Parnassus in its widest sense is a range of mountains extending across Phocis and terminating at the Corinthian Gulf between Cirrha and Anticyra. In the narrower sense, Parnassus indicates the highest part of the range a few miles north of Delphi. Deucalion was a son of Prometheus and husband of Pyrrha. When Zeus resolved to destroy the degenerate human race inhabiting the earth, Deucalion on the advice of his father built a ship and carried into it stores of provisions. When Zeus sent a flood all over Hellas, which destroyed all its inhabitants, Deucalion and Pyrrha alone were saved. After their ship had been floating for about nine days, it landed on Mount Parnassus, where they made sacrifices and prayed for the means to restore the human race. They then descended Parnassus and settled at Opus. Hellen was one of their sons. Dorus, the mythical ancestor of the Dorians, was a son of Hellen and brother of Xuthus and Aeolus. He is said to have founded the Doric race in the vicinity of Parnassus.
The two highest summits of Parnassus are called Tithorea and Lycoreia. Tithorea was a nymph of the mountain. The summit of Tithorea is northwest of, that of Lycoreia northeast of Delphi.
Immediately above Delphi the mountain forms a semicircular range of lofty rocks, at the foot of which the town was built. The overtowering rocks were called Phaedriades (Resplendent), from their facing south and thus receiving the full rays of the sun during the most brillant part of the day. The sides of Parnassus are well forested, and its summit is covered with snow during the greater part of the year. It contains numerous caves, glens and ravines.
Parnassus was celebrated as one of the chief seats of Apollo and the Muses and an inspiring source of poetry and song. It is related that four days after his birth, Apollo went to Mount Parnassus and there killed the dragon Python, who had pursued his mother during her wanderings before she reached Delos. Python, the famous dragon who guarded the oracle of Delphi, is described as a son of Gaea. He lived in the caves of Mount Parnassus until he was killed by Apollo, who then took possession of the oracle. Thriae was the name given to the three prophectic nymphs on Mount Parnassus, by whom Apollo was reared and who were believed to have invented the art of prophecy by means of little stones (thriae) which were thrown into an urn.
Parnassos was often associated with nymphs, and still is. On the summit Lycorea is the Corycian cave, from which the Muses are sometimes called the Corycian nymphs. Corycia was the nymph who became by Apollo the mother of Lycorus. Just above Delphi was the far-famed Castalian spring, which issued from between two cliffs called Nauplia and Hyamplia. Cassotis was a Parnassian nymph. Mount Parnassus was sacred to the Muses as was the Castalian spring, near which they had a temple.
The mountain also was sacred to Dionysus, and on one of its summits the Thyiades held their Bacchic revels.
Between Parnassus and Mount Cirphis is the valley of the Pleistus, though which the old road, once sacred, ran from Delphi to Daulis and Stiris; and at the pont (called Schiste) where the road branched off to these two places, Oedipus slew his father Laius.
City in central Greece on the southern slope of Mt. Parnasos, site of the ancient sanctuary and oracle of Apollo; it attained civic status sometime before the fourth century and enjoyed the attention of several fourth century emperors. Constantine I removed various monuments from Delphi, including the famous Tripod of Plataia, which was set up in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. The pagan cult apparently continued throughout the fourth century, and the Pythian Games were celebrated until 424. The city was abandoned between the sixth and seventh centuries. Today there is only a small village on the forgotten remains of this once important city.
The Oracle at Delphi"I know the number of the sands, and the measure of the sea; I understand the dumb and hear him who does not speak." Lying just north of the Gulf of Corinth, which cuts a blue gash out of the most famous oracle in the ancient world and the holiest place in pagan Greece. From its central location and spiritual preeminence, Delphi was thought to be the omphalos, or navel, of the world, a belief supported by the myth of Zeus loosing two eagles from opposite ends of the earth - the spot below where they met, Delphi, was deemed to be the center and was marked by a conical stone. For about one thousand years until the oracle's demise in the fourth century AD, people would come from all over Greece and farther abroad on foot, by ship or in chariots to question the oracle of Apollo about their businesses, marriages, farming, colonial enterprises and other concerns. Apollo responded to these petitions through his priestess, the Pythia, a local peasant woman who had to be more than fifty years old and lead a blameless life. In Apollo's temple, she would go into a trance and utter a stream of apparently incoherent speech. This was then interpreted by a priest, who translated it into verse and conveyed the answer to the questioner. There were other oracles in ancient Greece, for example, at Dodona in the Northwest. This oracle was associated with Zeus, who was believed to have communicated answers to questions through rustling the leaves of a sacred oak tree. However, Delphi was by far the most famous, counting among its petitioners kings and emperors such as Croesus of Lydia, Alexander the Great, and the notorious Roman emperor Nero. One reason for its prestige was undoubtedly due to its setting. No other place in Greece can parade such raw elements of natural beauty. The temenos, or holy area, of Apollo, where the oracle was located, was built on a slope cupped by towering 900-foot-high cliffs that are known as the Phaedriades, the Shining Ones, because at dawn and twilight they glow with incandescent light, as if they were the translucent crust of some volcanic furnace. From a deep cleft in the cliffs run the pellucid waters of the Castalian spring, famous since ancient times for