Delphi (24 page)

In summer 356, under Phocian occupation, the exiled Delphian Astycrates was welcomed back to the city, and the pro-Thebans elements were driven out. This was, for now, a conflict between Phocis and Thebes: the
Phocians even began to pay the fine originally imposed on them by the Amphictyony. Indeed they did everything they could to demonstrate their ritual respect for the sanctuary: their general Philomelus promised he would respect the sanctuary's treasures and even managed to turn the chance remark of the Pythia (along the lines of “do as you please”) into an oracular response to support his occupation.
²⁹
But a year later, in 355
BC
, the Amphictyony were forced into action to protect the sanctuary they were supposed to be running: sacred war was declared on Phocis for their occupation of the sanctuary. It was not, however, a united front. Several Amphictyonic members chose to remain neutral. Athens, though often represented on the Amphictyonic council, in reality supported her old ally Phocis, and, in a complete volte-face from the time Phocis had occupied the sanctuary a century before, Sparta now also supported Phocis (because Sparta was now anti-Thebes, having suffered defeat at their hands at Leuctra in 371).

It must have been an odd experience to visit Delphi in the 350s
BC
. On the one hand, the sanctuary was still a building site, its oracle functioning in some kind of temporary setup. On the other hand, the sanctuary was militarily occupied by the Phocians. They had destroyed the stele in the sanctuary on which the original Amphictyonic charge of impiety against them had been inscribed. And they had even begun to build fortress-like protective walls across the crags of the Parnassian mountains around Delphi to defend their position from attack (the remnants of which can still be seen today).
³⁰

But the Phocian bravado disguised despair. The Phocian general Philomelus threw himself off a cliff in 354
BC
, and his brother Onomarchus took over and was later replaced after being killed in battle (the Phocians proceeded to dedicate statues of Philomelus and Onomarchus in the Apollo sanctuary in their honor). The Phocian force faced opposition from within Delphi as well: Onomarchus was forced to expel seven families from the city and confiscate their property to keep control. As the conflict continued, the Phocians were even forced to go back on their promise not to mistreat the sanctuary's many sacred dedications. Money was needed to pay for the occupation, and the only source available was
the money at Delphi gathered for the temple rebuilding and from oracular consultation, and, when this ran out, they started melting down Delphi's precious metal offerings. The list of fabulous dedications destroyed during the years 356–46
BC
is heart-rendering: the gold tripod cauldron from the serpent column of Plataea; the crater of Alyattes, the sixth century Lydian king; what had survived from the 548
BC
fire of Croesus's golden lion; his gold and silver mixing bowls along with most of the rest of his dedications; the statue of Nike from the Sicilian tyrant Gelon along with other offerings from Sicilian rulers and probably the golden statue of Alexander I of Macedon offered after the Persians Wars. In total, Diodorus Siculus tells us that ten thousand talents'–worth of silver were melted down.
³¹

And yet, between 353 and 351
BC
, the committee for the reconstruction of the temple met each year at Delphi to discuss the rebuilding, which was supposedly still under way.
³²
Similarly, at least the pro-Phocian states seem to have continued to relate issues to the oracle. Dating from the middle of the fourth century
BC
, there is a series of inscriptions relating to changes in ritual practice in Athens, all of which seems to indicate backing from a Delphic consultation. At the same time, however, these consultations may have been cloaked in a degree of suspicion about Delphic bias. It is not without irony that the fullest contemporary report we have of the process of decision making involved in consulting the Delphi oracle comes from Athens at exactly the time when Delphi is experiencing one of the oddest periods in its history. In 352
BC
, according to inscribed reports in Athens, the Athenians were debating what to do with sacred lands belong to the sanctuary of Demeter and Core at Eleusis, which were subject to long-running disputes over ownership between the Athenians and Megarians. They could not decide whether or not to allow cultivation of the sacred land, and referred the issue to Delphi. But instead of simply sending their ambassadors to Delphi with this question, they recorded in the inscription that they had written out the two options (to cultivate or not to cultivate) on sheets of tin. These sheets were subsequently wrapped in wool, then placed in a bronze jug, shaken around, and one was placed inside a gold jug, the other inside
a silver jug. Both jugs were then sealed, so that no one knew which jug contained which option. The question the Athenians decided to put to the oracle was simply which jug they should pick. This is an extraordinary procedure and without parallel: that the Athenians chose to inscribe and publicly display the complex lengths they went to in order to ensure that no one—in Athens or at Delphi—could influence the response from the god. Only the god would know what was in each jug and indeed what the real question was in the first place. The answer came back that they should leave the land uncultivated, and the Athenians subsequently obeyed.
³³

