Delphi



My final destination on my tour of Greece was a place I had been most looking forward to seeing: Delphi. I had always found the legends surrounding Delphi to be fascinating.




In pre-Olympian times, the site was a place of worship for the Earth Goddess Gaia. Legend tells how the site was protected by Gaia's child, a mighty python named Pythia, that was killed by Apollo when he commandeered the site for his own worship. Following this, oracles at Delphi were said to be able to channel the voice of Apollo after becoming intoxicated by fumes from a fissure in the earth, fumes released perhaps by the decaying body of Pythia himself.



Greek rulers would often come to Delphi to ask the oracles questions of the future. Even Alexander the Great went there before conquering the whole of his empire. Leaders would build temples, tripods, or storehouses for offerings at Delphi and soon the site became riddled with temples, a theater, and even a stadium.



The visitor of today has a wealth of archaeology to explore, with most of the temples reconstructed and ready for the meandering tourists who venture this way. The museum is similarly well-developed and full of elaborately detailed friezes and statues. Above all, however, the site itself - a cedar-dotted terrain of mountains and cliffs falling sharply away to the rivers and sea below - is truly breathtaking. Even if there were no mystic oracle here, one can see why the Ancient Greeks would have chosen this spot as a place to build a temple to worship the Earth Mother.





For me, this was an ideal place to make my last destination in Greece. I was able at least to lose myself in Hellenic antiquity and imagine what the Greece of Homer and Plato must have truly been like: a Greece of severe beauty, timeless legends, and the impending judgment of the gods.