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High Greek Priestess Seized
Those of us who have had our fortune told from time to time usually find out the hard way that oracles are unreliable or ambiguous. A particular reading can have so many different meanings that it could be applicable to almost anyone at any time, hence each person believes it is ready-made for him. Even a negative reading of, say, impending Death, can be interpreted positively in order to avoid it, perhaps by moving elsewhere; alas, Death is waiting elsewhere too, for everyone dies. And when the outcome is not the future event longed for, the fault is said not to be with the oracle as delivered in the dice cast, shuffled cards, or hysterical utterance of the Pythia at Delphi, but with the mistaken interpretation. The god Chance is never wrong: the fault resides in the priest or supplicant; and, when the random result seems too egregious to blame on its hapless victims, well, god works his will in mysterious ways, in ways contrary to the individual's will.
Take for example the case of General Philomelus. He was chosen by the Phocians in about 357 B.C. to take possession of Apollo's temple at Delphi. The Amphictyonic assembly, an ancient Greek version of our United Nations with the rudimentary faults of same, was manipulated by Thebes to impose a huge fine on its neighbor Phocia due to charges brought on one pretext or another. As if the fine were not enough to resolve the Theban's ancient animosity over running border disputes, the assembly consecrated Phocian land to Apollo and declared the temple of Delphi thereon, then in possession of the Phocian's old brothers the Delphians, as the rightful possession of the Delphians.
Of course the Phocians were deeply offended by the assembly's sentence. Land consecrated to Apollo cannot be cultivated, hence the rug would be ripped right out from under them. According to one account, the huge fine was imposed for their cultivation of a rather small strip of land previously consecrated to Apollo. As for the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the very center of the Greek world, along with its function as an international gambling hall where outcomes were undoubtedly fixed in advance by the powers that be, its management belonged to the Phocians by right of ancient privilege recorded by Homer--the temple had been expropriated from the Phocians nearly eighty years prior to this present occasion for yet another "Sacred War."
General Philomelus lost no time raising funds, patriots, and mercenaries for the Sacred War. He attacked the town and temple of Delphi, capturing them both, then made himself master of the countryside. He proclaimed to the high heavens the ancient Phocian right to administer the temple, and he assured everyone concerned that the temple's treasures were in his safe hands. Thus in one stroke Philomelus had saved the sacred political casino and holy bank. However, something more spiritual was needed to make it official, namely, the rendering of the oracle in favor of his divine cause. Therefore he ordered the Pythian priestess to mount her tripod, the three-legged gambling bowl that had become the Pythia's sacred seat, and commanded her to deliver the desired oracle. I shall quote two of my favorite historians regarding this event: Diodorus of Sicily (1st century A.D.), a utilitarian whose work survived the centuries because it is a compendium of facts instead of voluminous fancy talk and theories; and George Grote (1794-1871), whose History of Greece is one of the great masterpieces of historical scholarship--he has fleshed out the old accounts of the event for our edificaton.
"When Philomelus had control of the oracle he directed the Pythia to make her prophecies from the tripod in ancestral fashion. But when she replied that such was not the ancestral fashion, he threatened her harshly and compelled her to mount the tripod. Then when she frankly declared, referring to the superior power of the man who was resorting to violence: 'It is in your power to do as you please,' he gladly accepted her utterance and declared that he had the oracle which suited him. He immediately had the oracle inscribed and set it up in full view, and made it clear to everyone that the god gave him the authority to do as he pleased. Having put together and assembly and disclosed the prophecy to the multitude and urged them to be of good cheer, he turned to the business of war." (Diodorus)
"Philomelus, while taking pains to set himself right in the eyes of Greece, tried to keep the prophetic agency of the temple in its ordinary working, so as to meet the exigencies of sacrificers and inquirers as before. He required the Pythian priestess to mount the tripod, submit herself to the prophetic inspiration, and pronounce the word thus put into her mouth, as usual. But the priestess--chosen by the Delphians, and probably herself a member of one among the sacred Delphian Gentes--obstinately refused to obey him; especially as the first question which he addressed concerning his own usurpation, and his chances of success against enemies. On his injunctions, that she should prophecy according to the traditional rites--she replied, that these rites were precisely what he had just overthrown; upon which he laid ahold of her, and attempted to place her on the tripod by force. Subdued and frightened for her own personal safety, the priestess exclaimed involuntarily that he might do as he chose. Philomelus gladly took this as an answer favourable to his purpose. He caused it to be put in writing and proclaimed, as an oracle from the god, sanctioning and licensing his designs. He convened a special meeting of his partisans and the Delphians generally, wherein appeal was made to this encouraging answer, as warranting full confidence with reference to the impending war. So it was construed by all around, and confirmatory evidence was derived from further signs and omens occurring at the moment. It is probably however that Philomelus took care for the future to name a new priestess, more favourable to his interest, and disposed to deliver oracular answers under the new administrators in the same manner as under the old." (Grote)
General Philomelus, thus favored by the oracle, went about the war and had some brilliant victories such as that against the Locrians. The Thebans, alarmed by that success, proceeded to organized the Amphictyonic states for an assault on Phocia "to assist the god." (Grote). Philolemus knew his only chance was to hire mercenaries to help him protect the god from the enemies who wanted to assist the god, so he most reluctantly borrowed some treasure from Apollo's vaults at the temple. His forces were given a fifty-percent raise, and there was the usual enrichment of friends and the adorning of wives with precious ornaments and fineries.
