[Illustration]
The pilgrimage to Delphi, which used to be fraught with considerable
hardship and inconvenience, is happily so no longer. It is still true
that the Greek steamers plying between the Piræus and Itea, the port
nearest the ancient oracular shrine, leave much to be desired and are by
no means to be depended upon to keep to their schedules; but aside from
this minor difficulty there is nothing to hinder the ordinary visitor
from making the journey, which is far and away the best of all ordinary
short rambles in Greece, not only because of the great celebrity of the
site itself, but because of the imposing scenic attractions Delphi has
to show. The old-time drawback, the lack of decent accommodation at
Delphi itself, or to be more exact, at the modern village of Kastri, has
been removed by the presence of two inns, of rather limited capacity, it
is true, but still affording very tolerable lodging. Indeed, hearsay
reported the newer of these tiny hostelries to be one of the best in
Greece outside of Athens, while the other quaint resort, owned and
operated by the amiable Vasili Paraskevas, one of the “local characters”
of the place, has long been esteemed by Hellenic visitors. Vasili, in
appearance almost as formidable as the ancient Polyphemus, but in all
else as gentle as the sucking dove, has felt the force of competition,
and his advertisements easily rival those of the Hotel Cecil. As a
matter of fact, the establishment is delightfully primitive, seemingly
hanging precariously to the very edge of the deep ravine that lies just
under lofty Delphi, boasting several small rooms and even the promise of
a bath-tub, although Vasili was forced to admit that his advertisement
in that respect was purely prospective and indicative of intention
rather than actuality.
The truly adventurous may still approach Delphi over the ancient road by
land from the eastward, doubtless the same highway that was taken by old
King Laios when he was slain on his way to the oracle, all unwitting of
the kinship, by his own son [OE]dipus,—possibly because of a dispute as
to which should yield the road. For the old road was a narrow one, with
deep ruts, suitable for a single chariot, but productive of frequent
broils when two such haughty spirits met on the way. To come to Delphi
over this road and to depart by sea is doubtless the ideal plan. That we
elected not to take the land voyage was due to the early spring season,
with its snows on the shoulder of Parnassus, around which the path
winds. For those less hindered by the season, it is said that the
journey overland from Livadià to Delphi, passing through the tiny hamlet
of Arákhova and possibly spending a night in the open air on Parnassus,
is well worth the trouble, and justifies the expense of a courier and
horses, both of which are necessary.
The way which we chose, besides being infinitely easier, is far from
being devoid of its interesting features. We set sail in the early
afternoon from the Piræus, passing over a glassy sea by Psyttalea, and
the famous waters in front of Salamis, to Corinth, where the canal
proved sufficiently wide to let our little craft steam through to the
gulf beyond. It was in the gathering dusk that we entered this unusual
channel, but still it was light enough to see the entire length of the
canal, along the deep sides of which electric lamps glimmered few and
faint as a rather ineffectual illuminant of the tow-path on either hand.
The walls towered above, something like two hundred feet in spots, and
never very low, making this four-mile ribbon of water between the narrow
seas a gloomy cavern indeed. It was wide enough for only one craft of
the size of our own, therein resembling the land highway to Delphi; but
fortunately, owing to the system of semaphore signals, no [OE]dipus
disputed the road with us, and we shot swiftly through the channel,
between its towering walls of rock, under the spidery railroad bridge
that spans it near the Corinth end, and out into the gulf beyond. It is
rather a nice job of steering, this passage of the canal. Everybody was
ordered off the bow, three men stood nervously at the wheel, and the
jack staff was kept centred on the bright line that distantly marked the
opening between the precipitous sides of the cleft, a line of light that
gradually widened, revealing another sea and a different land as we drew
near and looked out of our straight and narrow path of water into the
Corinthian Gulf beyond. The magnificence of the prospect would be hard
indeed to exaggerate. On either side of the narrow gulf rose billowy
mountains, the northern line of summits dominated by the snowy dome of
Parnassus, the southern by Cyllene, likewise covered with white. They
were ghostly in the darkness, which the moon relieved only a little,
shining fitfully from an overcast sky. The Corinthian Gulf is fine
enough from the railway which skirts it all the way to Patras, but it is
finer far from the sea, whence one sees both sides at once in all the
glory of their steep gray mountains. Happily the night was calm, and the
gulf, which can be as bad as the English Channel at its worst, was
smooth for once as we swung away from the little harbor of modern
Corinth and laid our course for the capes off Itea, something like forty
miles away. And thus we went to rest, the steamer plowing steadily on
through the night with Parnassus towering on the starboard quarter.
