282 THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI. THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO ...

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THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI.

THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI.

IN many respects Delphi and its varied cults possess an interest which is not to be rivalled by that of any other Hellenic site. The lofty precipices, the dark deeply-cleft ravines, the mysterious caves, and the bubbling springs of pure water, combine to give the place a romantic charm and a fearfulness of aspect which no description can adequately depict.

Again Delphi stands alone in the catholic multiplicity of the different cults which were there combined.

In primitive times it was the awfulness of Nature which impressed itself on the imaginations of the inhabitants.

In an early stage of development the mind of man tends to gloomy forms of religion : his ignorance and comparative helplessness tend to fill his brain with spiritual terrors and forebodings. Thus at Delphi the primitive worship was that of the gloomy Earth and her children, the chasm-rending Poseidon, and the Chthonian Dionysus, who, like Osiris, was the victim of the evil powers of Nature. It was not till later times that the bright Phoebus Apollo came to Delphi to slay the earth-born Python, just as the rising sun dissipates the shadows in the depths of the Delphian ravines, or as in the Indian legend the god Indra kills with his bright arrows the great serpent Ahi--symbol of the black thunder-cloud.

With him Apollo brings his mother and sister, Leto and Artemis, his usual companions, and then later still Athene* is added to the group of celestial deities who were worshipped by the side of the Chthonians, and by degrees took the foremost place in the religious conceptions of the worshippers at Delphi.2

Moreover as an oracular shrine Delphi stands quite alone among the many oracles of the Greeks.

Like Homer's Iliad, the sacred organisation of Delphi represented the hopes and aims of those who looked forward to a great Pan-hellenic confederation in matters both sacred and secular--a united Greece with one hierarchy of deities and common political interests, instead of a group of separate states each with its own local and tribal gods, and each fighting for its own interests, with little or no regard to the welfare of the rest of the Hellenic race.

1 Called Athene Pronaia from the position of her temple in front of that of Apollo --5ia rb irpb rov i/aov iSpvaffai. I t was one of the group of four temples seen by Pausanias on his entrance into Delphi; see x. 8.

2 Even as late as Plutarch's time there was a temple of Gaia near the temenos of Apollo (Pyth. or. 17); and the Chthonian Dionysus shared with Apollo the worship in his inmost sanctuary.

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Though in practice it broke down, yet the theory did at one time exist that the Amphiktionic Council should never advise Greek to fight against Greek, and should preserve a strict neutrality in all political matters.

But it was only for a short time--the period of the Persian invasion-- that it seemed as if this dream might come true and Zeus Pan-hellenius be the common divine guardian of the united states of Hellas.1

In some respect the scope of influence of the Delphic oracle was too wide. Extending as it did far beyond the limits of the Hellenic states, the oracle was led to include foreign interests in its consideration, even when they were hostile to those of Hellenic people. Thus, corrupted by the costly gifts and honours paid by Lydian and other Oriental kings, the oracle discouraged the Cnidians from resisting Harpagus, Cyrus' general ; Herod. I. 174; and at the time of Xerxes' invasion the Pythia committed the fatal blunder of advising the Greeks to submit to Persia--a mistake which cost the oracle very dear, as is most strikingly shown by the constant mention of the Delphic oracle and temple in the pages of Herodotus compared with the almost complete silence of Thucydides on the subject.2

Lastly, in wealth of works of art, and in the variety of their dates and origin, Delphi must have stood quite alone; and, as I hope to show in the following paper, the temjjle of Apollo possesses many points of exceptional interest, and, from its date being known, is of very great value for purposes of comparison with other buildings of the same epoch--the middle period between the highly archaic and the perfected form of the Doric style.

Now that the long-expected excavations on the site of the Delphian temple are, it is to be hoped, at last about to begin, it may seem an unfortunate time to deal with the subject. But, in the first place, some of the evidence afforded by the remains which I was able to measure some years ago can hardly be contradicted by future discoveries, and, secondly, it is well before beginning an excavation to seek out from all available sources what records exist about the building, so as to know what to look for, and how to read the lesson taught by even the smallest piece of detail.

For this reason I have laid before the Hellenic Society such literary and other indications as I have been able to collect about the temple, and also a hypothetical restoration of the building, in spite of the probability of its being in some respects confuted by future discoveries.

THE FIVE SUCCESSIVE TEMPLES.

According to the traditions handed down by the Greeks there were five successive temples built to enshrine the world-famed oracular chasm of Delphi.

1 See Herod. VIII. 144, and various speeches made by Athenian and Spartan envoys with regard to the proposed alliance of Athens with the Persians.

'- The force of this comparison is modified by

the fact that Thucydides was an Athenian writer at a time when Athens was cultivating the worship of her own special goddess, and of the Delian rival of the Pythian Apollo.

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THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI

It should however be observed that the first three temples seem to have belonged to a pre-historic period, earlier than the date of the Homeric poems, and anterior to the introduction into Delphi of the cult of Apollo and other celestial deities.

To these pre-historic temples belonged the worship of the Chthonian deities, the daughters of Gaia, Poseidon evvoalycuos and others.

