Delphi

Having gotten it, Gyges sent many offerings to Delphi:

These are the Greek oracles to which Croesus sent for divination:

Now none relate what answer was given by the rest of the oracles.

They were willing also to refer their cause to the oracle of Delphi.

and sending to Delphi, inquired of the god whether they should deliver up their city to the Corinthians, as their founders, and try to obtain some aid from them.

but they sent to Delphi and inquired of the god, whether it would be better for them if they went to war:

They say, at any rate, that at Delphi, near the council-chamber, a certain rock is shown, on which the first Sibyl is said to have sat, who came from Helicon and was reared by the Muses.

"O Delphians, servants of the far-shooting Apollo, I have come to deliver the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus, being wroth with my own brother Apollo.

" But the author of the Europia too relates that the statue of Apollo at Delphi is a column, in these words:

but now, since wealth has forsaken Orchomenus and Delphi, they can surpass you in pity, but not one in envy.

One might have much to say that Gorgias the sophist ought not to stand in Delphi, and that too aloft and golden.

If one should abolish the crown, for the sake of which they are ambitious, and the inscription of the victory which is to be at Olympia or at Pytho, do you suppose they would endure even the sun for a single day, to say nothing of the other unpleasant and grievous things that attend the matter?

—Before Apollo’s temple at Delphi.

I am come to this land of Delphi where sits Phoebus on the centre of the world and giveth oracles to men, ever chanting lays prophetic of things that are to be.

an oblong space of five score feet he meted out, intending to invite all Delphi to the feast.

When Xenophon came back from Delphi, he reported the oracle to Socrates;

So Xenophon went and asked Apollo to what one of the gods he should sacrifice and pray in order best and most successfully to perform the journey which he had in mind and, after meeting with good fortune, to return home in safety;

and Socrates, suspecting that his becoming a friend of Cyrus might be a cause for accusation against Xenophon on the part of the Athenian government, for the reason that Cyrus was thought to have given the Lacedaemonians zealous aid in their war against Athens, advised Xenophon to go to Delphi and consult the god in regard to this journey.

After this Agis, having gone to Delphi and offered to the god the appointed tithe of his booty, on his way back fell sick at Heraea, being now an old man, and although he was still living when brought home to Lacedaemon, once there he very soon died;

In this way, accordingly, the truce was made, and Agesilaus went to Delphi and offered to the god a tithe of the amount derived from his booty, an offering of not less than one hundred talents;

And in the first place he brought together at Delphi the Thebans, their allies, and the Lacedaemonians to negotiate in regard to peace.

That their land bear no fruit;

And when they were assembled they voted to march against the Amphissians.

But it happened that we were no sooner come to Delphi than Diognetus, the hieromnemon, fell sick with fever;

At Pytho the Pythian serpent is worshipped, and the festival of the snake is proclaimed as the Pythia.

and the temple of Apollo in Delphi first a storm-blast seized, and then a chastening fire made away with.

A Greek festival was being held over a dead serpent at Pytho, and Eunomus sang the serpent's dirge.

You surely realize that all your choruses and hymns to the god are sanctioned, not only by the regulations of the Dionysia, but also by the oracles, in all of which, whether given at Delphi or at Dodona, you will find a solemn injunction to the State to set up dances after the ancestral custom, to fill the streets with the savour of sacrifice, and to wear garlands.

For Alcibiades, Athenians, was on his father’s side one of the Alcmaeonidae, who are said to have been banished by the tyrants because they belonged to the democratic faction, and who, with money borrowed from Delphi, liberated our city, expelling the sons of Peisistratus, and on his mother’s side he claimed descent from Hipponicus and that famous house to which the people are indebted for many eminent services.

He took her to many houses to gay parties and among them to that of Chabrias of Aexonê, when, in the archonship of Socratidas, he was victor at the Pythian games with the four-horse chariot which he had bought from the sons of Mitys, the Argive, and returning from Delphi he gave a feast at Colias, to celebrate his victory, and in that place many had intercourse with her when she was drunk, while P …

Pausanias, the king of the Lacedaemonians, puffed up by this, inscribed a distich upon the tripod at Delphi, which the Greeks who had jointly fought in the battle at Plataea and in the sea-fight at Salamis had made in common from the spoils taken from the barbarians, and had set up in honor of Apollo as a memorial of their valor.

while he who is called thy father lingers still in Delphi.

