Pod Insights The Ancients Delphi: Centre of the Ancient World About this episode For more than a thousand years, Delphi was considered a cultural centre of the ancient world. Every year a throng of pilgrims climbed the slopes of Mount Parnassus to seek the words of Apollo through the famous Oracle of Delphi.
Today Tristan Hughes is joined by Michael Scott to uncover Delphi's story, the sanctuary that shaped the ancient Mediterranean. How did the Pythia become the most famous oracle of antiquity? Why did rulers travel from across the Greek world to seek its guidance? And what can Delphi’s temples, monuments and Olympic-like festivals reveal about the power and influence of this extraordinary sacred site?
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Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
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Transcript 10,412 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Tristan Hughes? Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:34 Speaker 01 I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.
0:41 Speaker 02 And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.
1:16 Tristan Hughes? For over a thousand years, Delphi stood at the centre of the ancient world. According to myth, Zeus, king of the gods, released two eagles, one flying east, the other west. And where they met, he marked the centre of the earth. That sacred spot became the site of Delphi and was dedicated to Apollo, the god of prophecy. Pilgrims and kings travelled from across the Mediterranean to the temple of Apollo to make offerings, seek guidance, and hear his words through the oracle of Delphi, the Pythia. Rulers, emperors and statesmen
1:59 Tristan Hughes? would travel to consult the Pythia and make their mark on the city with monuments and statues. Visitors came from all around to enjoy the Pythian Games, second only to the Olympics, and to marvel at this special sanctuary, which was itself a showcase for the best of Greek art and culture.
2:21 Tristan Hughes? Welcome to The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of Delphi with professor, author and broadcaster, Michael Scott.
2:39 Tristan Hughes? Michael, great to have you back on the show. It's a pleasure to be here. And we're talking about one of your first big topic areas, one of your first loves in ancient history, the great site of Delphi. And this is one of the most splendorous ancient sites, not just in Greece, but in the whole of the ancient world.
2:59 Speaker 03 It is. As you say, it's a place very close to my heart, but I have to let on that the first time I ever went to Delphi, I was 17. I was on that school trip to Greece. And you know what? My luggage had got lost on the plane on the way over. And so I went around the entire trip in the same set of clothes. It was pretty smelly. No one really wanted to spend any time near me. And the day we were at Delphi, it was pretty miserable weather. And so that first encounter with this great place, I was perhaps, you know, we didn't hit it off as a love affair at first sight. Let's put it that way. But then I went back when I was a master's student.
3:38 Speaker 03 And it became clear to me that there was something here. Not only is it a really mesmerizing space and place to spend some time. And I think whether you know anything about the ancient world, whether you're religious, whether you're not religious, whatever, it's still a mesmerizing and affecting place to be. And I know of relatively few places in the world that have that kind of impact on everyone who goes there. But it was also kind of from an academic perspective, a place that really had an extraordinary story. And yet so much more to tell. And so it became for me kind of very much central to my PhD work, which was kind of on the sanctuary of Delphi. And I ended up being lucky enough to actually live at the site
4:21 Speaker 03 in the archaeological dig house that's right by the site for a period of time while I was doing some work on the sanctuary. And you know, at night, you're sort of alone there, kind of with the sanctuary of Delphi. And that is something quite extraordinarily special. So I would now say absolutely that this is one of my favorite places on earth.
4:41 Tristan Hughes? And if someone says ancient Delphi, what should we be thinking?
4:45 Speaker 03 Inevitably, I think if people have heard of Delphi, they have heard of Delphi because of its oracle. Right. And an oracle is a way of communicating with the gods. And in the ancient Greek and Roman context, the ancient worlds more generally, the gods were in charge of everything. Right. The gods were all powerful. There was a god in everything and everywhere. And so, and the gods are not benevolent gods, like we imagine in many modern day religions, you know, kind of actually these gods could be for you and against you. And so in that context, it became absolutely crucial to know what the gods thought about a particular endeavour. Or whether they were pro something happening or not, because if if they weren't pro happening, it wasn't going to happen.
5:30 Speaker 03 And so, understanding the will of the gods was an absolutely crucial aspect of ancient Greek Roman religious practice. And the way to do that was to consult them through, in the case of Delphi, an oracle.
5:44 Tristan Hughes? And describe the location for us, because I guess that's also one of the key reasons as to why it has almost that that divine appeal, that star striking nature is its position in Greece.
5:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's today about two hours car drive outside of Athens, up into the Parnassian Mountains. And if you can believe it, Delphi is just below Greece's main ski resort.
6:10 Tristan Hughes? Oh, wonderful.
6:10 Speaker 03 So so if you wanted to do some skiing in Greece, which is your obvious place to go to to do skiing. You go to Delphi and then if you go up above Delphi, you get to Arakova and then if you go above there, you get to the the kind of ski plateau. So it really is nestled in the crags of the of the high Parnassian mountains, you know. And as a result, as you say, it is a spectacular location and site. And actually, the natural geography of the place is even more enticing because the site is is nestled really hidden in a particular crag of the mountains. And so it's not something you see from a long way away and you go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's Delphi. Actually, as you wind around the side of the mountains, Delphi is hidden from you until you turn that final corner.
6:53 Speaker 03 And then it's completely explodes in front of your face. And today, of course, it's an archaeological site. But if you imagine back to its heyday of the fifth century BCE, for instance, when it was filled to the brim with shining marble, brilliant bronze, gleaming gold, you know, kind of absolute.
7:12 Speaker 03 All shimmering in the sunlight of Greece. It would have been the most fantastical thing that hit you around the face as you as you got to it. And is, you know, kind of as a result, a magical and important place, both in the ancient world for people to spend time and I think for us today.
