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The Symmetry of Delphi
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Extract
Apollo is the god of measure. “Captain of Sevens,” his cithara brought seven-stringed order to music and seven-walled order to Thebes. As god of measure, symmetry informs the myth describing his birth: amid the Cycladic islands (which the Greeks considered a circle surrounding Delos) four adamantine columns bore Delos above the foam as Leto gave birth to the shining god. And, as in the birth of the Greek god of measure, so also in the emergence of the Greek world: a strict symmetry prevails in the myth describing how the omphalos, the earth's navel stone, came to be at the locus of what was to become Apollo's sacred seat. Zeus, it was told, freed two eagles from the ends of the earth, their paths crossing at the earth's center, at Delphi. The symmetric image of this aerial encounter over the terrestrial center suggests schematically the Apolline triad: two tensional extremes and, at the point of balance, a mediating mean.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1971
References
Notes
1. Hippolytus, Ref. I, 6, 4–5; in Jaeger, Werner, Paideia, trans. Highet, Gilbert (New York, 1967), I, 157Google Scholar.
2. Furley, David J. and Allen, R.E., Studies in Presocratic Philosophy (London, 1970), I, 73Google Scholar.
3. Simplicius, Physics, 24, 17 (after Theophrastus) in Kirk, G.S. and Raven, J.E., The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1957), p. 117Google Scholar.
4. Furley, and Allen, , Studies, I, 300Google Scholar.
5. Triadic forms: koros, hybris, nemesis, as mantically manifested in the three Fates, the triform goddess, and at the point where three roads meet whereat Oedipus slew Laius under the sway of Apollo Agyieus, Apollo of the Ways.
6. Whether the temple center is the location of the omphalos is not certain. On the basis of the symmetry informing the temenos it might well be.
7. Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, trans. Manheim, Ralph (New Haven, 1957), III, 151Google Scholar.
8. Elderkin, George W., The First Three Temples at Delphi (Princton, 1962), p. 2Google Scholar.
9. Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis (Cleveland, 1962), p. 41Google Scholar.
10. In the theatre which celebrated Dionysus the central seat might have been the seat of the priest of Dionysus, though, again, as in the case of the location of the omphalos, one cannot be certain.
11. In yet one more evidence of symmetry, the stage is as wide as the stage orchestra is deep.
12. Afterword: Upon completing the article, the following schematic significance of the enigmatic third threshold came to light. Insofar as it appears to offer only a partial solution to the mystery of the third threshold, the original closing stands.
The locus of this seemingly inconsequent terminus of the threshold tripod leg lies just beyond the shrine to Gaea (XXVII), the earth goddess and original possessor of the oracular shrine at Delphi. It is at the brink of a drop in the groundlevel, and is accessible by a stairway from the great circle path. From this vantage point an angle of l/27th (Anaximander's earth/sun ratio) of a full circle gives a view between the bouleuterion (XXVI) and the Treasury of the Athenians (XI) which encompasses, exactly, the facing semicircular offering sites consecrated to the Kings of Argos (9) and to the Epigoni (8). The suppliant at the point on the path leading up to the temple of Apollo, which is at the center of this circle of offering to the two Greek cities figuring so prominently in tragic myth—the Argive and Theban cycles—is exactly as far removed from the mystic point by the shrine of Gaea as is the tragic hero in the center of the stage. This could be yet one more evidence of the close correspondence Delphi reveals between man in his life journey and man in his mythic agon: through earth they are linked in their quest for tragic insight.