6

DOMINATION

As the Persians retreated from Greece during 479 BC, the victorious cities turned to Delphi to consult the oracle on the right way to celebrate their triumph. The response integrated Delphi more than ever into the fabric of the Greek world. The Pythia instructed the cities to erect an altar to Zeus Eleutherios (the liberator), but not to sacrifice anything on it until they had extinguished every fire in the land (as the altars had all been polluted by the barbarian invaders) and taken fresh fire from the sacred hearth at Delphi to relight the hearths and pyres of Greece. Euchidas of Plataea is said to have offered to run to Delphi and bring back the sacred flame to his city, completing the return journey in a single day, after which tremendous achievement he promptly dropped dead and was buried in the Plataean sanctuary of Artemis “of Good Repute” with an epitaph to commemorate his journey to Delphi.¹

As a result, Delphi became—literally—the common hearth of Greece, the origin of its fire, the center of its world. Any notions that Delphi had strayed to the Persian side before and during the conflict were forgotten, and the victors set about commemorating their victories at different sanctuaries across Greece, but most especially at Delphi (they had, after all, sworn an oath to dedicate at Delphi a percentage of spoils taken from those who had betrayed Greece for Persia). First to commemorate the Persian Wars were the Amphictyony, the governing council at Delphi, who not only set up a monument at Thermopylae to commemorate the famous Spartan stand, but also established at Delphi a statue group of two mythical heroes who were supposed to have helped the Greek fleet at the near-simultaneous sea battle, which had taken place at Artemisium. The council also put a price on the head of Ephialtes, the man who betrayed the Spartans at Thermopylae.²

In quick succession a second monument was established at Delphi to commemorate the Greek victory at Salamis. This, we know from the ancient sources, was a giant statue of Apollo six meters high, a trireme in his hand, placed on the temple terrace directly facing the great Chian altar and temple front (see plate 2, fig. 1.3). And while no trace of the statue now remains, French archaeologists have argued that the base survives, complete with its dedicating inscription, which, however, is damaged, leaving a tantalizing puzzle for modern scholars, for the one word missing from the dedicating inscription is the name of the dedicator. But thanks to the sentence structure and grammar, along with the neat alignment of letters on different lines, we know we are looking for a name that is eight letters and in the plural. The most tempting possibility is “Hellanes”—“the Greeks.” If correct, this would mark an exceptional moment in Greek history. The Greeks, torn as they were by city rivalry, rarely referred to themselves as Greeks. This monument, here at Delphi in the early fifth century BC, would represent perhaps the first time the Greeks had publicly described themselves as such. This dedication thus encapsulates the recognition and display of a community forged in the heat of battle, set up at the sanctuary that was the mythical center of the ancient world and now literally the common hearth of the Greeks.³

Those contributing to the dedication of the Salamis Apollo asked the Pythia if Apollo was satisfied with the monument established in his honor. The reply was ambiguous: he was, but he required more from the Aeginetans. Aegina, as we saw in the previous chapter, had most certainly wavered at the approach of the Persians and had been frequently accused of Medism (“having Persian sympathies”) by other Greek cities. Yet, in reality, this request for a second monument from the oracle provided the Aeginetans with a useful opportunity. Delphi was quickly becoming the place in which to commemorate one’s role in the Persian defeat and, as a result, an excellent place in which to stake a claim not to what actually happened, but rather to what the dedicator would prefer to remember as having happened. The Aeginetans certainly took the opportunity not only to make their presence felt, but also to make a strong statement of their (now) pro-Greek credentials. They offered a bronze palm tree with golden stars to be placed on the temple terrace.⁴ And while this offering was specifically requested by Apollo, other cities also actively chose to emphasize their role at Salamis by putting up their own monuments to commemorate their own role in that same victory, and all of these were placed on the terrace area in front of the Apollo temple, turning it into an unmistakable “Persian Wars zone.”⁵

