It was not only Eastern dedications that had their particular traits. During the seventh century BC, for example, Corinth does not seem to have continued with its dedication of bronze tripods, but only of pottery and, even then, only in the unelaborated sacred areas of the settlement. There is no Corinthian pottery in the maison rouge, for example, only locally made material.46 Yet, around the middle of the seventh century, the new tyrant of Corinth, Cypselus (who had been so involved with the oracle), constructed Delphi’s first (surviving) monumental dedication: a structure known as a treasury, because we think it was used as a treasure house to store other offerings (see plate 2).47 This treasury, constructed in a highly visible location on a sort of natural crest in the landscape on the steep hillside, facing toward what scholars think was (or at least became) the earliest entryway into the sacred area, would have acted, at a time when Delphi had no official boundary markers, as an early marker of the sacred space. Cypselus, not only fundamental to the story of the oracle, is crucial in the story of the elaboration of Delphi as a sanctuary.48
In contrast to Corinth, Attica (and, at its heart, Athens) had a slow start at Delphi. Though some Attic bronze offerings can be identified as from the late eighth century, the numbers are low throughout the seventh century when Athenian pottery is nowhere to be seen. But at the very end of the century (and gathering speed from then on), the Athenians seem to have copied Cypselus and constructed a small treasury on the west side of the later sanctuary. Laconia, on the other hand, despite the number of consultations that associate Sparta with the Delphic oracle, was limited in its offerings at the sanctuary throughout the century. And despite the trade routes between Delphi and the North, the number of objects found at the sanctuary from northern and western Greece is also low, especially when compared with the numbers of Macedonian and Balkan objects found at Olympia, which is, after all, much farther south.49
Yet other areas of mainland Greece seem better represented. Several Boeotian cauldrons have been found, and a significant supply of armor from the Argolid seems to have been dedicated (though the Argolid does not seem to have offered any vases or terra-cottas). This trend for Argolid dedication was capped at the end of the seventh century BC by the dedication of a pair of over-life-size statues, which have often been identified with one of Argos’s most famous myths, that of Cleobis and Biton (fig. 3.1).50 Cyprus is also well represented—with shields, inscribed tripods, a number of cauldrons, and even a bronze bull.51 So are Syria and Asia Minor, with lots of complex and beautiful cauldron decorations, ostrich eggs, glass human figurines, and even Phrygian belts (all found in recent excavations).Yet it is Crete that stands out, not only because of the number of tripods and shields, but also because of the way in which these offerings seem to be not isolated pieces but entire sets and series of dedications, and possibly even from the same area.52
Figure 3.1. The Argive twins dedicated at Delphi, sometimes identified as Cleobis and Biton or simply as the Dioscuri (© EFA [Guide du Musée fig. 2a])
Delphi, by 600 BC, may well have still been without a temple, or indeed any articulated, separated, sacred space, but it was, without doubt, already littered with offerings from the very small to the monumental, in a wide array of materials and styles, from a wide variety of dedicators. Once again, however, this material comes with a warning. While we label a piece “Cretan” because it is made in a style, procedure, or material we know to be associated with Crete, we cannot be sure that it was actually offered at the sanctuary by a Cretan, as opposed to its coming to the sanctuary via, say, a Corinthian trading network, or as the treasured possession of someone from outside Crete, or even as a prize dedicated by someone who was victorious over the Cretans in battle and took the piece as a victory trophy. Moreover, even some of the more monumental structures remain a mystery. A small, apsidal treasury-like structure was constructed around 600 BC in an area that would later be the temple terrace and even later be identified as the sanctuary of Gaia (see structure “B” in fig. 3.2). This, combined with its odd (and therefore supposedly religious) absidal-shaped end, as well as the literary myths about Delphi’s early association with Gaia, the mother goddess, have led to this structure’s often being called the Chapel of Gaia (as well as a possible early home for the omphalos). But in truth, there is not one shred of evidence that definitely connects this structure to Gaia. In reality, we simply have no idea who constructed it and why they did so.53
What we can do is begin to see increasing variation in the purpose and style with which different individuals, cities, and geographical areas interacted with Delphi in these crucial early phases of development. Not only in terms of their material offerings or trade connections, but by putting these together with the literary evidence for oracular consultation and mythical involvement, we can begin to have a more three-dimensional view of how Delphi was perceived in the wider Greek world, and the different ways in which the different parts of that world chose to interact (and were represented as interacting) with it. What this brings into focus is the way certain communities interacted with particular parts of Delphic cult activity, but not others. The Laconians, for instance, had a close and ongoing relationship with the oracle, but dedicated very few offerings at the sanctuary before the sixth century BC. In complete contrast was Crete. Cretans dedicated many expensive smaller offerings (tripods, shields, etc.), but (probably) not a single monumental offering. They did not consult the oracle, unless you count one individual Cretan asking about the omphalos, which is probably a later creation. Yet Crete was fundamentally tied to Delphi from the late seventh century through the Homeric Hymn to Apollo as Cretans became the first priests of Apollo’s temple.54 Even more interestingly, no Cretan tripods have been found at Olympia, a sanctuary with which Delphi is often compared, but which, from its earliest history, seems to have attracted something of a different clientele from Delphi and seems to have been a center for different priorities and interests.55
Figure 3.2. The sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi c. 550 BC (© EFA [Courby FD II Terrasse du Temple 1920–29 fig. 156]).
