URSABLOG: Consulting The Oracle

I don’t know what I was looking for, if indeed I was looking for anything at all, but as the weekend wore on it seemed that my search was being frustrated at every turn.

My youngest sister, Eleanor, who is in town for a few days from the UK, expressed a desire to visit Delphi. I didn’t need asking twice as it is one of my favourite places in the world. So I hired a car and booked somewhere for us to stay in Galaxidi, a picturesque port down by the sea. We set off Saturday lunchtime in good weather but as we got past Thiva the rain started. Undeterred, we pushed on, pausing only to pay our respects to the civilian dead at the poignant and impressive Monument to the Fallen at Karakolithos.

We were not tempted by the fleshpots of Arachova, but as we drove on Google Maps kept flashing up that there was no way through at Delphi. I ignored it of course – arrogant man that I am – as I had driven this road before and would drive it again. But by then a nagging memory of rock falls or something was beeping away in my brain, and lo and behold we were stopped just before the Tholos. By then the rain was really pouring down.

Google Maps showed a way down to Galaxidi, so we followed that Oracle’s instructions, but the road became a track, which then became small streams. Winding and turning, bumping and bouncing, we passed through a bucolic landscape lashed by rain, praying to the gods of the road that we would not get a puncture so far from civilisation, ancient or modern. Eventually we found a way through, and arrived in Galaxidi in time for a late lunch (for Greece) or early dinner (for tourists). I was not sure which camp we were in.

Prior to dinner (we had settled on being tourists) we wandered around in the rain through the old streets and alleyways whilst I told Eleanor the two things I knew about Galaxidi: paint and flour throwing on Clean Monday, and the sudden decline and fall of the port as a major centre of Greek shipping. I waxed a bit eloquent how Galaxidi was in fact a very important port in the nineteenth century but for reasons I can’t quite remember – maybe stubbornness and conservatism in the face of new technology – the very rich shipowners there missed out on the change from sail to steam, and faded into a backwater as more forward-thinking Greek shipowners embraced the new ways. As we talked, we stumbled upon an impressive house, with a figurehead from a sailing ship installed on the outward facing corner on the first floor. No shipowner lives there now: a lesson for our times perhaps.

We had dinner, and although originally intending to go for a drink, the weather drove us back to our hotel. After a good night’s sleep and an impressively opulent breakfast, we tried to get up to Delphi from the other direction, and succeeded. It was a beautiful morning as we started walking up the sacred way, and past the treasuries of the πόλεις, the most impressive being the restored Athenian one, constructed from Parian marble. I was in a hurry because I wanted to show Eleanor where it is thought that the Pythia, the most important of oracles of the ancient world, went down to inhale the fumes deep from the earth that her into a trance, and caused her to utter sayings that were then translated by the priests to guide those that went to consult them on matters political, athletic and personal. The translations were notably enigmatic, delphic in fact.

But today, of course, the way was blocked. I had remembered before investigating the conduit that led down under the temple of Apollo, but it was barred. Pointing it out to my sister from a distance was not quite the same thing. Nonetheless it was a beautiful morning and we wandered up to the top of the site to see the stadium and then wound our way back down to visit the museum and see one of my favourite sculptures, The Charioteer. I learnt that it was probably crafted in Magna Graecia, in southern Italy and then shipped across to be installed in Delphi as a votive offering. And in fact the museum was full of such offerings from far and wide in the Classical World, and the influences that they brought must have inspired many Classical Greek artists and craftsmen, particular the Naxian Sphinx. Getting around Greece by road then was even more difficult than today, and it amazed me again how important shipping was to the development of Greece, ancient or modern.

The last time I visited Delphi was with my mother and godfather, about eight or nine years ago. My godfather – tragically taken in the first wave of Covid – was an academic, a priest, and knew ancient Greek (he was translating the Apocalypse at the time), and was a lively and erudite companion. We spent a happy afternoon then as we sat and drank coffee looking up at the Apollonian precinct and down the green olive leaf carpeted valley, punctuated by the occasional exclamation marks of cypress trees. He drew threads between ancient and modern religious rites, and it was a fascinating  and lively conversation. I wanted to take Eleanor down for coffee there too, but of course the way was blocked. The injuries to the tourists at the Tholos which closed the road had also closed the whole of the lower site.