Pausanias (X. 5) gives a list of these five temples, not. however, distinguishing those which were earlier than the Apollo cult.

I. ' They say that the most ancient temple of Apollo was made of branches of bay (Bd^vrj'i), gathered from the bay-tree at Tempe. The temple thus constructed would have the shape of a hut (KaXvfir)).'

This legend may possibly be an invention of later times, devised to connect the oldest temple with the worship of Apollo by making its materials the sacred tre3 of Apollo, gathered at the scene of his nine years' exile and purification after the slaughter of the Python:1 a story which even as late as Plutarch's time--early in the second century A.D.--was commemorated every ninth year at the feast Septerion by a sort of miracle-play (Upbv \0709); see De def. or. 15, Quaes. Grate. 12, and De Mus. 14; cf. Ephor. ap. Strabo IX. 3 ; and Aelian, Var. hist. III. i.

II. Pausanias then goes on :--' The second temple, the people of Delphi say, was built by bees, with bees' wax and w ith wings'--Aevrepa Be Xeyovaiv ol Ae\(j)ol yeve&dai inrb fieXicrcr&v TOP vabv, airo re rod icqpov rcov fieXicrcrcap Kal eic Trrepwv. This passage is usually taken to mean that the mythical building was made of bees' wings and wax--a too impossible structure even for a fabulous temple. But Pausanias does not say that the wings were those of bees, and it seems more probable that birds' wings are meant.

This myth is perhaps referred to in an unfortunately corrupt passage of Plutarch, De Pyth. or. 17, who gives, as an early example of heroic metre, what appears to be part of an ancient oracular saying--

%vfj.epeT Trrepa olaivol, Kt)pov re fieXiaaai, 'Bring your wings, 0 birds; your wax, O bees.'

Pausanias then adds that, according to the legend, this second temple was removed into the Hyperborean regions. A little earlier in the same chapter (X. 5) he mentions that, according to one of the various legends, the Hyperboreans were the original founders of the oracle.2

With regard to the temple of wings and bees' wax, it should be noted

1 Plutarch ridicules the legend of Apollo's exile and purification after the slaughter of the Python (De def. or. 15), but the story probably has some connection with a very wide-spread custom among different races at an early stage of their development. Even now many savage tribes, both in Africa and America, go through some form of propitiation when they have killed a dangerous animal, with the object of averting injury from the enraged ghost of the

beast. Similarly after slaying enemies in battle some savages go through a form of purification, keeping themselves apart for a certain period from the rest of the tribe till the ghosts of the slain are propitiated. These curious facts 1 owe to Mr. J. G. Frazer.

2 Probably only a mode of expressing that the origin of the oracle was lost iu the mists of antiquity,

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that the priestesses of Apollo are sometimes called fieXicrcrai (Pindar, Pyth. IV. 106), a name also given in other places to priestesses of Demeter and Artemis. It seems possible that this story is an unconscious survival of the worship of a bee totem. Pausanias next gives one of those rationalistic explanations of an old myth such as were frequently invented in late times--namely, that the wing story came from this second temple having been built by a Delphian named Ptcras--an explanation which we may put by the side of another tale which was devised to explain away the Python as being the name of a brigand who infested Delphi; see Ephor. ap. Strabo, IX. 3. A second rationalistic theory that the second temple was made of fern branches {inepis:) Pausanias mentions, but does not believe.

III. The third temple, according to the myth quoted by Pausanias (X. 5), was constructed of bronze by Hephaestus. To show that a bronze building is not an impossibility Pausanias mentions Danae's tower, the then existing shrine of Athene Chalcioecus at Sparta, and the Forum in Rome which had a bronze roof.1 Pausanias did not however believe in Hephaestus having been the builder of the third temple at Delphi.2 Two legends are given by Pausanias as to the fate of the third temple; one being that it was burnt, the other that it was swallowed up in a chasm which opened in the earth--a not improbable supposition with regard to a place which has so frequently suffered severely from earthquakes; great damage was done there as recently as 1870 by a convulsion which shattered and threw down great masses of rock.

IV. All that Pausanias (X. 5) says about the fourth temple is that ' it was built of stone by Trophonius and Agamedes, and that it was destroyed by fire when Erxicleides was Archon in Athens, in the first year of the 58th Olympiad (548 B.C.), when Diognetus of Croton was victor.'

With the founding of the fourth temple we have come to the period of the advent of Apollo to Delphi, as described in the Homeric Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, which relates how the deity, after visiting Olympus, and being admired there for his beauty, journeyed to various places in search of a home, finding none to suit him till he reached the port of Delphi, Krissa.3 Landing there he says: ' I will build a splendid temple to be an oracle for men, they will bring hecatombs from Peloponnesus, from Europe, and from the isles, and I will make revelations to them in my temple.'

Then Phoebus Apollo lays massive foundations, and on them Trophonius and Agamedes, sons of Erginus, laid the stone threshold (Xdivoot) writes as if part at least of this fourth temple had survived and been incorporated in the last building: Ae\ ................
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