APOLLO'S TEMPLE AT DELPHI





Here are two views of the ruins of Apollo's temple at Delphi, perched on the south slope of Mt. Parnassos, beneath the twin cliffs (The Bright Ones) that glow red when Apollo's sun chariot begins to sink in the west. If, in your mind's eye, you move from your viewpoint outside the temple in the top photo to the opposite corner of the temple at upper right, you will see facing you from inside the temple, as in the lower photo, the same six ruined columns, now sunlit against the blue-hazed mountains in the background.

How old are these ancient Doric columns? What lies beneath them, what ruins from some earlier temple or sanctuary this one was built on? No trace exists here of any worship of Apollo before the 8th century BC, when, says legend, his cult was introduced at Delphi by priests from Knossos. Could they have fled with their god from the worship of the Mother Goddess and her serpent cult on the island of Crete? All that the Greek myths tell us is that shortly after he was born (on the island of Delos), Apollo went to Delphi to set up his oracle on this sacred spot, only to find it already occupied - by the cult of the Mother Goddess (Geia, the Earth), and protected by her offspring, the monstrous Python.

APOLLO KILLS THE PYTHON

"... oh you who reveal to all mortals
the eternal and infallible oracles.
They sing how you conquered the prophetic tripod
guarded by a fierce dragon when, with your darts
you pierced the gaudy, tortuously coiling monster,
so that, uttering many fearful hisses, the beast expired...."

Those lines are from the First Delphic Hymn to Apollo around 138 BC, "the oldest fragment of notated music" in the West. The Third Homeric Hymn has a more graphic account of the Python, the Dragon, the "bloated, great Drakaina":

"Whoever met the Drakaina, the day of doom would sweep him away, until the lord Apollo, who deals death from afar, shot a strong arrow at her. Then she, rent with bitter pangs, lay drawing great gasps for breath and rolling about that place. An awful, unspeakable noise rose up as she writhed continually this way and that among the trees: and so she left her life, breathing it forth in blood. Then Phoibos Apollon boasted over her : 'Now rot here upon the soil that feeds man! At least you shall live no more to be a deadly plague on men who eat the fruit of the all-nourishing earth, and who will now bring here perfect sacrifices. Against cruel death neither Typhon [her mate] shall aid you nor ill-famed Chimera [her offspring], but here shall the Earth and shining Hyperion [Apollo] make you rot.' Thus said Phoibos [Apollo], exulting over her: and darkness covered her eyes. And the holy strength of Helios [Apollo] made her rot away there; so the place is now called Pytho, and men call the lord Apollo by another name, Pythian; because on that spot the power of piercing Helios made the monster rot away."

This Homeric Hymn reminds us that "Pytho," which means "to rot," is the oldest name of Delphi - because there Apollo "made the monster rot away." But Apollo also had to purify himself for killing her by paying homage to her. Even a monster can be sacred, it seems, at least to some god or gods. And so he honored her by establishing at Delphi the athletic contests called the Pythian Games, and by calling "the Pythia" the priestess of his oracle, who sat upon the tripod and channelled the god's oracles while intoxicated from inhaling the fumes from the rotting Python. Its fumes rose from a crack in the rock below the tripod. Long thought to be a myth, both the fumes and the crack have recently been found to be real. (See " Was Delphi's Priestess high on gas?" ) So might "Pytho," the early name of Delphi, have come from the "rotten" smell of its gas?



In his rip-roaring comedy "The Frogs," Aristophanes pokes fun at Dionysus, the god of wine, women, and song - and drama - as he traipses around Hades in drag, in a yellow robe, carrying a lekythos, a little oil bottle that Greek men tied around their waist, especially when travelling, to cleanse and groom themselves by oiling up with perfumed olive oil. In this photo of a scene on a lekythos, we see painted in black on a white ground, two figures: Apollo, seated on the omphalos, or navel-stone, at Delphi, facing the Python, the world serpent that sprang from the loins of Geia, the Earth. Often seen as a male, here Python appears as a big-breasted woman with a snake's head springing from her forehead, and, below the waist, with a double snake-tail. As he raises his bow to start shooting arrows at her, Apollo sits on the omphalos stone, with the Delphic oracle's tripod in front of it.

THE OMPHALOS



This is the omphalos, the navel or "belly-button" of the world, that was found at Delphi in the sanctuary of Apollo, where his priestess, the Pythia, sat on the tripod inhaling ("inspiring") the intoxicating gasses from the stinking carcass of the Python in order to channel the god's oracles.

How did the Greeks know this stone marked the spot in the center of the Earth where the Python was born? According to myth, Zeus had sent his two eagles flying from each end of the world and the two met at this exact spot. To commemorate this event, the stone you see here originally had two golden eagles attached to its top.

Why the strange decoration carved on the stone? Ancient accounts say that long before this stone was carved and set up (some time in the 4th century BC), there was another omphalos stone there: a meteorite. Because meteorites are "thunderstones," hurled down from heaven by Zeus, they are sacred. And so this one was draped in an argenon, or woven net, so that it looked like a woven beehive. Bees had been sacred since the Bronze Age as symbols of death and resurrection. So had snakes, which annually shed their skins and "died," only to be "reborn" with new ones. The woven net around the stone resembled the baskets snakes were carried in. Snakes smaller than the Python, no doubt. But you get the connection.