7:31 Tristan Hughes? And that description right there, I'm a Lord of the Rings fan, but I imagine if Tolkien was inspired when he created like the elven capital of Iladris in that hidden valley, whether maybe there was some thoughts of Delphi in his mind, I don't know. But you can see the similarities, can't you, between a fictional and a non fictional place?
7:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, and you know, it's not just us today that are fascinated with it. The ancients were fascinated with it as a location and why it was in that location. Because at the same time, you're halfway up a mountain side, you're in the middle of really nowhere in terms of ancient Greek geography and and political kind of state boundaries. You're not near any major city or power player of the ancient world. And so from the perspective of, of course, quite hard to get there in the ancient world, it's quite hard to get all the stuff up the mountainside. You need to build stuff there. It's pretty hard to build stuff there because of all the terracing work that needs to get done. You know, all of these questions, the ancients were themselves asking, why is Delphi where it is?
8:30 Speaker 03 And we get a number of different kind of explanations from the ancient Greeks for why it is where it is. And the first kind of comes forward in the seventh, sixth centuries BCE, the Homeric hymn to Apollo. And this is a series of hymns worshipping the different gods and it's Apollo because Apollo is the god of prophecy. And it's Apollo who is the the ruling divinity at Delphi, whom you are consulting through their oracular priestess. And so in the Homeric hymn to Apollo, the story goes, Apollo was, you know, pottering around the world one day, you know, and just sort of came across this spot in the Parnassian mountains and thought, you know, this looks good for an oracular site.
9:15 Speaker 03 There may have been a sort of dragony creature there that he had to defeat in battle, no problem for God, you know. And then he's sitting there going, right, this is going to be my miraculous site, but no one lives there. So he sort of looks around, you know, divine godlike sight into the distance and sees a ship of some Cretan sailors that are sailing on the sea.
9:35 Tristan Hughes? You'll do.
9:36 Speaker 03 Them, them. And he sort of yanks them and brings them up to the, to the sanctuary. And, you know, ironically, they're the ones saying, what are we doing here? No one's going to come here. We're in the middle of nowhere. And Apollo goes, you know, don't worry, I'm going to set this site up to become this divine centre of the entire world. So that's kind of one story. And then as you go through the decades and the centuries, plenty more different stories are told that in some cases sort of make it not Apollo's decision, but Zeus's decision. His dad, Apollo's dad, who basically Apollo's a bit of a naughty child and Zeus tells him, go found an oracle, do it here.
10:15 Speaker 03 Then later stories extend it even further back past the generation of Zeus and Apollo, back to the previous gods. You know, to Gaia and Themis, to the original deities, setting up an oracular sanctuary in the site. And then you get other great stories that involve goats, kind of a Diodorusiculus. You've got to love a goat, you know, in a good story about a goat sort of wandering over this chasm in the ground and they go all a bit weird and they sort of fall into it. And so the people sort of put a poor woman on a three-legged tripod over the hole to sort of, you know, prophesize. And the, and the gases that they come out inspire her to prophesize. And then you get through to Strabo and he's the one who says, no, no, this, this is Zeus.
10:58 Speaker 03 And it's Zeus who basically let loose two eagles from opposite ends of the earth. And where they met was the centre of the earth, the centre of the world. And that was Delphi.
11:10 Tristan Hughes? So that's where we get saying Delphi is the centre of the ancient world.
11:13 Speaker 03 And the Greek word for that is the omphalos, the, the centre. And it also translates as the word for, for, for your navel, your belly button. And when, when we did a, a BBC documentary about Delphi.
11:28 Tristan Hughes? They were very keen that we we have that that word belly button kind of in the title because it it made all ancient history sound that little bit exciting, that little bit risque, you know, kind of thing. But it's it's omphalos, it's the it's the centre of the world.
11:43 Speaker 03 I remember watching that Delphi documentary, which is one of the inspirations into wanting to pursue ancient history media. So I'm always grateful.
11:50 Tristan Hughes? So you were brought in by the risque, the risque belly button, right? Like, you know, you were like, oh, I wonder what that's about.
11:57 Speaker 03 It is true.
11:58 Tristan Hughes? There you go. And Strobo, you mentioned there. So he's writing many centuries after that, Homeric hymn to Apollo. He's a Greek geographer, first century B.C. A.D., that kind of time.
12:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, so exactly, exactly that. And he's writing a big geography of the entire known ancient world at the time. And so this idea that, which is quite striking, isn't it, that that Delphi has a history that starts with its oracle, we think around about the eighth century B.C.E.
12:26 Tristan Hughes? Right, okay.
12:27 Speaker 03 And by Strobo's time, he's the one telling the story that it's the centre of the world. And Delphi's story will continue right the way through the Roman Empire as an important place. It will continue into the early Christian era. And it's really only in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. that Delphi falls out of use and and out of the storybooks. So for this incredible length of time, Delphi is a preeminent place. And our question, you know, my question when I was looking at this as a PhD is is trying to explain and understand, how can one place that is so physically remote, halfway up
13:07 Speaker 03 a mountain in the middle of nowhere, end up being so preeminent and so important for so long?
13:14 Tristan Hughes? Is one of those big questions, isn't it? And the timeframe makes you make an instant comparison with, let's say, the Battle of Hastings in modern day and everything that's happened in between. And yet in ancient history, the oracle of Delphi, Delphi is one of those amazing sites in that, I'm pretty sure there are a few others as well, where it just continues for so long, remains so important for so long, for so many generations. And I think it must be testament just to Word and mouth, the passing down of stories and legends and their importance for people who lived around the Mediterranean, you know, for an amount of time that we think today, you know, divides up so many eras. And yet that continued importance is just remarkable.
