Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/269

 DELPHIAN ORACLE. 253 fion of it into Pan-Hellenic notoriety (as I have already remark- ed), the first multiplication of the subjects of competition, and the first introduction of a continuous record of the conquerors, date only from the time when it came under the presidency of the Amphiktyons, at the close of the Sacred "War against Kirrha. What is called the first Pythian contest coincides with the third year of the 48th Olympiad, or 585 B. c. From that period for- ward, the games become crowded and celebrated : but the date just named, nearly two centuries after the first Olympiad, is a proof that the habit of periodical frequentation of festivals, by numbers and from distant parts, grew up but slowly in the Gre- cian world. The foundation of the temple of Delphi itself reaches far be- yond all historical knowledge, forming one of the aboriginal in- stitutions of Hellas. It is a sanctified and wealthy place, even in the Iliad : the legislation of Lykurgus at Sparta is introduced under its auspices, and the earliest Grecian colonies, those of Sicily and Italy in the eighth century D. c., are established in consonance with its mandate. Delphi and Dodona appear, ir. the most ancient circumstances of Greece, as universally vene- rated oracles and sanctuaries : and Delphi not only receives honors and donations, but also answers questions, from Lydians, Phry- gians, Etruscans, Romans, etc. : it is not exclusively Hellenic. One of the valuable services which a Greek looked for from this and other great religious establishments was, that it should resolve his doubts in cases of perplexity, that it should advise him whether to begin a new, or to persist in an old project, that it should foretell what would be his fate under given circumstances, and inform him, if suffering under distress, on what conditions solar and lunar coincidence was known to the Greeks in the earliest times of their mythical antiquity, or before the year 600 n. c. See Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologic, vol. i. p. 366 ; vol. ii. p. 607. The practice of the Eleians to celebrate the Olympic games alternately after forty-nine and fifty lunar months, though attested for a later time by the Scholiast on Pindar, is not proved to be old. The fact that there were ancient octennial recurring festivals, does not establish a knowledge of the properties of the octaeteric or ennaeteric period : nor does it seem to me that the details of the Boeotian ticKpvriQopia, described in Proclus ap. Photinm, sect. 239, are very ancient. See, on the old mythical Octaeteris, 0. Miiller, Orchomenos 218. scqq. } and Krause, Di Pythien, Xcmeen, und Isthmien, sect. 4, p. 22.