Delphi (27 page)

In time, Rome would come not only to consult the oracle, but to “free” Delphi—and Greece—from its “oppressors,” and eventually (not to mention ironically), to turn Greece into the Roman province of Achaea. But such a fate was far from the minds of Delphians at the beginning of the third century
BC
because a much closer power was in the process of taking over the sanctuary, the Aetolians, the same group to which Delphi had offered a collective grant of promanteia as part of their rebellious stance against Macedon in the 330s
BC
. The Aetolians were a
koinon
, a grouping of tribes in northern Greece. They were, like their Macedonian neighbors, something of an enigma to the southern Greeks, who would have had a hard time understanding their dialect and cultural priorities, and who would have considered them something of a backward federation. But, despite this reputation, and despite the fact that the Aetolians had had little to do with Delphi during the last thirty years of the fourth century
BC
(despite them being awarded promanteia by the Delphians), by 290
BC
, they controlled the sanctuary to the extent that they could ban the ruler of Athens, Demetrius Poliorcetes, from attending the Pythian games (he set up his own in Athens instead).
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In the years immediately after 290
BC
, that control only strengthened. An Aetolian governor was installed at Delphi along with a garrison of soldiers, and though Aetolia was never a member of the Amphictyony per se, it came to control enough of the members to ensure it could control the council. By 280
BC
, Aetolian control over Delphi was strong enough to precipitate a war to free Delphi in the spirit of the four Sacred Wars already fought over the sanctuary during its history. The king of Sparta rallied a group of city-states to repel the Aetolians, claiming that the sacred land around Delphi, which should not be cultivated, had been occupied. The force perished miserably and, with it, the cultivation of sacred land as a cause for war. The Aetolians erected a victory offering in the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi in honor (ironically) of their victory. It was the Aetolians' first civic offering at Delphi.
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But the following year, in 279
BC
, Greece faced a much bigger threat: an invasion of Gauls from the North. At first it seemed their advance was unstoppable. The Macedonian king was killed in battle, and the Gauls reached Thermopylae. Fighting their way past this narrow gateway into central Greece, they headed to Delphi. The Greek army was in tatters, and the only people who stood against them as they approached Delphi were a small contingent of combined Phocian, Amphissan, and Aetolian forces: at most a few thousand men.
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The ancient sources are quick to make this standoff over Delphi echo that of the Persian invasion and attack on Delphi two hundred years before. The Delphians, just as they did then, were said to have consulted the oracle on what to do, and, just as then, were told to leave everything as it was. As the Gauls began their attack, they were met, just as the Persians had been, with earthquakes, thunderbolts, and rockslides. Some of the same mythical heroes, like Phylacus, who defended the sanctuary against the Persians appeared again alongside the Aetolian forces, and were joined by a range of other heroic figures associated with the sanctuary including Neoptolemus. The priests of Apollo from the Delphic temple proclaimed joyfully that even Apollo, Athena, and Artemis had joined in the fray.
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Some of the ancient sources indicate that the Gaulish leader, Brennus, despite this divine onslaught, was still able to penetrate the Delphic defenses and enter the temple of Apollo itself. There, the ancient historian Diodorus Siculus claims, Brennus was unimpressed by all the wooden and stone images, contenting himself with carrying off gold—gold that was, as a result, it was later said, cursed and that brought misfortune and death to anyone who handled it.
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Whether or not Brennus made it into the temple, by the end of the day of their attack, the Gauls had been beaten back, and that night, Delphi was covered in snow. Now in unfamiliar territory and difficult conditions, the Gauls made easy prey for local Phocian raids. Brennus was eventually wounded and the Gauls withdrew. Soon after, the Greek forces, including the main Aetolian army, were able to regroup and comprehensively defeat the Gauls in battle and repel the invasion for good.

