Delphi (21 page)

Yet, before long, Athens, under the leadership of Pericles (another Alcmaeonid—their involvement with Delphi never ceased), went back to Delphi with its own military force so as to return Delphi to the Phocians once more. In response, the Athenian accepted a grant of promanteia from the Delphians (as if the Delphians had any choice but to offer it) and inscribed their acceptance of this honor on the same bronze wolf dedication that had recently been inscribed with the same honor for the Spartans.
²⁸

By 445
BC
, Delphi had once again been freed from Phocian control and returned to independence. This almost slapstick era of repeated Athenian and Spartan attempts to control and free Delphi, and their blatant one-upmanship in representing each stage of that struggle in the sanctuary (on different sides of the same wolf statue), is often referred to as Delphi's Second Sacred War. Scholarship is split about how it ended. The debate focuses around reports in the later historian Diodorus Siculus that the Delphians laid a compensation claim against the Phocians
for their take-over of the city before the Amphictyonic council, who resolved to fine the Phocians, the proceeds of which went into making a colossal bronze Apollo statue for the sanctuary.
²⁹
Yet whether or not the Amphictyony was strong enough in the fifth century
BC
to impose such demands, it is clear that the atmosphere at Delphi changed drastically in the first decades of the second half of the century. For it was during the 440s and 430s
BC
that not only did Sparta begin to dedicate in the sanctuary, but many other mainland Greek cities and states also returned to dedicate to Apollo. In particular Thessaly (closely associated with the sanctuary's long-term development, and heavily involved in the Amphictyonic council as its permanent president), and Thessalian cities like Pherai, returned to the sanctuary to offer monuments to their military victories over none other than Athens.
³⁰
The age of Athenian dominance—at Delphi at least—was over. Indeed, Athens, in contrast to the monopolization of the sanctuary space it exacted in the first half of the century, would not offer a monumental dedication there again during the fifth century
BC
.

At the same time, Delphi seems to have begun to receive offerings from parts of the Greek world that had never been connected with Delphi, like the Greek colonies of the Black Sea (in whose original settlements Delphi had not played a role) and from Sardinia. Aegean islands, like Andros, arrived to offer monuments to their original founders, and even professional associations put up monuments to Apollo, which simultaneously advertised their skills. And it is at this time that we find the first hard evidence for a cult of the old mother goddess Gaia at Delphi: the Delphians erected statues to Gaia and Themis by the Castalian spring (see
plate 1
,
fig. 0.2
), a symbol of a gathering sense of the ancient lineage of this sanctuary, and, no less important, the need to demonstrate that lineage publicly in an age of increasing competition among the many important oracular sanctuaries of Greece.
³¹

Amid this renewed enthusiasm for Delphic dedication from around the Greek world, the oracle continued its traditional role in the founding of new settlements, even for Athens, who was advised by the Pythia on how and where to settle what would become the colony of Thurii on
the southern Italian coast. The oracle was also likely involved in Athenian settlement in Amphipolis in northern Greece.
³²
In addition, the oracle was said to have been involved in the appointment of religious officials in Athens in the 430s, and, most famously, gave support to Athens's Imperial First Fruits Decree (argued to be c.435
BC
). Repeated twice in the inscribed text of this decree is a report of an oracle from Delphi encouraging that “first fruits” (a percentage of revenue) be dedicated to Demeter at the Athenian sanctuary of Eleusis by the Athenians, by their allies, and indeed by everyone.
³³
At the same time, the oracle remained of use to settlements as they continued to develop: in the 430s
BC
, Epidamnus was torn apart by
stasis
(civil unrest) and appealed to its original founder, Corcyra, for help. None was forthcoming, so the Epidamnians approached the oracle at Delphi for guidance on whether they should appeal instead to Corinth (the city that had founded Corcyra).
³⁴
The oracle, it seems, despite the intensifying political and military disagreements over the sanctuary itself, was still a useful port of call in times of tricky international Greek diplomacy.

