See Delphi And Die

by Lindsey Davis

  Our bags fell from our hands. We turned back and looked over the plain below. Covered with a thick forest of wild olives, the land fell away gracefully to the sea which twinkled in the distance. The sanctuary clung to a steep hillside on twin peaks of Mount Parnassus, with other mountains crowding around it. Above us towered enormous unclimbable crags. Huge birds of prey circled languidly on the updraughts, so far away that their long wings looked mere threads of black against the brilliant sky. The air was thin and chilly, even though the sun was shining. The beauty of the setting, the bright light, and the rarefied atmosphere gave pilgrims their first notion that they were approaching the gods.

  We had made it. As our breath hurt our windpipes, we clung to each other and were proud of our exertion. We could not speak, but we were grinning with triumph to have made the climb.

  Had we known what lay ahead of us, our mood might have been different.

  XL

  We wasted time next morning asking in the town for Statianus. Delphi was bigger than I had expected. If he was staying there, we could not find his inn.

  Next task was to familiarise ourselves with the sanctuary. We knew it would be a dramatic experience. Even after Olympia, with its massed temples and treasuries and its hundreds of statues of athletes, we were awestruck by the plethora of monuments. Nothing prepares the traveller for Delphi. In its heyday it must have been staggering, and it remained spectacular. We were seeing the sanctum when it was sadly in decline. That was due to Rome. Not only had bully boy Sulla stolen all the precious metal donations to finance his siege of Athens, but things had then deteriorated until the final indignity, ten years ago, when Nero attended the Pythian Games and carried off five hundred of the best statues. Nero loved Greece; he loved it so much, he stole as much as possible.

  More importantly, Roman rule had meant the loss of Delphi’s political power. Cities and states no longer came here to consult on matters of policy. Without their gratitude for good advice, no more treasure would be deposited.

  As you would expect, the sanctuary of Pythian Apollo was surrounded by a wall. Parts were made from enormous polygonal blocks which seemed to be the handiwork of giants. There were several gates, the purpose of which in my opinion was to funnel visitors into the hands of money-grubbing souvenir-sellers and guides.

  We had decided not to use a site guide. The clamorous guides decided otherwise. We were mobbed as soon as we stepped through the main gate on to the Sacred Way. Despite us shaking our heads and striding ahead, one man attached himself to us. He was a round-faced wraith with receding hair, so short that as we walked beside him we felt like over-healthy demigods. He proceeded with his patter whether we wanted it or not. Around us were other groups of pilgrims and tourists, all looking bemused by the same torrent of stories, recitation of inscriptions, names of battles, and lists of donated weaponry and gold plate. In the past, every city in the Greek world had jostled for attention by making ostentatious gifts, seeking the favour of the gods and the envy of other cities with varying degrees of taste and extravagance.

  The monuments nearest the gate score highest. Later, visitors are far too jaded to remember much. Our guide talked us past the bronze bull dedicated by Corcyra and the nine bronze statues of Arcadian gods, heroes, and heroines. I chortled at the outrageous belligerence of a Spartan commemoration of a naval victory over Athens, which boasted no fewer than thirty-seven statues of gods, generals, and admirals (each one meticulously named by our guide;) Helena preferred a more dignified and austere Athenian monument, which commemorated the battle of Marathon. These were just tasters. We could see the great Temple of Apollo above us, fronting a dramatic open air theatre, but at this rate we would take three days to reach it.

  ‘Can I pay you to skip?’ I asked the heedless guide.

  ‘Can we pay him to shut up?’ muttered Helena. He was now dragging us to a replica of the Trojan Horse, prior to Argive statues of the Seven against Thebes - and then another set of Argive gifts: the seven sons of the Seven against Thebes. We looked at each other in horror. Luckily the seven sons had managed to destroy Thebes, which spared us further generations. Even so, the magnanimous Argives kept going and managed to install ten more statues, these set up to emphasise their kings’ links with Hercules. Do not ask me what links; by then I was looking for a chance to wander off. Helena was gripping my hand tight, in case I abandoned her with the guide.

