Delphi (34 page)

Delphi fell into a lapse again after Nero's self-serving (or victimizing) attentions, symbolized more broadly by the reyoking of Greece to the Roman cart following Vespasian's reversal of Nero's declaration of freedom. In fact, scholars have pointed out that Nero's desire to compete in Greek games was unusual not least because he was one of very few ethnic Romans (as opposed to Greeks under Rome or who were given Roman citizenship) who chose to compete at Delphi. Most ethnic Romans who chose to compete in Greek games (and there were never many) chose Olympia rather than Delphi. Delphi's games—though continuing in their popularity—were popular, it seems, only with the inhabitants of the wider Greek world, not its Roman masters.
¹⁹

Yet Delphi's isolation did not continue for long. The Emperor Titus, who came to power in
AD
79, followed in Claudius's footsteps and became the eponymous archon of the city of Delphi, for which he too seems to have received a statue from the city of Delphi in the sanctuary. This “seems” qualification is necessary because many scholars disagree over whether this statue is of Titus, or of his successor, Domitian, who also held the archonship at Delphi. The latter's investment in the sanctuary has long been recognized. Indeed it is unavoidable. A gigantic inscription, measuring 4.75 meters by 0.65 meters, etched into stone plaques, has been found at Delphi. It can be dated to between 6 January and 13 September
AD
84, and testifies to Domitian's undertaking
of the refurbishment of the temple of Apollo at his own expense (the restored inscription can be seen in the Delphi museum today). Scholars are undecided whether this inscription was placed upon the eastern architrave of the temple, or set up on the ground by the temple. There has also been recent significant debate about exactly what refurbishments Domitian undertook. Traditionally, they have been thought to be those needed for well over one hundred years, since the temple of Apollo was damaged during the barbarian raids on Delphi in 84
BC
. Yet, more recently, the argument has been made that the damage Domitian undertook to repair was caused more recently, perhaps during the earthquake that struck Greece in
AD
77 and which, we know, caused significant damage at Corinth. It is, however, telling that at least one of the plaques onto which the inscription was placed had a series of older inscriptions on the reverse side. The plaques had, it seems, been appropriated from a former dedication thought by some to be the Cnidian treasury originally built in the sixth century
BC
(see
plate 2
), which, by this period, may well have fallen into disrepair and thus been seen as a convenient source of material. Domitian may well have restored the temple, but he made his motivations clear, it seems, by taking material from monuments he chose not to restore.
²⁰

Both Titus's and Domitian's reengagement with Delphi may have been part of a bigger picture of a return to more earnest ancestral religious observance as a result of a string of the disasters that befell Rome and Italy: there had been fire and an outbreak of plague in Rome in
AD
80, and Pompeii and Herculaneum had been destroyed by Vesuvius in
AD
79. Furthermore, Domitian's interest in the sanctuary did not end with the restoration of the temple. He was involved in the sacred procession festival between Athens and Delphi, renamed the Dodekais, as indicated earlier, to honor Augustus in the last years of the first century
BC
. He engaged in correspondence with the city of Delphi when they asked him about the organization of the Pythian festival, and his response belies something of the importance he attached to traditional religious observance: “it is naturally right and pious to keep to the appointed time of the Pythian contest in accordance with the
Amphictyonic laws and not to tamper with any part of the ancestral customs.” This letter, like all Imperial letters, was inscribed publicly at Delphi, and in
AD
86, it seems Domitian introduced the Capitoline games to Rome, which were themselves based on the model of the Pythian games at Delphi.
²¹

Yet, at the same time as he likely imported the Delphic model to Rome, his influence at Delphi seems to have started a process of returning the Delphic games to Greek control. Since the time of Augustus, alongside the introduction of an emperor's overseer (the epimeletai) attached to the Amphictyony, it is indicated that the position of an
agonothetes
(president of the games) was created. Yet it was during and after the time of Domitian that this role began more regularly to be filled by Greeks, and particularly citizens of Hypata, chief city of the Ainianians (part of Thessaly). This coincided also, from the time of the Flavian dynasty onward (Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian), with the appointment of more and more Delphians as epimeletai.
²²
Delphi, under the Flavians, is reputed to not only have been physically restored, engaged with, and encouraged to uphold its ancestral customs, but also to have had its games actively copied in Rome, and their organization and management restored to more local groups.