A vigorous blowing of the whistle roused the ship’s company at dawn. The
vessel was at anchor off Itea, a starveling village not at all praised
by those who have been forced to sample its meagre accommodations for a
night. Fortunately it is no longer necessary to rely on these, for one
may drive to Delphi in a few hours, and on a moonlight night the ride,
while chilly, is said to be most delightful. Arriving as we did at early
dawn, we were deprived of this experience, and set out from the village
at once on landing to cover the nine miles to Kastri, some riding in
carriages or spring carts,—locally called "sustas,"—some on mules, and
others proceeding on foot. From afar we could already see the village,
perched high on the side of the foothills of Parnassus, which rise
abruptly some three miles away across a level plain. The plain proved to
be delightful. Walled in on either hand by rocky cliffs, its whole
bottom was filled with olive trees, through which vast grove the road
wound leisurely along. Brooks babbled by through the grass of the great
orchard, and the green of the herbage was spangled with innumerable
anemones and other wild-flowers in a profusion of color. Far behind us
in the background towered the Peloponnesian mountains, and before rose
the forbidding cliffs that shut in Delphi. Above the distant Kastri,
there was always the lofty summit of Parnassus, somewhat dwarfed by
proximity and therefore a trifle disappointing to one whose preconceived
notions of that classic mountain demanded splendid isolation, but still
impressive.
[Illustration: THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI]
Naturally on this long, level plain the carriages soon passed us, and
disappeared in the hills ahead, while the footpath left the highway and
plunged off boldly into the olive grove in the general direction of
Delphi. When it attained the base of the sharp ascent of the
mountain-side, it went straight up, leaving the road to find its more
gradual way by zigzags and détours,—windings so long that it soon
developed that the carriages which so long ago had distanced us were in
turn displaced and were later seen toiling up the steep behind us! The
prospect rearward was increasingly lovely as we climbed and looked down
upon the plain. It resembled nothing so much as a sea of verdure, the
olive trees pouring into it from the uplands like a river, and filling
it from bank to bank. No wonder this plain was deemed a ground worth
fighting for by the ancients.
Despite the fact that the snows of Parnassus were apparently so near,
the climb was warm. The rocky hillside gave back the heat of the April
sun, although it was cloudy, and progress became necessarily slow, in
part because of the warmth and in larger part because of the increasing
splendor of the view. The path bore always easterly into a narrow gorge
between two massive mountains, a gorge that narrowed and narrowed as the
climb proceeded. Before very long we passed through a wayside hamlet
that lies halfway up the road, exchanged greetings with the inhabitants,
who proved a friendly people anxious to set us right on the way to
Delphi, and speedily emerged from the nest of buildings on the path
again, with Kastri always ahead and above, and seemingly as distant as
ever. It was Palm Sunday, we discovered, and the populace of the tiny
village all bore sprigs of greenery, which they pressed upon us and
which later turned out to be more political than religious in their
significance, since it was not only the day of the Lord’s triumphal
entry but the closing day of the general elections as well.
Admiration for the green and fertile valley far behind now gave place to
awe at the grim gorges before and the beetling cliffs towering overhead,
up through which, like dark chimney flues, ran deep clefts in the rock,
gloomy and mysterious, and doubtless potent in producing awe in the
ancient mind by thus adding to the impressiveness of god-haunted Delphi.
On the left the mountain rose abruptly and loftily to the blue; on the
right the cliff descended sharply from the path to the dark depths of
the ravine, while close on its other side rose again a neighboring
mountain that inclosed this ever-narrowing gulch.
At last after a three-hour scramble over the rocks we attained Kastri,
and found it a poor town lined with hovels, but, like Mount Zion,
beautiful for situation. A brawling brook, fed by a spring above, dashed
across the single street and lost itself in the depths of the ravine
below. On either hand towered the steep sides of the surrounding cliffs,
while before us the valley wound around a shoulder of the mountain and
seemingly closed completely. Kastri did not always occupy this site, but
once stood farther along around the mountain’s sharp corner, directly
over the ancient shrine itself; and it was necessary for the French
excavators who laid bare the ancient sites to have the village moved
bodily by force and arms before any work could be done,—a task that was
accomplished with no little difficulty, but which, when completed,
enabled the exploration of what was once the most famous of all Pagan
religious shrines. Curiously enough the restoration of the temples at
Delphi fell to the hands of the French, the descendants of those very
Gauls who, centuries before, had laid waste the shrines and treasuries
of Loxias. We stopped long enough at Vasili’s to sample some
"mastika,"—a native liqueur resembling anisette, very refreshing on a
warm day,—and then walked on to the ruins which lie some few minutes’
walk farther around the shoulder of the mountain.