THE TRIPOD



This is a silver stater of about 400 BC from the Italian colony of Croton. A few years ago this splendid little coin sold for $25,000. On the obverse Hercules is enthroned as the Founder of Croton. Actually it was founded on orders from Delphi, which explains why the reverse shows Baby Apollo shooting the Python across the Delphic oracle's tripod. The priestess (always called "the Pythia," in honor of the Python, no matter what her real name was) is often shown seated on the tripod, or in the bronze basin or cauldron atop it. The cauldron, as the name implies, was used to heat water or cook meat for dining and sacrifices. I don't know whether the three rings atop the "tri-pod" (Greek for "three legs") were attached to the tripod's legs or to the cauldron, so that it could be lifted hot off the stand and carried elsewhere. Perhaps the cauldron was always soldered to the legs to stabilize them.

You may think it odd that Apollo is shown here as an infant, still showing baby fat, rather than as a well-muscled young man, or even a beardless ephebe, a budding adolescent boy. When I wrote my article on the Apollo Sauroktonos, "Apollo the Lizard-killer," I felt those statues of him were satirical parodies, belittlings, literally, that looked forward like amusing prophecies to the grown-up Apollo's killing of the monster-sized Python. But gods and heroes can perform superhuman tasks while still little. While still in the cradle, Apollo's newborn brother Hermes went out and stole his brother's cattle. And while still an infant Hercules strangled two snakes that attacked him. Which leads us to the wonderful story of how, in a fit of pique at the Pythia, Hercules tried to steal her tripod, and how Apollo tried to stop him.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN APOLLO AND HERCULES OVER THE TRIPOD


Apollo fighting Heracles as he steals the Delphic tripod. Attic black-figure oinochoe (wine-jug), c 525 BC, by the Taleides Painter, Louvre Museum, Paris.Photographer/Source Jastrow (2006) (from MLehanas)

Like many heroes and muscle men with a surplus of testosterone, Hercules often went over the top. Once, when driven by a violent rage, he murdered Iphytus, for which he was stricken (by Apollo, probably) with a terrible disease. Seeking a cure, he went to Delphi to ask the Pythia what to do. But she was not able to answer him with an oracle. Outraged at what he took to be her refusal to help, Hercules started to tear the temple apart. Spotting the tripod, he seized it and started to run off with it, thinking to set up his own oracle.

But Apollo was not going to let anyone, not even a superman, carry off a prized tripod, let alone a tripod with the power to transmit oracles. So he began to wrestle with Hercules to wrest it from him. As they wrestled over the tripod, other gods came, including the women, not just to watch, but to join in. Artemis came to help her brother, and Athena came to help her hero. While their tug-of-war was going on, Zeus came by, and seeing his two sons fighting, decided to break up the fight. Taking up one of his thunderbolts, he hurled it between them. End of fight.


Apollo and Hercules struggling for possession of the tripod, with Artemis on the left helping her brother, and Athena, in the center, helping Hercules. Treasury of the Siphnians, east pediment, Delphi, ca 525 BC. Delphi Museum, photo by Maria Daniels.

After the brothers were separated, Apollo got back his tripod, and Hercules got his oracle. The oracle decreed he had to be sold into slavery for a year, and had to pay the money to Eurytus as compensation for the loss of his son.

HERCULES' DELIGHTFUL PUNISHMENT

Hermes, always ready to get in on a commercial transaction, brokered the sale of Hercules into slavery. He was sold to Omphale, the Queen of Lydia. All the gold from the sale was given to Eurytus as blood money for the murder of his son, but Eurytus refused to accept it.

A trio of Roman poets, Statius, Ovid and Fasti, embroidered the story of Hercules as Omphale's slave by depicting him dressed in women's clothes and doing needlework with the other ladies. According to Fasti, Faunas, a woodland satyr and follower of Pan and Dionysus, tried to rape Omphale. When he entered her bedchamber at night and lifted the silk nightie he took to be the queen's, he was amazed to feel a hairy bottom. Still, unfazed, as satyrs are wont to be, he tried to penetrate the sleeping form. That woke up Hercules, and he pushed Faunus off so hard the satyr couldn't get up. Torches were called for, so Hercules and Omphale could see the intruder. In the light, they laughed at the satyr's plight. So embarrassed was Faunus at being tricked by a nightie, afterwards he made all his followers come to his rites stark naked.

Such tales titillated the Romans, so it's no surprise to find at Pompeii this wall painting of Hercules in his dress at the court of Omphale. And guess who's in charge of his club?



In the Renaissance, Ovid and his amorous tales were so popular that pictures of Hercules in drag before a naked Omphale were much in demand, as this 1585 piece of eye candy by Bartholome Spränger testifies. Here the switch of gender roles and costumes is complete.



As for Hercules, after three years of serving his mistress as handmaid, sex slave and lover, she finally freed him to return to the world of male heroics. A nice, and naughty, tale indeed. But I wonder why Omphale's name seems to be a female form of Omphalos?

Speaking of the omphalos, do you feel we're drifting off-center and ought to get back to Apollo at Delphi? OK,let's return there, but via Pompeii, with this mural of Apollo playing his lyre there and singing to the omphalos.



But, what on Earth! Isn't that the Python , encircling it? Is this Apollo vs the Python, redux, but this time featuring Apollo as a sort of snake-charmer?