Most of the ancient sources for this invasion are late, and none are from before the second century
BC
. But we can be more confident in the nature and importance of this victory thanks to the inscriptional evidence dating from soon after 279
BC
. In spring 278, the island of Cos expressed votive thanks to the gods for saving Delphi, and in the following years, a number of decrees showered honors and rewards on individuals who had given information leading to the recovery of the sacred money belonging to Apollo, presumably that taken by the Gauls. Soon after, Gaulish shields were hung on the metopes of the temple of Apollo on the sides opposite where the Persian shields had been hung (and rehung) by the Athenians.
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The desired symmetry of the two victories against the Persians and the Gauls, separated as they were by almost exactly two hundred years, was complete.

The Phocians, in thanks for their role in saving Delphi, were given back their seats on the Amphictyonic council (which they had lost to Philip of Macedon after the Third Sacred War), and their ongoing fine to Delphi (which they had in all probability stopped paying many years before) was officially canceled. In response they seem to have dedicated a statue in the sanctuary. But the real winners were the Aetolians themselves. Their occupation of Delphi had never been sanctioned, indeed they had been attacked by the Greeks for it. However, now they were no longer Delphi's occupiers, but its saviors. This victory, this defense of Delphi, confirmed their right to occupy the sanctuary, and more importantly, confirmed them once and for all as defenders of Greece, and thus Greek. The Aetolians seem to have received their own seat on the Amphictyonic council and been recorded in the subsequent attendance records of the Amphictyonic meetings as second only to the presiding Thessalians.
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But they also ensured their victory was represented among the growing monumental history book of Delphic dedications. Stretching out from the west side of the Apollo sanctuary is Delphi's biggest single structure bar the temple of Apollo, the West Stoa, occupying a 2,000 square meter terrace (see
plate 2
). Its origins are uncertain, and scholars have been unable to precisely date its construction. Yet, it is certain that in the years immediately after 279
BC
, this structure became a focus for
the commemoration of the Aetolian victory over the Gauls. On the back wall of the stoa was inscribed in large letters a dedication from the Aetolians offering to Apollo armor taken from the Gauls, which seems to have been displayed on long planks of wood attached to the stone back wall.
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The stoa, coupled with the hanging of Gaulish shields on the west and south faces of the temple Apollo, was not the end of Aetolian commemoration. A statue of the personification of Aetolia was erected at the west end of the Apollo temple. The female Aetolia sat triumphantly atop a carved set of Gaulish weapons and was accompanied by not only a further statue elsewhere on the temple terrace, but also, according to Pausanias, a monument with statues of all the Aetolian chiefs as well as a special monument dedicated to the general Eurydamus.
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How did the Delphians feel about this renewed (and now largely accepted, especially by the Amphictyony) imposition of Aetolian control over their sanctuary? On the one hand, of course, they and the sanctuary would benefit hugely from such a backer (and controller), especially in terms of investment in the sanctuary and its games. But the Delphians' record of offering proxenia during the course of the third century
BC
gives a hint of a different story. Four hundred people were awarded proxenia by the city of Delphi during that time, and only thirteen of those were Aetolian (six of which were awarded before the Aetolian victory against the Gauls in 279
BC
). It could be argued that Aetolians didn't need grants of proxenia
,
such was their involvement with the sanctuary. But, on the other hand, it seems that the city of Delphi worked awfully hard to maintain its own relationships with a number of other parts of the Greek world at the same time.
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The 270s
BC
, as a result of the saving of Delphi from the Gauls, was a decade filled with renewed focus on Delphi as, once again, the symbol of Greece's freedom from invasion. It is not surprising that several previous dedicators to the sanctuary saw this as a fitting time in which to return and update their monuments. The Athenian statue base, originally dedicated after Marathon, and that ran along the southern flank of the Athenian treasury, was extended in the aftermath of this new victory to
include new figures paying homage to Delphi's new rulers. The Chians returned to their great altar in front of the Apollo temple not only to repair it after almost two hundred and fifty years of use, but also to reinscribe their rights to promanetia (see
fig. 1.3
). And at the end of the century, inscribed steles relating to their ambassadors to Delphi were also erected as close as possible to the altar. Alongside these individual revamps, the sanctuary seems to have undergone a series of rearticulations. To the south of the central open space just below the temple terrace (known as the
aire
and thought to be used for religious festivals), a series of previously dedicated monuments were repositioned along a newly created pathway, which in turn led to a new flight of steps leading directly to the aire performance space (see
plate 2
).