Nothing could well be more impressive than the prospect that opened out
as we came down to the famous site itself. No outlet of the great vale
was to be seen from this point, for the gorge winds about among the
crags which rise high above and drop far below to the base of the rocky
glen. Human habitation there is none. Kastri was now out of sight
behind. On the roadside and in the more gradual slopes of the ravine
below one might find olive trees, and here and there a plane. Beyond,
through the mysterious windings of the defile runs the road to Arakhova.
It was on this spot that Apollo had his most famous shrine, the abode of
his accredited priestesses gifted with prophecy; and no fitter
habitation for the oracle could have been found by the worshipers of old
time than this gloomy mountain glen where nature conspires with herself
to overawe mankind by her grandeur.
The legend has it that Apollo, born as all the world knows in far-off
Delos, transferred his chief seat to Delphi just after his feat of
slaying the Python. He is said to have followed that exploit by leaping
into the sea, where he assumed the form of a huge dolphin (delphis), and
in this guise he directed the course of a passing Cretan ship to the
landing place at Itea, or Crissa. There, suddenly resuming his proper
shape of a beautiful youth he led the wondering crew of the vessel up
from the shore to the present site of Delphi, proclaimed himself the
god, and persuaded the sailors to remain there, build a temple and
become his priests, calling the spot “Delphi.” Tradition also asks us to
believe that there then existed on the spot a cavern, from which issued
vapors having a peculiar effect on the human mind, producing in those
who breathed them a stupor in which the victim raved, uttering words
which were supposed to be prophetic. Over this cave, if it existed, the
temple was erected; and therein the priestess, seated on a tripod where
she might inhale the vapors, gave out her answers to suppliants, which
answers the corps of priests later rendered into hexameter verses having
the semblance of sense, but generally so ambiguous as to admit of more
than one interpretation. All sorts of tales are told of the effect of
the mephitic gas on the pythoness—how she would writhe in uncontrollable
fury, how her hair would rise on her head as she poured forth her
unintelligible gibberish, and so forth; stories well calculated to
impress a credulous race “much given to religion” as St. Paul so sagely
observed. If there ever was any such cavern at all, it has disappeared,
possibly filled with the débris of the ruins or closed by earthquake.
Perhaps there never was any cave at all. In any event the wonders of the
Delphic oracle were undoubtedly explicable, as such phenomena nearly
always are, by perfectly natural facts. It has been pointed out that the
corps of priests, visited continually as they were by people from all
parts of the ancient world, were probably the best informed set of men
on earth, and the sum total of their knowledge thus gleaned so far
surpassed that of the ordinary mortal and so far exceeded the average
comprehension that what was perfectly natural was easily made to appear
miraculous. To the already awed suppliant, predisposed to belief and
impressed by the wonderful natural surroundings of the place, it was not
hard to pass off this world-wide information as inspired truth. Nor was
it a long step from this, especially for clever men such as the priests
seem to have been, to begin forecasting future events by basing shrewd
guesses on data already in hand—these guesses being received with full
faith by the worshiper as god-given prophecy. As an added safeguard the
priests often handed down their predictions in ambiguous form, as, for
example, in the famous answer sent to Cr[oe]sus, when he asked if he
should venture an expedition against Cyrus—“If Cr[oe]sus shall attack
Cyrus, he will destroy a great empire.” Such answers were of course
agreeable to the suppliant, for they admitted of flattering
interpretation; and it was only after trial that Cr[oe]sus discovered
that the “great empire” he was fated to destroy was his own. At other
times the guesses, not in ambiguous form, went sadly astray—as in the
case where the Pythian, after balancing probabilities and doubtless
assuming that the gods were always on the side of the heaviest
battalions, advised the Athenians not to hope to conquer the invading
Persians. This erroneous estimate was the natural one for informed
persons to make,—and it is highly probable that it was influenced in
part by presents from the Persian king, for such corruption of the
oracle was by no means unknown. In fact it led to the ultimate
discrediting of the oracle, and it was not long before the shrine ceased
to be revered as a fountain of good advice. Nevertheless for many
hundred years it was held in unparalleled veneration by the whole
ancient world. Pilgrims came and went. Cities and states maintained rich
treasuries there, on which was founded a considerable banking system.
