Delphi

“ One day an old man told Cadmus that if he would go to Delphi and ask the Pythia, perhaps she could tell him all about Europa. Cadmus had never heard of Delphi or of the Pythia, and he asked the old man what he meant.
"I will tell you," said the man. "Delphi is a town, built near the foot of Mount Parnassus, at the very center of the earth. It is the town of Apollo, the Bringer of Light; and there is a temple there, built close to the spot where Apollo killed a black serpent, many, many years ago. The temple is the most wonderful place in the world. ”

“ On the whole, we discern that the moral influence of Delphi was beneficent and on the side of righteousness. It did nothing, indeed, to abolish, it may even have encouraged at times, the barbarous practice of human sacrifice, which was becoming abhorrent to the Greek of the 6th and 5th centuries; but a conservative priesthood is always liable to lag behind the moral progress of an age in respect of certain rites, and in other respects it appears that the “Holy Ones” of Delphi kept well abreast of the Hellenic advance in ethical thought. ”

“ But the prophetess in Delphi, whether she gives oracles to mankind through an attenuated and fiery spirit, bursting from the mouth of the cavern, or whether being seated in the adytum on a brazen tripod, or on a stool with four feet, she becomes sacred to the God; whichsoever of these is the case, she entirely gives herself up to a divine spirit, and is illuminated with a ray of divine fire. And when, indeed, fire ascending from the mouth of the cavern circularly invests her in collected abundance, she becomes filled from it with a divine splendour. ”

“ It was he who had first led the colonists to their distant lands over the misty deep. Sculptors came accompanying their statues; poets brought their songs. Now would pass an Ionian gentleman in long purple cloak, laughing, gesturing; now a quiet young philosopher whose large-eyed vivid face showed his spirit-quest. Philosophers were well known in Delphi and more welcome than kings. ”

“ The wisdom of the Delphian priests was revered and their judgments accepted much in the same way as were those of the seers who taught the children of Israel at the city gates. The Oracle of Delphi became potent—a name with which to conjure.
We know full well today that no priestess upon a tripod can reveal to us the secrets of the future. A thorough understanding of the past must be the safest guide for coming years. No vapor can inspire sudden revelations—the result only of faithful effort and earnest thought. ”

“ The meaning of Delphys adelphus is the womb; and thus the Greeks believed Delphi to be the centre of the earth, just as the mediæval Christians thought Jerusalem was. It is from this word that delphis (a brother) is derived, and from one no doubt of the same root, that was first a mass, and afterwards a dolphin, the similarity of sound accounting for the confusion of derivatives from the temple and the fish. Again, the dolphin is said to be so called as being the fish of the Dolphièm god.
It was probably as an attribute of the god that Delphinos was used as a name by the Greeks ”

“ The truly adventurous may still approach Delphi over the ancient road by land from the eastward, doubtless the same highway that was taken by old King Laios when he was slain on his way to the oracle, all unwitting of the kinship, by his own son Œdipus,—possibly because of a dispute as to which should yield the road. ”

“ When I stood high up on the stadium at Delphi, the great scene described by the orator Æschines came fresh upon me, when he looked upon the sacred plain of Krissa, and called all the worshippers of the god to clear it of the sacrilegious Amphissians, who had covered it with cattle and growing crops. The plain, he says, is easily surveyed from the place of meeting—a statement which shows that the latter cannot have been in the town of Delphi: for a great shoulder of the mountain effectually hides the whole plain from every part of the town. ”

“ But supposing that this name and character had some relation to Delphi, how are we to account for other places being called after this manner? They could not all be umbilical: the earth cannot be supposed to have different centres: nor could the places thus named be always so situated, as to be central in respect to the nation, or the province in which they were included. ”

“ That he was not their own child, and that in fact he was a foundling of unknown parentage, dipus was not slow of finding from the insults of his schoolfellows; and at length, with the determination of learning his origin and his fate, being now a full- grown young man, he strode off from Corinth to Delphi. The oracle at Delphi, being as usual in collusion with his evil destiny, sent him off to seek his parents at Thebes. On his journey thither, he met, in a narrow part of the road, a chariot proceeding in the counter direction from Thebes to Delphi. ”

