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Welcome, traveller. If you have just washed up on these shores from elsewhere, I invite you to start at the beginning of my journey, and head back to Athens and the first chapter of this online e-book: Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveller's Journal.
Otherwise, welcome back, dear readers. It's time to bid farewell to Attika and move into the mountains of Greece. This lens will focus on Delphi, site of the famous Oracle of the god Apollo, consulted by both Greeks and foreigners from all over the ancient world.
As usual, I will share my notes from Dr. Chris Downing's lecture on the site and its mythology, then take you there through my diary excerpts, photos, and recommended links and books about Delphi.
(All photographs, text and artwork © Ellen Brundige 2005-2008. All rights reserved.)

The valley below Delphi, studded with olive groves
"Know Thyself" was inscribed over the entrance to the famous temple at Delphi. According to Dr. Christine Downing, this is not a call to Jungian self-analysis, but a reminder that we are mortal.
Delphi's god is Apollo, Pythian Apollo, "Apollo who shoots from afar" or "the god that comes from afar." He is not really the sun god -- that's Helios -- although in later times the distinction between them became blurred. Rather, he is the god of "clarity, consciousness, clear boundaries, distinguishing things, and day."
Temples to Apollo arise on sites once sacred to Gaia, Mother Earth. These are human-built structures in wild, lonely, harsh landscapes. Apollo represents youthful male energy challenging the Mother.
According to local legend, there was originally no oracle at Delphi, only the Python, Gaia's great serpent. Apollo slew it to establish his authority over the area and installed the Pythia, the maiden who delivered his prophecies at the temple, seated on a bronze tripod over a crack in the earth whence mystical fumes emerge. Other traditions say that the oracle had first been Gaia's, usurped by Apollo after killing its serpent guardian. Gaia tried to undermine his oracular monopoly by sending prophetic dreams to the locals, but Zeus put a stop to that after protests from Apollo.
In Homeric and early myths, oracles (predictions of the future) come to people directly from the gods, unasked for, through dreams or signs. In the historic period, oracles are the priest/priestesses to whom the god sends divine inspiration. "Oracle" is also sometimes extended to the temple where the seer resides.
Historical records show that the questions put to the oracle at Delphi were straightforward: "Would it be okay for us to start a colony at X, make war on Y, or build temple Z?" In dramatizations of myths, Delphi's ambiguous responses often advance the plot, as when Oedipus sends to Delphi asking how to avert his city's plague and receives a riddle that proves his undoing.
Delphi's oracle was the most famous and most prestigious of all oracles in the ancient world, and suppliants came from all over to consult its priestesses, the Pythias.
Driving west from Eleusis and Athens, we soon climb into the mountains of Attika, past olive groves and farmland, fields of poppies, wheat, mustard, brilliant yellow Scottish broom, lilies and acacia, tall and stately dark cypress, Allepo pines. An hour or so later, we pass an all-too-ordinary town clustered over the ruins of the ancient acropolis of Thebes.

The Oedipus Trilogy, famous dramatization of the myth
Amazon Price: $11.00 (as of 07/26/2008)


This map of Delphi should help you get your bearings when reading my description.
Amazon Price: (as of 07/26/2008)
Following the road and the old pilgrim's path in reverse, we come to the outflow of the Kastalian Spring, whose falls upslope are hidden by gnarled trees. Beside the modern road is an ancient walled enclosure with broken steps leading down to a pool where suppliants once bathed. It is studded with purple flowers, and acacias grow over it, covered in ivy. Beside us, a moss-bedded stone channel in the rock bears a swift-flowing freshet down to the pool. I risk a drink and wash my face in the cold mountain water.
For there are archaic foundations in the vicinity, evidence of a goddess cult predating that of Apollo up above. Local legends hint that it was originally Gaia's, but in classical times it is a shrine to Athena, another goddess often depicted with a serpent companion.