Coming into focus also through this three-dimensional approach to early Delphi are the players, and tensions, that would, in the early sixth century BC, rip Delphi apart and catapult it forward. The dominant players at Delphi by the end of the seventh century seem to have been Sparta, Corinth, Lydia in the east, and increasingly Attica. Particularly these mainland Greek cities and city-states were users of the oracle, and to different extents, dedicators of cult offerings. In contrast, the longer-term influence of Thessaly on the site is not reflected in Thessalian interest in either of these activities during the seventh century.56 Instead Delphi was changing, its focus turning from the trade corridor north toward the sea and land routes to the south, just as its livelihood seems to have become more dependent on the oracle and visitors to the sanctuary, who were themselves increasingly from polis city-states rather than older, ethnos political groupings (like Thessaly). Delphi itself was an increasingly rich settlement, full of treasures, its wealth now widely recognized and by now most probably the subject of one or more elaborate foundation stories. But, at the same time, Delphi had little architectural elaboration or protection, and was under the auspices of no major city. As the inhabitants of Delphi went about their business at the end of the seventh century, their treasures glistening in the sunlight in among their houses, few may have realized that there was a storm brewing. The great age of state activity in the Greek world was about to begin. Delphi, and its oracle, had, for a number of reasons, been turned into an increasingly crucial instrument in the dynamic and volatile processes of social and political change that Greece was undergoing, at the very moment when those processes were increasingly encouraging its constituents to butt heads. Delphi was a rich and unprotected place that many of these communities had a stake in. Who would try to claim it as their prize, and what would happen to Delphi as a result?
Gods! What may not come true, what dream divine,
If thus we
are to drink the Delphic wine!
—Leigh Hunt, Epistle to Lord Byron on his departure for Italy and Greece (published in the Examiner 28th April 1816
4
REBIRTH
In 590 BC, tension boiled over at Delphi. According to the ancient sources, inhabitants of one of the other settlements on the plain leading from the sea up toward Delphi, the town of Crisa, had not only been attacking those en route to the oracle, but had also been extracting heavy tolls from pilgrims arriving by sea, and even making raids on Delphi itself (see map 3).1 The priests of the oracle at Delphi were said to be desperate to escape Crisa’s malign and damaging influence. At the same time, a religious association of several cities and states, known as the Amphictyony, decided to come to Delphi’s aid. Consulting the oracle over what they should do, they received this reply: “that they must fight against the Crisans day and night, and utterly ravage their country, enslave their inhabitants, and dedicate the land to Pythian Apollo, Artemis, Leto, and Athena Pronaia, and that for the future it must lie entirely uncultivated—they must not till this land themselves nor permit any other.” Acting, according to some of the ancient sources, on the advice of Solon (the famous lawmaker of Athens), the Amphictyony, spearheaded by particular members (Thessaly, Athens, and Sicyon), launched a war against Crisa, which was said to have lasted as long as the Trojan War. The campaign was led, according to differing sources, either by Alcmaeon (head of the Alcmaeonidai family from Athens), by Cleisthenes (the tyrant ruler of Sicyon), or by Eurylochus (the Thessalian). Some sources report that the Pythia herself gave the lead on how to defeat Crisa, others that the Amphictyonic forces, after a long and protracted conflict, resorted to their own form of Trojan horse: they introduced hellebore into Crisa’s aqueducts, subsequently rendering the city’s inhabitants helpless thanks to the poison produced by the plant.2
Finally Crisa was destroyed, and the entire territory of the plain below Delphi was dedicated to the gods as sacred land (see map 3). The ancient sources trumpet how the oracle at Delphi was saved as an institution, freed from malign influence for all of Greece, and instead came under the influence of the Amphictyony, whose members not only safeguarded the sanctuary but instituted a series of athletic and musical games in honor of Pythian Apollo at Delphi, the prizes for the first of which were paid for with the booty seized from ravaged Crisa.3 Delphi, in the first two decades of this new century, had been reborn, not only as a sanctuary free from the influence of any one city or state and instead under the protection of an multiregional association, but also as a sanctuary with games that would soon come to be considered on a par with the Olympics.
