Greece: In the land of the gods: The glories of Delphi

We have all fallen in love with our local tour guide in Delphi. Her name is Penny Kolomvotsou; she has curly brown hair and is wearing a beige leather jacket and jeans. Her phone is ringing incessantly and she keeps rejecting the calls and apologizing to us.

“Boyfriend?” I ask, one in a group of 30-plus travel executives and journalists from around Southeast Asia. “Go ahead and answer it.”

 â€œI have a husband and two children,” Penny says with a laugh. “I don’t have to pick up my phone.”

But the caller is persistent. Penny finally answers. “It’s Sabrina,” she says, referring to our Insight Vacations travel director Sabrina Tsimonidis from Siva Travel Services. “She’s asking where the handbrake is.”

Sabrina drives a manual; Penny drives an automatic. Sabrina is going to pick up some bottles of wine for a picnic in Thermopylae by the statue of King Leonidas of Sparta; Penny is orienting us at the Delphi Museum before we were to go up to the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on Mt. Parnassos, home to the most famous of sacred sites, the Oracle of Delphi.

Sabrina tells us later that not too long ago she was in her living room with the History Channel on her TV when she heard a familiar voice. She looked up and it was Penny, who has been interviewed for several documentaries to talk about Delphi and why it was the center of not just Ancient Greece but the whole known universe.

This is our fourth stop to see the Glories of Greece, one of the Greece itineraries Insight Vacations offers. Sabrina says that people who go to Greece sometimes forget the mainland. They go to Athens and then head for the islands such as Mykonos and Santorini (an itinerary that Insight also offers, by the way).

But to really see and fully understand Ancient Greece, you need someone like Sabrina, you need someone like Penny. You need to travel through the mainland. Only then do you begin to understand that this is the where, what, why and how of Greece and, ultimately, who. Who were the Ancient Greeks that they had so much influence on the world? And even as they were ahead of everybody else in medicine, language, philosophy and democracy, they still believed that their future could be foretold in Delphi.  

The Oracle of Delphi, Penny explains, refers to the whole complex— the series of terraces in the foothills of Mount Parnassos — and not just the priestess it.

From the museum we go up the archeological site at Delphi. This site was said to be determined by Zeus himself who wanted to find the center of the Earth or Gaia. Penny says that Zeus sent two eagles flying from opposite directions — one coming from the east and one from the west — and the point where the met was over Delphi, where the “navel” of Gaia was found.

The temple here is dedicated to Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto,  and it is also here where the Pythian Games were held, the precursor to the Ancient Olympics. The games did not have just athletes competing but also musicians, and the victors were presented with laurel crowns because Apollo believed they were sacred.

We climb to the top of the Oracle of Delphi, up to the stadium. It is so quiet here, surrounded by mountains, and it is nearly empty except for us. Below us, what  remains of the Temple of Apollo, where vapors once came out of the cracks in the mountain, which might partly explain the hallucinations of the Pythia, whose answers to questions of people’s future was anything but simple.

Your imagination starts to run as wild as your uncertainties in life: What would you ask the priestess?  So, so many questions you want answered — and like the ancient kings, you want to know the outcome of the most important things in your life.

The Oracle of Delphi was, if you will, a great equalizer. The kings sent their trusted people here to ask what they should do to win wars, to protect their thrones, the outcome of battles. The important stuff to important people, in short.

But archeologists also found tablets on which ordinary folk wrote their petitions and questions: Is my wife cheating? Will harvest be plentiful? Is this baby mine? The important stuff to ordinary people, as well.  

Penny tells us that the site was once occupied by a village until they were relocated and archeologists began a systematic excavation. They had discovered the Roman ruins before and what was under these? The Greek ruins.

What a magnificent sight it must have been, you think, as you approach the mountains — 5,000 statues surrounding the Temple of Apollo and 500 bronze statues that were looted by the Romans. “The Oracle at Delphi was not just looted by the Romans and Persians, but also by bad neighbors — by the locals, by neighboring city states,” says Penny. But thankfully, some people had the foresight to bury some of the treasures — forgotten for thousands of years.

“Archeologists always make decisions on which layer to keep and which layer to damage,” says Penny. “When they first came to Delphi and didn’t have the big equipment, they made the wise decision to leave it as it is. In 1939, archeologists had to go back to fix broken stones, which gave them the opportunity to dig and this is what they found accidentally — gold-and-ivory statues of Apollo, his sister Artemis and their mother Leto.”

The ivory part of the statues is now black from the vapors, but the gold (reconstructed as it is — as most of the treasures they excavated) is as awe-inspiring as it must have been then — glittering in a temple dedicated to a beloved god.

It is only in Delphi that we understand what all this means to modern life, how mythology and Greek drama were and are relevant.

Penny doesn’t quote Homer or Socrates or Plato. She quotes Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek, whom I began reading at university in the early ‘90s, specifically his 1953 novel The Last Temptation of Christ.

“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free,” were Kazantzakis’s most famous words, now immortalized on his tomb as well. 

“But they don’t tell us what is required to become fearless,” says Penny.

Even when the Pythia at Delphi — presumably high from the vapors and ready to tell fortunes — told the kings and soldiers they would die horrible deaths in battle, they still picked up their armors and swords and went to war.

Fearless.

Penny points out something else. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi was where Apollo was worshipped the most (the center of the ancient world, remember?) And yet he shared Delphi with another god — a lesser god no less — Dionysus (or Bacchus in the Roman version). 

