BOOK TWO
THE ORACLE
He arrived at Krissa beneath snow-peaked Parnassus,
Where a foothill turns to face the west: A cliff overhangs it
From above, a rugged hollow glade lies hidden beneath:
There the lord Phoebus Apollo resolved to build his glorious temple.
– HOMERIC HYMN
BLOODY BATTLE AND homecoming embrace, lightning-studded skies and Arcadian pastures, riddles, mirrors, smoke, illusion, the love of a woman, the wrath of the gods. Life is drama, a tragedy and comedy both, and we the actors. A trite observation, one decidedly inspired by some other man's muses. Yet for all the horrors and triumphs of the stage, I have found that the arts of Dionysus offer little to compare with the struggles and achievements, the lives and deaths of real men, or at least men of thought and action, men who renounce the apathy and ignorance of those who pass through life as if they were mere temporary visitors, gawking occasionally but for the most part simply following the meaty desires of their bellies and loins. Sophocles said as much when he wrote a few years ago,
Numberless are the world's wonders, but none more wonderful than man.
His is the power to cross the storm-driven seas…
His are speech and wind-swift thought…
But there is little that can be recited on the stage that can match any true story of men who have sought to rise above base passivity, men who have taken their lives into their own hands, shaping other men and their surroundings into something more amenable to their own desires, and in the process irrevocably changing their world. Men truly live just as passionately as in the great dramas. They die just as brutally; they love just as fiercely. But in the real world they do not wear plaster masks that are hung on the wall at the end of a performance. Men's actions endure beyond their faces and names, and their effects are not finite and temporary, but encompass their descendants and the descendants of their fellow protagonists in widening yet ever fainter rings for all eternity. How odd that we seek through drama to depict, or to escape from, our own world, the infinite variety and cosmic timelessness of which puts even that of the gods to shame.
My pen rambles and the impatient Muses urge me to move on with my tale.
CHAPTER ONE
THE TRIP TO Delphi was long, though not without interest. Xenophon was the perfect pilgrim, stopping at every roadside attraction, keeping a purse full of obols to tip the young guides importuning us to visit this or that sacred spring, never letting a table of fruit set up outside a farmstead be passed by without a sample. The roads were crowded with men and women, merchants, shysters and prostitutes, all traveling to Delphi to attend the annual festival celebrating Apollo's departure to the northern Hyperborean regions for the winter, and the arrival of his mad brother Dionysus. The ceremony was to begin with the usual dissipation in just a few days. We were rushing to consult the Pythia, the oracle of Apollo, before the festival began, but were hindered by the mobs of other travelers heading in the same direction. The closer we came to our destination, the more frequented the roads became until at length it was impossible to pass the other pilgrims, so heavily traveled was the route. We dismounted and led our horses, to stretch our legs and converse with some of the other travelers, since like it or not, we were condemned to travel with them in this fashion all the way to Delphi.
As it happened, Xenophon had carefully chosen the pilgrims near whom he had dismounted. He quickly struck up a conversation with a cheerful, heavyset country girl named Aglaia, who was traveling to Delphi for the first time, to ask the oracle for guidance on choosing a husband from among her three suitors. Oddly, she was traveling unaccompanied by any male guardian, a fact that would have raised disapproving eyebrows among the other travelers had it not been for the formidable, glowering old crone she was dragging in tow, who turned out to be her grandmother. Though dressed in the rough clothes of a village lass, a goatherd really, Aglaia was plump and lovely, with strong, fleshy arms tanned from her daily exposure to the sun, and full, soft breasts which, even without her calling overt attention to them, nevertheless drew men's gaze to their mesmerizing ripeness. Her eyes sparkled as do those of young maidens before clouding over with the cares of the house and the pain of childbearing, and her bell-like laughter carried far above the deep-voiced din and tramping of the mostly male crowd. Although I appreciated her beauty, she was lusty and demonstrative, just the sort of trollop I disdained, and she had taken an immediate liking to Xenophon, admiring his horse and gingerly touching the jeweled hilt of the short sword he carried at his belt.
