Delphi (33 page)

But perhaps Augustus's actions need also to be seen in the wider context of his attitude toward Greece and indeed to the whole of his empire. After 27
BC
, he reorganized the provinces of his world. Greece, which had hitherto been part of the province of Macedon, was established as its own province (Achaea, covering mainland Greece and the Aegean islands) and put under the governorship of the Senate. As a result, Achaea, unlike other provinces under direct political and military control, was given the privilege of having no Roman army stationed within its boundaries. At the same time, Augustus's move to place Nicopolis within the Amphictyonic council underlines the importance he attached to the council and its famous sanctuary and its ability to act as a source of legitimization for his new creation. More crucially, it also highlights what would be a continuing misunderstanding within the Roman world of what the Amphictyony was supposed to represent. The Amphictyony had never, in its history, represented all of Greece, but instead had always been a partial representation composed of a mixed assembly of some of Greece's oldest tribes, more recent poleis, occasional Macedonian rulers and the Aetolians, and nearly always been dominated by cities and states from northern Greece. Nevertheless Augustus, and the Romans more generally, seem to have understood the Amphictyony, in the Roman writer Pliny's words, “as the general council of Greece.”
⁵
Such a view not only helps us understand why Augustus was so keen to ensure his new city had a voice in this “general council,” but also to understand why the Romans—over the next centuries—would
pay it so much attention when interacting with the province. Delphi, and its governing Amphictyony, had—in Roman eyes—a role it had never had at any point during its already long existence. Indeed, rather than Delphi occupying a meager role in Imperial history, thanks in part to the Roman confusion over Delphic and Amphictyonic history, the sanctuary was set to play a much bigger role than even the Delphian authorities could have hoped for or anticipated. Delphi, thanks to a Roman misunderstanding, was to have greatness thrust upon it.

Despite the continuing and increasing importance in what was now a much bigger world, however, there is no getting away from the fact that, especially in comparison to its active centrality in centuries past, Delphi was no longer quite the place it had been. It is telling that in the first century
AD
Delphi stopped paying performers who had been hired to entertain the crowds at its festivals in between the sacred athletic and musical competitions in cash, and rewarded them only with civic honors and titles. This was now a Delphi relying on its cultural worth rather than its financial muscle (much like the rest of Greece in this period). So keen perhaps were the Delphians to ensure that those receiving these new honors did not realize the change or feel cheated by it, they seem to have erased the mention of fees paid to performers in inscriptions already set up in the sanctuary. Polygnota, who had been paid to perform during the difficult Pythian festival of 86
BC
in the midst of Sullan robbery and barbarian invasion, for example, had her fee erased in the inscription testifying to her performance, as did Antipatrus of Eleuthernai, who had been similarly paid for his playing of the water organ during the Pythian festival in 90
BC
.
⁶

At the same time, the list of dedications at Delphi from the first century
AD
makes rather sad reading. The overwhelming majority are from Delphians or the Amphictyony, the two communities with a direct connection to (and interest in) the sanctuary. Yet neither of them seems to have put up a statue to Augustus. It is perhaps more than a little surprising that this latter was done instead by one of the exceptional “outsider” dedicators of this period, who had made an active effort to incorporate their honoring of Augustus into their relationship with
Delphi: the city of Athens, who erected a herm in honor of the emperor in the Apollo sanctuary.
⁷