Apollo was the god of music, poetry, catharsis, logic. How is it, in his biggest temple, he shares it with Dionysus, god of wine and merriment?

Penny says that in front of the temple of Apollo, the Ancient Greeks had inscribed two things: “Know thyself” and “Nothing to the extremes.”

She continues, “When Achilles was going to war, his mother asked him, ‘What are you going to do? If you go to war, you will die. Stay at home and become a normal person with a family.’ He said, ‘No, my decision is to become mortal and I am going.’ Remember Hector? When he was holding his baby and his wife tells him, ‘There are other brave soldiers who will go out and fight. Stay with us.’ But with his baby, he stood up and said, ‘I’m going because it is my duty.’”

Penny loves telling these stories. “Always, it is about balance. There is a choice. You see how beautiful that is? My future is not dictated by any god, but if it is not, then who am I, where am I? With Greeks you find opposite sides within. This is the cornerstone of Hellenistic drama compared to Roman. Greeks try to understand what is causing something. How do you correct a wrong situation if you don’t know what caused it, like Oedipus and Jocasta? (He ends up marrying his mother, not knowing who she is, and in the end she commits suicide and he blinds himself.) You become the hero of your own life. The Oracle at Delphi had to do with war, peace, morals and ethics. The answers are not necessarily yes or no, but they require discussion and debate.” 

And speaking of debate, Penny tells us that in May she is going to be tour-guiding a group of philosophers from Germany. “They are discussing the European crisis, but not just economics, but also principles and values. They have examined Plato and want to focus on everything.”

She makes a face and laughs. Thirty philosophers. 

Oh joy!

Last year, I visited the British Museum in London with my friend Brendan. We have an ongoing discussion about patrimony and the repatriation of treasures from countries that stole them. We were walking in what the museum calls the Department of Greece and Rome, admiring the detailed sculptures, and later in the Ancient Egypt and Sudan hall where the Rosetta Stone is displayed. Should the Rosetta Stone be in Egypt or England? Should these ancient statues be in Greece or Italy or England?

I said Britain should return the treasures its archeologists had stolen; he said they shouldn’t lest they become victims of political or religious turmoil and the treasures would be lost for eternity. They are safe in Britain, he argued, the countries they got them from were not ready to keep them safe.

But Greece is ready. It has been for many years.

Its archeological museums in Athens, Olympia and Delphi are beautiful, modern and efficiently designed buildings.

I was so convinced of my argument that rich countries that hold the treasures should view them as under their temporary custodianship rather than ownership. That is, until a few weeks ago — on our last night in Greece.

We are in a traditional Greek restaurant in Plaka, the old quarter of Athens that is located just below the Acropolis. I am seated beside Insight Greece and Siva Travel Services managing director Miltos Spyromilios and we are talking about the Greek statues at the Louvre in Paris.

So I ask him the same question on the issue of repatriation that I have been asking some of our tour guides.

Miltos smiles and says, “But we have so many. If it makes people interested in Greece enough to want to come here, then let those other countries keep them.”

I have never thought of it from this perspective because I haven’t been to Greece before. But he wants people to see the country’s riches wherever they are. And it is true, Greece does have an embarrassment of riches from the ancient world.

In Olympia, our guide Nikki says thousands of statues and artifacts in gold were removed when Christianity was brought to the country by the Romans. At different points of history, Olympia was set on fire, buried under seven meters of mud, but the triumphs of the Ancient Olympians have been retold through the ages. How the athletes (sponsored by the city states) were also soldiers and wars temporarily stopped during the games. At Zeus’s Temple, they used 200 kilos of gold and diamonds for the 12-meter seated statue, ivory for his face, arms, torso and legs. 

Even in the small towns, they have ruins that date back thousands of years, archeological museums, statuary along the streets and small memorials.

The mainland’s riches are not only sanctuaries or monuments from the ancient times — there are also those that were built for isolation and contemplation.

Meteora, which means “middle of the sky,” is a beautiful place that holds some of the most important Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Greece. There are six huge monasteries built on top of mountains.

The one we visit is the Holy Monastery of Varlaam, built in 1548 and the second largest monastery in the Meteora complex. It has exactly seven monks.

Our local guide Dina Papaefthimiou tells us that the monks spend eight hours a day chanting, and the other 16 are spent meditating, praying, doing chores, sleeping. They get up at 4 a.m. They used to farm but have given up the monastery’s farm, which is now run by locals.

We climb the tower and see how supplies used to be brought up — when there were neither tourists nor a town below — a cage with pulleys and rope is lowered to the ground and then hoisted up with a wooden wheel.

You cannot imagine how the two monks — Theofanis and Matteo — that founded this monastery built it. Or how other monks did the one next door, the Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron, the largest of the monasteries and built in the 14th century. It has even fewer monks than Vaarlam — only four monks.

There is simplicity about everything here, except for the church built 400 years ago. The frescos depicting Bible stories are gilded in gold .

There used to be 24 monasteries around here with about 80 to a hundred monks, now there are only six monasteries with fewer than 10 monks each, from 35 to 80 years old.

Monastic life may be on the decline, says Dina, but they are up to speed with technology — they have mobile phones and Internet. The tourists don’t see them (except for the one manning the souvenir shops where they sell wooden icons).

Now their monastic life is lived alongside tourism. They built it — and people have come. It wasn’t their intention, of course. They did build their monasteries suspended in the air precisely to get away from people. But the monks should have known, something as beautiful as these quiet places of worship would attract people even if they have to climb up hundreds of steps to reach the top.

Just like in Ancient Greece.

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