For his sire stands not by my side to lend his aid and cannot avail his child at all, being absent in the land of Delphi, where he is offering recompense to Loxias for the madness he committed, when on a day he went to Pytho and demanded of Phoebus satisfaction for his father’s death, if haply his prayer might avert those past sins and win for him the god’s goodwill hereafter.

In the holy place of Loxias, leagued with Delphians.

for he is fated to die by a Delphian sword, when he claims satisfaction of me for the death of his father Achilles.

And you see Apollo, who makes the navel of the earth his home, dispensing to mortals unerring prophecies, whom we obey in all he says;

Alas for the toils which you, poor wretch, strove after to your ruin, when you heard the voice from the tripod, proclaimed by Phoebus, at his sanctuary, where the hollows are called the navel of the earth.

But Agamemnon was glad in his noos when he heard his chieftains quarreling with one another, for Apollo had foretold him this at Pytho when he crossed the stone floor to consult the oracle.

for he had violated Zeus’ mistress Leto as she was going through Panopeus on her way to Pytho.

He had gone to consult the god, bringing precious things from the finest spoils of Troy;

For, mounting his chariot of victorious horses, he gives the word to sing for the mother and her twin children who jointly watch over steep Pytho.

And if the life that guides him straight along the path of his fathers has given him as an adornment to great Athens, it must be that the son of Timonous will often reap the finest bloom of the Isthmian games, and be victorious in the Pythian contests.

They won six times beneath the brow of Parnassus;

The brilliance of his father Thessalus’ feet is stored up by the streams of the Alpheus, and at Pytho he has honor for the single and the double foot race within the circuit of a single day’s sun;

But as things are, Ergoteles, having been crowned with garlands at Olympia, and twice from Pytho, and at the Isthmus, you exalt the hot baths of the Nymphs, while keeping company with them beside your own fields.

I am not yet able, as the Delphic inscription has it, to know myself;

Then I promise, like the nine archons, to set up at Delphi a statue as large as life, not only of myself, but of you also.

For the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when they have been mad have conferred many splendid benefits upon Greece both in private and in public affairs, but few or none when they have been in their right minds;

But indeed Plato, that he might set no mark of testimony upon the senses, therefore in the Phaedrus too, in the person of Socrates, denies that he can know himself, as the Delphic inscription admonishes, and in the Theaetetus takes from himself knowing and perceiving, and in the Phaedo defers his verdict until after death, a posthumous verdict on truth, namely — and yet, not yet dead, he was philosophizing.

But he recognized the shield of Euphorbus once consecrated at Delphi, and said it was his own, and proved it by marks commonly unknown.

his deeds and words were clearly in harmony with the answer given by the Priestess at Delphi to such questions as What is my duty about sacrifice?

Tell me, Euthydemus, have you ever been to Delphi?

the Delphic god replies, Follow the custom of the state

And in particular I spoke about the expedition to Thermopylae, and about the holy places, and Delphi, and the Amphictyons.

To prove that they were Amphictyonic cities and thus protected by the oaths, I enumerated twelve tribes which shared the shrine:

they established themselves in power by daring to lay hands on the treasures of the shrine, and by the use of mercenaries they put down the free governments;

I initiated A— from Delphi and other friends of mine besides from outside Attica, and I frequented the Eleusinium and offered sacrifices, as I consider I have a perfect right to do.

And thou, reveler Bacchus, who, inhabiting the Parnassian rock, sparklest with torches, conspicuous among the Delphic Bacchanals!

Failing, then, in everything else, they took the contract to build the temple at Delphi, from which they came by abundant funds for the help of the Lacedaemonians.

All our cities contain shrines and temples of all the gods, and among them is one of Athena, Our Lady of Forethought, worshipped as a beneficent and powerful goddess, and close to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, immediately as you enter the precincts, she has a large and beautiful temple.