MAR

She was the spokesperson for the cult of the god Apollo, son of Zeus, god of oracles, Apollo the beautiful and eternally young, carrier of a golden bow and a quiver of silver arrows. She spoke in riddles, ‘ainigmata’ in Greek. Her audiences, the great and good who’d come to what they called the ‘centre of the world’, her remote mountain location, journeying from the faraway capital, Athens, had to wait on the opportune moment for her prophesy: once a month, only for nine months of the year, and only when she deemed the omens were good.
They came to hear what would be the outcome of their wars, their political actions or setting of laws. Public policy was often swayed by her utterances. Her fame spread, her shrine’s motto was ‘Know thyself.’
They called her Pythia. For the 400 year duration of the Delphic shrine’s heyday (C8 – C4 BC) there was always an Pythia in residence, the one for the oracular role elected from among older women.
Bathing in the Cassotis spring before prophesying, Pythia drank its sacred water and entered the tall-columned Temple. There was ritual cake ‘pelanos’ to share out, and a beast to be sacrificed. Pythia was obliged to dress in maiden’s clothes and when prophesying, to sit in a narrow cave and chew on laurel leaves, straddled over a sacred fire through came fumes seeping from a fissure in the rocks below. Priests interpreted and set down whatever Pythia said, enigmatic words, perhaps, or only sounds, intelligible or otherwise.
Living apart from her husband and family, Pythia was yet not alone – the site thronged then with with visiting dignitaries’ entourages and curious onlookers.
It was a busy hub, the sanctuary of Delphi become a lucrative enterprise, with treasurehouses constructed and filled with offerings of gold and bejewelled weapons. C19th research had revealed the temple plan showing the steeply-inclined sacred way winding up Mount Parnassus’ lower slopes, lined with grandiose monuments and these treasuries where offerings were left, tokens of thanks for the favours bestowed by the god.
It was this I wanted to experience, this contrast of location with designated purpose, from almost beyond imaginable time, from almost three thousand years ago, this that had decided us to take the road north out of Athens on a February day when the wind off the Aegean was biting, and snow forecast. In no way a typical tourist jaunt – but this was anyway long before Delphi received its 1987 World Heritage site designation, long before rural roads were widened to accommodate big buses. I recall signposts were few as we approached the location, to what was just an isolated pile of stone, it seemed, perched up above us, almost hidden in a fold in the hills against the sombre backdrop of grey mountain against a greyer sky.
We were confronted with a scramble up steep steps to find what remained of the glory: once a sprawling site, not much now: the foundations, large paving slabs, and a few columns, but dating from much later than the heyday period, eight centuries later, in fact. Some capitals and massive wall blocks are preserved from the first temple which burned in 548 BCE, as are some pediment sculptures from the second C6th temple. The Athens treasury has been rebuilt and displays a wall covered with inscriptions including musically annotated hymns to Apollo.
There was no aromatic smoke to be seen or smelled. Windswept silence prevailed, two dark specks above were hawks circling high over our heads. Imagining anything festive and/or frenetic, envisaging the raucour of a mass of questing, heated, celebratory humanity in the atmosphere was hard that day in this place, stumbling about on its bare rock, snow-wreathed and bleak – easier by far to be convinced the Oracle had determined at this point it’d prefer to hold on to its mysteries. (In 2001 scientists identified ethylene gas in the region. Once used as an anaesthetic and inducing trance-like states, they considered this could have been what prompted the behaviour Pythia presented with when making her pronouncements.)
Our time seeking Pythia’s presence was not for a moment wasted though, as ones for the memory book go – and then there was the consolation of a memorable lunch.
In an almost empty café in a village where, except for the proprietor, we saw no-one stir, we huddled to thaw out around the pot-bellied stove over which he cooked our meal. Shaking and tossing a heavy pan, he sizzled up the best, most-salivating, spiciest small sausages you could ever imagine, to serve with a raw cabbage salad dressed only with salt, offering us beakers of good Greek retsina to wash it all down. And then, on turning to begin our return route, behind us we were treated to the louring clouds clearing momentarily to reveal a vista yonder of the Gulf of Corinth outspread, twinkling pale blue in the day’s last gleam of sun, just one red sail in sight, far out against the wide horizon.