Yet it was in the commemoration of the battle of Plataea, the final land victory against the Persians in 479 BC, that Delphi’s key role in commemorating the Persian Wars became clearest. Whereas at the sanctuaries of Zeus at Olympia and Poseidon at Isthmia, the alliance of Greeks offered yet another Zeus and Poseidon statue (they had done the same to celebrate Salamis at these sanctuaries), at Delphi a unique monument was born, one that would come to epitomize Delphi itself: three bronze serpents coiled together into a column standing nine meters high with the serpent heads (partly made in gold) supporting the legs of a golden tripod (see fig. 1.3). The symbolism of the serpents (referring to Apollo and his fight with the serpent Pytho) and the tripod (the Pythia’s tripod) is clear. This was a monument designed for Delphi that sought to evoke Delphi: the ultimate expression of victory and of the Greeks’ close relationship with their gods, especially Apollo. It stood on the temple terrace, towering over the Salamis Apollo and other monuments around it. Thucydides would later report that the Spartan commander, Pausanias, tried to hijack the monument and have it inscribed as if it were a dedication from him alone. But he was punished, and instead, the names of all the Greek cities—not just those that fought at Plataea, but those that had any involvement in the fight against Persia at any stage—were inscribed on the serpent coils of the column.⁶ As a result, an evocation of a more comprehensive Greek community evoked by the Salamis Apollo (potentially the “Hellanes”), paid homage to Apollo and to Delphi as the common hearth of Greece. Yet swiftly, the serpent-column monument was surrounded by other offerings from individual cities that sought to commemorate their own particular role in the battle at Plataea, or, more often, to recast that role. The Carystians offered a statue of a bull for victory at Plataea, even though they had fought on the Persian side, and Alexander I of Macedon, who was keen to establish his credentials as having been on the Greek side the whole time, offered an enormous golden statue of himself.⁷

Yet, despite this overwhelming deluge of monuments and oracular consultations, which not only embedded Delphi more strongly at the center of the ancient Greek world, but also highlighted its role as a space in which to tell, and perhaps more importantly retell, history, some notes of the trouble to come were also being sounded. Themistocles, the Athenian general, after bringing his dedications to Delphi, was told by the Pythia to remove them from the sanctuary: the only instance in Delphic history of the oracle refusing a dedication. At the same time, Sparta proposed that the Amphictyony should become an anti-Persian league, excluding every city that had not fought actively against the Persians. Themistocles, whose dedications had been refused, argued against this proposition claiming it would shift the balance of power within the Amphictyony toward two or three main cities rather than its current wider representation.⁸ The proposal was dropped, but it sounded a note of disquiet that was all too familiar to the citizens of Delphi and was, in part, to define their future over the next two centuries. As Delphi and its council became more important and valuable, more people came to have designs on dominating them.

For the time being, however, the hum of tension over Delphian ownership was most probably drowned out by the increasing popularity the city and sanctuary enjoyed in the first half of the fifth century BC. And none more so than among the Greeks of the western Mediterranean world of Magna Graecia. Gelon (the tyrant of Gela and now Syracuse in Sicily, who had refused to help the Greeks during the Persian invasion) now sought not only to establish a permanent marker of his power at Delphi, but to put his own military victories against the enemies of the Greek world to the west (especially the Carthaginians) on a par with the great victories against the Persians to the east. Where better to do this than at the sanctuary where the Persian Wars had been so insistently commemorated? On the temple terrace, near the Salamis and Plataean monuments, Gelon erected a tall column and tripod monument (see fig. 1.3). The likeness of its style to that of the Plataean serpent column was supposed to underscore the similar magnitude and importance of Gelon’s victory (and no doubt cover his own refusal to contribute to the fight against the Persians).⁹

