But Delphi also had something of interest to Hadrian: its Amphictyony. Part of one of his letters to Delphi, dated to around the time of his visit in AD 125, concerned a reorganization of the Amphictyony council. Several emperors, as we have seen, undertook reorganizations, yet Hadrian’s letter is instructive because of the articulated purpose behind the reshuffle. The letter outlines a reduction in the large Thessalian representation (which had in fact been reinstituted by Nero only in the previous century), and the redistribution of those votes on the council between the Athenians, Spartans, and other cities so that, in the words of the letter, “the council may be a council common to all Greeks.”8
Such a purpose focuses our attention on two critical facets of the Roman relationship to Greece and particularly to Delphi. First, as we saw in chapter 10 regarding reorganizations before him (and particularly that of Augustus), the purpose of Hadrian’s was to develop a particular kind of council that could undertake a role that, in reality, the Amphictyony had never had during its archaic, classical, and Hellenistic lifetimes. Its council membership had never been a fair representation of all the Greek people; and it was not, despite many modern attempts at analogies, an ancient United Nations or European Union though this is how Romans (and many in the modern world) choose to see it, use it, and characterize it.9
The second, connected, point concerns Hadrian’s wider plan for Greece. In AD 131–32, Hadrian famously formed the Panhellenion—a union of Greek cities in the Roman province of Achaia that was specifically designed to allow Greece’s cultural and historical eminence to sit on equal terms with the more current economic and political muscle of other parts of the Roman Empire, particularly Asia Minor. Constituent members had to prove Hellenic descent, and its members were the famous metropoleis of central Greece and their overseas colonies. Many scholars have argued that Hadrian’s first instinct was to use the Delphic Amphictyony as the core of such an organization, and that this is why we see this critical restructuring of its membership in AD 125 in preparation for the formation of the Panhellenion in AD 131. Yet, what careful study of the documentation has recently pointed out is that Hadrian’s letter to the Delphi inscribed on the temple terrace wall in AD 125 is actually the report of a Roman senatorial commission about potential reform of the Amphictyony (reflecting the Roman misconception of what the Amphictyony was supposed to be), which was in fact later rejected by Hadrian. Hadrian’s Panhellenion was, it seems, always, in Hadrian’s mind at least, a separate entity that would in fact be centered around Athens, and that led, in Athens, to the creation of a sanctuary of Hadrian Panhellenius, Panhellenia athletic games, and the embellishment of the nearby sanctuary at Eleusis.10
Yet, even though Delphi and its Amphictyony may not have been the inspiration or original focus of Hadrian’s plans for a united Greece, the Greeks certainly responded to Hadrian’s keenness for the concept of a united Greece articulated specifically through the sanctuary at Delphi. In the early years of Hadrian’s reign, and before the creation of the Panhellenion, a statue of the emperor was erected at Delphi by the “Greeks who fought at Plataea.”11 This is the only dedication made in the sanctuary’s history by this particular grouping, although of course it made an instant connection to Delphi’s perhaps most famous monumental dedication, the three twisted serpents supporting a golden tripod set up for the victory at Plataea in 479 BC by the Greeks. The united Greek front achieved during the Persian Wars had been, ever since, a key part of any call for Greek unity, and it is not unsurprising that a collection of Greeks chose to reactivate this banner to demonstrate unity to Hadrian through honoring him with a statue in the very sanctuary in which such unity had originally (centuries earlier) been most monumentally displayed.