"Xenophon!" I said under my breath. "Don't be an idiot! Can't you see she's got you pegged to be suitor number four?" I tried to elbow him over to another group of travelers heading in our direction.
He shot me a black look. "What am I, Theo, an ephebe?" he hissed. "Are you still Father's stool-pigeon slave, guarding my morals from the evils of the world? I'm of age now. I don't need your handwringing."
I felt my jaw tense in anger at his insults, but forced myself to remain silent, and to keep looking straight ahead. After a few moments he seemed to regret his hasty words, and he excused himself from the girl and drew me aside. "Theo, relax. It's been months since I've even spoken with a woman. I just want to chat a bit with someone better looking than you. Believe me, I'll be better company for it afterwards."
I remained staring straight ahead as I walked, determined not to give him the satisfaction of a response. He shrugged, and stepped back up to Aglaia's side, and I resignedly lifted the elderly grandmother onto my horse, on which she rode stiff and trembling, grasping its mane tightly with both hands in her terror at sitting so high. I then walked behind Xenophon and the girl, casting my large shadow over their shoulders.
Aglaia had done her homework before setting out on her journey, and had collected quite a number of stories concerning the oracle, a few from good sources, most from the most spurious origins imaginable. She regaled us with what she had learned, her peals of laughter making men smile for yards around, even if they were unable to hear her actual words. Xenophon traded her story for story, to her great delight. She was most moved by the tale of King Croesus of Lydia, which Xenophon had learned from his mother as a young boy.
"Croesus," he recalled, "learned that the Persian king was becoming more powerful by the day. This worried him, and he began to wonder whether he should attack the Persians before they became too mighty. He decided to consult an oracle.
"In those days, Delphi was not the most famous oracle in Greece, it was simply one of many. Since Croesus didn't know which was the most truthful, he sent runners out from Sardis to every one, including the Pythia of Delphi, with instructions to wait until the hundredth day after their departure from Sardis. On precisely that day, each runner would consult the respective oracle and ask what King Croesus was doing at that moment. All their answers would be recorded and brought back to the King.
"At Delphi, just as the King's messenger entered the oracle's sanctuary, before he had even had a chance to sacrifice and make his inquiry, the oracle spoke in perfect hexameter verse:
I know the number of the sands, and the measure of the ocean;
I have ears for the dumb, and hear those who cannot speak;
Behold, there striketh my senses the savor of a shell-covered tortoise,
Boiling on a fire in a cauldron, with the flesh of a lamb-
Brass is laid beneath it, and brass the cover placed over it.
"All the messengers returned with their answers, and Croesus began reading them, but no sooner did he read the reply from Delphi than he himself was nearly struck dumb, and he discarded every other response. As it happened, when his messengers first left Sardis months before, he had racked his brain to think what impossible thing he could perform that no mortal could guess by chance, and then, on the hundredth day, he took a tortoise and a lamb and cut them to pieces with his own hands, and boiled them together in a brass cauldron with a brass lid. The oracle had des
cribed this perfectly.
"Because of this test, Croesus showered gifts on Delphi, to gain favor for the crucial advice he needed. He sacrificed thousands of animals and donated a huge pile of riches, golden goblets, statues and purple vestments. He even levied a huge tax on his own people, melting down all the money he collected into solid gold ingots."
Here the girl interjected a comment with her tinkling laughter. "I hope I'll be able to see some of the statues and drink from the cups! I've heard that even the dung-sweepers in the street use gold-handled brooms!"
"Herodotus," Xenophon said, "says that most of the riches are kept locked in the treasury, but that he himself had seen Croesus' enormous offering bowls, and a statue of a golden maiden, adorned with his wife's necklace and girdles."
Aglaia shrieked with laughter as Xenophon grinned and winked at me. "What happened next?" she asked.