Yet, at the same time, the new ascendency, and physical presence through its dedications, of Sparta at Delphi meant that the sanctuary was now an attractive place in which to hammer home military victories over that city too. Argos constructed no less than four different offerings at Delphi in this period, all of which celebrated victory over Sparta. It is most fascinating that experimentation with different sculptural and architectural styles of monument at Delphi seems to have helped crystallize the city's identity at home. The Argives erected a semicircular statue base in the lower half of the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi, complete with statues of the seven Argive heroes who had fought against Thebes, an almost identical copy of which was later erected in Argos itself (see
plate 2
).
³⁵
Delphi had become not just a place in which to tell (and retell) a (monumental) version of history, but an incubator for emerging identities within a constantly shifting world, of which Argos, developing its own democracy in the period after 460
BC
, seems to have taken full advantage.
³⁶

The second half of the fifth century
BC
was thus critical for Delphi. On the one hand, it bore witness to the development of the many stories
that surrounded Delphi's origins, which pushed its ancient lineage further and further back into mythical time (as we saw in earlier chapters). On the other hand, it bore witness to the development and widening of its role within the contemporary Greek world, both as a sanctuary that was decidedly international, and as a space that offered a range of opportunities for individuals, cities, and states to consult on difficult issues, tell and retell the past, as well as crystallize their own identities. As tensions in the Greek world continued to grow—as its city-states hardened in their attitudes to one another; as what was once, albeit only briefly, a united Greece fractured into two competing superpower blocs that would, in the following thirty years, tear the Greek world apart—Delphi stood as a mirror of the history that had brought Greece to this point. It was a religious space and institution to which access for all was jealously guarded, but also a small, unprotected city whose inhabitants, the Delphians, would once again have to strain every muscle and sinew to navigate the treacherous waters of Greek politics in the tumultuous years ahead.

The sources report that the Pythian oracle made a strong opening play in the first act of this unfolding tragedy. When, in 432
BC
, the Spartans consulted the Pythia on whether or not it would be better for them to go to war against Athens in response to what they saw as Athens breaking the terms of the agreement left over from the Second Sacred War, the oracle's response was said to be, uncharacteristically,
un
ambiguous: “if you go to war with all your might, you will have victory, and I Apollo will help you, both when you call for aid and when you do not.”
³⁷
During the following decade, Delphi was a crucially important strategic location for Spartan forces and its allies: it was probably almost constantly in the hands of the Peloponnesian league, to the extent that it was even suggested Delphi could contribute financially to Sparta's campaign against Athens, and is reported as sanctioning a further strategic Spartan settlement from which “Ionians, Achaeans, and certain other tribes” were banned.
³⁸
And even though the Delphic oracle was said to have been involved in yet another case of Spartan bribery in 427–26
BC
, this time helping to reinstate in Sparta a long-exiled king who was keener on peace with Athens than war, it seems that Athens's disillusionment with Delphi, perhaps
understandably, grew considerably during this period.
³⁹
Scholars have pointed to the rather bitter representation of Delphi in the Athenian tragedies of the time (particularly to Euripides'
Andromache
, performed between 428–25
BC
), and the searing sarcasm reserved for oracles in general in Aristophanes' comedies (particularly
Knights
, performed 424
BC
).
⁴⁰
And yet, perhaps because a thing lost is a thing missed most, it is telling that representations of Delphi in Athenian vase painting increased a lot in the same period: locked out of the sanctuary they had so recently dominated and claimed as their own, Athenians sought to visualize it in their every-day lives.
⁴¹

When peace was agreed upon between Sparta and Athens in 423 and again in 421
BC
, Thucydides makes clear the extent to which Delphi was center in the minds of both parties. In the agreement of 423
BC
, the first clause ran as follows:

concerning the temple and oracle of the Pythian Apollo, we agree that whosoever wants shall consult it without fraud and without fear, according to the usages of our forefathers…. concerning the treasure of the god we agree to take care to find out all wrong-doers, rightly and justly following the usages of our forefathers.