Games in honor of Pythian Apollo were celebrated in the stadium which is
still to be seen high up on the mountain-side above the extensive ruins
of the sacred precinct. Temple after temple arose about the great main
shrine of the god. Even distant Cnidus erected a treasury, and
victorious powers set up trophy after trophy there for battles won by
land or sea—the politeness of the time preventing the mention of any
Hellenic victim by name.
[Illustration: THE VALE OF DELPHI]
All these remains have been patiently uncovered and laboriously
identified and labeled, with the assistance of the voluminous writings
of that patron saint of travelers, Pausanias. The work was done under
the direction of the erudite French school, and the visitor of to-day,
provided with the plan in his guide-book and aided by the numerous
guide-posts erected on the spot, will find his way about with much ease.
One of the buildings, the “treasury of the Athenians,” a small structure
about the size of the Niké Apteros temple, is being “restored” by the
excavators, but with rather doubtful success. Aside from this one
instance, the ruins are mainly reconstructible only in the imagination
from the visible ground-plans and from the fragments lying all about. In
the museum close by, however, some fractional restorations indoors serve
to give a very excellent idea of the appearance of at least two of the
ancient buildings.
Space and the intended scope of this narrative alike forbid anything
like a detailed discussion of the numerous ruins that line the zigzag
course of the old “sacred way.” The visitor, thanks to the ability of
the French school, is left in no doubt as to the identity of the
buildings, and the wayfaring man, though no archæologist, need not err.
One may remark in passing, however, the curious polygonal wall of curved
stones still standing along a portion of the way and still bearing the
remnant of a colonnade, with an inscription indicating that once a
trophy was set up here by the Athenians,—possibly the beaks of conquered
ships. Of course the centre and soul of the whole precinct was the great
temple of Apollo, now absolutely flat in ruins, but once a grand edifice
indeed. The Alcmæonidæ, who had the contract for building it, surprised
and delighted everybody by building better than the terms of their
agreement demanded, providing marble ends for the temple and pedimental
adornment as well, when the letter of the contract would have been
satisfied with native stone. Thus shrewdly did a family that was in
temporary disfavor at Athens win its way back to esteem!
However easy it may be to explain with some plausibility the ordinary
feats of the oracle at Delphi as accomplished by purely natural means,
there was an occasional _tour de force_ that even to-day would pass for
miraculous—supposing that there be any truth in the stories as
originally told. The most notable instance was one in which Cr[oe]sus
figured. That wealthy monarch was extremely partial to oracles, and
generally consulted them before any considerable undertaking. On the
occasion in question he contemplated an expedition against Cyrus—the
same which he eventually undertook because of the enigmatic answer
before referred to—and made extraordinary preparations to see that the
advice given him was trustworthy. For Cr[oe]sus, with all his credulity,
was inclined to be canny, and proposed to test the powers of the more
famous oracular shrines by a little experiment. So he sent different
persons, according to Herodotus, to the various oracles in Greece and
even in Libya, "some to Phocis, some to Dodona, others to Amphiaraus and
Trophonius, and others to Branchidæ of Milesia, and still others to
Ammon in Libya. He sent them in different ways, desiring to make trial
of what the oracle knew, in order that, if they should be found to know
the truth, he might send a second time to inquire whether he should
venture to make war on the Persians. He laid upon them the following
orders: That, computing the days from the time of their departure from
Sardis, they should consult the oracles on the hundredth day by asking
what Cr[oe]sus, the son of Alyattes, was then doing. They were to bring
back the answer in writing. Now what the answers were that were given by
the other oracles is mentioned by none; but no sooner had the Lydian
ambassadors entered the temple at Delphi and asked the question than the
Pythian spoke thus, in hexameter verse: 'I know the number of the sands
and the measure of the sea; I understand the dumb and hear him that does
not speak; the savor of the hard-shelled tortoise boiled in brass with
the flesh of lambs strikes on my senses; brass is laid beneath it and
brass is put over it.' Now of all the answers opened by Cr[oe]sus none
pleased him but only this. And when he had heard the answer from Delphi
he adored it and approved it, and was convinced that the pythoness of
Delphi was a real oracle because she alone had interpreted what he had
done. For when he sent out his messengers to the several oracles,
watching for the appointed day, he had recourse to the following
contrivance, having thought of what it was impossible to discover or
guess at. He cut up a tortoise and a lamb and boiled them himself
together in a brazen caldron, and laid over it a cover of brass."[1]
-----
Footnote 1:
Herodotus, Book I, sections 46-48.