13:55 Speaker 03 It is. It is absolutely remarkable. When you think about all the political and military changes that take place around the Mediterranean during that time period, you know, and all the different cultures that come and go. And yet Delphi manages to to find its its importance to all of them. And for me, there are two reasons that that happens. The first is that crucially, Delphi was not just an oracle, right? That was very important, and we need to talk about it, you know, some more. But but fundamentally, that was not the only thing going on there. And there were other activities that had their own trajectories of rises and falls and of importance during that time, so that when one kind of waned, there were other things that were going on that brought, continue to bring people to Delphi.
14:40 Speaker 03 And together, they created this kind of perfect storm, if you like, of somewhere that could be so important to so many for so long. But the other kind of thing I think we need to recognize is that the Delphians, the little local city of Delphi around this sanctuary, it was probably never more than a thousand citizens. They were not passive in sitting back and going, I'm sure the world will come to us and it will keep coming to us. You know, actually, what we see time and time again is them being pretty proactive and responsive to that wider changing world to think, how can we repackage? How can we reemphasize?
15:22 Speaker 03 How can we reinsert Delphi into this bigger narrative? So they're being equally, I think, proactive and responsible for Delphi's continuing success and importance, making Delphi a place of importance and of value to the big players and rulers of the day, whoever they may have been.
15:39 Tristan Hughes? Well, archaeologically, it must really be a treasure trove. I mean, layer upon layer of buildings of archaeology. But for archaeologists at the site today, have they been able to get down to the earliest layers? Have we got a sense of what early archaic Delphi would have looked like?
15:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, we do. I mean, as you say, in terms of archaeology, it is an extraordinary treasure trove. And partly that's because it got lost.
16:04 Tristan Hughes? Really?
16:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, so, so after it falls out of the history books in that sort of six, seven centuries, literally Delphi is lost. Its remains end up being built over in sort of, you know, kind of shacks and shanty towns and whatever and through history and that gets covered over by a town that actually didn't even bear the name of Delphi. So you get dial forward to 16th century, 17th century, 18th century. People are going, we've got this place called Delphi that's in all the surviving literature as this absolutely crucial place. No idea where it is. Don't know it. And it's only in the 18th, 19th centuries when that kind of interest in ancient Greece
16:47 Speaker 03 starts to really ramp up across Europe. And with the Greek War of Independence in the 19th century, that Greece suddenly becomes accessible again for these different European nations to get involved in actually uncovering the archaeology of Delphi. And in the 1890s, the French won the deal, if you like, with the Greek government to have the right to excavate Delphi. So by the 1890s, people had worked out that Delphi, the ancient Delphi was actually sitting underneath this modern town. And the French won the right to, not only, so they had to destroy the town, they had to build a new little town on the next crag round of the Panathinaea Mountains for the inhabitants to all move to. And then they could get down to excavating the site.
17:32 Speaker 03 And it took them 10 years, that initial big dig, as it was called from 1896 onwards, 10 years to uncover Delphi. So there was, if you like, this treasure trove that had been locked secret for so many centuries that could then be uncovered. But there is so much there that in that 10 years scraped the surface and excavations are still continuing to this day to be able to get back to those earliest phases. And we are now 1990s, 2000s on. Now we're in the phase of being able to get down to the earliest phases of Delphi's existence. And not just at the main site itself, but actually understanding how Delphi warped, if you like, the wider landscape around it, both in the mountains and in the plains below.
18:16 Speaker 03 To get that picture and answer that picture of, you know, kind of archaeologically, what, what started here? In the ninth centuries and eighth centuries that would go on to become so big. And the picture that's emerging is that it's a settlement first. It's actually a place people are living. And to begin with, there is no real distinction between the settlement and kind of what we think are the kind of religious areas. It's all kind of mixed in together. There are some early destructions as well, some fires that sweep through and then rebuilds. And then suddenly, in the eighth century, the archaeology is confirming for us that this decision is taken to, if you like, separate out the domestic
18:57 Speaker 03 and to create this prioritized sacred space in the area that will become the later sanctuary. And that's the kind of moment, if you like, that Delphi emerges.
19:09 Tristan Hughes? And is that also when you get the building of the grand centerpiece of ancient Delphi, the temple to Apollo?
19:15 Speaker 03 Well, at least one of them.
19:17 Tristan Hughes? One of the versions.
19:18 Speaker 03 Because the temple that stands there today was actually the temple that was built in the fourth century BCE, with a few additions and kind of, you know, bits and pieces in the interim. But actually, there were several temples that were built before that on the same site or thereabouts that go back all the way to, we think, probably seventh century. But archaeologically, we can attest to sort of three main ones that we can see today in the archaeological record. And they're each in some ways similar to one another, but each slightly improving, you know, on one another. And more amazingly than that, we have surviving sculpture from at least the last two that is on display in the Delphi Museum for you to be able to see today.
20:02 Speaker 03 So we can get a sense of this temple at the heart of the sanctuary, which was where, of course, the eracular priestess reposed and did her heracular consultation that really was the kind of beating heart of the sanctuary.
20:15 Tristan Hughes? And what do we know about these statues?
20:17 Speaker 03 Oh, the statues that were in the pediments of the town. So there are interesting choices about, you know, pedimental sculpture. It reflects a choice about what is, what is the message you want to send to people who are coming to Delphi? And in the case of Delphi, you know, on the one hand, it's obviously about honoring Apollo. Right. So you want, you want kind of a story associated with kind of Apollo. And that's the primary note that we get kind of from the temple itself. But there are also lots of stories related to it, not to the fourth century one, but to the one prior to that, that was built in the five twenties, that was actually, there was an Athenian family who were in exile from Athens at the time because they were out of favour.