Despite the funds so impiously borrowed by the Phocians to increase their forces and the beauty of their women, the Thebans grew more and more confident of their success as the war drug on: so confident that, at one point in the conflict, they had all prisoners executed; the Phocians, not to be outdone, did likewise. To make a long story short, Philomelus eventually got his army into a bad position near the town of Neon:
"An engagement took place, and then a sharp battle in which the Boeotians (Thebans), who far outnumbered the Phocians, defeated them. As the flight took place through precipitous and almost impassable country many of the Phocians and their mercenaries were cut down. Philomelus, after he had fought courageously and had suffered many wounds, was driven into a precipitous area and there hemmed in, and since there was no exit from it and he feared the torture after capture, he hurled himself over the cliff and having made atonement to the god ended his life." (Diodorus)
Thus concludes the story of the general who seized the priestess at Delphi who then delivered the oracle that he could do as he pleased. Whether he did his will or the god's will, or whether or not there is a difference between the two, we shall leave to the philosophers to settle.
The Amphictyonic ("dwellers around") league was an ancient and venerable Hellenic assembly of 12 nations of Northern Greece, fractions of the Hellenic name, associated to worship Apollo at Delphi and Demeter at Thermopylae. The original nations were the Thessalians, Boeotians, Dorians, Ionians, Perrhaebians, Magnetes, Lokrians, Aenians, Malians, Dolopians, Acheans and Phocians. Each nation had two votes regardless of its size. Its deputies were called Hieromnemones and Pylagorae. The assembly met twice annually, at Delphi in spring, and at Thermopylae in autumn.
Every fourth year, the assembly presided over the Pythian games at Delphi. The hero-worship at Delphi was tantamount to the papacy''s canonization of saints. Although the priests at Delphi soon complained that the rising popularity of sports and the glorification of athletes was a great evil leading to national ruin, the National Games did serve to bind the Greeks together, providing them with common ground whereupon individuals could prove their merit and virtue; furthermore, the prize competition of those dramatic poets who extolled the virtues of the heroes at the games led to the rise of Greek tragedy and comedy.
The Amphictyonic assembly was the legal guardian of the temple at Delphi, then considered to be the physical and spiritual center of the Greek world. There were numberous sacred wars for the honor of presiding over the temple, of which four were brought about by the assembly, ostensibly to protect the temple against the Crisaens (B.C.595), the Phocians (B.C. 355), the Amphissaeans (B.C. 340), and the Aetolians (B.C. 280).
Any dispute over the presidency of the temple threatened to ruin the Hellenic peace. There had been a tug of war over the site ever since it had become the center of the world. Apollo himself had reputedly seized the Egg guarded by Pytho the dragon, slaying the dragon and letting her rot there--hence the term 'Pytho' (I rot), and 'Pythia', the name of the woman or nun--probably of a Cretan order--whom the priests eventually allowed to sit on the tripod. We should note that Pytho was a dragoness until male poets provided her with a literary sex change, making a male of her. She was, in a manner of speaking, the Uterus guarding the World-Egg: the globular stone Omphalos found at the temple by which stood two golden effigies of the two eagles Zeus sent from East and West to meet at the Center of the World.
