Geography

​Wealth, even if it is sacred, is a target for envy and difficult to guard. At any rate, at the present time, the temple at Delphi is extremely poor as far as money is concerned, but of the votive offerings, some have been taken away, though most of them remain. Previously, the temple was extremely wealthy, just as Homer has said: “Nor all the wealth that the stone threshold of the Archer, Phoebus Apollo, contains within, in rocky Pytho,” and the treasuries show this, as does the plunder made by the Phocians, from which the Phocian and so-called Sacred War was kindled. Now, this plunder took place in the time of Philip, the son of Amyntas; but they suspect another, ancient plunder before this, which carried away the wealth mentioned by Homer. For not even a trace of it was preserved down to the later times in which Onomarchus and Phayllus plundered the temple, but the things carried off then were of a later date than those ancient riches. For they had been deposited in treasuries, dedicated from spoils, and preserved inscriptions containing also the names of those who dedicated them, such as of Gyges, Croesus, the Sybarites, and the Spinites around the Adriatic, and likewise in the case of the others; thus, it is not likely that the old wealth was mixed up with them. Moreover, other places show this, having been plundered by these same men. But some, taking “aphetor” to mean “treasury”, and “the threshold of the aphetor” to mean a underground hoard, say that that wealth was buried in the temple, and that when Onomarchus and his men attempted to dig it up by night, great earthquakes occurred, so they fled outside the temple and ceased their excavation, which also instilled in others a fear of such an enterprise.

​Now, of the temples, the first, made of wings, must be placed among the myths; the second they say was the work of Trophonius and Agamedes; and the present one was built by the Amphictyons. In the sacred precinct is shown the tomb of Neoptolemus, built in accordance with an oracle, after Machaireus, a Delphian, had slain him; as the myth says, because he was demanding satisfaction from the god for his father’s murder, but as is plausible, because he made an attack on the temple. And they say that Branchus, who presided over the temple at Didyma, was a descendant of Machaireus.

​The ancient contest at Delphi was of citharodes singing a paean to the god; and the Delphians established it. But after the Crisaean War, the Amphictyons, in the time of Eurylochus, arranged equestrian and athletic contests for a crown, and called them the Pythian Games. And they added to the citharodes both players of the aulos and of the cithara without song, who were to perform a melody which is called the Pythian Nomos. Its parts are five: the prelude, the trial, the onset, iambics and dactyls, and the pipes. Now Timosthenes, the admiral of Ptolemy the Second, who also compiled the work on harbors in ten books, composed this music. He intends to celebrate through the melody the contest of Apollo against the dragon, representing the introduction as the prelude, the first attempt of the contest as the trial, the contest itself as the onset, the victory song with such rhythms as the iambics and dactyls (of which the one is suited to hymns and the iambic to abuse), and the expiration of the beast as the pipes, they imitating its last hissing as it expires.