20:58 Speaker 03 And they lodged up at Delphi and so they offered to pay for the building of the temple. And in fact, out of their own pocket, to pay for the front of the temple and the pedimental sculptures to be made in even nicer material than the Delphians could afford. And then they just so happened to be the case following that, nice donation to Delphi, that the oracle at Delphi gave them very supportive oracular consultations for a period of time afterwards. So I don't think we can see Delphi as being kind of totally impartial in the way that it engaged with the key players that helped it and supported it. But that's kind of part and parcel of that picture of those Delphians being pretty savvy, pretty proactive.
21:42 Speaker 03 And, you know, about securing a future and an importance for their hometown.
21:46 Tristan Hughes? Is this where we get those fascinating, that, that pair of statues, the Cleobis and Beton?
21:51 Speaker 03 So they were there in the sanctuary, not from the pedimental sculptures, they were there in the sanctuary as kind of very much the early dedications, but not to do with the Athenians. It goes back to that point about what else is going on at the sanctuary? You turn up at the oracle, you get your consultation, great. If actually your consultation turned out to be really helpful and it went on to help you, you know, in a business venture or military victory or whatever it might be. You would often return to the sanctuary to then dedicate something in the sanctuary in thanks to the god for their support and their help and their generosity and their willingness to, to, to, to give you what you wanted. And that could be a set of sculptures, it could be a set of kind of precious objects.
22:34 Speaker 03 And over time, different types of dedications get, get developed. So treasury houses, as they're called, become a thing for a while as well. So you've got the temple, but increasingly over time, around the temple, you've got a sanctuary absolutely stuffed to the brim with these dedications. Because once they've been dedicated, they are the property of the God. And so you can't ever remove them. So not only are they a brilliant way to say thanks to the God, but they're also a brilliant way for whoever set them up to leave an eternal message for everyone who comes to the site. And this is what I mean by kind of, you know, different reasons for people to come to Delphi.
23:17 Speaker 03 You've got your oracle, come and get a consultation. You've got your dedication saying thanks, but also increasingly, they know that people are going to be coming to the site on a regular basis. So it becomes a great place for you to get a message across. So people start putting up dedications in the sanctuary whenever something great has happened for them, because they want the world to know about it. And this is an era without podcasts, out YouTube, without radio, without TV. How do you get a message across to the wider ancient Greek world? You do it by putting up a monument in a place that you know the ancient Greek world is going to come to. And so Delphi becomes this, you know, you think about it a bit like an information hub. People are coming there, so there's information travelling with them.
24:02 Speaker 03 And that then feeds in, no doubt, to the oracular consultations and the informed responses that the oracle can give. But also it's an information hub because it contains all these monuments to increasingly all of the major moments in Greek history that are permanently there for all eternity, that people can come to see, to recognise, to engage with, to build on, embellish, and indeed contradict and try and counter. So, you know, it ends up with Greek city-states who, you know, they didn't like one another most of the time. Someone puts up a statue to their victory in this battle over, say, the Spartans. 10 years later, the Spartans get a victory.
24:47 Speaker 03 So they come and they put a monument up and they put it up. When you start looking at it, the kind of dynamics of it. They put it up right opposite the monument.
24:55 Tristan Hughes? Bigger and better.
24:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, it was right opposite and going, yeah, sharks, boom, my monument's bigger than yours. And it's right opposite and kind of so you get not only this kind of information storyboard of history, but you get these these kind of monument wars that develop and competitions and things. And it becomes this absolutely enthralling, if you like, history book.
25:14 Tristan Hughes? And it's interesting because you not only have people, like whole people making dedications as you're celebrating events, but also certain aristocrats, kings from the Greek world and beyond, wanting to leave their mark on Delphi because it's another way for their legacy to be remembered.
25:30 Speaker 03 Absolutely. Yeah. So think of it as a snowball, kind of going down a hill, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Because the more that people come there and choose to put up a monument there or consult there or get involved in the athletic and musical competitions that were also happening there that were on par in the ancients view with the Olympics. The more people who have done that, the more it becomes a place that you want to do that because people have done it in the past. It becomes an essential space to have a stake in and to have visibility in and to have your your identity, your successes reflected in. And and for me, the kind of the ultimate success of this
26:13 Speaker 03 is when the Greek world gives way to the Romans and the Romans feel obligated to put up monuments to their own military victories at Delphi. And it starts with their military victories over the Greeks. And you can kind of see why that might make sense. You know, we're establishing our authority over the Greeks. We're better to do that than at one of the key Greek sites, you know, kind of where you you establish your your monuments to military victory in the past. Romans are here now. Look at our big monument right bang slap in the middle here. But actually, it starts going beyond that when the Romans are kind of doing things, you know, nothing to do with Greece across the much wider kind of Mediterranean sphere.
26:54 Speaker 03 Delphi is still having a role in the telling of that story. And again, it comes back to those proactive Delphians, who, when we get into the era of the Roman emperors, they are writing this little city of Delphi in the mountain crags of the Parnassian Mountains, are writing to the new emperor, going, dear new emperor, we would like to put a statue of you up in the great sanctuary of Delphi so that you can take your place amongst this extraordinary history book. And we would like to invite you to become a local magistrate, the great honour, you know, of becoming a magistrate of Delphi. And extraordinarily, not every Roman emperor, but a number of Roman emperors go, yes, please, yes, please.
27:37 Speaker 03 You know, and if the Roman emperor is doing it, everyone else is going to do it as well.