But there is another story of a more peaceable transaction, an economic transaction by which Apollo came into possession of the temple. The title to same had passed naturally, from Gaea, goddess of Earth, the daughter of Chaos, to her daugher Themis, goddess of law and prophecy--therefore no male was originally required to bring order to Earth. The Python dragoness was produced by Gaea to babysit her youngest son by Tartarus, Typhon, the giant hundred-headed beast symbolizing fire and smoke in the center of the Earth. Gaea, according to this economic account, shared Delphi with Poseidon, god of water, who gave his share to Apollo in exchange for the island of Calauria, subsequent ot Themis transferring her inhertied share to Apollo.
As for the evolution of the myth of Apollo, long before he became associated with the Sun or Light, he was a prehistoric Hercules, a heroic cave man, a wolf-god, then a shepherd-god who eventually immigrated to the city where he lived in a cave in the suburbs: thus he is the Traveller, the god of immigration. Therefore the concern at Delphi with colonization and constitutions, and the practice of sending out slaves tithed to the temple as immigrants to the colonies. In any event, no-one was to interfere with any colony sanctioned by Delphi.
The Delphian temple is located in Phocis (now within the Fokis Department) on the slope of Parnassus, about 6 miles from the Gulf of Corinth. Phocis gets its name from a mythological hero named Phocus, a descendent of Sisyphus, king of Corinth; Phocus inherited Phocia from his father Oryntus, who won it in a war from the Locrians; at least that is the story according to one of several real-estate records.
Phocis was originally populated by the Aeolians. Some time prior to the 6th century B.C., Boeotians and Thessalians encroached and intermixed with the natives. The Delphians were originally of the Phocians name; and the Phocians were in possession of the famous temple at Delphi. One of the early disputes over that property both material and spiritual arose from the animosity of pilgrims who were being charged excessive tolls on the road through Crissa to Delphi; hence a coalition proclaimed (B.C. 590) a sacred war, destroyed Crissa and put the temple under a joint council.
Since international law was based on religious custom in those days, the Amphictyonic assembly had rather loosely defined political functions: it arbitrated conflicts between weaker states; imposed fines for illegal seizures of territory; protected water rights; prohibited the destruction of towns; and so on. It rarely meddled in the internal affairs of nations until the humiliation of Sparta by the Thebans at Leuktra (B.C. 371); thereafter, the Thebans proceeded to use the assembly for abusive political purposes, making of it the source of a great deal of mischief.
The Thebans brought suit before the assembly against defeated Sparta for seizing Cadmea (citadel of Thebes). A stiff fine was assessed and was doubled when the Spartans refused to pay it.
Although the Spartans had usually favored Delphian possession of the temple at Delphi, the assembly's judgement against the Spartans eventually prompted them to join the Phocians nearly sixteen years later during the nine-year Sacred War (B.C. 355) over Delphi, for the Spartans were still under burden of the huge indemnity imposed by the assembly after Leuktra. Since the temple at Delphi was the symbol of Greek unity, the question of who had the prestige of presiding over the temple and its treasures was of enormous political significance regardless of the small political power of the priesthood there, who tended to side with the apparently stronger military force and to conserve the foregone political conclusions given to them; in other words, the priests relied more on probability than chance to pick the winners and get on their good side.
The Phocians were traditionally the border-enemies of Thebes; in the war leading up to the defeat at Leuktra (B.C. 371), the Phocians had allied themselves with the Spartans against Thebes until submitting to Thebes after the battle of Leuktra; whereupon they formed and then broke off an alliance with same: they fought with the Thebans in the Peloponnese, but were negligent at the battle of Mantinea (B.C. 362). Miffed by the breach of promise, the Thebans brought a complaint before the Amphictyonic assembly against the Phocians on one pretext or another; we are not sure of which. According to one report, the grounds for complaint was that the Phocians had cultivated Cirrhaean, consecrated territory near Delphi on the Corinthian Gulf--land consecrated to Apollo was supposed to remain uncultivated, or conserved for the god. Another witness said the Phocians were charged with invading Boeotia without cause. Another report had them accused of carrying off a married Theban woman named Theano. Whatever the alleged offense, Thebes obtained a conviction. As in the case of the Spartans, a large fine was imposed. Furthermore, the assembly rendered a judgement recorded in a resolution engraved on a column at the Delphian temple, officially expropriating the temple from the Phocians and consecrating Phocian territory to Apollo.