The level of contact and care lavished on this sanctuary by Hadrian during his reign represents without doubt a high point in Delphi’s history. It was a blessing Delphi was to enjoy, after Hadrian’s death in AD 138, for much of the rest of the second century AD, and it came in several forms—first, through continued interaction with the emperor and other important Roman officials. Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius, became archon of the city, and his image appears on a series of Delphic coins, the last major series of coins minted at Delphi in its history, most probably struck for the occasion of its ongoing and successful Pythian games. And Valeria Catulla, the wife of Tiberius Claudius Marcellus, a Roman official in Greece during the second half of the second century AD, set up a statue in the sanctuary in Antoninus’s honor with the agreement of the Amphictyony.12 Second was through a growing interest in and use of the sanctuary as a base for philosophical thinking. Since the end of the first century AD, Delphi had been acquiring a reputation as a locus for philosophical discussion, thanks to its unique combination of history, oracle, philosophical heritage, and athletic and musical competitions, which even other Panhellenic periodos sanctuaries could not match. It was a reputation much enhanced by Plutarch’s time as priest of Apollo and the dissemination of many of his philosophical discussions about Delphi and other matters (see fig. 10.1).13 As a result, Delphi was visited by a significant number of philosophers and sophists during the second century AD, such as Aulus Gellius who attended with his students to watch the Pythian games in AD 163. At the same time, a number of statues of Sophists were erected in the sanctuary both by the city of Delphi and by other cities like Ephesus and Hypata, and by groups of Sophists in honor of respected members of their circle.14
Combined with (and partly as a result of) this Imperial favor and reputation as a philosophical hotspot, Delphi’s games also continued strongly in popularity during the second century AD. The sanctuary’s increasingly packed confines were populated with a plethora of statues to athletic winners and to those tasked with organizing the games (in particular the agonothetes) from the Amphictyony, as well as from cities around the Mediterranean who had previously dedicated in the sanctuary, and sometimes from cities that had never dedicated at Delphi.15 Ancyra, in Asia Minor, for example, made its only dedication in the sanctuary’s history at the end of the second century AD, erecting a statue of its victor in the Pythian musical competition. Likewise, Myra (in Lycia in Asia Minor) erected its only offering in the sanctuary’s history during the second century AD: a statue for its own Pythian victor. So, too, Sardis (in Asia Minor) erected a series of monuments to one of their extremely successful athletes (who had been victorious in a number of the periodos Greek games) at the end of the second century AD and the beginning of the third century.16
This interest in Delphi’s athletic and musical competitions reflects Delphi’s importance all across the Mediterranean (but especially in the east) during the second century AD.17 But at the same time, the sanctuary was the focus of one of Greece’s own greatest benefactors from this period: Herodes Atticus. A millionaire aristocrat from Athens, but also of Roman citizenship (and who would be consul in Rome in AD 143), Herodes Atticus was born at the very beginning of the second century AD and died in AD 177. During his lifetime, he saw Greece flourish under the spotlight of successive Roman emperors (many of whom he encouraged to take an interest in Greece, and with whom he was on excellent terms). More importantly he was himself prolific in building projects designed to enhance both Athens and other cities in the Greek world. At Delphi, he turned his attention—perhaps unsurprisingly, given the amount of interest in the Pythian games at this time—to the stadium. What you see today when you visit the site is largely the work of Herodes Atticus (fig. 11.2). The stadium’s length was reset to measure six hundred (Roman-measured) feet. For the first time in its history, the stadium was given stepped seating in local limestone: twelve levels on the northern side, six on the southern, with curved seating at the western end that allowed for approximately 6,500 spectators. At its eastern end, a monumental entrance was created with arched doorways and niches for statues. As a result of Herodes’ enormous benefaction, a number of statues were put up in his honor. One, predictably, comes from the city of Delphi, which also erected one to
his wife, Regilla, and to Herodes’ disciple Polydeucion. In contrast, it is interesting that we have no record of the Amphictyony erecting a statue in Herodes’ honor. But Herodes Atticus seems also to have been keen to erect statues in honor of his own family and circle in the sanctuary—of his wife, more than one of his daughter and son and Polydeucion; and in turn his wife set up a statue of him And all these were placed prominently near the temple of Apollo.18