  Soon we were in among treasuries. They were neat little roofed buildings, rather like tiny temples; instead of colonnades all round, their porches were generally adorned with only a couple of columns or caryatids - although the spectacular (rather too well draped) caryatids on the Treasury of Siphnos (where the hell is Siphnos?) sparkled with gemstones on their diadems and in their hair. The guide trotted out mentions of winged-victory acrotiria, sphinxes, continuous friezes, and sculptured Herculean metopes. The only way to cope with his bombardment of information was to copy the caryatids and affect a slight archaic smile (while wondering how long it was until lunch.)

  By the time we reached the Council Chamber, my archaic smile was openly disfigured by bared teeth. Local government upsets me: old men making wrong decisions to protect their own trade interests.

  At least we were getting somewhere: the spring once guarded by the rampaging dragon called the Python, which had been slain by the infant Apollo.

  Apollo’s mother Leto had stood on a rock and held him in her arms to shoot. This Leto must have been a liability. Helena and I had once been plagued by a neighbour who allowed her child to loose off toy arrows in the street; however, we hid our disapproval of feckless mothers and nodded wisely as the guide proclaimed Apollo’s institution of a peaceable and spiritual regime.

  Our guide droned on. ‘Now we are standing before the most famous statue of antiquity - the Sphinx of Naxos, also called the Delphic Sphinx. It stands on an exquisite Ionian capital, in front of the polygonal wall. The column has forty-four flutings and six drums; it rises to a height of approximately forty feet, or forty-one and a half at the wing-tips. The Sphinx, who set very famous riddles, wears a dreamy, quizzical smile -‘ Helena had a quizzical expression too. She was inspecting its hairstyle. ‘The most famous riddle was: what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at even tide?’

  ‘Man! Crawls, walks, uses a stick.’ I had had enough. Informers are notoriously gruff. Sometimes I try to overturn the stereotype; not today. I wished I had a stick myself, to beat the guide. ‘Save it. Look here! I’ll give you this -‘ The coin I offered was three times what he was worth. ‘Now leave us alone, please.’

  ‘You don’t like my guiding?’ The fellow pretended to be astonished.

  Informers, who need to be unobtrusive, are followers of etiquette. When in shrines devoted to tolerance, I avoid getting into a fistfight. I stayed quiet and crisp. ‘We want to commune with the gods in silence. So go back down the hill and kidnap someone else.’

  ‘But you must have a guide!’

  Cobnuts to etiquette. ‘And you must have a kick up the backside if you don’t go.’

  He went.

  Other tourists had overheard our rebellion with interest. Subgroups began huddling together; we could see them muttering, then squaring up to take action. Soon arguments broke out all around the ancient cave of the Python. The gods of immemorial earth and the deities of subterranean waters must have gurgled with mirth, as normally timid tourists stood up to their guides and dismissed them. Apollo, the arbiter of moderation, tickled the strings of his lyre and rejoiced.

  I had no conscience about causing a rebellion. The bastard guides would be back tomorrow, boring new victims.

  Helena and I gazed up at the Sphinx, hand in hand, glad of the chance to enjoy one famous statue undisturbed.

  ‘She reminds me of you, my darling, in some ways. Beautiful, seemingly remote and mysterious - and clever, of course.’

  ‘Older, though!’ returned Helena cattily.

  The time-honoured Sphin
x showed no reaction, but assuming she was a woman of the world, I winked at her.

  In our own time now, we moved on along the Sacred Way.

  The narrow route wound upwards, its worn stones sometimes dangerous underfoot. Delphi could have used a Roman road-maintenance gang. Freed from our obligation to absorb every detail, we scurried past altars, columns, tripods, porticoes, pedestals, and victories, pausing only to admire the towering statue of Apollo himself beside the spring of Cassotis. At long last we reached the temple. We could hear guides listing the many previous versions of the building (‘first woven laurel, then beeswax and beeswings, then bronze, then porous stone in the Doric style…’) They came up with more of these suspect details, but I stopped listening. (I’m all for myth - but you just try knocking up a garden gazebo from beeswings when you have a free hour or two!) We took a quick circuit around, saw the east facade, with its scene of Apollo arriving in Delphi, and the west, with Dionysus and various maenads.