27:42 Tristan Hughes? It's amazing. If you visited ancient Delphi and you could see in that sacred area, you could see a dedication from the legendary King Chrysus. You could then see one from Alexander the Great, and then one from the Emperor Hadrian, all pretty close together in one location.
27:56 Speaker 03 In one location. Who wouldn't want to be part of that storyboard, of that microcosm of history? And that, that, for me, you know, the oracle is, is, is an absolutely fascinating and important part of Delphi's history. But actually, if you look at the kind of consultation record from the fourth century B.C. onwards, although the oracle will continue to be consulted right the way through to the advent of Christianity and Rome's conversion to Christianity in the fourth century A.D., really, the oracular consultation as a reason to come to Delphi starts to wane away. The oracle's preeminent moment was eighth century B.C. to fourth century B.C. So the question becomes after that period, after the fourth century B.C., when the oracle is no longer as preeminent as it was,
28:40 Speaker 03 what's driving people to Delphi? And it's increasingly that ability to be part of the monumental, permanent storyboard that Delphi offers. And alongside that, it's a chance to be part of the increasingly important and famous athletic and musical competitions that happen at the site. You know, when you go to Delphi today, you see a religious sanctuary with a temple and all these dedications, but there's also a gigantic Stadium, you know, that they've carved into the rock side and terraced in. There's a gymnasium, there's a big theatre and and down in the the plain below the mountains, they couldn't get this terraced into the mountainside, so they had to put it in the plains below, was a great horse racing track.
29:21 Speaker 03 So this place had facilities equivalent to those of Olympia in the ancient Olympics. And in fact, actually, in some cases, it had the the first sets of facilities. So the gymnasium, for instance, at Delphi, constructed in the fourth century BCE, is the earliest kind of gymnasium structure at the sanctuary that we know of. It's getting it before Olympia. And so that starts to tell you a story of how those other activities at Delphi actually have their own trajectories of success that extend way beyond the period that the oracle was the preeminent piece, after the fourth century BCE, and why Delphi continues to be a place that attracts people to come to it from far and wide.
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31:19 Speaker 01 I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.
31:26 Speaker 02 And I'm Carter Roy and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.
31:59 Tristan Hughes? Well, you've set up this next section wonderfully. So let's do the story for the oracle first and then we'll delve into this entertainment side of Delphi with the Pythian Games and so on. First off, with the oracle, not a silly question at all. What exactly was it? How did it work?
32:15 Speaker 03 Oh God, no, not this question, no. It's not just not a silly question, it's the $64 million question that you can't... So the wonderful irony is that for an oracular process that was happening from the 8th century BCE to the 4th century AD, we don't know exactly how it happened.
32:33 Tristan Hughes? We don't know, okay.
32:35 Speaker 03 And that is because there is no single source from the entirety of that period that tells us step by step what happened. And partly that could be because it was a bit of a big secret. But then at the same time, we get stories from the kind of classical era, from the great historian Herodotus, who he's talking about other, other oracular sites. And he goes, "The consultation here happened just like it happens at Delphi."
33:00 Tristan Hughes? Hmm, okay.
33:02 Speaker 03 And you're like, so is that a kind of, "I don't know how it happened there and I don't know how it happens here" sort of thing? Get out of jail free card for Herodotus? Or is it indicating that actually it was so well known that no one needed to talk about it? But either way, what we're left with are a series of smatterings of indications of how the process worked from that vast timeframe. And the only thing we can do is try and put together a sort of composite picture from all of those sources that is never going to, you know, really represent the process at any one period of time, because we know it changed over time, right? So, so we are never going to know the answer to that question.
33:47 Speaker 03 The best we can offer is this, that there was a priestess known as a Pythian priestess. She somehow was inspired to give an answer that was thought to come from the god Apollo to a question that was posed by a consultant. That happened within the temple. But then the sources all are kind of, you know, disintegrating and conflicting as to whether or not the consultant stood in front of the Pythian priestess and put the question directly and heard the response, or whether they were in separate rooms and the response was sort of given to them. Whether, how this priestess was inspired, you know, by the god, was it those, those
34:29 Speaker 03 weird gases that sent the goats weird, you know, according to Diodoro's? Was it some kind of self-induced hallucination or some kind of hypnosis? People have pored over this question endlessly in a desperate attempt to come up with what to us today would seem like a logical answer. And there's lots of different directions you can go in, but in what I would say is this, that put it against the background of what I would call a kind of constant hum of human divine communication. Everyone was trying to communicate with the gods to find out what they had in store. So people came predisposed to think this system worked.
35:10 Speaker 03 You were there at the place, you could only turn up on nine days a year for the consultation, one day a month for nine months of the year. So tons of people massing at Delphi for a consultation day. So you get that collective buy-in. You then paid your fee to be able to offer the consultation. So you've bought in quite literally to the system. And then people tell us that the way you asked your question was, you know, it wasn't, should I eat salad for lunch or, you know, whatever? It was, would it be better for me to do X or Y? So you offered two options. And if the priestess came back to you saying, do option X, and you went away and you did option X, and it turned out to be a disaster, then the priestess or the Delphi authorities
35:55 Speaker 03 could go, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a disaster. But you've no idea how bad Y would have been.
35:59 Tristan Hughes? It was still much better than that.
36:00 Speaker 03 Which you could never, ever disprove.