Thus, on one occasion, the oracle is supposed to have performed a feat
of what we should now set down as telepathy, and which, if it really
happened, would be explicable in no other way. It sufficed to establish
Delphi as a shrine to be revered, in the mind of Cr[oe]sus, and to
propitiate the god he sent magnificent gifts. And as these may serve to
give some idea of the vast riches of the spot in bygone ages, it may be
well to relate here what Cr[oe]sus is supposed to have sent. Herodotus
relates that he made a prodigious sacrifice, in the flames of which he
melted down an incredible amount of gold and silver. "Out of the metal
thus melted down he cast half-bricks, of which the longest was six palms
in length, the shortest three; and in thickness, each was one palm.
Their number was one hundred and seventeen. Four of these, of pure gold,
weighed each two talents and a half. The other bricks, of pale gold,
weighed two talents each. He made also the figure of a lion, of fine
gold, weighing ten talents. This lion, when the temple at Delphi was
burned down, fell from its pedestal of half-bricks, for it was placed
upon them. It now lies in the treasury of the Corinthians, weighing only
six talents and a half,—for three talents and a half were melted from it
in the fire. Cr[oe]sus, having finished these things, sent them to
Delphi, and with them the following: two large bowls, one of gold and
one of silver. The golden one was placed on the right as one enters the
temple, and that of silver on the left; but they were removed when the
temple was burning, and the gold bowl was set in the treasury of the
Clazomenæ; while the silver one, which contains six hundred amphorae,
lies in a corner of the Propylæa, and is used for mixing wine on the
Theophanian festival. The Delians said it was the work of Theodorus the
Samian, which was probably true, for it was no common work. He sent also
four casks of silver, which also stand in the Corinthian treasury; and
he dedicated two lustral vases, one of gold and the other of silver. The
Spartans claim that the golden one was their offering, for it bears an
inscription, ‘From the Lacedæmonians;’ but this is wrong, for Cr[oe]sus
gave it. He sent many other offerings, among them some round silver
covers, and also a golden statue of a woman, three cubits high, which
the Delphians say is the image of Cr[oe]sus’s baking-woman. And to all
these things he added the necklaces and girdles of his wife."[2]
Such is the account given by Herodotus of the gifts bestowed by the king
regarded as the richest of all the ancient monarchs. In return for his
gifts he got the answer that “if Cr[oe]sus shall make war on the
Persians he will destroy a mighty empire.” Cr[oe]sus was so delighted at
this that he sent more gifts, “giving to each of the inhabitants of
Delphi two staters of gold.” A further question as to how long he was
destined to rule elicited the response, “When a mule shall become king
of the Medes, then, tender-footed Lydian, flee over the pebbly Hermus;
nor delay, nor blush to be a coward.” There is even less of apparent
enigma about that statement; yet nevertheless Cr[oe]sus lived to see the
day when a man, whom he deemed a “mule,” did become ruler of the Medes,
and he likewise saw his own mighty empire destroyed. The case of
Cr[oe]sus is typical in many ways of the attitude of the ancients toward
the oracle,—their belief in it as inspired, and their frequent attempts
to predispose it to favor by gifts of great magnificence. Not everybody
could give such offerings as Cr[oe]sus, to be sure. But the presents
piled up in the buildings of the sacred precinct must have been of
enormous value, and the contemplation of them somewhat overpowering. By
the way, recent estimates have been published showing that the wealth of
Cr[oe]sus, measured by our modern standards, would total only about
$11,000,000.
-----
Footnote 2:
Herodotus, Book I, sections 50-51.
Doubtless the awe felt for the spot sufficed in the main to protect the
treasures from theft. When Xerxes came into Greece and approached the
shrine, the inhabitants proposed that the valuables be buried in the
earth. Ph[oe]bus, speaking through the priestess, forbade this, however,
saying that “he was able to protect his own.” And, in fact, he proved to
be so, for the approaching host were awed by the sight of the sacred
arms of the god, moved apparently by superhuman means from their armory
within the temple to the steps outside. And moreover while the invaders
were approaching along the vale below, where the temple of Athena
Pronoia still stands, a storm broke, and two great crags were dashed
from the overhanging cliffs above, killing some and demoralizing the
rest. A war shout was heard from the temple of Athena, and the Delians,
taking heart at these prodigies, swept down from the hills and destroyed
many of the fleeing Medes.