We know relatively little about life at Delphi under the first Emperors. In
AD
15 the Emperor Tiberius, who maintained Augustan interest in the Olympics by participating in the equestrian races, took the province of Achaea away from the Senate and made it an Imperial province under the control of the
legatus
of the northern province of Moesia, only for it to be restored again to the Senate by Claudius (
AD
51–54) as part of his show of respect for the Senate and Augustan ancestral ways.
⁸
At the same time, the city of Delphi and the Amphictyony seem to have fallen into a pattern of honoring the emperor, which mirrors most towns around the empire. Both the city and the Amphictyony, for example, put up statues of Tiberius in the Apollo sanctuary, and the Amphictyony also put up a statue to the grand matriarch related to Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero: Agrippina Major.
⁹
At the same time, the city of Delphi seems to have embraced both Augustus's new epimeletai (his overseers attached to the Amphictyony), and Tiberius's choice of governor relatively quickly. The city put up a statue in honor of Poppaeus Sabinus, the governor, with an accompanying inscription in which they honored him for “saving the Greeks.” And they put up a statue of Theocles—the first of the epimeletai whose name survives to us (from the reign of Tiberius
AD
14–37)—in the sanctuary while he was in the post, and then another after he retired. It is not without irony (or indeed design) that Theocles was son of Eudamus of Nicopolis, Augustus's new city, only recently itself a member of the Amphictyony, and that the link between Nicopolis and the epimeletai would continue all the way through to the end of the second century
AD
. The very last of the epimeletai we can identify in the surviving records is M. Aurelius Niciadas, from none other than Augustus's city of Nicopolis.
¹⁰

The Emperor Caligula (
AD
37–41) was even more honored with statues, this time not only by the Amphictyony (who also put up a statue of his sister Drusilla), but also by a koinon (a “community alliance”) of Achaeans, Boeotians, Locrians, Phocians, and Euboeans, who must
have felt Delphi was the appropriate place for such a gesture.
¹¹
Yet it was under Claudius, who had returned Greece to the control of the Senate, that we first see sustained interest by the emperor in Delphi itself. A series of measures seems to have been undertaken by the senior Roman administrator, L. Iunius Gallio, at the emperor's instigation, to help repopulate the town surrounding the sanctuary and restore its former territory. Claudius himself, in the spirit of the Roman generals and the senators who had written to Delphi during the second and first centuries
BC
, wrote about these measures in an open letter to Delphi, marking the beginning of an almost unbroken chain of correspondence between Delphi and the emperor from the time of Claudius right through to the rule of Gallienus in the second half of the third century
AD
. This correspondence with Claudius—after the splendid isolation of Delphi during the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula—clearly meant a lot to the Delphians. It was inscribed publicly in the sanctuary, not just anywhere, but rather as part of the first set of correspondence inscribed on the western end of the south wall of the temple of Apollo (see
plate 2
).
¹²
Previously reserved for the records of the most serious moments in Delphic civic history, it now became the place for demonstrating the connection between Delphi and the emperor, not least because it was one of the most visible corners of the temple to visitors. Delphi was once again making sure that any greatness thrust upon it was as conspicuous as it could be.

Claudius seems to have been seen, particularly by the Delphians, as something of a heroic refounder of the sanctuary and city, not least because he had planned the city's repopulation and helped bolster its reputation as a place of importance even for the emperor. That gratitude is most evident in terms of dedications within the sanctuary. While no evidence for a statue of Claudius erected by the Amphictyony has survived, he was most certainly honored by the city of Delphi with a plethora of statues (including one set up 150 years after his reign). This makes sense: it was, after all, the city that benefited most from Claudius's patronage. Claudius, in response perhaps to the city's worship, even seems to have taken on the position of eponymous archon (chief magistrate) in the city, and by so doing he became the first Roman emperor to hold
an honorific magistracy in Greece.
¹³
The city of Delphi had managed to secure its own greatness and renown by attracting, involving, and holding onto Imperial attention and interest.

