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Didyma FROM
the temple of Apollo Delphinios at Miletos a paved Sacred Way led south for 15
km to the oracular temple of Apollo at Didyma. Although extensive areas of
ancient habitation have been uncovered near the temple, the site belonged to
Miletos and was never an autonomous city. The oracle is very ancient. According
to Pausanias, it was in operation before the Greeks arrived around 1000 BC; some
eighth century BC structures have been detected, and inscriptions begin around
600 BC. Croesus king of Lydia was a client, and made gifts to the shrine at
around the time that the archaic temple was being built in about 560 BC. This
was destroyed in 494 BC when the Persians crushed a revolt of the Ionian cities,
and the cult-statue of Apollo was carried off to Persia. After the conquests of
Alexander nearly two centuries later, the statue was returned and work finally
began on a new temple in about 300 BC. This was the structure which we see
today; work continued for 500 years and the temple was never fully completed, as
the absence of fluting from some columns shows (compare the temple of Olympian
Zeus in Athens, begun in the sixth century BC and not completed until the second
AD). The oracle flourished in the first and second centuries AD under imperial
patronage, but declined in the third century, doubtless because of the spread of
Christianity; it finally closed after the edict of Theodosius in AD 385 banning
pagan oracles.
The temple cannot fail to impress for its sheer size (109 × 51m; only the
Artemision at Ephesos and the Heraion at Samos were bigger), and harmony of
proportion. The heart of the complex was a sacred spring, from which the
prophetess drew her inspiration; this and the cult-statue of Apollo were
enclosed in a small Ionic temple. Only traces of these features survive, but a
bay-tree, sacred to Apollo, has recently been planted there. Above tower the
unroofed high walls of the cella. From the east end of the cella an imposing
flight of steps led to the chresmographeion, the oracle-office, where the
utterances of the prophetess were turned into verse (sometimes prose) for
delivery to the client; two vaulted passages, probably used in cult ceremonies,
also lead from the courtyard below the chresmographeion and out to the porch in
front of the temple. In front of the porch between the antae (the projecting
side walls of the courtyard) were twelve massive columns, and all round the
outside there was a double row of columns on a stepped base; some of these lie
where they were toppled in an earthquake. A circular altar and a lustral well
stood in front of the temple. The place must have been awe-inspiring in
antiquity.
Every four years the festival of the Great Didymeia was held here, with musical,
dramatic and athletic contests; the south steps of the temple served as the
seats of a stadium which lies immediately alongside, and names scratched into
them attest the reservation of places.
On our way north from Didyma, we see on our right a stretch of the Sacred Way
currently under excavation by German archaeologists. Charles Newton had
excavated part of the Way in the 1850s, and some of the seated 6th century BC
statues which lined it are now in the British Museum.
WESTMINSTER CLASSIC TOURS