Delphi (15 page)

Figure 4.2
. The Silver Bull, dedicated in the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi and subsequently found buried in the sanctuary (© EFA [Guide de Musée fig. 11])

PART II

Some achieve greatness

The sun blows down from Parnassus
and unhinges the centre of the world.

—Salvatore Quasimodo,
Delphi
(translated by Richard Stoneman)

5

FIRE

In 548
BC
—less than thirty years after the Amphictyony had taken control of Delphi; separated out sacred from secular space; built the sanctuary's first boundary walls; and elaborated, if not built from scratch, its Apollo temple—fire broke out, once again, at Delphi. The new sanctuary, gleaming with its new ivory, limestone, gold and silver dedications, reveling in its busier-than-ever-oracle and brand new Pythian athletic and musical games that had become part of a recognized Panhellenic circuit, was consumed by the flames.
¹
The fire was so intense that it was said to have melted the solid gold lion dedicated by King Croesus of Lydia along with the half-gold brick base on which it stood: four and a half of the twelve talents of gold the monument contained melted away never to be seen again.
²

When the flames finally died away and the smoke cleared, the sanctuary was in a poor state. The temple must have been near ruin. Many of the sanctuary's most extravagant metal dedications, which had been placed around the temple, especially from rich eastern dedicators, were destroyed: only two of Croesus's offerings, the silver and gold amphora mixing bowls that had stood in front of the temple's entrance, had been removed in time to save them. A sanctuary, which
had increasingly been basking in the full focus of the ancient Mediterranean world, lay in tatters.

We don't know for sure how the fire started. Herodotus is insistent that it was pure accident. The Greek word he used almost gives the sense that the temple caught fire of its own free will.
³
Given the presence of the continually burning sacred fire inside, and the regular use of the larger altar outside for burning sacrificial offerings, it's easy to see how such a fire may have been an accident. And we do know how Delphi, and its new ruling Amphictyony, responded: by building bigger and better than ever before. Out of the ashes of destruction, they created a sanctuary worthy of its reputation as the center of the world.

The Amphictyony seems to have taken charge of the rebuilding process (we can only imagine the chagrin this must have caused the inhabitants of the city of Delphi as
their
sanctuary was now rebuilt by an international committee). The upside, however, was a rebuilding program beyond their wildest dreams. What the Amphictyony envisaged was a construction scheme on a par with, if not surpassing, any that had been seen in Greece. Building a new temple was just the beginning. It was to be a bigger temple, which, because of the steep and treacherous mountainside on which Delphi was perched, required also the creation of a new, monumental, supporting terrace that could provide a sufficiently large, stable, flat surface on which to build. At the same time, the opportunity was taken to expand the size of the sanctuary yet again, to push out its (only recently created) boundary walls on all sides, perhaps to the chagrin of the inhabitants of Delphi, as it meant encroaching on what had been residential areas (see
plate 2
). What is more, even though we have no evidence to suggest the sanctuary of Athena, sitting below the Apollo sanctuary on the same cleft of the Parnassian mountains, had been damaged in the fire, the Amphictyony seems to have decided to expand that sanctuary too and build a new temple there as well (see
plate 3
).
⁴

This was no mere patch-up of fire damage: out of Delphi's fiery destruction would come a rebirth of the Apollo and Athena sanctuaries on a scale of size and grandeur never seen before. We should not underestimate the enormity of the project that the Amphictyony conceived of
at Delphi in the mid-sixth century
BC
. Temple building was the largest and most complex economic and management project the Greek world undertook at this time. This project not only sought to build a bigger temple, but to do it on incredibly unstable and difficult ground, requiring every ounce of engineering knowledge the Greeks had at their disposal. And at the same time, they sought to build a second temple in the Athena sanctuary, as well as enlarge both sanctuaries with new, monumental, boundary walls. Every block of stone, every piece of timber, every rope and pulley, every chisel had to be dragged and carried up to the sanctuaries. The stone had to come either from the local quarries in the Parnassian mountains or from farther afield, arriving by land through the mountains, or by sea to the Itean plain and then carted six hundred meters above sea level to Delphi (see
fig. 0.1
).
⁵
Working areas for the final cutting and shaping of the stone had to be created within and around the sanctuary, and the sanctuary itself became a building site for years. People with the necessary skills had to be found throughout Greece and the Mediterranean world, hired, and brought to Delphi, where they had to be accommodated. And, of course, all this had to be paid for.

For certain, Delphi had seen nothing like it in its history, and the Amphictyony had, almost certainly, never, as a council, undertaken a project on such a scale. It is arguable that the Greek world itself had never been party to such an undertaking, and that the Delphic rebuilding was fundamental to forcing the development not only of new skills in the Delphic and Amphictyonic communities (project management skills and alphabetic literacy, for example), but also the development of legal arrangements for building contracts and account keeping in Greece as a whole.
⁶
It also forced the Amphictyony to become good at raising money. The ancient sources tell us that the estimated total cost for this rebuilding was three hundred talents, which is the approximate equivalent of 3,600,000 days'-worth of wages for an Athenian juryman, or 1,800,000 days'-worth of wages for a skilled hoplite soldier. The Amphictyony took responsibility for raising among its members 225 talents, leaving 75 talents (still 450,000 days'-worth of hoplite wages) to be raised by the city of Delphi itself. This was a tall order for a small city
whose main income came from the business of the oracle, and it would have to be done by appealing to the wider Greek world for support; as such, it would be a huge test of Delphi's popularity in and importance to the ancient Mediterranean community. The response to Delphi's call for funding is thus fascinating. We don't have the full picture of where the money came from, but we do know that Amasis, the pharaoh of Egypt, felt it important enough to contribute one thousand talents'-worth of alum—an Egyptian product highly valued in Greece—which could then be sold and the proceeds put into the restoration fund. To get a sense of the magnitude of this gift, the total contribution from Greeks living in Egypt came to twenty minas, one third of a single talent, which was itself thought to be very respectable.
⁷