Nor was he the only western Greek dedicator anxious to find a place in Delphi’s growing collection of monuments. The city of Croton, a long-term user of the oracle, set up a similar enormous tripod dedication on the temple terrace, and even represented Delphi on its coinage in this period. Rhegion, too, put up offerings in the sanctuary, as did the Etruscans. Most famous, however, were those of Gelon’s successor, Hieron, and the latter’s successor, Polyzalus. Hieron not only dedicated monuments to military victory (similar to those of Gelon and the Plataean serpent column), but also to his own victories in the Pythian games. The Delphi charioteer, discovered buried in the ground in the first years of excavation at Delphi and now holding pride of place in Delphi’s museum, is part of Hieron’s athletic victory monument (plate 6). Placed just beside the temple of Apollo, originally composed not only of the charioteer, resplendent as he is in bronze, silver, and precious metals, but also of a life-size representation of the entire chariot and horses, this would have been an awesome offering (see fig. 1.3). So much so that Polyzalus decided not to try and top it for his athletic victories, but instead simply rededicated the statue in his own name. Theirs was not the only chariot dedication at this time: Archesilaus IV, king of Cyrene, also dedicated his winning chariot and placed it on the temple terrace in honor of his victory in the late 460s BC.¹⁰

This investment in the commemoration of victory in the Pythian games emphasizes the continued, if not growing, importance of these games in the wider fifth-century Greek world. The games, lasting for five days, were held during the Greek month of Boucation (sometime between our mid-August and mid-September), beginning on the seventh day of the month (events were often scheduled on the seventh day of a month at Delphi because, as has been said, this was thought to be the day of Apollo’s birthday). The Amphictyony and the city of Delphi devoted huge resources into their organization. They sent out Delphic citizens as theoroi (ambassadors) six months before the games on pre-agreed routes to announce the games and call for competitors to come to the events. They prepared the facilities at Delphi for the competitions (it is around the middle of the fifth century BC that the area of the later stadium may have first been used for contests—see plate 1). They ran the games themselves, which involved undertaking large-scale religious rituals (over a hundred animals were sacrificed and their meat roasted for consumption at just one of the rituals on the first day of the games), and coped with the sheer practical needs of so many spectators in one place for a week.¹¹ In 484 BC, the Amphictyony expanded the competitions to include a running race in full armor (the hoplitodromoi), and in the mid-fifth century BC, a contest for painting appears to have been introduced, which complemented the important and ancient musical competitions that had always been part of Apollo’s games (a dance competition was added in the fourth century BC and, later, competitions in acting, mime, and pantomime).¹²

The first day of the Pythian festival was dedicated to religious sacrifices and a re-enactment of the mythical clash between Apollo and the serpent, the second day to communal banquets, the third day to musical and artistic competition, the fourth to athletics, and the final day to chariot racing. This last was the day perhaps more than any other on which all eyes were focused, especially as it was the richer and more powerful individuals of the Greek world who were competing against one another through the horses they owned and entered into the competition, each chariot in turn driven by a professional charioteer. It is no accident that most of the surviving odes to athletic victory at Delphi written by the praise-poet Pindar during the fifth century BC are for chariot victories (he can’t have been cheap to hire): Hieron of Syracuse, Archesilaus IV of Cyrene, Xenocrates of Agrigentum, Megacles of Athens all paid for praise odes from Pindar for their chariot victories at Delphi between 490 and 462 BC.¹³

Pindar’s victory odes and hymns are also important because they give us the first evidence for the existence of a particular cult at Delphi: that of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. Pindar’s Paean 6 (117–20), produced c. 475 BC, tells of the death of Neoptolemus at Delphi (see fig. 6.1). How he died, however, is heavily disputed among the literary sources (including by Pindar, himself, who offers a different version of the story in Nemean 7.59–69). Whatever the manner of his death, the Delphians likely offered an annual sacrifice to him as a hero. In addition, according to Pausanias, the Aenianes sent a sacred embassy to Delphi during the Pythian festival to honor Neoptolemus, since he had been their king. In the following centuries, the area of the cult tomb of Neoptolemus in the sanctuary would be a popular one for dedication (just northeast of the temple of Apollo), and the dead spirit of the hero himself was later said to have fought alongside other heroes and demigods to protect Delphi against invasions in the third century BC.¹⁴