We know too that during this period of occupation, a number of Delphic festivals continued. In the period 356–46
BC
, the Thyades, female worshipers of Dionysus from Delphi, joined the Thyades from Athens who had processed from their city to the sanctuary, in order to take part in their regularly held (every two years) joint festival in honor of Dionysus. This ritual celebration took place not in the sanctuary of Delphi, but high in the wilds of the Parnassian mountains. The Delphian and Athenian celebrants processed together from the sanctuary by torchlight up into the mountains to take part in a series of Dionysiac revels. In this particular period, at the end of one such celebration, the Thyades lost their way returning down from the mountains to Delphi and strayed into Amphissan (enemy) territory. The women of Amphissa, keen to ensure the lost female worshipers were not maltreated, looked after the group and made sure that they found the path that would take them home.
³⁴

This was not the only festival in honor of Dionysus celebrated at Delphi. Plutarch in the first century
AD
tells us of several others (which will be examined in a later chapter). The difficulty, as always, is with knowing whether Plutarch's testimony should be extrapolated back in time. Despite the fact that Dionysus may always have been worshiped at Delphi, it is only now in the fourth century
BC
that his cult can be archaeologically attested to. From the middle of the century, dedications appear to Dionysus in an area just to the east of the Apollo sanctuary that would become (or indeed may have been already) the established cult location of the god (see
plate 1
). In 339–38
BC
, a paean was written by Philodamus honoring Dionysus at Delphi, and complemented by the introduction of
a statue of the god offered by the Cnidians set up in the area of the theater (see
plate 2
).
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And Dionysus even made it on to the temple of Apollo itself. The temple construction, interrupted by the different wars of the fourth century, would finally be completed in the 320s
BC
. The new pedimental sculptures adorning it were the work of Athenian sculptor Praxias and finished (probably by c. 327
BC
) by another Athenian, Androsthenes. Made in Pentelic (Athenian) marble, the east pediment displayed Apollo, hunched on his tripod, while the west pediment portrayed an Apollo-like Dionysus, playing the lyre (
fig. 7.1
). Much scholarly ink has been spilled over the meaning of the sculptural choice for these pediments, and particularly the elevation of Dionysus to equal billing with Apollo. Some have
seen it as a result of Macedonian influence, others of Athenian. Yet what it reflected above the politics of influence was the increasingly wide and public scope of worship at Delphi, with major cult areas dedicated not only to Dionysus but also to Asclepius and Hermes in the fourth century, alongside the continued worship of a variety of other gods.
³⁶

Figure 7.1
. Statues of the gods Apollo (
left
) and Dionysus (
right
) from the east and west pediments, respectively, of the fourth century
BC
temple of Apollo in the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi (Museum at Delphi).

By 351
BC
, the Phocian cause looked almost lost, although they managed to hang on to control of Delphi until 346
BC
. They were supposedly so desperate for money by this time that one of their last commanders, Phalaecus, even resorted to following lines from Homer's
Iliad
that intimated there might be wealth beneath the temple of Apollo. He set his soldiers to work digging up the area around the sacred hearth and tripod, but to no avail.
³⁷
What finally brought their occupation of Delphi to an end, however, was not so much the absence of money, as the arrival of one man: Philip, king of Macedon.