This war—known as the First Sacred War—has long been considered a watershed moment in Delphi’s history. Yet in 1978, historian Noel Robertson challenged its existence, arguing that the war was an invention of the fourth century BC (at a time when Delphi was “once again” embroiled in a—now its third—Sacred War). His argument was strong: apart from possible allusions to the war in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (in which, as we saw in earlier chapters, Apollo warns his priests against hubristic profiteering from the sanctuary) and the Hesiodic Aspis, the first reference to this great conflict is from fourth-century orator Isocrates (Plataikos c. 373 BC); followed by a cluster of material in the 340s BC (such as Speusippos’s Letter to Philip 8–9; fragments from lost historians; as well as Aeschines in On the Embassy and Against Ctesiphon). Further references can be found in Diodorus Siculus (who quotes a lost fourth–century BC historian Ephorus) and Strabo, followed by nothing until the second century AD when the war resurfaces again in Pausanias. Indeed, the most detailed narrative of the war comes from the Scholia to Pindar and Hypothesis to the Pythian Odes (II 1–5 ed. Drachmann).4
There is a dilemma here. Is the First Sacred War—the moment when Delphi was brutally reborn, at the expense of other settlements in the regions, as a sanctuary with international backing dominating a massive, and now off-limits territory—a necessary and important fiction used as justification for events in later Delphic history, or a later retelling (and potential enlargement) of an event that has its roots in historical truth? Most likely, it is the latter, and as such, we need to be careful in distinguishing between what we can known of what went on in Delphi in the early sixth century BC, from what later centuries portrayed as having happened for their own purposes. The circumstances surrounding the emergence of this First Sacred War in the fourth-century sources will be dealt with in detail in later chapters. For now, our focus is on what we can know to have happened in the early sixth century BC.
Key changes did take place at Delphi in the first half of the sixth century. The Amphictyony certainly came to have a heavy involvement there by, at the very latest, 548 BC.5 The Pythian games were hosted for the first time in this period, although the date of their inception varies between 591/90 BC (according to the Parian Marble inscription) and 586 BC (according to Pausanias 10.7.4–5), with the first festival in which the laurel wreath was a prize occurring in 582 BC.6 And the motivation for their inception is not, either, agreed upon in the ancient sources: some claim they were a celebration of the Amphictyony’s victory in the First Sacred War, others that they celebrated Apollo’s arrival at Delphi or Apollo’s slaying of the serpent (their origins in the latter thus portrayed as funeral games).7
As well, the decision was made to leave the vast plain below Delphi uncultivated around this time, which, given its fertility and thus potential for profit, can only be explained by a significant turn of events like a Sacred War.8 Coupled with this are stories in some literary sources from this period referring to bandits preying on Delphic pilgrims, which seem to echo elements of the Sacred War narrative. Moreover, some scholars have argued for a shift in the ideology underlying oracular responses from favoring Dorian powers to a more even-handed approach possibly tied with Delphi’s rebirth as a “free” international sanctuary. And finally, there are a number of recognizable changes in the archaeological record at Delphi before and after this period that could be explained by the war: Cretan influence at Delphi, for example, which, as we have seen through the eighth and seventh centuries BC had been strong, tapered off by the beginning of the sixth century. Likewise, representations of scenes of Heracles stealing the Delphic tripod—a favorite used to epitomize conflict at (and over) Delphic—become extremely popular in vase painting 560–540 BC in the aftermath of the assumed occurrence of First Sacred War.9
Yet the most critical evidence for change at Delphi in the early decades of the sixth century BC has only recently come to light. As part of the excavations that revealed the series of houses (maison jaune, noire, and rouge) dating back to Delphi’s earliest past, the excavators were able to date the first perimeter wall of the Apollo sanctuary (see fig. 3.2). As was stressed at the end of the last chapter, despite Delphi’s increasingly important and international oracular and dedicatory record during the seventh century BC, there was still no separation between secular and sacred space, no bounded sanctuary or probably temple of Apollo during that time. The latest excavations show that all this changed in 575 BC, with the destruction of the maison rouge, and the building of the Apollo sanctuary’s first perimeter wall over it, to which time should also probably be associated the building of a temple to Apollo (or at the very least the major elaboration of a structure that did not much predate it—see fig. 3.2).10 By 575 BC, therefore, something had happened at Delphi to push the sanctuary headlong into a complete renovation and rearticulation of the settlement, which privileged the definition of a sanctuary space and prioritized the building of structures to worship Apollo.
The narrative of the First Sacred War fits neatly as an explanation for all these changes. Yet while recent scholarship has again become comfortable with the idea of conflict at Delphi in the early sixth century, it has sought to limit its scale and international nature. In particular, scholars have sought to emphasize the particular interests in Delphi of those Amphictyonic members who took the lead in the war (Thessaly,
Athens, Sicyon), and the corresponding absence of Amphictyonic members who were less directly related to the sanctuary.11 Thessaly’s long-term interest in Delphi has been noted in previous chapters, but, as a result of this conflict in the early sixth century, the Amphictyony (in which Thessaly held a prime role) became ensconced at Delphi, ensuring that Thessaly also maintained a say in affairs south of its own territory for the future.12 Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, is equally argued to have become involved in the war over Delphi because it offered a unique opportunity to challenge the supremacy of Corinth, itself long implicated in the sanctuary and surrounding area (not least as an ally of Crisa). This effort resulted not only in Sicyon fighting for the sanctuary, but in its dedicating substantial monuments there during the first half of the sixth century.13 A number of groups in Athens (especially the Alcmaeonid family) have been argued to have been keen, given their rather difficult relationship with the oracle as a result of its involvement in Alcmaeonid as well as Athenian affairs, to reshape Delphi more on their own terms.14