Delphi (8 page)

The traditional narrative of Delphic history based on the archaeology, up to the last years of the twentieth century, claimed a slow decline in the size and vitality of its habitation (and perhaps cult practice) toward the end of the Mycenaean period (c. 1100–1000
BC
), with a complete abandonment of the site until the early ninth century
BC
.
⁴³
That picture has been radically changed in the last decade, thanks to the most recent excavations at the Apollo sanctuary. Now, almost continuous habitation can be demonstrated in the area of the Apollo sanctuary between the eleventh and ninth centuries
BC
. The pottery associated with this period
is distinctly local, mixed with a degree of contact with northern Phocis. Yet by the ninth century
BC
, there is evidence for an increased amount of contact between the Delphic region and areas farther north, in particular Thessaly.
⁴⁴

Through the ninth century
BC
, settlement in the area of the later Apollo sanctuary continued to expand, often building on (and reusing) the foundations and material associated with earlier Mycenaean structures. But at the beginning of the eighth century
BC
, there is substantial change, both in terms of style of building at the site and in influence on the styles of material culture found in and around the settlement. The most recent excavations have shown how, in the region of the later “pillar of the Rhodians” dedication to the east of the temple of Apollo (see
fig. 1.3
), the existing habitation, which seems to have existed on the natural incline of the mountain, was reorganized substantially by the construction of leveled terraces at that time. On one of these terraces, the remains of a house, known to the French excavators as the
maison noire
(the “black house”), have been uncovered. Gradually over the course of the eighth century, this house seems to have become part of an increasingly regularized pattern of what are known as row houses, with the wider settlement split into two main camps and an open spine, which seems to have served as the main access route for the settlement, running north-south up the mountainside.
⁴⁵
The decision to invest in the landscape and create a more organized, leveled building space was matched at the time by a decisive shift in the nature and style of objects brought to the site. Soon after 800
BC
, the predominant Thessalian-influenced pottery is replaced by imported high-quality Corinthian pottery, although Thessalian influence continues for both metalwork and low-quality pottery. At around the same time, the first monumental objects that can be definitively associated with cult use (the three-legged bronze tripods) appear at Delphi.
⁴⁶

The beginning of the eighth century
BC
thus seems to have borne witness to much change at Delphi, which evolved from being a settlement connected to Thessaly and the north—with little contact to the sea and communities to the south, or with any powerful regional role—into a
newly reorganized community strongly connected to the sea and the powerful settlements to the south (particularly Corinth), and with an increasingly important regional role.
⁴⁷
Nor was it the only place in the Greek world to undergo such transformation. The eighth century
BC
is often cited as
the
critical period of change for the emergence of archaic and classical Greece, in part thanks to the influence of increasingly dense contact with the world outside. As the historian Robin Osborne has put it: “in 800
BC
, the Greek world was poor, small, and lacking in general organisation. Its communities were small, and hard-pressed to survive in a hostile natural environment. Greeks had few contacts in the wider world and no special advantages.”
⁴⁸
During the eighth century
BC
, all this changed. The number of sites of habitation increased dramatically; the amount of resources available increased; the social and political organization of settlements seems to have been more open and flexible to question and change; the investment by communities in their tombs and sanctuaries increased substantially; and, on a larger scale, the influence of different cultures (e.g., the Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, and the Greeks in Italy, Sicily, and the eastern Mediterranean) bear witness to a greater social mobility and international interaction. Places of cult worship seem to have been major beneficiaries of these changes in part because they were able to provide useful locations in which to conduct and display a material culture associated with these changing social priorities, attitudes, and interests. At the sanctuary of Kalapodi, for example, in the region of Phocis (see
maps 2
,
3
), not far from Delphi, there are the remnants of construction for a more monumental cult structure at the end of the ninth century. On the island of Samos, the later sanctuary of Hera received its first temple c. 800
BC
, as did the sanctuary of Hera at Perachora near Corinth. At Perachora, too, there is evidence for a vast range of international material culture being dedicated at the site (including no less than 273 Phoenician scarabs), while at Samos there is evidence for contact with Egypt, Cyprus, North Syria, Phoenicia, Phrygia, and Assyria.
⁴⁹

Yet, as has often been pointed out by scholars, this investment, particularly in cult spaces, was by no means uniform. Though Delphi clearly
sees a change and increase in investment from the beginning of the eighth century
BC
, it is by no means on the scale of other sanctuaries such as at Samos or Perachora, or even nearby Kalapodi.
⁵⁰
The sanctuaries that benefited most in the first part of the eighth century seem to have been those tied more closely to growing political communities (the eighth century is also often known as the time of the “rise of the polis”). Conversely, sanctuaries like Delphi and Olympia, which would eventually become known as the great Panhellenic sanctuaries, are significantly less monumentalized than their counterparts more firmly attached to particular communities probably because they lie in this period outside the sphere of control of particular poleis. At the same time, as we shall see in later chapters, it is ironic that this very absence of attachment to a community in this early period would become in turn an important factor in the eventual successful development of these sanctuaries as places with Panhellenic significance.
⁵¹

