Delphi

The Argives made and dedicated at Delphi statues of them as being the best of men.

So he took possession of the sovereign power and was confirmed in it by the Delphic oracle.

This Gyges then was the first foreigner whom we know who placed offerings at Delphi after the king of Phrygia, Midas son of Gordias.

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.

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

After this, the Lacedaemonians waged what is called the sacred war, and having taken possession of the temple at Delphi, gave it up to the Delphians:

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?

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.

—Before Apollo’s temple at Delphi.

And the lords of Delphi decreed by general vote that my mistress should be hurled from the rock to die, because she strove to slay the priest and compass his death in the temple.

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

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.

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;

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.

This district was once inhabited by the Cirrhaeans and the Cragalidae, most lawless tribes, who repeatedly committed sacrilege against the shrine at Delphi and the votive offerings there, and who transgressed against the Amphictyons also.

I come now to the third period, or rather to that bitterest period of all, in which Demosthenes brought ruin upon our state and upon all Hellas by his impiety toward the shrine at Delphi, and by moving the alliance with Thebes—an unjust alliance and utterly unequal.

When I had entered the council, perhaps a little too impetuously—the other pylagori had withdrawn —and when I was just beginning to speak, one of the Amphissians, a scurrilous fellow, and, as I plainly saw, a man of no education whatever, but perhaps also led on to folly by some divine visitation, cried out, O Greeks, if you were in your right mind, you would not have so much as named the name of …

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

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

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.

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.

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

whereof I will not speak before the time, but, when my plot begins to work, Delphi’s rock will witness it.

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.

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?

Then did you notice somewhere on the temple the inscription Know thyself?

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

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

and if any one should violate the shrine of the god or be accessory to such violation, or make any plot against the holy places, they would punish him with hand and foot and voice, and all their power.

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

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.

For who does not know that this man, when, under the obligation to serve you, he was entering upon public life, was being hounded as a slave and was under indictment as an alien usurping the rights of a citizen and came near being sold by these men whose servant he now is and for whom he used to write the speeches against me, but since he is himself now practising what he then accused others of do …

Since the Ozolian Locrians, settled at Amphissa, are outraging the temple of Apollo at Delphi and come in arms to plunder the sacred territory, I consent to join you in helping the god and in punishing those who transgress in any way the principles of religion.

Not long ago, when we were travelling to Delphi, necessity compelled us to look upon that scene—homesteads levelled with the ground, cities stripped of their defensive walls, a countryside all emptied of its young men;