36:04 Speaker 03 So there was a kind of Teflon coating to the process whereby you couldn't necessarily disprove that or prove that the priestess had given you bad advice. And then on top of that, it's clear that a lot of the responses weren't simply do X, but it was quite an ambiguous and unclear response that required you then to go away, chew it over and decide how to interpret the response. So the two famous ones, and you mentioned kind of Chrysus, you know, kind of, he famously gets a consultation from the oracle that says, you know, if you invade this territory, a great empire will fall. And he goes, fabulous, that's going to be my enemy. He loses, he ends
36:45 Speaker 03 up losing his empire. He turns up literally at Delphi, throwing his chains of imprisonment down in front of the oracle going, you told me a great empire will fall. And they go, yes, we did. You misinterpreted the answer. Now, the famous one, the Athenians, when the Persians are invading, turn up at Delphi and go, what should we do? And the Athenians get told to trust in your wooden walls. They have to go back to Athens and they have to have a debate about how to interpret that. So we shouldn't think about the oracle at Delphi as some kind of fortune teller. You know, this isn't Mystic Meg. This is a kind of sense-making mechanism
37:24 Speaker 03 that gives some kind of impetus that has a really strong divine authority behind it that people are buying into, to people having to think about the decision they need to make, and spurring them on their way to be able to make the decision for themselves. Or as one businessman put it to me once, oh, sounds like a management consultant. And I think there's some value to that.
37:51 Tristan Hughes? The example that I immediately go to, and this is just my nerdy interest, and I just remember the story. It's a lesser known prophecy that supposedly happens, but I can't remember if actually he goes to Dodona and not Delphi. But this is a king of a region in northwest Greece who's considering going to southern Italy or not. And so should I go or should I not? And then the response to that is just be wary of the river Akaron and the city Pandosia. And those are two places in northwest Greece in Epirus. So he goes over to southern Italy. And then he loses a battle in southern Italy and he loses his life in a river Akaron. Cause he didn't realise there was also another river called that and another city called Pandosia.
38:36 Tristan Hughes? When I started saying that, my question was going to be, that type of prophecy sounds very different to one from Delphi. Because that one feels like one with hindsight. And then, as I was saying, I remembered that I think that's from another oracle at Dodona and not from Delphi. So my question then is, the style of the oracles at Delphi, were they therefore very unique? In how they presented the knowledge in that kind of, you know, A, X or Y compared to stories of prophecies and bad luck and misfortune for other figures who tried to get a prophecy from a different oracle.
39:15 Speaker 03 So there were certainly lots of different ways in which oracle consultation happened at different sanctuaries. And gave different kinds of responses. I mean, we go back first to that kind of Herodotus quote when he's talking about a different oracle. And he says, oh, it happens here just like it does at Delphi, right? So, so in some cases, there would have been similarities between the way it happened at Delphi and the way it happened at other places. But actually, as you quite rightly point out, lots of other oracle consultation sites did things in very different ways. So at Dodona, they listened to the rustling of tree leaves. Right, there was a sacred tree to Zeus and they had priests who were, you know, trained interpreters of the rustling of these tree leaves to get your response. There was no
39:58 Speaker 03 kind of oracular priestess in the same way. And then even more widely, kind of that oracular consultation model was just one of the ways in which you could actually divine the will and intention of the gods. So you could also go and consult the spirits of the dead. There were sites of necromancy, as it's called, to find out about the will of the gods. Or you could cut up an animal and read its entrails and look for particular signs on its liver and there'd be specialists who could do that. There'd be others who would read the signs in, say, the flights of birds or things like that. Famously, though, the Greeks trusted most animals for divination, except fish. There's this really weird kind of thing where
40:43 Speaker 03 the Greeks think fish are inherently dumb and thus untrustworthy and cannot possibly tell you the will of the gods. Sort of slightly out of left field. But then also there were oracle books. So these books that had just tons of different responses in them, all sort of numbered or whatever. And then you went through this complex system of, you know, pick your favorite number, take away five, add six, add your age, you know, whatever. And you ended up with a response that was relevant to your question. And then even down to the lowest of the low, there would be people that were called sort of oracle peddlers, who would literally be accosting you on the street of your hometown going, would you like an oracular consultation? You know, only a fiver. So there was a whole spectrum of
41:26 Speaker 03 different ways to consult and find out the will of the gods. And you'd have to make a choice, right? You know, was this an important question? If it was, you'd probably go to a more expensive or more authority, weighty oracular site that would inevitably take you more time, cost you more money to go to, travel to, you know, et cetera. If it was a kind of, you know, sell my sheep or whatever, you might go for a more local sort of nearby
41:56 Speaker 03 But the the one bit I really do like is that over time, clearly people start thinking, you know, I totally trust the system. Of course I trust the system, right? But is there a way to play this system? And one of the ways I think is absolutely brilliant, that people occasionally did it, was if you were somebody quite big in importance, you couldn't still couldn't turn up at Delphi and go, give me the response I want, right? That might happen down the line in the Roman era with the Roman emperors. But certainly in the Greek world, no, because that place has such authority and power. But if you turn up at the the little the little oracular site in your hometown, and you're the ruler, and you go, hi,
42:41 Speaker 03 you're more likely to get the response you want. So we have examples of people who would go to an oracle of Zeus, but it was a little piddly oracular sanctuary in their hometown that they could perhaps influence more to get the response they wanted. But no, even though it's an oracle of Zeus, it's the oracle of Zeus in some little town that no one's heard of. It's not, no one's going to buy into it, it doesn't have the authority. Then they would go to Delphi, to the oracle of Apollo, the son of Zeus, and they would simply ask the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, does the son agree with his father? And Apollo cannot disagree with his dad, Zeus, king of the gods, right? So what they then get is the answer they wanted
43:26 Speaker 03 with the authority that comes from having an oracular response from Delphi. As the kind of, if you like, the gold standard in oracular responses. So lots of different ways of doing it, lots of different choices you could make, but also within that, ways in which you could play the system to your best advantage.
