(jazz music)
- [Voiceover] Sitting here overlooking the
Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi
makes it really clear to me why the Greeks believed
that the Gods dwelled on a mountain.
- [Male Voiceover] Well we have this glorious view.
- [Female Voiceover] I feel on top of the world.
It makes sense.
The Greeks practiced their religion
in places called sanctuaries
that became complexes of many buildings.
- [Male Voiceover] This is one of the most important
Pan-Hellenic sanctuaries.
What that means is that it was not controlled
by one city state,
but it was a place that Greeks came from
numerous city states from all over Greece.
- [Female Voiceover] Therefore Pan-Hellenic
across Greece.
The Sanctuary at Olympia is another example
of Pan-Hellenic sanctuary.
- [Male Voiceover] Now of course in that case,
Greeks from all over came to compete
in athletic games,
but Olympia also had an oracle that is
a priestess who had a connection to the Gods,
but here at Delphi this was perhaps the single-most
important sanctuary because here although there were
games, there were musical competitions
and there were sporting competitions.
This was the place with the single-most important oracle.
That is with the priestess who could help decide
major political and even private issues.
- [Female Voiceover] The priestess here at Delphi,
the oracle was called the Pythia
and she made her pronouncements.
She answered questions from the temple
that we're looking at now.
- [Male Voiceover] When she did this,
she was seated behind a curtain we believe.
She was seated on a tripod
and over a kind of chasm that went into the earth
and according to traditions that go back
at least to the ninth century,
this was a way that she connected directly to
the God Apollo.
- [Female Voiceover] Right, a way that Apollo
could speak through her
and so we're in a space that is entirely sacred
to the God Apollo.
- [Male Voiceover] So according to the ancient reports
we have,
the way this would work is
somebody of high stature with significant wealth
or political power would come
with a very specific question,
often a yes or no question.
They would give it to one of the priestess' assistants
and that would then be read to the priestess
who was behind a curtain.
She would make a pronouncement
which would then be interpreted
so that it could be understandable
by the assistant priests.
- [Female Voiceover] So as a Pan-Hellenic sanctuary,
as a sanctuary for all Greeks,
this was a place where one could really
show off the wealth and the power
of your city state.
The primary way that city states could do that
was by building treasuries.
Now, treasuries were often small buildings.
They weren't peripteral,
but as we normally think about a Greek temple
as having columns all around it.
Instead they had columns in the front
and they were mostly storehouses for objects
that were being offered dedicated to the God.
It's important to remember I think that
Greek religion was transactional.
That people gave gifts to the Gods
and in turn the Gods favored them.
- [Male Voiceover] This might be booty
that was taken in war.
It might be the result of some other kind of
good fortune, but there's no question
that that transactional aspect was important.
You wanted to give as much as you could
to the Sanctuary of Apollo
in order to stay in Apollo's good graces.
- [Female Voiceover] And so when visitors came
to the sanctuary,
they walked up, what was called the sacred way
and they passed by numerous
treasury buildings built by
numerous Greek city states
or what the Greeks called the polis.
- [Male Voiceover] Now you can imagine how
competitive this was
because each city state was showing off
against the other.
- [Female Voiceover] Right and we can look down
at the reconstructed treasury built by
the city state of Athens.
- [Male Voiceover] That's a great example.
Just beside it, we believe that there
had once been a huge pile
of booty that they had taken from the Persians
at the Battle of Marathon.
- [Female Voiceover] Right, which they won
against great odds
and so you really could understand
why they would thank the Gods for that victory.
- [Male Voiceover] It's one of the larger treasuries
and it's in a very prominent place,
just below the Athenian treasury
is a smaller treasury,
which was, according to reports,
the most lavishly decorated of all the treasuries here.
This belonged to the small island of Siphnos
in the south of the Aegean Sea.
- [Female Voiceover] And the Siphneans
were especially wealthy
because they had gold and silver mines
so they could afford to build
a really lavish treasury.
- [Male Voiceover] The treasuries were stacked up
over each other in such a steep space.
- [Female Voiceover] Well you wound your way
back and forth to go up to the
very top of the sanctuary
where we see the theater.
- [Male Voiceover] Well most sanctuaries had a theater.
The most famous probably,
the theater Epidaurus
which was an important sanctuary for healing.
- [Female Voiceover] This is a good reminder
that theater was connected to religious practice
and it's interesting to know too
the form of the theater we have the actors on the bottom
and the seats rising up above built into the hillside.
Imagine sitting in that theater,
looking down past the actors,
to this amazing view of the temple
and the valley beyond.
(jazz music)