  ‘Apollo goes to spend winters with the Hyperboreans,’ Helena said.

  ‘Hyper whats?’

  ‘Boreans - peoples behind the north wind. Don’t ask me why; what do you think I am, Marcus, some damned site guide?’

  ‘I think you’ll find,’ I smirked, ‘this myth symbolises the absence of the sun - or of light, as represented by Apollo himself-during winter.’

  ‘Well, thank you, encyclopedist! Anyway, while Apollo is on holiday getting frostbite under his drapery, Dionysus takes over at Delphi. The oracles cease and the sanctuary is given over to feasting.’

  ‘Sounds like fun.’

  ‘Sounds like very bad news for Statianus,’ Helena said, ‘if he is still here in the question queue. Oracles are given on Apollo’s birthday, which I think is February or March, and afterwards only on the seventh day of the month. So if they cease in winter, Statianus is about to miss his chance altogether.’

  ‘The October oracle has passed; he’s stuck until after Saturnalia. But does he have a chance at all?’ I asked. ‘What are the rules about applicants? Who exactly gets to put their questions?’

  ‘Citizens of Delphi first, then people to whom Delphi has awarded rights of precedence.

  ‘Official queue-jumpers? How does anyone get to be one of them?’

  ‘Money, no doubt,’ Helena sniffed. ‘And finally, the rest, in order drawn by lot.’

  ‘With as much chance as cuckoo spit!’

  We had already poked our noses into the temple interior and been shooed out from the inner cella. We had dutifully stared at the legendary mottoes. KNOW YOURSELF and NOTHING IN EXCESS. We had made the inevitable bitter joke about the Delphi guides not taking any notice of either. Now we found a spot on the steps, shaded by a column, where we sat down to rest, hugging our knees and drinking in the majestic views. I wished we had brought a picnic. To distract me from my hunger pangs, Helena told me what she knew about the rituals of the oracle.

  ‘Prophecy has an ancient history here. There is a fissure in the earth which breathes vapours that make people clairvoyant. The priestess, the Pythia, was in ancient times a young virgin, but nowadays she has to be at least fifty.’

  ‘Disappointment!’

  ‘She’s not your type. She has to live in the sanctuary, irreproachably.’

  ‘I’ve met lots of so-called irreproachable girls. I won them over.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, you should know, Helena!’

  Helena was used to ignoring my jests. ‘Applicants - successful ones - are cleansed in the Kastalian Spring, then they pay a fee, which is variable, depending on their question.’

  ‘Or depending on how badly the priests decide they want an answer,’ I guessed cynically.

  ‘I imagine they are all fairly desperate, Marcus. Anyway, they make a sacrifice, usually a kid. It has cold water poured over it; if it trembles, the god is at home and amenable to hearing questions. In that case, the Pythia purifies herself with Kastalian water and enters the temple. She burns laurel and barley flour on the hearth where the immortal fire burns. Then she descends into a space below the nave while the priests and applicant wait nearby. The applicant asks his question in a loud, clear voice. The priestess drinks more Kastalian spring water, chews bay leaves, mounts the sacred tripod beside the umbilicus - the navel of the world - then as the spirit emanates from the fissure, she falls into a deep trance. She speaks, though it is meaningless.’

  ‘Typical woman!’

  ‘Bastard. The priests write it down, then they translate the gibberish into words - though they leave you to interpret for yourself what is meant. Typical men,’ retorted Helena neatly.

  I knew an example. ”If Croesus crosses the River Aly, a great kingdom will be destroyed.’ Croesus eagerly decides that’s the Persians so he rushes off with an army. Of course the Persians annihilate him and he destroys his own kingdom.’

  ‘While the oracle chortles, ‘Told you so!’ The let-out clause, Marcus, is that the oracle at Delphi ‘neither reveals nor conceals the truth.’ Whoever wants answers has to unravel the meaning.’

  ‘Rather like asking my mother what she wants for a Saturnalia present… Though Ma never needs a bay-leaf snack to make her confusing.’

