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Didyma is located
near the village of Yenihisar (Yoran) near the town of Söke in the
province of Aydın in the Aegean region. Here one finds an important
sanctuary that housed one of the oracles of Apollo. It was connected
to Miletus by sea, and those arriving by ship would land at the
harbour of Panormus and thence follow the Sacred way to Didyma.
Until its destruction by the Persians in 494 B.C. it was administered by
the family of the Branchidae, the descendants of Bronchos, a youth
beloved of Apollo. For the last two kilometers the Sacred Way was
lined with seated statues of the male and female members of the
Branchidae family. After his capture of Miletus in 334 B. C.
Alexander the Great placed the administration of the oracle in the
hands of the city of Miletus. In 331 B.C. the oracle proclaimed
Alexander "the son of Zeus". In 300 B.C. the Milesians embarked on
the construction of the largest temple in the Greek world. Although
work continued until the middle of the 2nd century A.D. the temple
was never finished. Later, a church and other buildings were
constructed, while the Byzantines built a barracks in which troops
were garrisoned. The buildings were damaged by fire and in the 15th
century further damage was caused by a great earthquake. The Temple
of Apollo (Didymaion) was the largest and wealthiest Ionic temple in
Anatolia and was renowned for its holy relics, its treasury, its
sacred spring and sacred laurel grove. Investigations in the Temple
of Apollo were first undertaken in 1834 by the French traveller
Charles Texier and the English archaeologist Charles T. Newton, who
had conducted the excavations at Halicarnassus.
The first excavations were begun in 1904 by Theodor Wiegand under the
auspices of the Berlin Museum and continued until 1913. Since 1962
excavations have been conducted by Klaus Tucheld on behalf of the
German Archaeological Institute.
The first Temple of Apollo was built in the Archaic period and the
Hellenistic temple which succeeded this was built on the foundations
of the earlier building, materials from which were used in the
construction. The temple we see today is an Ionic structure
measuring 60 x 118 m, with a dipteral arrangement of two rows of
columns with 21 on each side and 10 at each end. The columns are of
various styles with pedestals adorned with reliefs. These columns
support an architrave surmounted by a frieze decorated with acanthus
leaves and Gorgon (Medusa) heads. The high pronaos at the top of a
monumental flight of steps leads into a naos with two columns, which
gives access to the sacred area or cella in the form of an open
courtyard surrounded by high walls with columns and containing a
small Ionic temple which housed the statue of the god. Didyma was
never a large city and its fame was closely connected with the
existence of a sacred spring and the temple founded over it. The
ancient Greeks merely took over the already existing sanctuary and
reorganised it.
Didyma was connected to Miletus by the Sacred Way, the latter part
of which was lined with sarcophagi and statues of lions and
sphinxes. The Branchidae family was responsible for the maintenance
of the Sacred Way.
The remains of the earliest temple, which lie within the later building,
have been dated to the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. These consist of a
sacred wall measuring approximately 24 x 10 m, an open-air
sanctuary, a portico 16 m in length, a sacred well and a votive
altar.
SUPPLIANTS TO THE
TEMPLE
After traversing
the entire length of the Sacred Way, all suppliants to the temple
would assemble in front of the building and purify themselves with
the water from the sacred well. They were then obliged to pay a
certain tax proportionate to the seriousness of their request. For a
private affair one had to pay eleven times the standard tax. It was
then necessary to sacrifice an animal, frequently a goat, in order
to learn whether or not the god was willing to receive the
suppliant's request.
Before the sacrifice, cold water was thrown over the animal. If the
animal showed no reaction the whole process had to be repeated. The
suppliant then entered the naos and addressed his question to the
priest. If there were a large number of suppliants the next to be
received was chosen by lot. The priests then entered the inner
temple and communicated the question to the priestess of Apollo who
had prepared herself by fasting for several days and purifying
herself with water from the holy well. The priestess in the inner
sanctuary would drink the water from the sacred well, chew bay
leaves and inhale the gases rising from the well.
She would then begin to utter apparently meaningless words and sounds,
which would be interpreted by the priests, the oracle being written
in understandable language in the chresmographeion, or oracle
office, a building located immediately adjacent to the pronaos. All
the words uttered by the priestess were subsequently communicated to
the suppliant by a priest or priests.
Legend has it that it was in this way that Alexander the Great learned of
his coming victory over the Persians.
The pronaos, or forecourt, to which access is given by thirteen steps,
contains twelve columns. The ceiling decorations were of great
magnificence, and the columns of quite exceptional height. It was
here that the suppliants waited for the oracle of Apollo.
Oracular divination was the art of foretelling the future through the
power of the god mediated by the observation of natural events or
objects. Divination in some form or another has been known in all
countries in all ages and spread throughout the Western world in the
form of astrology. It is popularly known as ``fortune-telling".
Oracular divination rests on conclusions drawn on the basis of
observation and interpretation. In the case of divination based on
observation, recourse is had to the examination of accidental
phenomena interpreted by intuition. The soothsayer who examines the
intestines of the sacrificial animal, its shoulder-blade or its
footprints in ashes was obliged to take special measures to ensure
the truth of the oracular pronouncement. The signs chosen for
observation by the ancient Greek and Roman soothsayers included
lightning, thunder, the night and call of birds and sacred fowls, as
well as accidental phenomena such as the spilling of salt, sneezing
or stumbling.
The term "oracle", which is derived from the Latin "orare", to speak, was
used both for the relation between the soothsayer and the god, and
the place where the divination was performed. One of the oldest
oracles was that of Apollo at Delphi on the skirts of Mt Parnassus
at the top of the gulf of Corinth. At first the oracle belonged to
Gaia, the goddess of the earth.
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