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This archaeological travel article was first published in:
Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece: Everything
You Always Wanted to Know About Ancient Greek Philosophy but
didn't know who to ask.
Ed. Patricia F. O'Grady, Ashgate Publishing 2005.
'The memory of the pleasure which this spot afforded me
will not be .. easily erased. The columns... are so exquisitely
fine, the marble mass so vast and noble, that it is impossible
perhaps to conceive greater beauty and majesty in ruin'.
Richard Chandler Travels in Asia Minor 1764
The setting
A monument of enormous
proportions and grandeur, the temple of Didyma vies for the
most impressive site on Turkey's west coast. This is no gentle,
graceful shrine, quietly echoing former glories, instead it
shouts loud its power and prestige. Here as you walk beneath
soaring columns, or down dark vaulted corridors to the innermost
holy of holies, you can still feel the might and influence wielded
by the old gods.
An ancient voice
As famous in its heyday as the oracle at Delphi, Apollo's prophetess
at Didyma was visited by pilgrims from across the Greek world.
The oldest oracular responses date back 2,600 years. One inscription
answers a question whether it was right to engage in piracy
- the god's response, 'it is right to do as your fathers did'.
The site itself is older still, and like the name, Anatolian.
Even before the Greeks settled here, the location with its laurel
trees and holy spring was sacred.
The sacred way
I first visited Didyma when walking across Turkey retracing
the footsteps of Alexander the Great. Setting out from ancient
Miletus, I headed into the hills searching for the Sacred Way,
connecting city and temple, repaved by the Emperor Trajan cAD100.
It's not for the faint hearted, but if you have time, fitness,
and water, ask a villager in Akkoy if he'll take you on the
old way (eski patika) to Didyma. The statues and monuments that
once lined the route are gone (some are stored in the British
Museum), but you can still pick out the processional path, and
the waystations where pilgrims rested.
If you can't face an endurance test, the greatest section of
the Sacred Way is easier to hand, unearthed in recent times
by German archaeologists immediately north of the temple. Beside
antique baths and shops, lies a grand boulevard laid out in
giant white slabs that dazzle in the Mediterranean light. Here
you can tread the very footsteps of the ancients, the pilgrims
coming to seek Apollo's guidance, or the tourists en route to
the Great Didymeia festival held every four years.
Tourists - ancient and modern
The modern road is lined with souvenir shops and tourist touts,
but don't turn your head in dismay. Little has changed. 2,000
years ago, travellers would have run the gauntlet of local guides,
the exegetai 'explainers' who took them around for a fee, and
the trinket sellers, with their Apollo pots, or miniature temples
- silver for the wealthy, terracotta for the masses.
'the mighty ruins lie as they originally fell, piled up like
shattered icebergs' Sir Charles Newton 1863
Excavation
Didyma
Medusa
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A few centuries back,
the temple was almost hidden from view, covered in a mound of
detritus following an earthquake. Now the temple stands completely
exposed. Great Ionic capitals with swirling volutes lie scattered
about. Enormous Medusa heads that decorated an architrave atop
the columns sit prone on the ground.
The Didymeia festival
Walk around to the west where a collapsed column lies, its segments
like giant fallen dominoes. Imagine it re-erected into the sky
along with the other 119 columns that surrounded the temple
- a vast sacred grove turned to stone. Strolling back along
the south side, picture the festival in full swing, the songs
of poets in the air, and the steps beside you crammed with spectators
watching athletes race in the stadium.Quite how the oracle functioned
remains obscure:
The oracle in action
The... singer of prophecies, is filled with divine radiance,
either when holding a rod ... originally handed over by some
god, or sitting on an axon (tripod ?) she foretells the future,
or dampening her feet ... or breathing from the water, she receives
the god. Iamblichus De Mysteriis 3.11
Persian destruction
Her prophecies were written down, there was even a place for
them to be transcribed, the 'chresmographeion', but where this
was, and where supplicants waited eagerly for answers is unclear.
We do know that Apollo's mouthpiece fell silent at times. 2,500
years ago Didyma was sacked and looted, either by the Persian
king Darius following the area's revolt in 494, or by Xerxes
after the invasion of Greece in 479.
The Branchidae
The priests who administered the temple, the Branchidae (named
after Branchus, a shepherd seduced by Apollo and given the power
of divination) willingly handed over the treasures, including
Apollo's bronze statue. Their sacrilege was infamous in antiquity.
They were resettled by the Persian king in Central Asia, and
their descendants extraordinarily discovered by Alexander the
Great north of Afghanistan in 329BC. For their ancestors' act
of treason he killed all the men and sold the rest into slavery.
Into the holy of holies
Next, walk through the porch, and single out the column bases
carved in the most stunning designs, a feature almost unique
in the Greek world. Down one of the dark passages, you'll come
into the temple's heart, its cella. So large, Strabo reports
that to roof it proved impossible. Instead it was left open,
a court planted with laurel, Apollo's hallowed tree, with a
shrine housing the god's image and sacred spring.
Alexander the Great
After 150 years silence, the spring magically gushed again and
the oracle spoke forth when Alexander the Great liberated the
region from Persian control. The prophetess declared Alexander
'born of Zeus' and forecast his triumph over Persia. One of
his successors, Seleucus, returned the stolen Apollo statue
from Persia c300BC, and set to work rebuilding the temple you
see today.
Unfinished work
For nearly 700 years it remained a building site, with up to
8 architects and 20 construction companies working simultaneously.
But this vast wonder was never finished. Alongside knife-edge
masonry remain protruding nodules inscribed with Greek letters,
referring to the workmen who worked on a block, but never dressed
it smooth. Even unfinished, it was considered in antiquity one
of the greatest of all Greek temples. It is without doubt one
of the biggest.
The old gods outlawed
Didyma's end came in 385AD with the edict of Theodosius:
'no mortal man shall have the effrontery to encourage vain
hopes by the inspection of entrails, or (which is worse) attempt
to learn the future by the detestable consultation of oracles.'
Apollo's oracle was silenced forever, and a Christian church
erected in the temple's cella.
Visit Didyma
Why not go and see Didyma for yourself. Peter will personally
show you around the ancient temple on our
Halicarnassus to Ephesus cruise
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