  Abruptly we thought of home. We were silent for a while.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘Even if Tullius Statianus ever did win a place in the lottery, the Oracle would never tell him straight out ‘who killed Valeria.’ The Pythia would hedge her bets and disguise the name in subterfuge.’

  ‘Well, how could she know?’ scoffed Helena. Ever logical; never mystical. ‘An elderly Greek lady, living on a mountainside, permanently sozzled with sulphur fumes and out of her mind on aromatic leaves!’

  I loved that girl. ‘I had assumed,’ I returned mildly, ‘the incomprehensible Pythia is a smokescreen. Her unearthly moans are just a sideshow. What happens is, as soon as applicants present themselves, the priests do a hasty background check on them, then the priests invent the prophecies, based on their research.’

  ‘Sounds exactly like your work, Marcus.’

  ‘They are better paid!’ I was feeling morose. ‘I once heard of a man who constructed a model of a talking snake, then let it answer people’s questions in return for enormous fees. He made a fortune. I would earn more, and certainly gain more prestige, if I turned myself into an oracle at a thousand sesterces a go.’

  Helena seemed thoughtful. For a moment I wondered if she took the suggestion too seriously and was planning to set me up in a booth on market days. Then she grabbed my arm.

  ‘I’ll make a prophecy, Marcus! See that young man over there having the argument with the temple assistant, who has heard it all before? I say it is Tullius Statianus.’

  XLI

  As arguments go, it was a one-sided contest. The young man was frantically making his case. Meanwhile the temple attendant was letting his eyes slide off in preparation for welcoming other people.

  We knew Statianus was about twenty-four. That fitted. If this was him, then physically, he was unremarkable. He wore a white tunic and looked as if he had been in it for a week, and a circular travelling cape, into which he huddled like a man who would never feel warm again after serious illness or shock. Although not formally dishevelled, as litigants or people going to funerals are in Rome, his hair was too long and barely combed.

  The acolyte tired of him and brushed him aside, moving with a practised sidestep towards someone else.

  ‘There are other oracles!’ we heard Statianus shout angrily. Helena and I had pulled each other upright from our seat on the steps and now skipped down to his level.

  ‘Statianus? Excuse me.’

  Something about us alarmed him. After one frightened glance towards us, Statianus took off.

  If you have never tried chasing a fugitive through a very ancient religious site, my advice is. don’t. In Rome, the merest hint of a skirmish with a pickpocket sends people diving behind columns in case they get their best boots scuffed or their togas torn in th
e scrum. Visitors to foreign shrines won’t get out of the way.

  I realised we knew little about this man. I had assumed he was spoiled: a leisured son of rich parents. His wedding trip to Greece was compensation for not being put into the Senate. Avoiding politics could mean he lacked intellect (or that he had too much good sense. More we had never discovered. Now I learned that Statianus looked after himself. He must go to a gym - and he took it seriously. The bridegroom could run. We needed super-fit Glaucus. Otherwise, we were going to lose this suspect.

  Immediately below the Temple of Apollo, people came snaking up the Sacred Way, sad bunches of visitors, some standing still in groups to listen to their dogged guides. The crowds made Statianus turn aside. He rushed away from the temple portico. High pillars bore statues of various Greek kings. They made excellent turning-points to skid around. Statianus must be familiar with the layout. He nipped among the monuments, cuffing aside pilgrims who were dutifully staring skywards as their guides described the stone dignitaries. Seconds later, I crashed into these people just as they turned indignant after Statianus barged them.

  We jumped down a level, to the astonishing Tripod of Plataea, its three towering intertwined bronze snakes supporting a mighty gold cauldron. Next was a huge plinth bearing a gold chariot of the sun. Statianus tried to hide behind it. When I kept coming, he bounded uphill again, dashed between two more columns with kings atop, and headed for what looked like a fancy portico. Its columns had been infilled with walls; thwarted by the solid barrier, he turned left. I nearly caught him at the Tomb of Neoptolemos. He was the son of Achilles. This was my nearest brush with the heroes of Homer, and I missed its significance. Never mind; Neoptolemos was dead, killed by a priest of Apollo (whose priests love music and art, but are tough bastards) - and I was gasping too much to care.