Yet the beginning of the first century BC, not withstanding the threat of foreign invasion, also represented the start of a broader downturn in Delphic fortunes. In 87 BC, the Roman general Sulla, having marched on Rome only the year before, was on campaign in Greece against the forces of Mithridates, the latest threat to Roman control of the eastern Mediterranean. In part thanks to his precarious relationship with Rome, Sulla found himself in need of money. He turned to Greece’s best bank vaults: its sanctuaries. Taking the treasures from Olympia and Epidaurus, he wrote to the Amphictyony at Delphi to warn them of his intention to raid the sanctuary. He sent his agent in Phocis, a man named Caphis, to Delphi to organize the plunder. Once there, Caphis was said to have heard the sound of Apollo’s lyre and took it as a sign of the god’s displeasure at what was being done. He reported this to Sulla, yet Sulla replied that the sound of the lyre meant the god’s pleasure not displeasure and instructed Caphis to continue. Sulla was not ignorant of Delphi’s importance; he had most probably consulted the oracle himself several years before and was said to carry with him everywhere a small golden statue of Apollo from Delphi, which, when in particularly tight situations, he was said to have always kissed. But he was also a canny political and military operator in a tight spot: he found himself at odds with Rome to the west and at war with Mithridates to the east; neglecting the treasures he had at his disposal was simply not an option.50
Delphi was thus—once again—raided and the larger objects that could not be transported whole, like a giant silver mixing bowl said to have been one of King Croesus of Lydia’s dedications back in the sixth century BC, were broken up on-site for ease of transportation. In return, Sulla, after his subsequent victories, took land belonging to Thebes and reapportioned its revenues to those sanctuaries from which he had taken money. It was little more than a gesture, however, never likely to reach the financial value of what had been taken and most certainly unable to repair the damage to the sanctuary’s reputation and relationship with the Roman world.51 Up to this point, Delphi had been the recipient of Roman dedications to Roman victories, even those over fellow Greek cities. Now Delphi had become the bankroller for the destruction of Greece (ostensibly of course in the name of saving Greece from Mithridates).52 When Sulla laid siege to the city of Athens between the summer of 87 BC and 1 March 86 BC, some Athenian citizens fled to Delphi and asked the oracle whether Athens had finally met its fate. All the oracle could do was repeat the words it had supposedly said to the Athenians hero Theseus centuries before: “be not too distressed within your heart, and lay your plans. For as a leathern bottle you will ride the waves even in a swelling surge.”53
Delphi should have celebrated the Pythian festival in 86 BC, the year Athens fell to Sulla. Certain competitors certainly presumed the celebrations would go ahead. Polygnota, a woman from Thebes, arrived at Delphi accompanied by her cousin, ready to take part in the musical competitions as a harp singer, only to find that the festival had been canceled. Given that she had already made the effort to come, she offered a free performance to those present. She was apparently so good (or the need for anything cheering so intense) that the city of Delphi commissioned her to perform for three days for the price of five hundred drachmas, and threw in civic honors for her as well. The uncertainty surrounding the Pythian celebration of 86 BC was understandable. Athens had fallen to Sulla. Mithridates was still a prominent threat both to Sulla and to mainland Greece, and another set of Roman legions, under the command of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, was also crossing northern Greece on route to Asia.54
Things got worse the following year. Tribes from the north, including the Illyrians, Thracians, Scordisci, Maedi, and Dardani, having defeated the Roman army stationed in northern Greece, invaded central Greece and sacked a number of cities, including, by 84 BC, Delphi. Accounts differ as to the extent of damage, but it appears the invaders were able to get to the heart of the sanctuary, cause significant damage to the temple of Apollo, extinguish the sacred hearth, and carry off a number of dedications.55 Funds at the sanctuary seem to have been so low that no immediate repairs were carried out. The only upside was found in stories that later circulated about how anyone who came in contact with the booty taken in the barbarian raid was met with a curse. The Illyrians suffered a plague of frogs; earthquakes drove the Celtic tribes from their homes; and even the Roman governor, Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus (who would be consul at Rome in 83 BC), having acquired a share of the booty from the Illyrians, was said to have taken home with him the curse of civil war that would plague his consulship and Rome for the remainder of the decade, and indeed for a good part of the rest of the century.56