inspiring poets. Below the sanctuary, a deep broad gorge filled with the thousand swaying heads of silvery-green olive trees sweeps down to the waters of the gulf. The whole area, dominated by the craggy peaks of the Mount Parnassus range, is prone to sudden electric storms, when Zeus "hurls his thunderbolts with sparking hand," as well as earthquakes and landslides. Buzzards and vultures soar upon thermals above the cliff tops, and innumerable birds and cicadas make the landscape buzz and whirr with life. It is now wonder that before the site became dedicated to Apollo, Delphi was sacred to Ge - also known as Gaea - the earth goddess. According to legend, her oracular shrine, originally called Pytho, was guarded by a giant serpent, the Python, a creature commonly associated with the chthonic, or earthly, power of nature. Apollo, god of light, reason and civilized arts such as music, medicine and archery, came to the shrine, slew the Python and installed there his own priestess, the Pythia. In historical times, Apollo's oracle grew in prestige, and by the end of the seventh century BC, this was reflected in the opulence of the buildings of the sanctuary, the remains of which are still very evident. Kings and city states, wishing to honor or show their gratitude to Apollo, as well as demonstrate their wealth, set up a number of statues, monuments and small temple-like "treasuries" that housed precious offerings. King Croesus, for example, sent to Delphi a gold lion, weighing a quarter of a ton, standing on a 117-brick pyramid of white gold. The statues and treasuries bordered the sacred way that zigzagged up the slope of the temenos, to the grand Doric temple of Apollo, in which the oracles were given. Even today, with the temple shorn of all but a few of its columns, its size and position, sweeping views over the Pleistos Gorge, are awesome. According to the Greek traveler and writer Pausanias, who visited Delphi in the late second century AD, several temples were built on this site. They had been made, successively, of laurel branches; beeswax and feathers; bronze; and, finally, stone. The stone temple was burned down in 548 BC It was immediately rebuilt but collapsed in an earthquake in 373 BC Its successor is the one whose remains can be seen today. Above the temple there is a well-preserved theater and, at the top of the site, a stadium. This was used for the Pythian games festival, which, after 582 BC, was held every four years. The entire sacred area, which measures above 200 by 140 paces, must have been a glittering array of marble and bronze. Nero is reported to have stolen more than 500 bronze statues, but still at least another 3,000 remained. Despite such impressive displays of city wealth, the living pulse of the sanctuary was the oracle. This affected the fate of men and women and the destinies of city states. Pilgrims who came here, already moved by the natural grandeur and dazzled by the material wealth, were likely to be further impressed by the encounter with the Pythia. For when she spoke, it was the god Apollo himself speaking through her. Such a dramatic spiritual encounter required elaborate preparatory rituals. Although the sources give an inconsistent, patchwork picture of the procedure, it seems that the Pythia, the priests and the questioners all had to purify themselves in the waters of the Castalian spring. Then, to test whether it was propitious for the god to enter the Pythia and give a consultation, a sacrificial goat was sprinkled with cold water. If it shivered, perhaps symbolizing the Pythia's trance state, then the omen was good for an oracle session. Questioners had to buy a sacred cake and offer it on the altar outside the temple. Then, one by one, they were taken inside to sacrifice a goat or sheep on the inner hearth within the cella, or main part of the temple. They then proceeded to the adyton, or inner sanctuary, and sat there in expectant silence with the priests. The Pythia sat on a tripod - a bronze bowl mounted on three legs - hidden from their view, probably by a curtain. By this time, she was already in a trance, possibly helped by chewing laurel leaves and drinking sacred water. One source suggests that her tripod was placed over a fissure in the bedrock from which emanated an intoxicating vapor. One of the priests then conveyed to her the questioner's inquiry and, after she had uttered the mysterious answer, he gave the reply to the inquirer in verse. Many of the oracles seem to have been cryptic or equivocal. Croesus, for example, was told that if he attacked the Persians he would destroy a great empire. He did - but it turned out to be his own empire. Nero was warned to fear "three and seventy years," but did not realize that it referred not to his old age but to his successor Galba. Despite such ambiguities and the potential for the Delphic priests to influence the Pythia's responses for political ends, the oracle retained its prestige until the first century BC when Greece was under the sway of Rome. By the first century AD, however, the site was in serious decline. The Greek writer Plutarch (c. AD 46-120), himself once a priest at Delphi, wrote a treatise called On the Failure of Oracles, a phenomenon he attributed to a general decrease in population. When Pausanias visited Delphi in the next century, he found it neglected and deserted. The last recorded oracle was given in about AD 362 in response to an inquiry by the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate. The oracle stated poignantly: "Tell the king this: the glorious temple has fallen into ruin; Apollo has no roof over his head; the bay leaves are silent, the prophetic springs and fountains are dead." In 393, the Christian emperor Theodosius officially closed the oracle down: Apollo, the god of light, who had conquered the earth goddess, had now himself succumbed to a new god, of a different, but more powerful, spiritual light. During the succeeding centuries, the sanctuary fell into ruin and, by the Middle Ages, the village of Castri has grown up over it. |
Last modified: Wed Jan 6, 1999 / Jeremiah Genest