"Well, Croesus asked the Pythia whether he should declare war on the Persians. The oracle's response was clear enough: 'If you make war on the Persians, you will destroy a mighty empire.' Croesus was overjoyed when he heard this, and marched his army from Sardis all the way to Persia-where his own troops were demolished. He retreated back to Sardis, pursued the entire way by the king. After a long siege, Sardis was taken and Croesus fell into the Persians' hands. He spent the rest of his life complaining how he was so cruelly deceived by the oracle, which had led him to believe he could wage war against the Persians."
Aglaia was silent for a time, puzzling this over. "But why did the Pythia deceive him?" she finally asked. "I thought the oracle always told the truth!"
Xenophon laughed. "You're falling into the same trap as Croesus-you guess the response even before you ask the question, and then you have ears only for the answer you've decided upon! The oracle was right. She said Croesus would destroy a mighty empire, and he did-his own. The Pythia's response was in the form of a riddle-it almost always is-but Croesus had no right to complain. If he'd been wise, he would have asked the oracle which empire she meant, the Persian or his own. He should have been more careful when formulating the question and receiving the answer." Xenophon looked slyly at the girl. Her face was wreathed in smiles.
"Well," she said finally. "I see now how dangerous it is to ask a question of the Pythia that is too vague. I was simply going to ask which of my three suitors was the best man. A question like that would never do-it's far too open-ended. How could the god possibly know what their best qualities would be, to me? Gods have their idea of good, and-well, I have my own."
We walked along in silence for a few moments, thinking on this, and as she turned her head to look at Xenophon, I could see a half-smile slowly forming on the girl's face.
"It's settled, then," she finally said. "I'll just ask the oracle to tell me which man is the richest."
CHAPTER TWO
LONG BEFORE ARRIVING at our destination, we saw glimpses of mist-shrouded Mount Parnassus towering over its neighboring summits, with its sheer, snow-capped peaks, storm-wracked trees, and above the timber line, its naked slopes. As we approached, the wind sometimes stirred the boughs of the trees, revealing the village of Delphi high above, a shiny cluster of garish color and gleaming white set against the huge flank of the mountain, glittering like a tiny jewel worn on a matron's plump breast. There, part way up the south flank of the mountain famous throughout the world for being sacred to Apollo, his mad brother Dionysus, and the Muses, lies a sort of a natural hollow, like an enormous theater built for Titans but populated by nymphs. It is surrounded on three sides by the sacred mountain itself and two enormous upright crags, the Phaedriads or "Shining Ones." Their sheer cliffs seem to catch the summer's burning sunlight and intensify it across the deep, echoing gorge. Here, as if suspended in space over the river valley, exposed to the wind, air, and penetrating light, is Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, the place chosen personally by the god Apollo for his domain.
There are signs of the god's presence everywhere, and the forces of nature seem almost magnified by the deity's startling closeness. The light is brighter there, almost blinding, and at midday the luminous air seems to lift the very rocks from the earth until they burn in a blaze of holy light. At dawn and dusk, the magnificent colors that paint the landscape to the distant horizon are so pure and clear that sky and earth no longer seem to have any definable boundary. Earthquakes often rock the low-framed houses nestled into the cliff, and after dark, when nature seems to be at its most raw, thunder from distant mountain storms rolls and echoes through the gorge and across the mountainside.