“ As he makes his homeward way through the low dark ruins, which are all that the intrepid archæologists could summon from the grave of centuries, he is moved to wonder whether Delphi, save for its natural beauty by day and by night, has any place in modern thought. ”

“ GALEN says that man has seven bones in the sternum (instead of three) ; and Sylvius, in reply to Vesalius, contends that "in days of yore the robust chests of heroes had more bones than men now have."
GREENE (Robert) speaks of Delphos as an island; But Delphos, or rather Delphi, was a city of Phocis, and no island. "Six noblemen were sent to the isle of Delphos."—Donastus and Faunia. Probably he confounded the city of Delphi with the isle of Delos. ”

“ Such a man was as perfect a teller-forth of the honour of the gods, as truly a heaven-born προφήτης, as the temple of Delphi could have found for its service and the more we study Pindar's poetry, the more we shall read in it the mind of that Delphic religion which, in his time, was still a mighty, if a declining, power. ”

“ Although Delphi had not for many ages wielded the enormous political, and even international, power which it enjoyed before the Persian wars, still, even in the days of its greatest obscurity, it was the resort of many who came to consult it in the ordinary cares of life. Apollonius of Tyana, in the reign of Nero, visited the old oracular centres, Delphi, Dodona, Abae, and the shrines of Amphiaraus and Trophonius.2453 They seem to be still active, although the sage had, in fulfilment of his mission, to correct their ritual. ”

“ Look far up the mountain road! Every visible loop is filled back to where it is lost in distance. Oh, Apollon, surely you have forgotten! Son of Leto, you are far off this day, joying among your Olympians. Our Delphi is naught to you!
What happened now can hardly be believed, but it is recorded by the father of history and later writers bear testimony to it.
This had happened time and time again in the past to the hurt of Delphi, why not happen this once to her help? Herodotus says it did happen.
Eëtíon, Dryas, Theria, Nikander heard groan as if the earth, old Gê herself, had spoken. ”

“ Now although from early times the singular and striking character of the place might often have raised the feelings to ecstasy, and excited in the spectator dim and shadowy forebodings of the future; yet the establishment of a fixed institution, with its sacred regulations and rights, was intimately connected with the introduction of the worship of Apollo. At what time, however, did this first obtain a footing at Delphi? Probably when the Doric race came from Hestiæotis to Parnassus, and settled above Delphi, which event took place at a very early period. ”

“ Well seen now at the foot of Delphi’s own cliffs, well seen at the foot of Phaidriades, well seen below in the Precinct of Athena Forethought in Delphi village!
Pointed caps, huge wicker shields, tall lances, these were the Medes themselves. Behind them, a curious barbarian folk in hooded mantles, and oh, dear Paian, what are these? Men black as ebony, clad in skins of leopard and lion, carrying bows twice as tall as themselves. Some have woolly heads, others have heads not human at all but horse heads, with upright ears and flowing manes. ”

“ An eight years' tenure of the kingship at Delphi and Thebes would accord with the similar tenure of the office at Sparta and Cnossus. And if the kings of Cnossus disguised themselves as bulls, there seems no reason why the kings of Delphi and Thebes should not have personated dragons or serpents. In all these cases the animal whose guise the king assumed would be sacred to the royal family. At first the relation of the beast to the man would be direct and simple ”

“ The town of Delphi was built on the slope of one of the peaks of Parnassus, in the midst of a natural excavation, and being almost entirely surrounded with precipices, it was left unprotected by any artificial fortifications: above the town, on the north, was situated the magnificent temple of Apollo, filled with native offerings of the Greeks. ”

“ We have remarked, that Parnassus itself is situated on the western boundaries of Phocis. The western side of this mountain is occupied by the Locri Ozolæ; on the southern is Delphi, a rocky spot, resembling in shape a theatre; on its summit is the oracle, and also the city, which comprehends a circle of 16 stadia. Above it lies Lycoreia; here the Delphians were formerly settled above the temple. At present they live close to it around the Castalian fountain. ”