Domitian was also likely honored with a statue erected alongside the temple he restored (and that mirrored in style and placement the monument of Aemilius Paullus from 168
BC
) as well as perhaps with a second statue set into a niche created in the northern wall of the Apollo terrace (see
fig. 1.3
).
²³
Perhaps this gratitude was more well deserved than we have already recognized. Delphi itself also seems to have been the beneficiary of much other new construction during Domitian's reign and in the period immediately afterward. The gymnasium, for example, was given a new bathhouse in the later first century
AD
/early second century
AD
; a library and a dining room were added to the gymnasium complex under the auspices of the epimelete Tiberius Flavius Soclarus, and the covered running track (the
xystos
) was also given a new colonnade (see
fig. 7.3
). Too, just outside the sanctuary of Apollo, along its eastern boundary wall, a large house was erected at the end of the first
century
AD
, 100 square meters, with an ionic colonnaded courtyard at its center. Known as the “peristyle house,” it has been interpreted as either the new home of the Pythian prietess (we know from inscriptions that the epimelete of the period, Tiberius Flavius Soclarus, built a new home for the Pythia), or as the new prytaneion council house for the city of Delphi (see the “Roman house” in
plate 2
).
²⁴

The end of the first century and beginning of the second century
AD
were an important time for Delphi. The writer and orator Dio Chrysostom (Dio “the golden-mouthed”), while in an exile forced on him by Domitian for his overzealous support of the emperor's rivals, visited the sanctuary and undertook a consultation of the oracle in the period
AD
82–96. The Emperor Nerva, who would eventually end Dio's exile, received a statue from the city of Delphi, as did Trajan from the Amphictyony, and several other dedications by the Amphictyony and the city of Delphi suggest the sanctuary was both well plugged in to the wider political world, and the beneficiary of a number of visitors, especially its games. The Amphictyony honored the proconsul of Asia, T. Avidius Quietus, with a statue in
AD
91–92, and the city of Delphi honored his successor Caristanius Julianus in the same way in
AD
99.
²⁵
The Amphictyony honored an agonothete from the city of Nicopolis (who just happened to be a member of the Amphictyonic council as well), and the city of Delphi also honored the wife of one of the epimeletes in this period, as well as two of the Greek-born (Hypatian) agonothetes and a grammarian. But Delphi also attracted new dedicators in this period. The city of Gortyn made their only dedication at Delphi in the sanctuary's history around
AD
100: to commemorate a victor in the Pythian aulos competition from their city. In addition, Hypata, whose citizens were increasingly involved with the games as agonothetes
,
offered a statue of Trajan in the sanctuary, and a group of sophists dedicated a set of statues to different individuals at Delphi at the same time. And in the early second century
AD
, a certain Memmia Lupa, seems to have made a large enough contribution to the sanctuary to receive no less than ten reserved seats in Delphi's theater, each inscribed with her name, as well as a statue in her honor (see
plate 2
).
²⁶

The Emperor Trajan responded to a number of Delphic letters during his reign, including accepting their request for him to reconfirm Delphi's status as an independent city and sanctuary during his reign. Yet he also seems to have been responsible for sending in a series of financial administrators to ensure the books were balanced.
²⁷
At Delphi, this
cor-rector
, as he was known, was C. Avidius Nigrinus, and in
AD
116–17, he, according to inscriptions engraved onto the temple of Apollo, arbitrated yet another series of disputes over land boundaries between Delphi and Ambryssus, Amphissa, and Anticyra, with the resulting decisions inscribed in both Latin and Greek.
²⁸
Nigrinus however seemed to have fallen foul of the new emperor, Hadrian, soon after he came to power in
AD
117: he was executed on a charge of conspiracy.
²⁹

