Delphi: The Bellybutton of the Ancient World Page #6

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meant the end of their independence.

But Greece's prestige meant that

Roman leaders still found it useful

to emphasise their power at Delphi

with a series of

magnificent monuments.

More over, their religious outlook

was very similar, so some of

the sanctuary's most beautiful

treasures date from that time.

The stadium was rebuilt in stone

and the temple of Apollo restored.

They even expanded the gymnasium

and added a characteristically

Roman plunge pool.

Yet something had changed.

Delphi was no longer

in the political mainstream.

By the 1st century AD, we find even

Plutarch and his friends lamenting

that the Oracle was no longer

the political arbiter it had been.

But even though the Oracle

was no longer being heeded

on the international stage,

Delphi still had its place.

Even the most important people in

the Hellenistic and Roman worlds

tried to justify their importance

by placing themselves here at Delphi.

The irony of those mottos "know thyself"

and "nothing in excess" continued.

But then something happened which did

finally bring a halt to Delphi's story,

and to understand what that was,

we need to go a very long way indeed.

In the fourth century AD,

the Roman emperor Constantine

converted to Christianity.

He founded a new capital

for the Empire.

It's now known as Istanbul,

but the emperor renamed it

Constantinople, after himself.

And it was a Christian capital.

Not longer afterwards,

one of his successors

banned divination

in the political field.

And a decade after that,

another Roman emperor banned

the ancient gods completely.

In 360AD, the last pagan

emperor, Julian,

sent a question to the

Oracle back at Delphi.

But the sources say that this

was the only response he received.

"Tell the king the fair-wrought

hall has fallen to the ground.

"The water of speech,

even, is quenched."

The Oracle at Delphi

had finally fallen silent.

Now a museum, once a mosque,

this building began life

as a great church of Hagia Sophia.

It was built by one of

Constantine's successors

as the state church of

the new Christian empire.

The emperors decreed that the

centre of the world, the Ompholos,

was no longer in Delphi.

It was here.

The emperors were crowned here in

Hagia Sophia,

in a place they

called the Omphalion.

The architecture and symbolism

here show all too clearly

how the world of classical Greece

had been transformed forever.

This place's name,

Hagia Sophia, means holy wisdom.

But not the kind of wisdom,

that edgy self-awareness,

that was on display at Delphi.

Here, that wisdom is part of

monotheistic religious orthodoxy,

and the politics it represents

isn't that of the showing off and

elbow shoving of the classical Greeks.

Here, it's all about an absolute,

incontestable autocracy.

And in that very new world,

the Ompholos

is now the place where the Byzantine

emperors themselves were crowned.

But, astonishingly,

here in this city,

there is still a direct

link back to the days

when Delphi had been the

centre of the ancient world.

In the emperor's new capital,

there had to be a stadium

for chariot races.

Bigger and better than racetracks

anywhere else, including Rome.

With, in the middle where

everyone could see it,

cultural booty

from all round the empire.

And from Delphi they brought perhaps

the most potent symbol of all,

the serpent column, symbol of Greek

unity and of Greece's heroic past.

And here it is,

battered and broken, imprisoned,

overshadowed by the obelisks

on either side, forgotten.

The serpent column of Plataea,

from the fifth century BC that stood

opposite the temple

of Apollo at Delphi.

And the names still

just barely legible

on the coils of those cities

and states who came together

to fight against

the Persian invasion of Greece.

You know, I often wonder that

if the bronze and stones of

the ancient world could talk,

what would they say to us?

This creature would have

a lot of stories to tell.

Not just the 800 years it spent at

Delphi, but its history after that.

It came here to Constantinople,

modern day Istanbul,

and was placed in

the Hippodrome,

the charioteers it saw

racing round it, the wars,

the crusades, got turned into

a fountain at one point.

It's an incredibly sad sight to

see it now, today,

forgotten in something almost

akin to a bit of rubbish dump.

But we have to remember, this piece

is almost 2,500 years old.

And, for me, that makes it

a miracle that it's here at all.

For this small town

on the side of a Greek mountain,

it's been an astonishing career.

Delphi has been a local shrine and

an arbiter of international events.

A focus of national unity and an

arena for intense political rivalry.

And its messages, "know thyself"

and "nothing in excess,"

still reverberate.

For me, the message is actually

think about yourselves in relation

to others and understand yourselves.

Delphi is referred to in the

ancient world often as a theatron,

their word for spectacle,

out word for theatre.

A place where people

came to watch, but also to be seen,

to discuss, to debate, to think about

themselves and the world around them.

And Delphi is still

doing that for us today.

It's broadcasting many different

messages to many different people.

But for me, it's about that

double-edgedness that Delphi has,

that ambiguity and yet clarity,

that unity and yet rivalry,

the constant reinvention

of what Delphi is that forces the

question and reflection back on us.

It makes us think about ourselves,

our limitations and, ultimately,

about our own humanity.

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