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45:13 Tristan Hughes? Well, there's certain cases where oracular stories were added with hindsight, knowing the misfortune that happened to a certain individual, and then drawing a link saying, "Oh, actually, he perished near a place called Pandosia", which was actually in northwest Greece as well. And then they kind of create oracular stories to align with it, saying, "Well, he just didn't listen."
45:35 Speaker 03 I think that's inevitably the case as well, right? So a number of the... Where we get told all of these oracular stories, particularly at Delphi, they're all in the... in later literary sources than they are happening. So from Herodotus onwards, through Thucydides, through the Hellenistic historians, through into the Roman historians, they're all talking back and telling us a story with hindsight. So you get lots of these stories. Whereby clearly the question and the answer then makes sense in light of what goes on to happen. Or, you know, sometimes the poetry and verse that these responses come in. There's no way that some priestess high on some gas or, you know, hallucinogenic experience or hypnosis or whatever is going to come out with this perfect verse.
46:18 Speaker 03 So clearly the responses have been curated. That is very different though. I mean, Dodona is a really another interesting example where actually there was this rustling of tree leaves, but then the way responses were often given was very simply yes or no.
46:35 Tristan Hughes? Interesting.
46:36 Speaker 03 And not given orally, but actually inscribed. And one of the traditions was that you would write your question and the, sometimes the answer on a lead tablet that you would then bury at the sanctuary. So we've actually dug these up and at Dodona, we have the questions and the answers, you know, of it for, for a sanctuary that works in a very different way. So Delphi again has a, has a slightly different story because of that increasing preeminence and that increasing importance and that increasing authority. And because of the way that the consultation happened that allowed for this retelling and restyling.
47:15 Speaker 03 It enables stories of oracular consultation to be told with the benefit of hindsight and inserted in some cases into the stories of history. So if you get through into the, the early Christian era, there's actually in those kind of early Christian writers who are working within the world of the Roman Empire, an attempt to try and construct an oracular consultation from Delphi foreseeing the birth of Jesus.
47:44 Tristan Hughes? Wow.
47:45 Speaker 03 You know, and, and so it's crossing, in some cases, it's crossing worlds, cultures, religious divides and everything in between.
47:51 Tristan Hughes? But once again, that kind of harkens back to that, the evolving nature of Delphi and how it is able to stay important. Thanks to the local Delphians, but also kind of that, that prestige that it keeps for so long. Shall we talk a bit about the Pythian Games then and that whole entertainment side of Delphi? How popular do these games become?
48:11 Speaker 03 So in antiquity, they are considered on par with the ancient Olympics. So there were four sets of athletic games that were the Premier League, if you like, and they were known as the Crown Games. That's at Olympia, that's at Delphi, and that's at two other sanctuaries, Ismya and Nemea. So famously, for instance, Athens, great city of the ancient Greek world, had its own set of games, but they never became part of the Premier League, the Crown Games that was Olympia-Delphi. And so what we need to imagine is these would be the biggest events in the entire ancient Greek world in terms of an audience coming together for them.
48:53 Speaker 03 And estimates are of somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people congregating for these games lasting a week or so every couple of years, sometimes Olympia, you know, Delphi on this cycle. And at Delphi, that must have been an absolutely extraordinary occurrence because it's a tiny place clinging to the crags of the Ponassian Mountains. So that many people would have been spread out around the mountains, down into the valley below. And imagine that at night, you know, twinkling fires as all of these people are camping out. There's no hotels or anything like that for them. They're all camping out kind of around the grounds and they're all bringing all the animals and everything they need with them for that period of time. And winning at one of these sets of games was really the kind of gold standard.
49:37 Tristan Hughes? Celebrity status.
49:38 Speaker 03 Celebrity status. And so again, in the sanctuary, alongside all those monuments to oracular consultation and military victories and this city's done amazing things, you'd also have monuments to the athletic victors and the great things they'd done. And what we see is an expanding number of competitions, kind of the running races, the chariot races and everything in between. But what Delphi had on top of that, which actually we don't see at Olympia, Ismya and Nemea, was alongside the athletic competitions, they also had a really well-respected set of musical, theatrical and poetical competitions. So if you were a rhapsode, you know, an orator, if you were a poet, if you were a sculptor,
50:23 Speaker 03 if you were a dramatist, if you were any of these kind of thing, musician, you would want to perform and win at these musical competitions. And dial forward through to the era of the Roman emperors again, Roman Emperor Nero.
50:36 Tristan Hughes? Nero, was it?
50:37 Speaker 03 Nero rocks up at the musical competitions, you know, because we know Nero and his preference, love for kind of, you know, playing music, kind of, he's, he's entering the musical competitions. Amazingly, he wins, you know, phenomenal, as well as consulting the oracle, as well as kind of leaving some dedications in the city. So kind of people are coming in huge numbers to the site for these athletic and musical competitions. And they again, generate their own momentum for the site and their own importance that keeps people coming back over time.
51:07 Tristan Hughes? I guess of all the statues that survive, shall we mention the charioteer? Because it is one of the most, well, I, I use the word incredible a lot, but it is a standout artifact, an amazing piece of bronze art that survived.
51:22 Speaker 03 Yes, it is. And it was discovered in that big dig in the first 10 years of the excavation of Delphi. And there's an extraordinary photo of it literally half found in, in the earth, kind of coming out feet first. You can see it in the Delphi Museum today, work of the fifth century BCE, in which they have managed to cast in bronze, this extraordinarily human figure, the charioteer, the muscular is extraordinary, the facial features are extraordinary. But we have to imagine and remember that it is only a tiny bit of the original dedication. Because this was a chariot driver and there were also the chariot and the horses, all in bronze.