Herodes Atticus died in AD 177, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (AD 161–80), who had himself taken the cue from his predecessors (and indeed his co-emperor Lucius Verus AD 161–69) and continued a close relationship with Delphi. Both Lucius and Marcus confirmed the continued independence and autonomy of Delphi as a city, and Marcus Aurelius seems to have kept up a lengthy correspondence with the sanctuary.19 We can get some sense of the wealth of Delphic citizens in this period from their tombs, collected in burial areas (necropoleis) surrounding the city and sanctuary (see plate 1). We know, for example, that an underground crypt was created during the Imperial period in one of the necropoleis to the west of the sanctuary. While it is difficult to date the crypt specifically, we can be more certain of the date for a large, ornate, and expensive sarcophagus from the second century AD, now on display outside the Delphi museum (fig. 11.3). It is known as the sarcophagus of Meleager because of the mythological scene carved around it, and it was an expensive choice for whomsoever was originally buried in it. Indeed it was so much admired that it was reused as many as fifteen times for additional burials between the second and fifth centuries AD.20
Figure 11.2. A view of the stadium at Delphi following a makeover thanks to the benefaction of Herodes Atticus in the second century AD (© EFA/P. Aupert [Aupert FD II Stade fig. 142])
Figure 11.3. The Meleager sarcophagus, at the moment of its discovery in the nineteenth century (© EFA [La redécouverte de Delphes fig. 86])
Moreover we catch brief glimpses of the continued use of the oracle in this period, mostly for private inquiries, but also for more official ones. A Spartan theopropos was sent to consult during Marcus Aurelius’s reign (about what, we do not know), and stories circulated that the oracle had even been involved in ensuring that Galen, one of the most famous medical practioners in the ancient world, give up his studies in a different field to concentrate on medicine.21 Yet with renewed attention paid to the oracle, so too was it subjected to greater criticism in a world that was fast changing and would, in less than 250 years, officially reject paganism entirely in favor of Christianity. One writer, Lucian of Samosata, writing in the middle and second half of the second century AD, chastised the Delphians for being at the beck and call of dedicators because their fates were tied to that of the oracle, and railed against the famed obscurity and ambiguity of Delphic oracular responses, a trope that would continue to play well with Christian writers keen to undermine oracular sanctuaries and paganism in general in the years to come.22
Yet it was during the reigns of Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verrus, and Marcus Aurelius in the second half of the second century AD that Delphi was immortalized in another set of writings: those of Pausanias. Despite the survival of Pausanias’s Description of Greece, we know almost nothing about the writer himself; indeed we are not even sure of his name. He seems to have come from Asia Minor, possibly Magnesia in Lydia. Born during the reign of Hadrian, circa AD 110–15, he was old enough to have seen Antinous, Hadrian’s lover, alive before Antinous drowned in the Nile on 30 October AD 130. Compared with other famous men of his time, he was about the same age as Ptolemy of Alexandria, and a little older than Lucian of Samosata and Galen of Pergamon. His writings belong to the period AD 155–80 and fit into a broader genre of literature known as periegetic: tour guide mixed in with, among other things, geography, history, mythology, art history, and ethnography.23 His Description of Greece appears to do just what it says on the tin. Starting in Athens in book 1, Pausanias claims to deal with “panta ta hellenika” (“all things Greek” 1.26.4) and proceeds to travel around Greece, describing Olympia in the middle (books 5–6) and Delphi in the final book (book 10).24 As a result, his detailed descriptions of many Greek sites are instantly recognizable to those studying ancient Greece today and were a fundamental guide to the early excavations of those sites, Delphi included.25