Figure 6.1. The murder of Neoptolemus at Delphi (identified by the tripod and omphalos) represented on a volute krater by the Iliupersis painter c. 370 BC (© Intesa Sanpaolo Collection inv. F.G-00111A-E/IS)

As the sanctuary was expanding in terms of cult locations, myths, and monumental dedications, the oracle was by no means silent: forty-five different oracular consultations are known to have occurred between 479 and 431 BC.¹⁵ The Spartans in particular continued their long tradition of consulting the oracle on a range of issues concerning military endeavors, diplomacy, and, sometimes, their own misdeeds. Pausanias, the Spartan general who had tried to hijack the Plataean serpent column as his own monument, was found guilty of treason by the Spartan elders. Pausanias fled for sacred refuge into the temple of Athena on Sparta’s acropolis. There, under the protection of the gods, the Spartans could not touch him but instead chose to starve him into submission. He died in the temple’s forecourt. Before long, Sparta was subject to a series of signs of divine disfavor and promptly consulted Delphi on what to do: they were told to bury Pausanias where he had fallen; they did, alongside putting up two statues of him in the sanctuary.¹⁶

We also know that in 476–75 BC, the Athenians—busy building an anti-Persian alliance (the Delian league) that would before long become the Athenian empire—consulted the Pythia regarding cult practice on one of the Aegean islands, Scyros, in which they happened to have strategic interests. The result was that, in order to “follow” the “advice” of the oracle, the Athenians moved in to annex the island, discovered (as instructed) the bones of their hero Theseus, and built a temple over them.¹⁷ As well as being a useful tool in explaining Athenian expansion, the oracle at this time played an increasingly important role in the cultural mindset of Athens thanks to the development of Greek tragic theater. It is in the fifth century BC—and specifically with the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, which have survived into our time, starting with Aeschylus’sPersians in 472 BC—that we begin to gain an insight into how the Athenians conceptualized the Delphic oracle, its origins and its role in Greek society. As we saw in earlier chapters, the tragic plays from Athens are some of our most significant sounding boards for learning how the Greeks (or more specifically the Athenians) understood (the various and changing) stories regarding Delphi’s origins. But they also show us the extent to which Delphi was conceived of in this period as an enforcer of civic values, a place that was on the path toward conflict resolution and active justice: although the actual resolution and justice are themselves (perhaps unsurprisingly) eventually always to be found in Athens (e.g., Aeschylus’s Oresteia). As can be seen, Delphi is portrayed on the Athenian tragic stage as an institution for the maintenance of order in the Greek world and, at the same time, as emphasizing the special role of Athens in Greek society.¹⁸

Thus the Delphi’s oracle was undoubtedly held in high regard in the first part of the fifth century BC. Compare this, however, with the use of the sanctuary for other purposes, particularly monumental dedication, and a picture emerges of a Delphi in which its oracle is, in reality, no longer the only prime motive for going to, and investing in, the sanctuary. We have already seen that the Pythian games attracted important and powerful individuals to invest and display their triumphs at Delphi. But in the first half of the fifth century BC, there was also a growing tendency by different dedicators to attempt a monopolization of the Apollo sanctuary through offering a series of monumental structures, often to advertise military victories, on the many terraces that comprised the Apollo sanctuary. In short, the value of having a permanent and obvious presence that advertised one’s military and cultural prowess in this sanctuary complex—firmly embedded at the very core of the Greek world, and to which more and more people were coming—was as attractive and useful as the oracle’s ability to provide guidance at moments of difficult decision.¹⁹

Western dedicators were at the forefront of this trend. The Liparians, just off the coast of Sicily, erected vast numbers of Apollo statues on both the temple terrace and in the lower half of the Apollo sanctuary, perhaps deliberately opposite dedications by their frequent enemy, the Etruscans.²⁰The Tarentines, in southern Italy, who had been among the first to use Delphi to announce military victory through a monumental sculptural dedication at the very beginning of the fifth century (and in doing so had bagged the first spot visitors saw as they entered the Apollo sanctuary at its new southeastern entrance) now returned in the 460s BC to erect another sculptural group on the temple terrace to commemorate military victory, placing it just in front of the already well-known Plataean serpent column (see fig. 1.3).²¹