52:03 Speaker 03 This entire thing was life size, over life size, as an enormously impressive, visible and expensive monument set up. And we know it was placed right by the, the, the temple of Apollo. And it was paid for by not one of the kind of rich families of mainland central Greece, but actually by one of the, if you like, wealthy elites from the wider Greek diaspora over in Sicily. And the Sicilian Greeks, you know, they like to do things bigger and better than anyone else. And this was his way of doing it and having his mark at Delphi.
52:42 Tristan Hughes? Gotcha. Very cool. The story of Magna Gracia and the Sicilians and they're like, that's a story for another day. Well, let's go on then towards the downfall. And I guess the more infamous side of Delphi's story. First off, one close to my heart. I know it's not really near the downfall, but it's a bit of a, well, it's quite the story in its own right. There's an episode where the Celts potentially descend on Delphi and try to seize its treasures, but are prevented on way.
53:11 Speaker 03 So there's a number of wars that are fought over Delphi actually throughout its history, in which kind of groups invade and they come from, in some cases, far away. So when the Persians invade Greece, they supposedly invade and take over Delphi as well. And sometimes actually it's rival Greek city-states that are sort of trying to nab the place for itself. But then, as you say, into the Hellenistic period and into the kind of, well, you know, the latter periods of Delphi history, you get these invasions that threaten what has now become this kind of beacon of Greekness and Greek identity. And eventually, when we get into the fourth, fifth, sixth centuries AD, they will become the downfall, you know. And the last archaeological picture we have of
53:53 Speaker 03 Delphi is of a hastily constructed defensive wall being thrown together using bits of the sanctuary, a last stand, you know, against these invaders. And then it eventually succumbs and disappears from view. And so it doesn't go out with a bang, but with a kind of whimper in that sense. But I, you know, I think for me, what's extraordinary is that it manages to survive all of those attacks prior to that, because it has enough of an importance to enough people who rally together to repulse the invaders or free the sanctuary from whoever's tried to
54:35 Speaker 03 take it over. They go, no, you can't have this because this thing is too important to a wider community of Greeks.
54:43 Tristan Hughes? Do you think Christianity is the fun on air in the coffin?
54:46 Speaker 03 Weirdly, no, because, you know, so we hear of the final Oracula consultation in the fourth century A D by the last pagan emperor. And supposedly, of course, again, with the beautiful benefit of hindsight, supposedly that last consultation was, you know, the waters of prophecy are quenched, you know, we will now fall silent. It makes a lot of sense. But actually, although some elements of it had to stop in terms of the pagan worship at the site, the site was so important that even early Christianity wanted to have its place in its physical story. So they don't destroy the pagan temples.
55:30 Speaker 03 What they do is start building Christian basilicas and churches alongside them.
55:35 Tristan Hughes? Clever.
55:35 Speaker 03 In the site, in the actual site. So Delphi as a sanctuary becomes a place of Christian worship, you know, and so there's quite a active kind of Christian worship going on and site of activity. So Christianity in some ways isn't the death knell for Delphi, it's another evolution in Delphi's story.
55:56 Tristan Hughes? Michael, this has been absolutely fantastic, as always. And last but certainly not least, you have the BBC documentary on Delphi, but you have also written a large book on Delphi. It is called?
56:09 Speaker 03 Delphi, centre of the ancient world. We got out of saying belly button this time. Delphi, centre of the ancient world, and that came out with Princeton University Press. And so great book about the whole history of Delphi that was such fun to write, really kind of just so extraordinary. And also at the back, there's a guide to when you go to the site, because I can't emphasise enough, this is one of those places that you really need to go and see.
56:32 Tristan Hughes? Like Pompeii, you need to go there.
56:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, you need to be there, take some time to spend some time there. And it's a lovely part of Greece to visit as well. And there's a guide to the key sites in the sanctuary and in the museum to see. But I think the final kind of note just to say is that Delphi doesn't just exist at Delphi. And this is again, one of those strange things about Delphi. So when the Roman Emperor Constantine, who would go to set up Constantinople, modern day Istanbul, turned up at Delphi, he nicked a bunch of its treasures and took them with him to Constantinople, to Istanbul, including the very famous serpent column that was the Greek monument to victory over the Persians. And that serpent column stood in Istanbul, right the way through to today.
57:17 Speaker 03 So when you go to the Hippodrome in Istanbul, you see at the centre of it, the 5th century BCE bronze serpent column that once stood at Delphi. So Delphi is at Delphi, but Delphi actually is spread out now around the world as well.
57:32 Tristan Hughes? What a fact. What a fact to leave it on. Michael, it's been such a pleasure. It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.
57:40 Speaker 03 It's great to be with you guys.
57:46 Tristan Hughes? Well, there you go. There was Professor Michael Scott, returning to the show to talk through one of his most cherished topics, which is the story of Delphi. I really do hope you enjoyed the episode. It is always such a pleasure to get Michael on the show. And if you want more with Michael, well, I've got good news for you. We've recorded several episodes with Michael over the years. We've done one recently, all about the Mysticles, the rises and falls behind ancient Athens's naval mastermind. But we've also done episodes with him on Zeus, King of the Gods, and on topics like Kerros, this island in the Aegean with its own fascinating Bronze Age story. So we'll put a link to several of those episodes
58:29 Tristan Hughes? we've done with Michael in the past, in the show notes, if you want to listen to more of Michael and ancient Greece. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're enjoying it, that really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd be happy to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.
59:10 Speaker 01 I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.
59:17 Speaker 02 And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.
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