And yet, there have always been a number of questions about how to understand his text. At the same time as it was an indispensable aid to excavators in the nineteenth century, literary and textual scholars like von Wilamovitz Moellendorff intensely criticized his work. More recently, there has been a concerted effort to highlight the difficulties in taking Pausanias at face value, and even a question about his usefulness for archaeological research.26 No longer do we see him as simply recording what he saw, but as a writer with particular interests and views writing to a very particular agenda, and shaping what he reported to fit that mold. As such, Pausanias’s text is now considered not simply a straightforward tour guide, but rather a cognitive map created to express a particular ideology of Hellenism contiguous with the greater project of reshaping (and creating) a unified Greece as seen in other initiatives like Hadrian’s Panhellenion. Pausanias’s focus, scholars have stressed, was on stories, places, objects, and moments that spoke to Greek unity, and most definitely to Greece’s past rather than its present: with only two exceptions, no monument discussed by Pausanias at Delphi was erected later than 260 BC (the exceptions being the stadium and a structure in the Athena sanctuary). Pausanias’s present-day Delphi, indeed any part of Delphi’s history subsequent to the assumption of full control by the Aetolian league, seems not to have fit with Pausanias’s project, which sought to stress the antiquity, cultural history, memory, and importance of an (ancient) unified Greece.27
Pausanias’s goals are understandable. His Description of Greece came at a time of heightened interest in, and prosperity for, the country; as well as at a time of recognition that Greece’s trump card in a fast changing Mediterranean world was its claim to an unrivaled historical and cultural contribution. But, was he successful in his literary goals? In two ways, it could well be argued that he was not. His own work, the Description of Greece, seems not to have been much read in antiquity. The first surviving mention of him and his text is 350 years after his death, in the time of the Roman Emperor Justinian subsequent to Rome’s conversion to Christianity. But perhaps more importantly, and indeed what might explain his lack of success, is that by the time of his death circa AD 180, the brand of philhellenism ignited by Hadrian had begun to splutter slightly.28 It is telling that one of the two monuments Pausanias mentions in his description of Delphi, and which dates from after 260 BC, is the stadium, and that his description of it differs from what we find today (see fig. 11.2). Pausanias claims that Herodes Atticus paid for the spectator banks to be made out of marble. But the surviving ones are of local limestone. Scholars have discounted the possibility that the marble has been lost. Instead they believe it was likely never there. Pausanias may well have written about what he heard was intended, but, after the death of Herodes Atticus in AD 177, it seems the plans were scaled back. The opulence was no longer justified, and stone from the local quarry was used instead. At the same time, when Pausanias writes about the sacred lands belonging to Apollo, and which had remained uncultivated since the sixth century BC, it is telling that no one at Delphi seems to know exactly why this is the case. He hears some say it is because they are cursed, and others that it was not good earth for olive trees.29 Respect for Delphi, it seems, was beginning to falter, and Delphi’s trump card—its reputation as a place of cultural memory and unsurpassed history—was threatened by its own lack of knowledge about its own history.
But this was by no means a sudden downfall. At the end of the second century AD, with the arrival of Septimius Severus as emperor (AD 193–211), Delphi once again sent ambassadors to congratulate him on his military victories over rivals (that had brought him to power), and, no doubt, to ask him to reconfirm the liberty and autonomy o
f the city and sanctuary in accordance with his predecessors. This he did, and the Delphians duly wrote up his response on the walls of the temple of Apollo. In addition, during the reigns of Severus and his son Caracella, a further restoration of the temple of Apollo seems to have been undertaken and overseen by the proconsul of the Roman province of Achaea, Cn. Claudius Leonticus.30 Indeed, at least for the city and citizens of Delphi, the end of the second century AD and the beginning of the third seems to have been a relatively prosperous and stable time. One Amphictyonic secretary from this period, M. Junius Mnaseas, could claim to be the grandson of a Pythian priestess and descended from a number of priests of Apollo; such, it appears, was the stability of the governing class within the city. Moreover Delphi’s inhabitants were wealthy enough for numerous statues to be put up in the sanctuary for members of their own families, as well as for a number of important Romans and Roman officials.31 The Imperial governor (and corrector of Delphi), Cn. Claudius Leonticus, who was probably responsible for a series of renovations of the temple, is thanked with no less than five statues set up by individual Delphians for taking care of all Delphi’s affairs. Moreover, although the dating is notoriously difficult, the initial elaboration of the Roman agora space at the entrance to the sanctuary of Apollo continued, and seems to have been accompanied around this time by an expansion to the south with the construction of a complex originally thought to be a set of baths, but now thought likely to have been a complex of housing, shops, and service workshops (see plate 2).32