“ Such in my day the objects remaining in Delphi that are worth recording.
10.32.2 On the way from Delphi to the summit of Parnassus, about sixty stades distant from Delphi, there is a bronze image. The ascent to the Corycian cave is easier for an active walker than it is for mules or horses. I mentioned a little earlier in my narrative that this cave was named after a nymph called Corycia, and of all the caves I have ever seen this seemed to me the best worth seeing. ”

“ The whole account, and even the time, are clearly drawn from the mysteries of the worship. According to the tradition of Delphi, Apollo, at the expiration of the great period, visited the beloved nation of the Hyperboreans, and danced and played with them from the vernal equinox to the early setting of the Pleiades; and when the first corn was cut in Greece, he returned to Delphi, as I suppose, with the full ripe ears, the offerings of the Hyperboreans.1156 Even the story of the swans was no addition of Alcæus ”

“ Since we have frequently considered Delphi as belonging to the number of the Doric cities, on a supposition that it was the seat of an ancient Doric nobility (although the people was chiefly formed of naturalized slaves of the temple) , we have finally to observe on the character of the Delphians, that their early degeneracy (which even Æsop is said to have strongly reproved) is a phenomenon which has frequently taken place among the people residing in the immediate neighbourhood of national sanctuaries. The number and variety of strangers flocking together ”

“ The Oracle of Delphi gained a celebrity wide as the world. It was often consulted by the monarchs of Asia and the people of Rome in times of extreme danger and perplexity. Among the Greeks, scarcely any undertaking was entered upon without the will and sanction of the Oracle being first sought. ”

“ The Delphic oracle, and some of the others, used for a long time to give their answers in verses. At last, however, irreverent critics of the period made so much fun of the peculiarly miserable style of this poetry, that the poor oracle gave it up and came down to plain prose. Every once in a while some energetic and cunning man, of skeptical character, insisted on having just such an answer as he wanted. It was well known that Philip of Macedon bought what responses he wished at Delphi. Anybody with plenty of money, who would quietly “see” the priests, could have such a response as he chose. ”

“ And Hegesander uses the same expression. And we ourselves have seen that lying at Delphi, a thing really worth looking at, on account of the figures of animals which are carved upon it, and of other insects, and living things, and plants. . . . . . . . can be put upon it, and goblets, and other furniture.
But the thing which is called by the Alexandrians ἀγγοθήκη is a triangular vessel, hollow in the middle, capable of receiving an earthen wine-jar inside of it. And poor men have this made of wood, but rich men have it of brass or of silver. ”

“ If he had had a son, he would have trained him up to be a brave man and great king; but he did not know what to do with this fair-haired daughter. When he saw her growing up to be tall and slender and wise, he wondered if, after all, he would have to die some time and leave his lands and his gold and his kingdom to her. So he sent to Delphi and asked the Pythia about it. The Pythia told him that he would not only have to die some time, but that the son of his daughter would cause his death. ”

“ It is also said that he entered into the military profession, but finding it disagreeable soon renounced it, and, as a means of subsistence, sold medicines at Athens. But most of these reflections on his juvenile character may perhaps be attributed to slander.
However this may be, it became necessary for him to choose an employment; and, on going to Delphi to consult the oracle, he was directed to proceed to Athens, and apply himself to the study of philosophy. This he accordingly did, and at the age of seventeen commenced his career as a pupil of Plato. ”

“ A fragmentary inscription has come to light from Delphi, which seems to give us the desired aid for our Pauline chronology in that it fixes the date of the coming of Gallio to Corinth (Acts 18:12) . This inscription, as its lacunæ are supplied by Deissmann, is as follows:
Tiberius Claudius Cæsar Augustus Germanicus, Pontifex Maximus, of tribunican authority for the 12th time, imperator the 26th time, father of the country, consul for the 5th time, honorable, greets the city of the Delphians. ”