We know relatively little about how Delphi fared in the rest of the first century BC. The traditional picture is that it entered a period of steady decline: its temple not repaired, its sanctuary deprived of its sacred treasures first by Sulla and then by barbarian invaders. Yet there are signs that this picture may be overly pessimistic. Some have recently argued that the Amphictyony was active in and around this period, even trying to establish Athenian tetradrachms as the coinage of preference throughout the Greek world. Others have argued that the damage to the temple, traditionally thought not to be repaired until the time of Emperor Domitian 150 years later, was repaired much sooner. Three Spartans received awards of proxenia in 86–85 BC, and later, in 29 BC, the Spartans even honored a Delphian, in recognition of his help to Spartans visiting Delphi: they set up a monument in his honor in the sanctuary. We know that Cicero, an ambitious young man, came to consult the oracle in 79 BC to ask about how he might win fame and was given the response that he make his own character his guide in life (Cicero comments in one of his writings that the oracle had by now stopped giving its answers in verse form).57
Moreover, Delphi continued to play host during this period to a relatively new form of business begun (or at least more publicly and permanently displayed) in about 200 BC: manumissions. Since 200 BC, and continuing through until the end of the first century AD, Delphi seems to have become a key space in which to publicize the contract for the freeing of a slave. There are over thirteen hundred known manumission inscriptions at Delphi, covering the massive polygonal wall that supported the terrace of the temple of Apollo, as well as a series of other monuments around the sanctuary (see plate 2, fig. 9.2). These inscriptions reveal the sanctuary’s development of a new public function for a changing clientele list, which, over time, encapsulated not only Delphi’s controllers and the Delphian community, but also a wider local market.58 In the fifty-seven manumissions known through to 190 BC, for example, forty-three were undertaken by Aetolians and only twelve by Delphians. As well, in the year 179–78 BC, just as the Aetolians were cut out of Delphi, no Aetolians undertook a manumission in the sanctuary. After 167–66 BC, the two biggest groups undertaking manumissions were the western Locrians and Phocians, suggesting, that at least for this particular element of Delphic business, the sanctuary was particularly (and understandably) attractive to those living within striking distance of it.59
Yet undoubtedly, Delphi was at best a bystander in the titanic struggles that were about to grip the Mediterranean world in the second half of the first century BC. In the midst of the war between Caesar and Pompey, Julius Caesar, in the lead up to the battle of Pharselis in August 48 BC, records Delphi simply as another Greek town occupied by one of his lieutenants, Q. Fufius Calenus, several months before the battle. Yet one of Pompey’s lieutenants, Appius Claudius Censorinus, whom Pompey had put in charge of Greece in 49 BC, seems to have taken Delphi more seriously, and consulted the oracle in the run up to the conflict about whether to support Pompey or Caesar. It was, it seems, only due to his influence as a Roman official that he could persuade the priests of Apollo to conduct a full consultation ceremony. The Pythia replied, in typically enigmatic fashion, that the war did not concern him (he fell ill and died before he had to take a side). In turn Anthony would pay more attention to the political value of Delphi. Having won in
42 BC, with the help of Octavian, the battle of Philippi in northern Greece against Caesar’s murderers, Brutus and Cassius, Anthony is said to have flattered the Greeks in part through his respect for the temple of Pythian Apollo. Later he is also said to have attempted to win the good will of the Roman Senate by promising to repair the temple of Apollo following a visit to the sanctuary. Later, while resident in Athens, Anthony seems to have been involved in the dispatch of a sacred embassy to Delphi c. 40 BC, only Athens’s second since the time of Sulla, which was followed up in 36/5 BC by a renewal of friendship and exchange between Gephyraei (a genos [family group] of Athens) and Delphi.60 Anthony’s offers and embassies, however, would come to naught, not least because of his own death in Alexandria, bringing to an end the civil war that had split the Roman world in two. Its winner, Octavian, became Rome’s first emperor in 27 BC. As Augustus, he faced significant challenges in healing and controlling his Roman Empire. The question was, what role would there be for Delphi in this—a yet another—new world?
