Delphi (Part 2)

From the main site we walked a little further east along the road to the site of the Castalian Spring, where pilgrims and priests would cleanse themselves before visiting the Oracle. Lord Byron, when he visited, was apparently very taken with the myth that the Castalian Spring nurtured poetic inspiration and so took a full plunge into the waters. Sadly the Castalian Spring, like the Gymnasium, were both closed due to the danger of rockfalls and so we were not able to enjoy the same sort of antics.

The Gymnasium

The Sanctuary of Athena

A little further east again is the Sanctuary of Athena, which is also remarkably well preserved. The setting is a little less impressive and somewhat more tranquil than that of Apollo’s Temple and the main remains but the circular Tholos is particularly noteworthy.

With the heat starting to build we returned to the museum where the coachparties had started to arrive in force. It’s an excellent museum, exhibiting the significant (and some less significant) finds from the site. Most impressive in many ways was the bull, a votive offering measuring about 2.3m long by 1.5m high and 1m wide, and which was made from sheet silver, with gilding on the horns, forehead and other areas, laid across a wooden frame. Most of the frame has not survived and much of the sheet silver is now in pieces too small to display, but enough of the large sheets still survive for the museum to display the offering ‘as was’.  It’s impressive enough 2 millenia after it was made. It must have been incredible when it was new.

The twins of Argos (Cleobis and Biton) are also on display in the museum and whilst they are very large and impressively complete, for us it was almost better to see the photographs taken when the French archaeologists actually unearthed them. The looks on the faces of the people involved are a wonderful mixture of amazement that they have made such an important find and that the statues have survived almost unscathed for so long.

The 560BC statue of the mythical Sphinx with a female face, the body of a lion and the wings of a bird was supposed to ward off evil. It was sent by one of the rich Cyclades islands, Naxos, as a grandiose offering to Apollo. The statue sat on a large column reaching up 12.5m. As a result of this offering the priest of Apollo honoured the people of Naxox with the privilege of promanteia; priority in receiving an oracle.

And then there is the Charioteer found in 1896. Its discovery caused quite a stir because no other bronze life-sized statues had been found from the classical period. Most large statues were plundered and later smelted down for other works (or for more prosaic uses) but this one was not looted because it was buried in the debris from the 373BC earthquake.

Again there was far more in the museum than I can represent properly straight away and so I will update this blog entry later. Here are a few more photographs to give a bit more of a feel for what is on display.

Itéa