Raising such a huge amount of money, even with gifts like those of Amasis, must have taken a considerable amount of time. It is no surprise that, given also how complicated a building project this was, the construction of the new temples and sanctuary boundary walls was not completed until 506
BC
, over forty years after the fire.
⁸
On the one hand, this left Delphi as a building site for the second half of the sixth century
BC
. It has been argued that, as a result, dedicators keen to continue their relationship with Apollo during this period went elsewhere, particularly to the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoios not that far from Delphi. Apollo Ptoios saw a leap in dedications of kouroi statues in exactly this period, which faded away in the early years of the fifth century
BC
as Delphi came back online.
⁹
Yet, on the other hand, this process of fund-raising and rebuilding ensured that, for the first time, all the Amphictyonic members, as well as the inhabitants of Delphi and the wide range of people they tapped for money from all over the Mediterranean world, now had a financial stake in the fabric of Delphi.

Even more interestingly, despite the initial impression that Delphi was out of action at this time, the truth seems to have been quite the opposite. In the second half of the sixth century
BC
, Delphi, for better or worse, was becoming more and more deeply involved with the politics of ancient Greece. The oracle, despite the fact that the temple from which the Pythia made her responses was in ruins and under reconstruction,
continued to prophesize (we have no idea where or how). In part, the questions put to her were business as usual. Questions about the founding of new settlements continued to come to Delphi (e.g., Abdera in 544
BC
, Cyrnos in 545
BC
); tyrants continued to consult and were (later) recorded as being given the brush off: Polycrates of Samos consulted about whether his new festival on the sacred island of Delos should be called Delia or Pythia, and was told it didn't matter (he died soon after). Equally important for Delphi's continued success was that settlements with which Delphi had been involved at the time of their foundation continued to return to the oracle for advice. When Cyrene in Libya suffered political unrest in the second half of the sixth century, it consulted Delphi on how best to manage it, and was instructed to appoint a mediator, Demonax of Mantinea. A little later, King Archesilaus III of Cyrene, keen to reclaim complete control of Cyrene following the process of mediation, consulted Delphi on how best to do so and was told not to attempt to gain too much power. Ignoring the advice of the oracle, he was eventually assassinated.
¹⁰

Indeed, scholars have noted an increasing boldness of oracular responses in this period (even allowing for their recalibration in later sources), borne out in the oracle's response to the residents of the city of Cyme in Asia Minor, when they, just after the middle of the century, consulted as to whether or not they should hand over Pactyes, a man who had taken refuge in the city after having betrayed his Persian masters. The oracle is said to have replied that they should hand him over (because that's what they wanted in reality to do), but that the city itself would be punished for having even considered asking the oracle about breaking such a fundamental rule of the rights of a refugee suppliant. Underlying this chastisement, however, is a sense of Delphi's understanding of the changing balance of power in Asia Minor, and particularly the growing dominance of Persia after its defeat of Croesus of Lydia. Delphi, after all, told Cyme to give in to Persian demands even though it meant breaking a fundamental tenet of Greek society. Similarly, the oracle is recorded as responding to the Cnidians in Asia Minor, who consulted on how best to fight against the Persians (they planned
to dig a canal through the landscape to make their city an island), that it would be best if they not resist.
¹¹

Delphi was thus, despite being a building site, still fundamentally active in the affairs of North Africa and Asia Minor in the second half of the sixth century
BC
. As well, it was consulted several times by settlements in the West during this period, particularly about public and private matters concerning the inhabitants of Croton in southern Italy.
¹²
But it was Delphi's involvement with the politics of mainland Greece that would be of crucial importance for its immediate future. More specifically, it would be Delphi's involvement (and noninvolvement) with two rival aristocratic families in Athens that would define the political landscape not only in Athens, but also at Delphi and set the stage for future events.

The first of those families were the Alcmaeonids. Back in the late seventh century
BC
the would-be tyrant Cylon, having consulted (and misunderstood) the Delphic oracle on how to take control of Athens, had been killed by the Alcmaeonid family. However, after performing such a service for their city, the Alcmaeonids dragged him out from the sacred refuge of a temple to Athena, their family thereby cursed forever because they had not respected Cylon's protected status while in the religious sanctuary. Despite this curse, however, the family continued to gain in wealth and importance. In the first half of the sixth century
BC
, Alcmaeon, had, it is claimed by Herodotus, helped the ambassadors of King Croesus of Lydia during their frequent trips to Delphi for consultation and dedication, and had gained great wealth as a result.
¹³
His son, Megacles, married the daughter of Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon (who, too, was very active at Delphi). Their son, also called Cleisthenes, was the famous Cleisthenes of Athens, who would eventually be fundamental in founding democracy in that city at the end of the sixth century.