An early morning trek to the Delphi Museum on the hill below the site landed us in the mob of a French cruise ship moored in the Bay of Corinth at the mouth the valley below. However, the museum offered up its treasures as well as people:
There is great magic in meeting old friends diligently studied and learned in Archaeology 101 for the first time! The tour through the museum was quick, as was our sprint up the mountain to explore the sanctuary; I was very grateful for yesterday's ramble.
Temple of Apollo, Home of His Oracle

Click on thumbnails for full-sized versions -- and apologies for the dry dusty descriptions! I've included a lot of nitpicky information because I'm getting a lot of hits from (I think) students working on reports or studying for exams.


Price: 16.99
Price: 15.99
Price: 14.99
Our group retraced our steps down the zigzag Sacred Way, past the Temple of Apollo and down to the modern road hugging the mountain. In the heat of the day we plunged arms and faces gratefully into the cold waters of the Kastalian Spring. I had emptied out a small water bottle the night before, and now refilled it.

Nietzsche famously opposes rational, civilized Apollo with passionate, wilderness-loving Dionysos in his Birth of Tragedy, but the ancients made less clear-cut distinctions. In winter, Apollo leaves Delphi in Dionysos' care while he returns home to the wild north. Myths say Dionysos is the foreign import, but in fact Linear B texts show him to be home-grown; Apollo is the later arrival.
Hailed as Apollo Lykeios, "Wolfish Apollo," the god of reason is actually an ambiguous figure. Perhaps his nickname merely alludes to his role as protector of shepherds, who claimed him as patron; but the archer god -- like his twin sister -- has a ferocious side.
He kills the Cyclopes, smiths of Zeus, for forging the thunderbolts that slew Apollo's son Asklepios.
He slays the python, sacred serpent of Gaia. For these crimes, Apollo is polluted with miasma, blood-guilt, and must undergo purification. Apollo the murderer becomes god of law; bringer of plague, he is the god of medicine. In Euripides' Eumenides, Orestes calls on Apollo as his defense lawyer after killing his mother to avenge his father's murderer.
Two festivals are associated with Apollo: the Septeria, a reenactment every nine years of Apollo's slaying the Python, and the Thargelia, a first-fruits spring harvest festival that includes a public purification ritual to drive away accumulated miasma. Two members of the community are chosen as pharmakoi, scapegoats, and chased out of the city or stoned to death. Once these pharmakoi were two of "the best" members of the community; by the historical period they are usually poor, crippled, or criminal.
Several myths explore Apollo's connection to death, first fruits, and sacrifice.
One made famous by Euripides' play Alcestis relates how King Admetus, whom Apollo served as part of his self-purification, receives a double-edged favor from Apollo as reward for having treated his servant well. The god persuades the Fates to spare Admetus from death if anyone will agree to die in his place. His aged parents refuse, but the king's loving wife, Alcestis, sacrifices herself for him. In Euripides' version, Herakles brings her back from the underworld, but this is probably a Disney ending.
Other myths associate Apollo with youths whose lives are cut short in the first bloom of adulthood, just like Kleobis and Biton. The Roman poet Ovid touchingly describes the death of Hyakinthos, one of several youths loved and lost by Apollo. The god accidentally kills the youth with a discus-throw, and in grief transforms his blood into the flower that bears his name.
Apollo has no better luck with women, who usually flee him. The nymph Daphne begs her river-god father to save her from Apollo's pursuit, and she who loved most to run is transformed into a rooted laurel tree. Apollo and victors at his Pythian games-- similar to the Olympic games-- wear laurel wreaths in her honor. The Kastalian Spring on Mt. Parnassos is supposed to be another transformed nymph who suffered a similar fate.
Kassandra of Troy is another maiden who pays the price for catching the god's eye: he courts her with the gift of prophecy, but when she refuses his advances, he spitefully curses her never to be believed. The aged Sibyl of Cumae is yet another prophetess who refuses Apollo after receiving a boon; he cannot retract his gift of long life, but she is doomed to live it as an old woman.

Browse the photos and just enjoy the view, or, if you're a student looking for information on the site, I've done my best to include archaelogical details for all the ruins.

The goddess Athena on one side, the graceful Tholos of Athena Pronaia at Delphi on the other.
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The Apollo vase on one side, beautiful photo of the Temple of Apollo framed by poppies on the other.
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