The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [113]
It must have been an emotional journey for every single pilgrim. Here you were surrounded by both your polis’ great victories and its great humiliations. And although it was Athenians, the Alcmaeonid family, who had completed Apollo’s brash temple (‘a marvel to see,’ says Pindar7) in the sixth century, Athena’s people were by no means immune from public disgrace in the sanctuary. On the hill above the commemorative Stoa of the Athenians, the limestone equivalent of a two-finger salute, stood the Treasury of Brasidas and the Acanthians, built after the allied Spartan victory against the Athenians at Amphipolis (422 BC). A battle that Socrates himself would soon suffer. Each island, each city-state, each alliance that visited this sacred place wanted others to remember that power was fleeting, that the powerful would have their day.
But still, in happier times the atmosphere in Apollo’s sanctuary must have been charged, expectant. All ages came and men of all degrees. The prettiest girls would trek out here to dedicate locks of hair. Heads of state bowed to ask for advice in foreign affairs – although after the oracle had given a number of wrong answers during the Persian Wars the footfall of official delegations dwindled a little. Overwhelmingly popular were personal questions. From the trembling ‘Whom should I marry?’ to complex character profiles; hence Chaerephon’s question, ‘Is Socrates the wisest man of all?’
But Socrates’ friend would get his answer only if he penetrated the inner sanctum of Apollo’s temple where the Pythia – the voice of the oracle – resided. So on he walked, up past the monstrous altar dedicated by the people of Chios, which, during the Pythian Games held here every five years, would have run with the blood of a hundred sacrificed bulls. Past the dripping sound of Apollo’s own sacred spring, the Kassiotis, that ran into the sanctuary itself and gurgled on towards the slope that led inside.
The smell of roasting flesh must have penetrated the interior, just as it sharpened the air outside. Not only pilgrims but all priests had to make sacrifice to the god before approaching the sanctuary. Scrubbed and beautified animals, coy with garlands of flowers or ribbons, their horns gilded, would be led to the knife, concealed in a ‘blameless’ maiden’s basket under barley-cakes. A sprinkling of water or oats ensured the animal nodded its head at the right moment – meeting the Delphic oracle’s own injunction, ‘That animal which willingly nods over the holy water, that one, I say you may justly sacrifice.’8 For tight-stomached country men the atmosphere must have smelled Elysian.
And from the holy of holies, the adyton, where the Pythia herself sat, other olfactory tendrils would reach out to the nostrils: the ever-burning hearth, the laurel leaves and barley scattered on the flames. And – as has only just been scientifically identified by an international team of geologists – the hallucinogenic vapours seeping out of the ground.9 After years of scepticism, the most recent geological surveys have shown that two faults meet right under the current Temple of Apollo. Through a fracture in the limestone, hydrocarbon gases, including ethylene, may well have escaped in antiquity.
It was over these that the Pythia, an old woman dressed in a young virgin’s clothes, would sit and would babble out the Oracle – ramblings turned into hexameter verse by a priest so that the Oracle could be delivered. And here at Delphi, a place that bannered itself with aphorisms – Meden Agan, ‘Nothing in Excess’; Gnothi Seauton, ‘Know Yourself’ – and that set a moral tone for the eastern Mediterranean (advising, for example, that murder requires atonement), there came a stark retort that would quickly be spoken of across Attica and throughout the Athenian Empire. When Chaerephon asked, ‘Is there any man wiser than Socrates?’
The answer came back:
‘No.’
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GNOTHI SEAUTON – KNOW YOURSELF
Delphi and Athens
Is there anybody wiser than Socrates?
No.
Whatever does the god mean? Whatever is his riddle? For I know that I