a banqueting room called the Cnidian Lesche decorated apparently by the famous
painter Polygnotus and equipped for symposia, so that Delphi has all the distinctive
components that mark Classical Greek civilization.
Given the importance of the oracle, Delphi was administered by a league of
states living round about to ensure its independence. In the peace treaty between
Athens and Sparta at the end of the first phase of the Peloponnesian war, the opening
clause guarantees access for all to temples and sanctuaries ‘according to ancestral
custom’, amongst which the sanctuary and temple of Apollo at Delphi are given
special mention (Thucydides, 5.18). The influence of the oracle is highlighted in a
story that suggests its independence may often have been compromised. According
to Herodotus (5.62–4) the Athenians, who had built a temple there, had bribed the
Pythia to tell any Spartan consulting the oracle to liberate the Athenians from the rule
ofthe family of Peisistratus in the late fifth century. This, Herodotus says, was instru-
mental in Spartan intervention.
The oracle was regularly consulted by officers of state when new colonies were
being contemplated, and famously when the Athenians asked how best to oppose the
Persians and received the answer to trust to their ‘wooden walls’ (which the Athenian
leader Themistocles interpreted as their ships). It was also consulted by ordinary
individuals like Socrates’ friend Chaerephon who had enquired whether anyone was
wiser than Socrates, to which the answer was ‘No’. Consultants were required to pay
a fee and perform a sacrifice beforehand before they were admitted to the adyton or
sacred place, where they encountered the Pythia who had previously purified herself
by washing in the waters of the Castalian spring and who was seated on a tripod and
crowned with a laurel wreath, the sacred emblem of Apollo. Exactly how she worked
has been much debated. Geologists excavating the site of the temple in the 1990s
detected the presence of ethylene, a mildly intoxicating gas emanating from the
limestone beneath, that might have induced the Pythia’s trance. The ambiguity of her
Delphic utterances was doubtless thought to reflect the general difficulty of inter-
preting the voice of the god.
Festivals
Particular festivals were often held on an annual basis and in different communities,
notably, at Athens the great or city Dionysia, the rural Dionysia and the Lenaia at
which tragedies and comedies were performed (see below p. 145 ff.). The Anthesteria
was a festival of Dionysus celebrated particularly in Ionian cities over a period of
three days in the late winter or early spring when the wine harvested in the previous
autumn was opened, sampled and dedicated to the god. The competitive element in
Greek life seems to be apparent here as individuals competed against one another in
draining a five litre measure. Festivals of Dionysus, god of wine and intoxication, were
104 THE GREEKS