Yet Nigrinus is not the only individual we know of at Delphi from this period. Much better known, in fact, is Plutarch, son of Autobulus, from the city of Chaeronea, not far from Delphi, and famous for being the site of a series of decisive battles in Greek history. It was where Philip of Macedon won hegemony over the Greeks by beating the Athenians and Thebans in 338
BC
; and the place in which the Roman general Sulla defeated Mithridates in 86
BC
. The inhabitants of both Delphi and Chaeronea were often close friends. Plutarch's grandfather Lamprias had been good friends with a doctor called Philotas, who had settled and practiced in Delphi, and an inscription was even set up at Delphi during the first century
AD
to commemorate the
homonoia
(the “equality”) between the two cities. Plutarch himself was born in
AD
47 and later became a Roman citizen, thanks to being recommended for the honor to Trajan by his close friend the Roman L. Mestrius Florus, from which Plutarch took his Roman name: Mestrius Plutarchus. Plutarch was well educated and traveled extensively across Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, and his philosophy and learning was widely respected. He was well connected to powerful men in both the Greek and Roman worlds: he was friends with Sosius Senecio, a friend of the Emperor Trajan and consul in
AD
99, 102, and 107; and he was also friends with the son of Plutarch's brother, who became a stoic philosopher and was a tutor to the future Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
³⁰

Yet Plutarch is especially important for our story because he spent a great deal of time at Delphi. Though there is no evidence that he possessed a house or land in the city, we can first place him there at the time of Nero's visit to Greece, when he visited the sanctuary in the company of his brother. From that time on, Plutarch seems to have taken a keen interest in Delphi, and throughout the rest of his career worked in a series of important civic and religious roles in the city and its sanctuary: he was an agonothetes, a
proedros
of the Amphictyonic council, as well as an epimeletes of the Amphictyony, and even, in very old age, he was procurator of Greece. He became a citizen at Delphi, and was a priest of Apollo at the sanctuary at the time of the arrival of Trajan's corrector, Nigrinus, with whom Plutarch became friends (indeed he dedicated one of his philosophical writings, on the subject of brotherly love, to Nigrinus). And following his death in
AD
120, just after Hadrian became emperor, he was honored by both Chaeronea and Delphi with a portrait bust in the sanctuary (
fig. 10.1
).
³¹

Yet Plutarch is even more important for our story because, in addition to being a well-connected and active member of the Delphic community, he was also a great writer, publishing two weighty tomes known collectively as the
Moralia
and the
Parallel Lives
. The
Lives
is a series of individual biographies that paired particularly important Greeks and Romans because of their similar characteristics or achievements. It was a masterwork of historical and psychological analysis drawing on a wide range of previous sources, and has often provided critical insight for modern scholarship, not least for our understanding of Delphi as a place many of his personages passed through or impacted.
³²

His
Moralia
, however, is, for our understanding of Delphi at least, perhaps an even more precious survival. It is composed of sixty or so individual treatises on a wide range of subjects from religion to philosophy, ethical matters, politics, science, and literary criticism, some of which are responses to official requests and others notes of his philosophical dinner conversations at his home in Chaeronea and those of his friends. Within this sprawling feast of intellectual abundance lie three treatises explicitly located at, and concerned with, Delphi. All seem to have been written before Plutarch became priest of Apollo (circa
AD
95) and were sent by Plutarch as a first installment of his musing over Delphi to Sarapion, a poet living in Athens who wrote verse on scientific subjects.
³³
The first is a discussion of the meaning of the mysterious letter “E,” one of the philosophical maxims attached to the pronaos of the temple (which, as indicated above, Augustus's wife, Livia, as Plutarch tells us, replaced with a version in gold).
³⁴
The text takes the form of a discussion, at first initiated by Plutarch's son in conversation with strangers at Delphi and later with Plutarch, who, in turn
relates a previous discussion he had on the matter when he was a young man with his friends and a priest of Apollo, and which concludes, after offering several explanations motivated by logic, metaphysics, and mathematics, that there is no certain interpretation of the symbol.