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Didyma is located near
the village of Yenihisar (Yoran) near the town of Söke in
the province of Aydin in the Aegean region. Here one finds
an important sanctuary that housed one of the oracles of
Apollo. It was connected to Miletus by sea, and those
arriving by ship would land at the harbour of Panormus and
thence follow the Sacred way to Didyma. Until its
destruction by the Persians in 494 B.C. it was administered
by the family of the Branchidae, the descendants of Bronchos,
a youth beloved of Apollo. For the last two kilometers the
Sacred Way was lined with seated statues of the male and
female members of the Branchidae family. After his capture
of Miletus in 334 B. C. Alexander the Great placed the
administration of the oracle in the hands of the city of
Miletus. In 331 B.C. the oracle proclaimed Alexander "the
son of Zeus". In 300 B.C. the Milesians embarked on the
construction of the largest temple in the Greek world.
Although work continued until the middle of the 2nd century
A.D. the temple was never finished. Later, a church and
other buildings were constructed, while the Byzantines built
a barracks in which troops were garrisoned. The buildings
were damaged by fire and in the 15th century further damage
was caused by a great earthquake. The Temple of Apollo (Didymaion)
was the largest and wealthiest Ionic temple in Anatolia and
was renowned for its holy relics, its treasury, its sacred
spring and sacred laurel grove. Investigations in the Temple
of Apollo were first undertaken in 1834 by the French
traveller Charles Texier and the English archaeologist
Charles T. Newton, who had conducted the excavations at
Halicarnassus.
The first excavations were begun in 1904 by Theodor Wiegand
under the auspices of the Berlin Museum and continued until
1913. Since 1962 excavations have been conducted by Klaus
Tucheld on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute.
The first Temple of Apollo was built in the Archaic period
and the Hellenistic temple which succeeded this was built on
the foundations of the earlier building, materials from
which were used in the construction. The temple we see today
is an Ionic structure measuring 60 x 118 m, with a dipteral
arrangement of two rows of columns with 21 on each side and
10 at each end. The columns are of various styles with
pedestals adorned with reliefs. These columns support an
architrave surmounted by a frieze decorated with acanthus
leaves and Gorgon (Medusa) heads. The high pronaos at the
top of a monumental flight of steps leads into a naos with
two columns, which gives access to the sacred area or cella
in the form of an open courtyard surrounded by high walls
with columns and containing a small Ionic temple which
housed the statue of the god. Didyma was never a large city
and its fame was closely connected with the existence of a
sacred spring and the temple founded over it. The ancient
Greeks merely took over the already existing sanctuary and
reorganised it.
Didyma was connected to Miletus by the Sacred Way, the
latter part of which was lined with sarcophagi and statues
of lions and sphinxes. The Branchidae family was responsible
for the maintenance of the Sacred Way.
The remains of the earliest temple, which lie within the
later building, have been dated to the 8th and 7th centuries
B.C. These consist of a sacred wall measuring approximately
24 x 10 m, an open-air sanctuary, a portico 16 m in length,
a sacred well and a votive altar.
SUPPLIANTS TO THE TEMPLE
After traversing the entire length of the Sacred Way, all
suppliants to the temple would assemble in front of the
building and purify themselves with the water from the
sacred well. They were then obliged to pay a certain tax
proportionate to the seriousness of their request. For a
private affair one had to pay eleven times the standard tax.
It was then necessary to sacrifice an animal, frequently a
goat, in order to learn whether or not the god was willing
to receive the suppliant's request.
Before the sacrifice, cold water was thrown over the animal.
If the animal showed no reaction the whole process had to be
repeated. The suppliant then entered the naos and addressed
his question to the priest. If there were a large number of
suppliants the next to be received was chosen by lot. The
priests then entered the inner temple and communicated the
question to the priestess of Apollo who had prepared herself
by fasting for several days and purifying herself with water
from the holy well. The priestess in the inner sanctuary
would drink the water from the sacred well, chew bay leaves
and inhale the gases rising from the well.
She would then begin to utter apparently meaningless words
and sounds, which would be interpreted by the priests, the
oracle being written in understandable language in the
chresmographeion, or oracle office, a building located
immediately adjacent to the pronaos. All the words uttered
by the priestess were subsequently communicated to the
suppliant by a priest or priests.
Legend has it that it was in this way that Alexander the
Great learned of his coming victory over the Persians.
The pronaos, or forecourt, to which access is given by
thirteen steps, contains twelve columns. The ceiling
decorations were of great magnificence, and the columns of
quite exceptional height. It was here that the suppliants
waited for the oracle of Apollo.
Oracular divination was the art of foretelling the future
through the power of the god mediated by the observation of
natural events or objects. Divination in some form or
another has been known in all countries in all ages and
spread throughout the Western world in the form of
astrology. It is popularly known as ``fortune-telling".
Oracular divination rests on conclusions drawn on the basis
of observation and interpretation. In the case of divination
based on observation, recourse is had to the examination of
accidental phenomena interpreted by intuition. The
soothsayer who examines the intestines of the sacrificial
animal, its shoulder-blade or its footprints in ashes was
obliged to take special measures to ensure the truth of the
oracular pronouncement. The signs chosen for observation by
the ancient Greek and Roman soothsayers included lightning,
thunder, the night and call of birds and sacred fowls, as
well as accidental phenomena such as the spilling of salt,
sneezing or stumbling.
The term "oracle", which is derived from the Latin "orare",
to speak, was used both for the relation between the
soothsayer and the god, and the place where the divination
was performed. One of the oldest oracles was that of Apollo
at Delphi on the skirts of Mt Parnassus at the top of the
gulf of Corinth. At first the oracle belonged to Gaia, the
goddess of the earth
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