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The greatest change, however, at Delphi, during these years was in its festival calendar. The saving of Delphi required a new festival celebration, and the Soteria (quite literally “the saving”) was created in response. Performed annually in the autumn, this new festival mirrored the athletic and musical contests held during the Pythian games, in addition to competitions for tragedies and comedies. Its creation also heralded the probable final completion of the new stadium at Delphi high above the temple, and ushered in a new era of popularity for Delphic games and festivals (see
plate 1
,
figs. 0.1
,
0.2
).
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And yet, despite this outpouring of celebration, renovation, and innovation at Delphi, it would have been impossible not to notice Delphi's more lackluster place in a changing wider Greek world during this period and over the next thirty years. Many scholars have noted that while the Aetolian dedications, both public and private individual offerings, continued to flow at Delphi, most of the Hellenistic kingdoms and their ruling monarchies were dedicating not at Delphi, but at Apollo's other well-known sanctuary on the island of Delos, the place of his birth, as well as at sanctuaries like those on Samos (see
map 2
). The Ptolemies of Egypt were absent from Delphi, so were the Seleucids, so too the kings of the Black Sea, as well as Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, despite his constant campaigns against the Romans. The Greek cities of the Western Mediterranean—so long the dependable stalwart of Delphic dedications and
oracular consultation—were also largely absent at this time.
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Walking around the sanctuary in the middle of the third century
BC
, it must have felt like Delphi had in some way slipped from being an international sanctuary to a regional one, and this was, to some extent, the reality. It was no longer a sanctuary whose independence was jealously guarded in peace treaties and fought over in sacred wars. It was now a sanctuary under the increasingly strong control of the Aetolians, which meant that dedicating great monuments at Delphi no longer served predominantly to glorify the dedicator as much as it glorified the owners of the sanctuary.
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Coupled with the fact that this was now a world in which monarchical rule already had much less use for a conflict-resolving mechanism like the Delphic oracle and thus less reason to come to Delphi—as well as a world in which many of the traditional dedicators no longer had the money or reason to put up expensive votive offerings—a contraction in Delphi's appeal was, in reality, unavoidable.

But the story is not one of total decline. Several city-states continued to dedicate, particularly in order to celebrate their victories in the Pythian games or to honor particular Aetolians (e.g., Abydos, Clazomenai, Cnidus, Cyzicus, Elatea, Boeotia, Eretria, Megara, and Erythrai near Thermopylae), as well as particular associations like the Pylaioi (thought to be linked with the Amphictyony's other sanctuary of Demeter at Anthela). In the second quarter of the century, one king, Dropion of Paeonia, a region above Macedon in Thrace, was attracted to dedicate at Delphi first a statue of his grandfather and subsequently a statue portrait of the head of a bison.
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In 260
BC
the Aetolians celebrated their latest victory over the Archarnians with a new victory monument, representing victorious Aetolian generals alongside Apollo and Artemis.
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Athens too had recovered from the banning of its ruler from competing in the Pythian games in 290
BC
and was now in a much closer relationship with the sanctuary: not only had it updated its statue group monument to victory against Persia, which lay alongside its treasury (which also began in this period to be used as a notice board for recording Athenian victories in the Pythian games), but the Delphic Amphictyony had publicly granted ateleia (exemption from oracular consultation taxes) and asylia (religious
sanctuary) to the Dionysiac artists of Athens. In addition, the close connection between Athens and Delphi was symbolized by the synchronization of the worship of Apollo Patroos and Apollo Pythios in Athens during the course of the century, rendering Apollo Pythios the paternal god of the Athenians.
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Rome also returned to dedicate during the First Punic War (when it was itself fighting the Gauls in northern Italy), with one of its generals, Claudius Marcellus, copying the act of his predecessor Camillus in the previous century and sending a golden mixing bowl to Delphi as a symbol of the plunder taken in the battle.
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