As we wound our way back to Athens, stopping at Μονή Οσίου Λουκά to see the 1,000 year old mosaics – it’s amazing, make the stop if you can – this nagging thought kept coming back. What was I looking for? Why am I so disappointed? It was just a weekend road trip, after all.

I think it’s three things. Firstly, I was frustrated that the road I had always taken in the past became unavailable. There was no way through. Secondly, the delight I hoped to engender in my sister by the site of the oracle fell flat. Thirdly, in trying to revisit memories that were precious to me I realised that the past was no longer available to me. The dead have left me, and only the memories of the time that I spent with my dear godfather, mentor and friend are left. I could not bring the conversation on that afternoon some time between Catholic and Greek Easter many years ago back to life.

But then other memories started coming back. The time, in the summer just gone, when I went to Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus with a friend to watch the Oresteia in full. The evening was a long one, but gripping, and maybe by the time we got to the Eumenides – the third play in the trilogy – my attention wasn’t as strong. But I remembered Orestes finding himself at Delphi, begging Apollo for atonement for his sin of murdering his mother Clytemnestra, in revenge for her killing his father. And then whilst being able to purge himself this blood crime, hugging the navel stone for strength, he is handed over to trial by Athena, goddess of wisdom, and of my city, Athens. Justice overcomes the endless cycle of revenge, and the Furies, instead of hounding Orestes to the ends of the earth screaming for vengeance, become the ‘kindly ones’, that enable rehabilitation and a stop to the cycle of violence.

And of another time in Epidaurus, with another friend at another play – Oedipus Tyrannus – where the Pythian Oracle having stated to his parents that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother decide to kill the baby, only for the trusted and kind hearted servant-shepherd entrusted with the task not being able murder a child, letting it live, and thus ensuring the prophecy was fulfilled. And Oedipus – blinded by his own hands, and tormented by his grief – only finds forgiveness, and a god-given relief, in Kolonos, just outside Athens.

And then of visiting Patmos with other friends, last year, and me dragging them up to the Cave of the Apocalypse instead of hanging around drinking coffee to listen to a monk of the monastery there tell us, with tears in his eyes, of the labours that Saint John took whilst writing the last book of the bible. And raising a glass of red wine to my godfather in silent tribute to his love and wisdom.

Ancient, Byzantine or modern, Greece keeps bringing me gifts that I have not asked for, nor knew even existed, and they keep coming the longer I am here. We stopped on the way back to Athens for a late lunch just outside Livadia – παϊδάκια since you ask – and my sister asked me whether I was happy here, and would stay. The answer was immediate: “Yes, of course. Where else would I go?”

I appreciate that I wasn’t born and raised here, and would probably think differently if I did. But having been here, and lived here, and in fact invested myself in Greece for fifteen years has brought me so much, and not all of it easy and idyllic either. And the longer I am here, and the more the memories intertwine with Greece itself, the more I realise that the blockages, the obstacles, the frustrations I have are not in Greece, but in myself. The good news is that Greece – for me at least – has a tenacious hold on my soul, and will not let go even as it shakes my lazy assumptions and stubborn beliefs from me. It hurts sometimes, but arriving back at Athens again this afternoon I came again to feel what it has become for me: a sanctuary, and a home.

We came home, after dropping the car off – and a small dispute over damage that was eventually resolved amicably and without payment (she recognised me as a fairly regular customer, and it perhaps helped my cause that I tried to speak Greek) – I dozed off a while prior to starting to write this blog. In the vivid dreams that these small naps sometimes bring, I dreamt that I was given a short epigram from the priests at Delphi. I remembered it when I jumped awake, as if snapped out of my reverie, enough to write it down. What does it mean? I don’t know. It doesn’t make much sense to me right now. But, as so often with my life here, the answers will eventually come. Right now, as also with my life here, I’m still trying to work it out. It’s not a bad place to be.

Simon Ward