps on their own spontaneous impulse, out of regard to the temple—to punish the Cirrhæans. After a war of ten years, the first sacred war in Greece, this object was completely accomplished by a joint force of Thessalians under Eurolychus, Sicyonians under Clisthenes, and Athenians under Alemæon; the Athenian Solon being the person who originated and enforced in the Amphictyonic council the proposition of interference. Cirrha appears to have made a strenuous resistance until its supplies from the sea were intercepted by the naval force of the Sicyonian Clisthenes. Even after the town was taken, its inhabitants defended themselves for some time on the heights of Cirphis. At length, however, they were thoroughly subdued. Their town was destroyed or left to subsist merely us a landing-place; while the whole adjoining plain was consecrated to the Delphian god, whose domains thus touched the sea. Under this sentence, pronounced by the religious fooling of Greece, and sanctified by a solemn oath publicly sworn and inscribed at Delphi, the land was condemned to remain untilled and implanted, without any species of human care, and serving only for the pasturage of cattle. The latter circumstance was convenient to the temple, inasmuch as it furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims who landed and came to sacrifice—for without preliminary sacrifice no man could consult the oracle; while the entire prohibition of tillage was the only means of obviating the growth of another troublesome neighbor on the seaboard. The ruin of Cirrha in this war is certain: though the necessity of a harbor for visitors arriving by sea, led to the gradual revival of the town upon a humbler scale of pretension. But the fate of Crissa is not so clear, nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or left subsisting in a position of inferiority with regard to Delphi. From this time forward, however, the Delphian community appear as substantive and autonomous, exercising in their own right the management of the temple; though we shall find, on more than one occasion, that the Phocians contest this right, and lay claim to the management of it for themselves—a remnant of that early period when the oracle stood in the domain of the Phocian Crissa. There seems, moreover, to have been a standing antipathy between the Delphians and the Phocians.
The Sacred War emanating from a solemn Amphictyonic decree, carried on jointly by troops of different states whom we do not know to have ever before coöperated, and directed exclusively toward an object of common interest—is in itself a fact of high importance, as manifesting a decided growth of pan-Hellenic feeling. Sparta is not named as interfering—a circumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both her power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with the Delphian oracle—while the Athenians appear as the chief movers, through the greatest and best of their citizens. The credit of a large-minded patriotism rests prominently upon them.
But if this sacred war itself is a proof that the pan-Hellenic spirit was growing stronger, the positive result in which it ended reinforced that spirit still farther. The spoils of Cirrha were employed by the victorious allies in founding the Pythian games. The octennial festival hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of the god, including no other competition except in the harp and the pæan, was expanded into comprehensive games on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only of music, but also of gymnastics and chariots—celebrated, not at Delphi itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Cirrha—and under the direct superintendence of the Amphictyons themselves. I have already mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such Athenians as gained victories in the Olympic and Isthmian games, thereby indicating his sense of the great value of the national games as a means of promoting Hellenic intercommunion. It was the same feeling which instigated the foundation of the new games on the Cirrhæan plain, in commemoration of the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to him. They were celebrated in the autumn, or first half of every third Olympic year; the Amphictyons being the ostensible Agonothets or administrators, and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their names. At the first Pythian ceremony (in B.C. 586), valuable rewards were given to the different victors; at the second (B.C. 582), nothing was conferred but wreaths of laurel—the rapidly attained celebrity of the games being such as to render any further recompense superfluous. The Sicyonian despot, Clisthenes himself, once the leader in the conquest of Cirrha, gained the prize at the chariot-race of the second Pythia. We find other great personages in Greece frequently mentioned as competitors, and the games long maintained a dignity second only to the Olympic, over which indeed they had some advantages; first, that they were not abused for the purpose of promoting petty jealousies and antipathies of any administering state, as the Olympic games were perverted by the Eleans on more than one occasion; next, that they comprised music and poetry as well as bodily display. From the circumstances attending their foundation, the Pythian games deserved, even more than the Olympic, the title bestowed on them by Demosthenes—"the common Agon of the Greeks."