It’s All Greek To Me – Greg and Mandy's Travels

‘In your country, you say “It’s All Greek To Me”’, said our guide. ‘Here we say “It’s All Chinese To Me”’.

That set the tone for the tour. We were off to Delphi for the day. “Delphi?”, you say. Yep, Delphi. Home to Apollo and the rest of the clan. Let me explain. Well, actually, I’m not sure if I can – at least clearly. As we were told, there are hundreds of Greek legends, and each of them has hundreds of variations, so I guess I could tell you anything, and it has a pretty good chance of being right.

But the distilled bones of it all is that the chief Greek God, and father of all other Gods was Zeus. He was born of two Titans, the divine descendants of the sky and the earth in a legend remarkably similar to the first few verses of Genesis. He gave birth to all of the other Gods including his wife who was his daughter, and whenever he had another daughter he had more children, or his sons had more children with their sisters, or both, if you get my drift.

So, eventually there were hundreds of Gods, but the three we seem to have to worry most about are Zeus (king of the Gods, ruler of Mt Olympus and God of the sky), Apollo (God of light, truth, philosophy and the arts), and Athena (god of wisdom and warfare). They were three of the twelve major Gods called Olympians because they resided in Mount Olympus, which we didn’t go to. They became the major Gods when Zeus led them all out to fight the previous major Gods known as the Titans who, of course, were their parents (or step parents) and their parent’s siblings.

Got all of that?

We catch up with Zeus and Athena tomorrow in Athens, but today was Apollo’s day, as we went to Delphi where the Greeks had erected the temple of Apollo, and the oracles of Delphi lived. We’re basically talking about the 5th century B.C., or thereabouts. Whenever somebody had a favour to seek of the gods, or a question to ask, they would make the trip from Athens with their gift or offering, which is how the place got so wealthy, and ask the virgin high priestess known as the Oracle of Delphi to intercede. One of the main stories claimed that the priestess delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapours rising from a chasm in the rock, or the brew of local plants, and that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as enigmatic prophecies, subtly designed so that you could read into them whatever answer you were hoping for – the origin of our modern horoscopes really.

Of course Apollo wasn’t the first at that site. According to earlier myths, the office of the oracle was initially possessed by the goddesses Themis and Phoebe, and the site was initially sacred to Gaia. Subsequently, a new god of prophecy, Apollo, allegedly seized the temple and expelled the twin guardian serpents of Gaia, whose bodies he wrapped around the caduceus, which we still use as a symbol today.

The temple survived until AD 390, when the Roman emperor Theodosius I silenced the oracle by destroying the temple and most of the statues and works of art to remove all traces of paganism. Didn’t hurt that it also swelled the coffers of the Romans at the same time. Basically buried by natural causes, and pretty much forgotten, the site was unearthed in the 1890s, and restoration began.

A long bus ride. After being picked up from various hotels around Athens, we were sliced and diced into our tour groups, and off we set. With one comfort break, we arrived late morning and did a guided tour of the site before having some free time. Then it was in to the museum at the site for a tour of the various artifacts that had been dug up and moved into the museum to preserve them. Finally, about 2:30 we were given some time for lunch before beginning the long bus ride back to the city. We got back to the apartment about 8:30 after a torturous drop off schedule to all the other hotels. Even the guide abandoned the bus before we got dropped off.