The Phocians, under command of General Philomelus, rebelled against the assembly's incursion on their liberty and property, claiming they were the legitimate administrators of the temple by virtue of ancient privilege. As I have previously mentioned, Delphi was once a part of the Phocian name; according to the Homeric Catalogue, the Phocians had commanded "rocky Pytho" (Delphi) in the old days. And despite disputes and periods of joint management, the temple was in fact under Phocian control as late as 450 B.C. However, after a sacred war, with Phocians and Athenians on the one side, and Delphians, Spartans and Thebans on the other, the Phocians, because of the weakening of their allies the Athenians, reliquished control to the Delphians; hence the Delphians, severed from their Phocian brothers, assumed the lucrative business of the temple as formally confirmed by an article of peace in 421 B.C.
Nevertheless, the Phocians never gave up their claim to the administration of the temple at Delphi, a claim they vigorously pressed (B.C. 355 ) after being condemned by the Amphictyonic assembly at the Thebans' behest. In the ensuing nine-year Sacred War between Phocia and Thebes, on the side of the Phocians were Athens, Sparta , Peloponnesian Acheans, and some other Peloponnesian states; and on the side of the Thebans were the Thessalians and all the states north of Boeotia (Thebes was the principal city of Boeotia).
After General Philomelus was cornered and hurled himself to his death to escape torture, General Onomarchus took command of the war against Thebes and her allies; he was a despot who had no scruples about seizing whatever funds he needed from the temple and executing anyone who resisted or begged to differ. At the head of a formidable army of patriots and mercenaries, he won many battles and pressed as far north as Thermopylae, becoming its master; he also invaded Boeotia.
The Thebans were running out of money fast and were hard pressed to continue the war. Yet they were not the only ones who were short of funds: Onamarchus had nearly exhausted the holy coffers of their sacred money, and his allies the Athenians, who were also engaged in an antisocial Social War with their own allies at the same time as the Sacred War, were left empy-handed by the overdrawn account at Delphi. To compound adversity, Philip of Macedonia was up to his usual duplicitous machinations, posing a serious northern threat to Athens, hence she made overtures to Thebes for the sake of mutual protection. Philip, seeing that a general Hellenic peace would thwart his grand designs, made an overture to Athens; which she joyfully accepted despite the prescient warnings of her great speaker Demosthenes and others who foresaw the danger of an alliance to her independence.
After the deal was sealed, Philip marched through Thermopylae and right into Phocia. The Phocians, bereft of her Athenian allies, surrendered unconditionally. Philip occupied Delphi, took Phocia's two votes in the Amphictyonic assembly for himself, then had the assembly decree the destruction of all cities in Phocis (except Abae), their inhabitants were scattered into villages of not more than fifty houses each. Then the defender of the great god savior of his temple, Philip, together with the Thebans and Thessalians, presided over the Pythian games of B.C. 346.
Demosthenes, who rose from his speech disabilities to be one of the greatest speakers of all time, was right about Philip. Philip proceeded with his grand plans to attack Athenian cities, colonies and Persia. Athens combined with Thebes in defense, and their army met Macedonian forces on the plain of Chaeronea (B.C. 338). The Greeks were routed; Greece was crushed, becoming a mere province of Macedonia. Philip was kind to the defeated Athenians because of the love he acquired for Athens while living there for a couple of years during his younger days; but he was harsh to the defeated Thebans.
At a marriage festival in honor of his son Alexander the Great, Philip was assassinated (B.C 336) by a young man with a grudge who had concealed a long sword under his garment.
Alexander followed gloriously in his father's footsteps to his own grand destiny.
Note:
All dates given above are approximate.
References:
Diodorus, Siculus, DIODORUS OF SICILY, Trans. Charles L. Sherman, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, MCMLII
Grote, George, HISTORY OF GREECE