Figure 9.2. Manumission inscriptions carved into the retaining wall of the temple terrace in the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi (P. de la Coste-Messelière & G. Miré Delphes 1957 Librarie Hachette p. 53)
The guest of Phoebus claps his hands and shouts,
“There is but one such spot: from Heaven Apollo
Beheld; —and chose it for his earthly shrine!”
—Aubrey de Vere lines written under Delphi 1850
10
RENAISSANCE
Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, is not known to have visited Delphi. But the sanctuary did feel the force of the new emperor in three particular ways. First, because Augustus reorganized the Amphictyony. Following his victory over Anthony at the battle of Actium in September 31 BC, Augustus set up a new city, called Nicopolis (the “city of victory”), in the vicinity of the battlefield (see map 2). This new town, according to the geographer Strabo who wrote a tour guide for the entire Mediterranean world in the first thirty years of the first century AD, was bolstered by Augustus with all the necessary accoutrements for its survival. And at the same time, Augustus reengineered the composition of the Amphictyonic council at Delphi to give his new city a seat in this ancestral grouping; he also formally instituted a bureaucratic position in the Amphictyonic hierarchy—the epimeletai, “overseers”—effectively the emperor’s agent attached to the Amphictyonic council.1
On top of this rather domineering insertion, Augustus and his wife, Livia, are said to have sent dedications to the sanctuary at Delphi. Livia’s was especially atuned to the particularities of Delphic practice and belief. Alongside the wise maxims said to have been inscribed on the pronaos of the temple of Apollo at Delphi (“Know thyself,” “Nothing in excess,” “Give an oath and face perdition”) was the mysterious letter “E.” Plutarch, who, in the early second century AD, was a priest of Apollo at the temple, recorded an entire discussion about the meaning of this letter, about which none of his friends could agree. But he relates the fact that the original letter “E” had been made in wood and attached to the temple, that the Athenians had replaced this wooden letter with one in bronze, and that Livia, in turn, replaced it with one in gold, although he does not relate what drew her to be particularly interested in—of all things at Delphi—the mysterious letter.2
Augustus’s final link with Delphi revolved around the increasingly close relationship between the sanctuary and Athens that had blossomed in the final quarter of the second century BC, at which time not only had Athens reinstituted its ceremonial procession festival, the Pythaïs, but the Amphictyony had also heaped praise on Athens as the savior of civilization. Now, just over a century later, under Augustus, the Athenians chose to rename the Pythaïs the Dodekais. In so doing, they linked the sacred procession to the date of the new emperor’s birthday, the twelfth day of the Athenian month Boedromion. By extension, because the month of Boedromion was also Apollo’s birthday, the Athenians were able to underscore the Apollonine nature of the emperor (who liked to think of himself as under the protection of Apollo) and to link the emperor to both Athens and Delphi.3 Once again, Delphi had proved extremely useful to the Athenians in helping them navigate and articulate their position in this new world and power hierarchy.
Yet, despite these actions and interactions, and despite that some scholars have claimed Augustan monuments in the east seem to have deliberately copied the style of dedication epitomized by the famous serpent column at Delphi from the fifth century BC, Augustus never showed particular interest in the oracle or temple of Apollo at Delphi, especially in contrast to the “lively interest” he took in the Olympics and Olympian sanctuary. Some scholars have seen this as a sign of things to come. Emperors, because of their all-powerful positions, did not have need of oracles to help them in times of difficult or contested decisions (and if they did, there were forms of oracular divination much closer to home than Delphi). Others have argued that Delphi, despite its fantastic collection of art and architecture, lacked the one thing that always fascinated a Roman world obsessed with Greek cultural achievement: a chryselephantine (ivory and gold) statue made by a famous sculptor, like the statue of Zeus made by Pheidias at Olympia, which captured the imaginations of a host of Roman writers.4 Others still have argued that longer-term Imperial interest in Olympia rather than Delphi was the result of Olympia’s claim to be the original home of Greek athletics, which continued to play a part in the culture and power-broking of the Roman world.
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 fi
nancial 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