It is perhaps to this period, too, that we should date something of a reshuffle and revival in Delphic organization and fortune. New officials, like the “secretary of the archives,” were appointed. The inscribed records of honors given out by the city of Delphi in this period also show Delphi once again playing to a much wider, more international and cosmopolitan field, especially courting those who were stars of the stadium or the theater. It was in this period, too, that the theater at Delphi seems to have been embellished with a new frieze representing a series of mythical events (see
plate 2
). And perhaps most innovative of all, it is in this period that the first records appear of women competing, not in their own separate games, but on a par with the men in the same competitions. In the 40s
AD
, a surviving inscription attests that a woman called Tryphosa had victories in the running races at Delphi and Isthmia, the “first of maidens to do so.”
¹⁴

The arrival of the Emperor Nero to the throne, and subsequently in Greece, and indeed, at Delphi after
AD
54, must have been something of a shock for the sanctuary and its citizens, not least because he was most probably the first emperor actually to visit Delphi. Nero's desire, many have argued, was to achieve the status of a
periodonikes
(a victor in at least four of the six “Panhellenic” festivals). To that end, he began a tour of Greece, during which, he entered competitions at several of the Greek periodos games, inevitably winning, even in contests that were specially inserted into the competitions just for him. At the end of his tour of Greece, in a speech at Corinth on 28 November
AD
67, Nero is reported to have declared the freedom of Achaea from financial tribute to Rome. It was an action, which was said later by Plutarch to have won Nero a reprieve when being judged for his other harsh actions in the underworld, but was, in the world of the living, quickly revoked by his successor Vespasian in
AD
69.
¹⁵

At Delphi, Nero had been honored with a statue of himself by the Amphictyony in the sanctuary in the first year of his reign, and his
mother, Agrippina Minor (who had been the fourth wife of Claudius) was similarly honored with a statue by the city of Delphi. The Amphictyony's move to honor Nero seems to have paid off, as he reorganized the Amphictyony, returning it to its “ancestral order,” in particular giving the presidency and a majority of seats back to the Thessalians. On his visit to the sanctuary, Nero entered the athletic and musical competitions at the Pythian festival, and, not surprisingly, won. He was also said to have consulted the oracle. The Pythia's response, according to later sources, was said to have warned Nero to beware the seventy-third year. In return for this oracular advice, Nero gave ten thousand sesterces to the sanctuary, probably the largest sum given for an oracular consultation since King Croesus of Lydia had showered the sanctuary with gifts in return for his oracle responses in the sixth century
BC
. And just as that response had not turned out to be so straightforward (or indeed positive) for Croesus, so it was to be with Nero and, in part, for Delphi. It was not Nero's seventy-third year that turned out to be the difficulty. Rather it was his rival's, Galba's, who, in
his
seventy-third year, revolted against Nero and became his successor. Once again, it seems, the oracle's ambiguous response to Nero had been “proved” right. But any increase in the oracle's reputation must have been marred by the fact that Galba also reclaimed for Rome the ten thousand sesterces originally given by Nero to Delphi.
¹⁶

Yet whatever Nero had given (or tried to give) with one hand, he had taken away with the other. He sent veteran soldiers to live on the Cirrha plain, on what had been for centuries land sacred to the god Apollo. He also took, according to Pliny, some five hundred statues from the sanctuary at Delphi to adorn his Golden House in Rome. In some cases this action simply led to the removal of dedications from the sanctuary altogether—as if they had never been there. In others, it left a forlorn reminder of the removal and a confused, if not meaningless, role for the remainder. Nero, for example, was said to have taken a shine to one of the statues from the group of Scylla and Hydna, dedicated by the Amphictyony after the sea victory against the Persians at Artemisium in 480
BC
. Now, over five hundred years later, Nero chose to remove
the statue of one of these mythological heroines, leaving the other behind.
¹⁷
The
damnatio memoriae
that took place after Nero's death only placed emphasis more strongly on the negative aspects of Nero's interaction with Delphi. Later sources speak of a further series of oracular responses to Nero: that the oracle had told Nero it would prefer some poor man's meager offerings to the emperor's lavish gifts, and that it had alluded to Nero's murdering of his own mother (whose statue stood in the sanctuary) by saying “Nero, Orestes, Alcmaeon, all murderers of their mothers.” In response, according to these later sources, Nero's uncontrolled fury led him to attempt to block the mouth of the cave (from which vapors emerged to inspire the Pythia) with the bodies of slaughtered men.
¹⁸