The most successful attempt to prejudice and corrupt the oracle seems to
have been that of the Alcmæonidæ, who have been referred to as the
builders of the great temple after its destruction by fire. They had
been driven out of Athens by the Pisistratidæ, and during their exile
they contracted with the Amphictyons to rebuild the great shrine of
Apollo. That they imported Parian marble for the front of the edifice
when the contract would have been amply satisfied with Poros stone seems
to have been less a disinterested act than an effort to win the favor of
the god. The Athenians long maintained that the builders still further
persuaded the oracle by gifts of money to urge upon the Spartans the
liberation of Athens from the tyrants; and in the end the Pisistratidæ
were driven out, in obedience to this mandate, while the Alcmæonidæ came
back in triumph, as had been their design from the first.
It was rather a relief at last to turn from the bewildering array of
ruins to the museum itself. It is not large, but it contains some
wonderfully interesting things, and chief of all, no doubt, the bronze
figure of the charioteer. I cannot bring myself to believe that he
surpasses the bronze “ephebus” at Athens, whom he instantly recalls both
from the material and from the treatment of the eyes; but he is
wonderful, nevertheless, as he stands slightly leaning backward as one
might in the act of driving, the remnants of a rein still visible in one
hand. His self-possession and rather aristocratic mien have often been
remarked, and a careful examination will reveal what is doubtless the
most curious thing about the whole statue—namely, the little fringe of
eye-lashes, which those who cast the image allowed to protrude around
the inlaid eye-ball. They might easily be overlooked by a casual
observer, but their effect is to add a subtle something that gives the
unusual naturalness to the eyes. One other statue, a marble replica of
an original bronze by Lysippus, deserves a word of comment also, because
it is held by good authorities to be a better example of the school of
Lysippus than the far better known “Apoxyomenos” in the Braccio Nuovo at
Rome. Each of the figures is the work of a pupil of Lysippus, but the
claim is made that the copy of a youth at Delphi was doubtless made by a
pupil working under the master’s own supervision, while the Apoxyomenos
was carved after Lysippus had died. From this it is natural enough to
infer that the Delphi example is a more faithful reproduction than the
Vatican’s familiar figure. In this museum also is a carved stone which
is known as the “omphalos,” because of its having marked the supposed
navel of the earth. The legend is that Zeus once let fly two eagles from
opposite sides of the world, bidding them fly toward one another with
equal wing. They met at Delphi, which therefore shares this form of
celebrity with Dodona in Epirus.
[Illustration: CHARIOTEER—DELPHI]
Of course we visited the Castalian spring, which still gushes forth from
a cleft in the rock, as it did in the days when suppliants came thither
first of all to purify themselves. After a long journey one is not loath
to rest beside this ancient fount after washing and drinking deep of its
unfailing supply, for the water is good and the chance to drink fresh
water in Greece is rare enough to be embraced wherever met. The cleft
from which the spring emerges is truly wonderful. It is narrow and dark
enough for a colossal chimney, running far back into the bowels of the
mountain heights behind. An old stone trough hewn out of the side of the
cliff was once filled by this spring, but the flow has now been diverted
and it runs off in a babbling stream over the pebbles. Not the least
inspiring thing at Delphi is to stand here and reflect, as one enjoys
the Castalian water, how many of the great in bygone ages stood on this
very spot and listened to the same murmur of this brook which goes on
forever.
Hard by the spring, under two great plane trees that we fondly believed
were direct descendants of those planted on the spot by Agamemnon, we
sat down to lunch, a stone khan across the way affording shelter and
fire for our coffee. And in the afternoon we rambled among the ruins
below on the grassy slopes of the lower glen, where are to be seen a
ruined gymnasium, a temple of Athena Pronoia, and a fascinating circular
“tholos,” all of which, though sadly shattered, still present much
beauty of detail. If the site were devoid of every ruined temple it
would still be well worth a visit, not merely from the importance it
once enjoyed as Apollo’s chief sanctuary, but also for the grandeur and
impressiveness of its setting, so typical of Greece at her best.
Fortunate indeed are those who may tarry here awhile, now that local
lodging has been robbed of its ancient hardships. To-day, as in the days
of the priests, Delphi is in touch with the uttermost parts of the earth
by means of the telegraph, the incongruous wires of which accompany the
climber all the way from Itea, so that details of arrival, departure, or
stay may be arranged readily enough from afar. Long sojourn, however,
was not to be our portion, and we were forced to depart, though with
reluctant steps, down along the rough side of the mountain, through the
vast and silent olive groves, back into the world of men, to sordid Itea
and our ship.
------------------------------------------------------------------------