And in the renewed agreement two years later, the first clauses again concerned Delphi:

with regard to the common sanctuaries [Delphi and Olympia], whosoever wishes may offer sacrifices and consult the oracles and attend as a deputy according to the customs of the fathers, both by land and sea, without fear. And the precinct and temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the people of Delphi shall be independent, having their own system of taxation and their own courts of justice, both as regards themselves and their own territory, according to the customs of the fathers.
⁴²

As a result of the privileged position at the heart of these treaties, it is possible to see Delphi as once again reaching out to a more varied crowd in the last twenty years of the fifth century
BC
. Its oracle was involved in
encouraging the development of an Arcadian confederacy under Mantinea; in continuing its evolving role as arbitrator in a dispute between Thasos and Neapolis; in dealing boldly with Athens to insist Athens returned the Delian exiles to Delos after Athens had sought to purify the island by expelling its citizens; and in advising Athens about how to recover from plague (for which Apollo Alexikakos (the averter of evil) was henceforth worshiped in Athens).
⁴³

Yet, in reality, and especially for Athens, relations with Delphi were still strained. Thucydides' rendition of the peace treaties evoked the need to convince all the separate parties to agree to the terms, which, in relation particularly to Boeotia, was difficult. Relations between Athens and Boeotia remained tense, with a treaty between them repeatedly agreed upon every ten days. The result, given that Boeotian land stood between Athens and Delphi, was that the sacred processional route from Athens to Delphi was only accessible with Boeotian permission. As Aristophanes lamented later in 414
BC
: “if we wish to go to Pytho, we have to ask the Boeotians for passage through their territory.” That sense of ongoing frustration with Delphi continues to be palpable in Athenian tragedy, too, for example in Euripides'
Ion
, where, despite the fact that the play is staged at Delphi, and Delphi continues to be represented as an interpretive space through which solutions for future actions could be found, Pythian Apollo is presented as something of an ambiguous villain.
⁴⁴

Perhaps because of the ongoing difficulties of access to Delphi, and the perceived reception waiting for them when they did get there, the Athenians do not seem to have consulted to the same degree as they did during the Persian Wars in the run up to launching their infamous Sicilian expedition in 415
BC
. Indeed, if anything, the sources indicate that the oracle was supporting the Spartans once again as conflict resumed in the aftermath of that campaign.
⁴⁵
Visitors to the sanctuary over the last decade of the fifth century would be left in no doubt either about how the war was going. Neither Athens nor its allies dedicated monumental offerings at Delphi during this period, but their enemies most certainly did. Over the course of the Peloponnesian War, almost all of Athens's proud monuments from the first half of the fifth century were
opposed—spatially, artistically, and architecturally—by monuments constructed by its enemies: the Acanthians, the Syracusans, the Megarians, and, of course, in the aftermath of 404
BC
and Sparta's final victory over Athens at Aegospotamoi, the Spartans. The latter made their new ascendancy particularly clear: at the southeastern entrance to the Apollo sanctuary, where Athens had constructed its second group monument to Marathon and positioned it so as to be the first seen on entering the sanctuary, the Spartans now trumped that position with a group comprising thirty-eight statues in two rows: in total, three times the size of the Athenian offering on a base eighteen meters long (
fig. 6.2
). On the opposite side of the entrance path, they built a stoa that towered over the entrance, and whose construction required heavy engineering to ensure its stability on the mountainside; in it, valuable offerings were placed by the Spartans and their victorious general Lysander.
⁴⁶

The changing tide of Greek history had once again been written into the Delphic complex in marble, stone, and bronze. But if Plutarch, writing in the first century
AD
, is to be believed, this was also the moment when monuments at Delphi began not only to represent the victories of their dedicators, but their fates as well. Not simply in the sense that they were eventually upstaged, opposed, and overshadowed, but, more powerfully, in the sense that the monuments themselves crumbled as their dedicators crumbled. As the Athenians set off on their fateful Sicilian expedition in 415
BC
, Plutarch records, the brilliant bronze palm tree topped by a golden statue of Athena dedicated by the Athenians on the temple terrace in 460
BC
(see
fig. 1.3
) was pecked at insistently by crows, till it was disfigured.
⁴⁷