But this new trend of “spatial monopolization” was not only practised by Western dedicators. Cnidus, on the coast of Asia Minor, having dedicated a marble treasury in the sixth century BC, returned in the fifth century to offer not only a group of statues squeezed in next to the Siphnian treasury in the new lowest terrace of the sanctuary, but also to take advantage of the newly laid-out northern part of the sanctuary above the temple terrace to offer a cultural tour-de-force in the form of a lesche (see plate 2). A lesche was a place for meeting, conversation, and contemplation, and the Cnidian lesche at Delphi, constructed in the 460s BC, provided ample material for discussion since its walls were covered in paintings by the famous artist Polygnotus, none of which have survived, but all of which were described in exacting detail by Pausanias in his second century AD tour of the site. The paintings described numerous Greek myths and stories, offering a space for visitors to contemplate the mytho-history of the Greek world, having just walked up through a sanctuary that was itself increasingly stuffed with monuments to moments in Greek history, and over which the lesche (and its attached terrace) provided one of the most unobstructed views.²²

Yet no one monopolized the Apollo and Athena sanctuaries in the period 479–460 BC more than the Athenians. Already well represented in the sanctuary with a new treasury, shields and inscription on the temple, as well as in the Persian War dedications, the Athenians scattered-bombed Delphi with dedications to their military and cultural prowess in this period. They likely erected a treasury in the Athena sanctuary in the 470s BC; built Delphi’s first-ever stoa along the bottom of the polygonal wall as a shelter for the display of booty from naval and land victories; and constructed a bronze palm-tree dedication with a golden statue of Athena in its branches on the temple terrace in the 460s BC to commemorate Athens’s military victory at the battle of Eurymedon (see plate 2, fig. 1.3). Finally, the Athenians supplanted the Tarentines as the first to be seen by visitors entering from the southeast with a new monument that restated the importance of their victory at Marathon in 490 BC. This new monument mixed the eponymous heroes of Athens, whose names had been chosen by the Pythia in 508 BC, with figures more closely connected to the battle of Marathon itself (plate 2, fig. 6.2).²³

Delphi was not the only place in which Athens commemorated its prowess in this period, but, in comparison with the other major sanctuaries of Greece, it received far more insistent and visible attention than any other (except of course for the acropolis in Athens itself). Such domination at and of Delphi is not unexpected as this was the period in which Athens moved to dominate the Greek world with its great empire. But Athenian monumental presence at Delphi also underscores a crucial point for understanding the changing perception of Delphi within the Greek world, and the motivation for what would happen next in Delphi’s life story. Take away the popular participation of western and eastern dedicators in the first half of the fifth century BC, and, in the period 479–60, we are left with almost no one except Athens. While Sparta and a host of other cities and individuals continued to consult the oracle, the physical space of the Apollo and Athena sanctuary was unmistakably dominated by Athens at this time because Athens had created for itself an empire within the Greek world, and had, almost mirrorlike, created a similar hold over the microcosm of the Greek world that was Delphi. It was unlikely that other powers in Greece would put up with either for long.

Figure 6.2. A reconstruction of dedications by Athens and Sparta at the entrance to the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi. 1 Fourth century BC Argive semi-circle dedication. 2 End fifth century BC Spartan stoa. 3 Fourth century BC Arkadian dedication. 4 Fifth century BC Athenian statue group dedication. 5 End fifth century BC Spartan dedication to victory at Aegospotamoi. 6 Later Roman agora. 7 Entrance to Apollo sanctuary.