So just what is going on at Delphi during the eighth century
BC
, and how, if at all, can we understand the development of its sanctuary, cult activity, and oracular practice? It is clear that by the beginning of the century, there was an important settlement at Delphi. Yet it is unclear to what extent any of this space was considered sacred, unclear to what degree a religious cult had developed, and unclear whether any oracle was functioning. The arrival at the site in c. 800
BC
of Corinthian fine-wear pottery and of more monumental votive offerings, and the increased investment in construction at the site mark our first clear indication of both wider interest in Delphi and a more insistent investment in cult practice. Delphi, it seems, had become part of Corinth's broadening interest in the region, and part of its expanding trading network (a particular type of Corinthian pottery, known as Thapsos ware, which was reserved for export by Corinth, is found at Delphi from the middle of the eighth century
BC
onward). This interest of Corinth in Delphi may have been occasioned by Delphi's longer-standing connections with Thessaly to the north, which Corinth may in turn have hoped to exploit for its own trading network (and this link to the north will become increasingly important toward the end of the eighth century).
Yet we should not overemphasize Delphi's newfound trading or cult importance in the first seventy years of the eighth century
BC
. Other sanctuaries with which Corinth was heavily involved, like Perachora, or even nearby sites like Kalapodi, have provided much richer material records for this period.
⁵²

As far as cult activity at Delphi goes, our evidence is based entirely on the contents of several later deposits (effectively rubbish heaps) of material found buried in different parts of the later Apollo sanctuary, which were used as packing to create a more solid floor level for building in the sixth century
BC
. What has been found proves cult practice at the site—pottery, charred bone, fragments of bronze tripods—but it is unlikely that this originated from any significant separate cult area. The origin of this material (particularly the pottery and tripods) reflects Corinthian interest in cult activity at the site, but also a significant Argive presence, some Thessalian, and a certain amount of (perhaps) locally made material for dedication. As for the oracle, no material find proves that it was in operation for the better part of the eighth century
BC
, or indeed during any time before that. Some scholars argue that the oracle was not instituted until the late eighth century, others that it may have had a much longer existence dating back into the second millennium, which is what motivated the continuation of settlement in this otherwise rather difficult physical habitat clinging to the mountainside.
⁵³

Whenever the oracle began, however, it is crucial that, in regard to that nascent phase of Delphic development, we distinguish between a real Delphi and the early Delphi described in later literary and historical sources. The literary sources, whichever story you choose to follow, paint a picture of a Delphi born for success and international prestige. Yet the archaeology reveals a different story. A tiny, isolated community with a connection to northern Greece slowly refocused its attention south and was drawn into the trading network of Corinth, and, in turn, benefited from the more general social and political processes of eighth century development, which, at the same time, left Delphi much less elaborated than many sanctuaries more closely tied to particular political communities. Many scholars, encouraged by the literary and
historical sources for Delphi's divine origins, have taken the traditional picture of later Delphic international and Panhellenic success and transposed it back onto the site's early history.
⁵⁴
In reality, Delphi, through to the last quarter of the eighth century
BC
, did not play anything like such a role. It was not born into success as the center of the Greek world, but struggled, for centuries, to be anything more than a small and isolated community clinging to the Parnassian mountains.

And yet, in this formative phase of Delphic development, there are signs of the forces that will propel Delphi over the next century and a half to the forefront of the Greek political and religious world. One is the occasional glimpse of dedicated objects at Delphi that originate from much farther afield: eighth-century amber from Scandinavia, probably arriving with traders from Etruria; a Villanovian helmet from 800
BC
; Italian spearheads from the mid-eighth century; tripods not only from Corinth and Argos, but also from Crete by the middle of the century.
⁵⁵
Another sign is not dedication, but destruction. The maison noire was burned down (hence its name “the black house”!) during the first seventy years of the eighth century
BC
, and rebuilt, suggesting a consistent desire for habitation at Delphi.
⁵⁶
A further sign comes from the references to Delphi in Homer's
Iliad
(9.401) and
Odyssey
(8.79–81). Both these epics are thought to have coalesced into their near final forms during the course of the eighth century
BC
, and, while they do not refer to the oracular importance of Delphi (the references to Apollo Pythios are thought to be later interpolations in the text), they do give a sense of an acknowledgment that Delphi was (already by this time) a recognized place of wealth and importance.
⁵⁷
Yet perhaps the most interesting sign is that though other sanctuary sites, like Perachora, may have been showered with a far greater number of dedications than Delphi during the first half of the eighth century, the nature of most of those objects was personal and/or trade related.
⁵⁸
Perachora never received the kind of monumental offerings that Delphi was beginning to receive, seemingly (given their expense) from state elites.
⁵⁹
Delphi, which around 800
BC
, had been a local and isolated settlement, was, by the last quarter of the eighth
century (725–700
BC
), seemingly (also) becoming a location serving the demands of (particular) emerging states and their elites. And it was thanks to the pressures, needs, and desires of those emerging communities that Delphi, from the last quarter of the eighth century
BC
, was to burst forth onto the international stage.

Apollo is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel of the
earth, and he is the interpreter of religion for all mankind.

—Plato
Republic
427B

3

TRANSFORMATION

Fire is all consuming. So easily started, so often uncontrollable in the dry, hot conditions of Greece. In the late eighth century
BC
, c. 730, fire took hold of Delphi. It spread through the small community clinging to the Parnassian hillside, leaving destruction in its wake. As the smoke ebbed away, as the charred timbers finally began to cool, and as Delphi's inhabitants began to come to terms with the extent of their loss, Delphi's precarious position in the Greek world must have felt even more fragile.

We know that the maison noire—the house recently discovered by excavators just to the east of the later temple of Apollo at Delphi—burned to the ground a second time (it definitely earned its name) in this fire.
¹
The French archaeologist Jean-Marc Luce, who conducted the excavation of the maison noire, ties this destruction to the accounts in later ancient sources of a raid on Delphi by the Phlegyians, whom, according to the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo
(lines 277–80), were people from one of the places Apollo had visited as a potential home for his oracle, and were said in later sources not only to have raided but to have set fire to the temple of Apollo at Delphi (their name comes from the Greek verb “to burn”).
²