Instructors of rhetoric teach that it is not wise to assume equal knowledge on the part of both reader and writer. A word of explanation is in order here, in the event that these scribblings someday fall into the hands of distant readers in lands unfamiliar with the Pythian oracle, though I can hardly imagine how far one must travel not to have heard of this wonder. It is said that in ancient times, when gods alone roamed the earth, the site of Delphi was occupied by a terrible dragon known as the Python, which from its dark lair guarded Gaia, the ancient earth goddess, and her powers to foresee the future. After man was created, Apollo, the god of art and enlightenment, wished to communicate with the mortals, but to do so he had to find a place to enter into contact with them. An ancient hymn we often used to sing in his honor during festivals tells how the god traveled from Crete riding on two dolphins until he arrived at Delphi, where he slew the dragon with his arrow, and took the oracle for his own use. From then on, he was the Lord of Delphi, known as the Pythian Apollo. He was later joined by his younger brother, the mystic god Dionysus, who resides at Delphi during the three months of the year when Apollo is taking the winter months in the northern regions. The holy oracle never speaks to human petitioners directly, but rather through the Pythia, a local Delphian priestess, usually of peasant stock, who is chosen by the temple priests at a young age and who spends her entire life in chastity and dreamlike prayer in the god's service. It was to the Pythia that Xenophon planned to address his question, and if Apollo found favor in his sacrifice and in his pureness of heart, then it would be from the Pythia's lips that the answer would be received. The legendary ambiguity of her responses, however, which were often couched in the form of riddles, usually required written interpretation by her attending priests, the prophetai.
Upon our arrival that evening Xenophon and I immediately began the task of searching for lodgings, a difficult task in this crowded season, and obtaining care for our horses. After arranging a room at a small, timeworn inn, and treating ourselves to a quick splash of water from the inn's tiny, bubbling fountain, we left to wander the enchanted streets of the holy town, guided by one of the street urchins gathered outside our inn. Xenophon had been in almost a trancelike state since arriving, in awe and wonder at being so close to the gods, and it was all I could do to keep him from walking off the edge of the cliff in his utter distraction. His eyes seemed permanently fixed on the summit of the peaks or the tops of the temples, as if expecting Apollo to arrive at any moment in bodily form to answer his query personally.
The town of Delphi itself is as much a wonder as its setting. I had always thought Athens to be the most beautiful city in the world, but Delphi is a worthy rival. Under the late-slanting autumn sun reflected from the glowing cliffs, the temples and public buildings shine and even glow with their polychromed surfaces. Xenophon and I were entranced by the contrasts between the blinding white of the building stone in the few places where it was left unadorned, and the soft pastel shades of pink, blue, and green used so effectively by the Delphians elsewhere, to emphasize the contours of the pillars and stonework. The graceful structures of the temples and gymnasiums, the porticos and fountains, the art galleries and treasuries, and even the more modest houses and inns, were all designed and constructed with the subtle elegance of a holy city.
Most eerie in the moonlight of our walk were the hundreds of bronze statues, gifts from grateful suppliants and cities, which were adorned wi
th a delicate blue and green patina produced by the moisture-laden air constantly blowing over them. Along one side of the sacred approach to the sanctuary stood a row of monumental bronzes erected by the Athenians; standing directly opposite them and casting hostile stares at their carved enemies was another series of bronzes erected by the Spartans. Every temple was surrounded by statues, which spilled onto the street corners, public fountains and gardens. There were the usual portraits of the gods, of course, but also a surprising number of sculptures of animals, which added an almost barbarian aspect to the city. Horse statues abounded, donated by winning generals from their share of the battle loot, or by winners of the chariot races at the festival of Delphi. I saw a bronze bull, offered by the people of Corfu in return for a miraculous haul of tuna during a famine several years earlier; several goats, one of them from a small tribe in thanksgiving for its delivery from the plague; and near the great altar outside the main temple a bronze wolf offered by the Delphians themselves, in honor of a beast that had killed a thief who had stolen some of the sanctuary's gold. There was even a statue of a donkey that was said to have alerted its people to an ambush. The gods apparently cherish our beastly companions as much as they do us ourselves.
The day after our arrival, and the day prior to our scheduled appointment with the oracle, we came upon Aglaia walking along a side street, her aged grandmother in tow along with a small retinue of admirers whom she had already collected. Her face was beaming and she greeted Xenophon warmly, as if they were two old friends separated for months.
"I've just come from the oracle," she announced. "I asked the Pythia exactly what you told me to ask, rather than 'whom should I marry.' And wouldn't you know it-the man that Apollo said was the richest was the very one I most wanted for a husband anyway!"
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