Philip had in fact already been involved with Delphi in the first year of the Phocian occupation. In his dealings with the Chalcidians in 356
BC
, he had negotiated a treaty, which he called on the oracle at Delphi to put its stamp of approval to; a copy of this was later set up at the sanctuary.
³⁸
Now, however, at the request of the Amphictyony, he came with his forces to expel the Phocians from the sanctuary. This he did in 346
BC
, having first successfully neutralized Athens's support for Phocis through another peace treaty of his own with Athens.
³⁹
The Phocians were expelled from the temple and the Amphictyony. Those who had fled abroad were put under a curse, as was anyone who had touched the money that came from the melting down of the sanctuary's treasures. Those who remained were forced to break up their cities within Phocian territory into villages of not more than fifty houses. Phocis was handed an enormous fine—an annual tribute of sixty talents—until such a time as they had repaid everything they had destroyed at the sanctuary (valued by Diodorus Siculus at ten thousand talents). The sanctuary was given back to the Delphians. The pro-Phocian families (including that of Astycrates) were once again expelled, and those exiled by the Phocians were allowed to return. In a statement of the seriousness of Phocian actions, the statues of their generals dedicated in the sanctuary
during their occupation were targeted for removal and destruction: the only instance of such a decision in Delphic history.
⁴⁰

In contrast, Philip of Macedon was feted as the savior of Delphi. Even though Thebes had borne the brunt of the conflict, Philip took the glory. He presided over the Pythian games in 346
BC
and was given the seats on the Amphictyony formerly occupied by the Phocians. Indeed in the lists of attendees at their meetings, his representatives came second, while the Thessalians, who presided over the council, came in first (the latter were pro-Macedonian in any case). Philip was voted promanteia by the Delphians, and a statue of him was erected in the Apollo sanctuary, possibly by the Amphictyony themselves. In turn, the Amphictyony was later said to have proclaimed itself at the center and beginning of a new era, an era of
koine eirene
—“common peace.”
⁴¹

Athens—increasingly wary of Philip's actions—especially after their peace treaty with him had not delivered the rebalancing of power in central Greece they had hoped for, boycotted the Pythian games celebrated by Philip in 346
BC
, lost their right of promanteia with the oracle (just as Philip got his), and even considered going to war against Philip and the Amphictyonic league. Demosthenes, the famous Athenian orator whose anti-Philip stance would eventually convince Athens to face Philip in battle at Chaeroneia in 338
BC
, characterized life at Delphi during the 340s under Philip's auspices by saying that the new government at Delphi was so tyrannical that if anyone mentioned the sacred treasures, they were thrown off a cliff. And Philip, Demosthenes argued, was so intent on holding on to to authority at Delphi that, if he could not be there to celebrate its games, rather than allowing another city to do it, he would send his slaves.
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The impression one gets of Delphi through the speeches of Athenian orators like Demosthenes is of a place of critical importance not only due to the authority of its oracle, but also to its own long existence and long-standing interaction with Athens over that time. Delphi was a source of authority and tradition, an important element of Greek society, which the orators, especially Demosthenes, increasingly portrayed as besmirched by Philip.
⁴³
And at the same time as Delphi was characterized in this way by the Athenian orators, Athens's physical involvement with
Delphi was very selective: the Athenians were boycotting its games, offering no civic dedications in the sanctuary, and refusing to contribute financially to the reconstruction of its temple. Yet the Athenians were active as part of the commission tasked with overseeing the rebuilding (as
naopoioi
), and as craftsmen and suppliers for it. Nor is this patchwork approach to Delphic interaction only true for Athens, the plentiful inscriptional evidence from this period allows us to form a picture in which many different cities and states made particular decisions about what kinds of activities at Delphi they wanted to be involved in.
⁴⁴
And at the same time, the inscriptional evidence reveals the degree to which individuals throughout the Greek world sought to be part of the construction: many individuals gave small amounts, most half a drachma (about a day's wage for an Athenian juror), but some gave only enough to cover the cost of their donation being inscribed (and sometimes even less than that). Donating was, however, clearly a huge source of pride: Clearistus of Carystus brought his children to Delphi in order to donate to the reconstruction fund and, while there, showed them the statue of his grandfather Aristocles of Carystus, who was represented on the monument to Spartan victory at Aegospotamoi.
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