By 457 BC, Athens’s influence had extended from dominating the Delphic complex through dedications to political dominance and control over all its nearest neighbors.²⁴ As a result, when Athens decided to support Phocis in its claim to incorporate Delphi within its political territory (since the time of the arrival of the Amphictyony in the early sixth century BC, Delphi had had a position of independence from any regional political unit), there was little the citizens of Delphi could do about it. Athenian domination of the sacred space of the Delphic complex through monumental dedications to the gods in honor of its own military victories had been transposed into, by proxy, control over Delphi itself. It is no surprise that many scholars date two preserved oracular responses, which encouraged and justified growing Athenian power, to exactly this time when Athens was effectively the master of Delphi.²⁵

In 449 BC, however, the balance of power began to change in Greece and at Delphi. The first hint of this change was perhaps Sparta’s decision to make monumental dedications in the Apollo sanctuary. Despite being a long-term and constant user of the oracle, and despite a presence in terms of small dedications for much of Delphi’s history, Sparta had never invested much in monumental artistic and architectural offerings (except of course for the Spartan general Pausanias’s attempt to hijack the Plataean serpent column). This is perhaps not unexpected: Sparta was, after all, famously Spartan in its approach to such projects. Which makes it all the more interesting that, at the midpoint of the century, Spartan monumental dedications begin to arrive at Delphi. This statement of dedicatory presence within the sanctuary was accompanied by a military presence: Sparta sent troops to Delphi to champion the cause of the city, remove its Phocian overlords, and return Delphi to its (historic) independent state.²⁶ In honor of which, the Delphians granted Sparta promanteia and had the decree inscribed on the brow of a bronze wolf statue that the Delphians themselves had dedicated in the sanctuary (in honor of the story of a wolf who had helped defend the site). The symbolism of placing this inscription of thanks for Spartan defense of the sanctuary on this monument originally made to commemorate the defense of the sanctuary must have been palpable to sanctuary visitors. The Delphians may have gone even further to please their Spartan saviors: Herodotus reports that one of Croesus’s precious metal offerings that survived the great fire of 548 BC, was now reinscribed to make it look as if the Spartans had dedicated it.²⁷

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).³⁵Delphi 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, unambiguous: “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

According to some later (and doubtful) sources, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, victorious Sparta and her allies asked the Pythian priestess whether Athens should be destroyed; she replied that the victors should spare “the common hearth of Greece.”⁴⁸ But as the Greek world slowly shook itself free of the dust that had settled in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, how would the Delphians have taken stock of their position in the Greek world? It is telling that at this point in Delphi’s story, one of its most enduring legacies comes into focus. By the end of the fifth century BC, somewhere on the architecture of the pronaos (the front section) of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the now-famous maxims of Delphi had been inscribed and were viewable by all who came to the sanctuary. Gnothi sauton—“know thyself”; meden agan—“nothing in excess”; and the less well-known eggua para d’ate—“an oath leads to perdition.”⁴⁹ The statements of wisdom inscribed on the temple at Delphi were—from the fifth century BC—ascribed to the Seven Sages, a group whose existence was much noted in the ancient sources from the early sixth century BC onward. Some argued that the Delphic maxims were actually responses from the oracle to the Seven Sages, while other later authors attempted to assign each of the Delphic maxims to a particular Sage (and adopted four more sayings so that each of the Sages could have their own).⁵⁰ But whoever came up with them, it is almost certainly without accident that it was during this time of crisis and uncertainty in the Greek world that they came to have such public renown.

At the end of the century, if the Delphians had contemplated what drew people to the oracle, they would have recognized its role as a central resource of advice for issues affecting individuals and city-states across the Greek world, and yet, that it was also a place inaccessible to some thanks to political and/or military conflict. If they contemplated their sanctuary, they would have seen something that had survived intact the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, and was now groaning under the weight of dedications, many of which testified to the tensions, ambitions, and animosities that had shaken Greece to its core. And at the same time, they would have felt a sense of irony about the Delphic ideals of “know thyself” and “nothing in excess,” which were now emblazoned across their temple. Here was a religious complex that screamed excess, and one that, while often tripping up others who had failed to know themselves and understand the words of the oracle properly, was itself part of a wider world whose identity was anything but known, certain, or stable.

When I stood up, everything rose with me, and the whole
of great Delphi accompanied my movement.

—Amendée Ozenfant (1939: 394–96)