When goats started tripping down the hill with luminous looks in their eyes in 1400 BC, local folks began to wonder what was going on.

“Following the goats back up the hill, they saw the goats were inhaling fumes from a crack in the ground,” tour guide Penny said. “Crazy goats.”

Maybe. But crazy folks, too.

Because those magical fumes induced hallucinations, Delphi soon became known as a holy place, the center of the ancient world where the god Apollo would speak to his followers through a fume-breathing priestess.

It was in Delphi that magnificent monuments were built, showcases of power and wealth were displayed, leaders came from everywhere to hear what the hallucinating priestess had to say and important decisions of the day were made.

“If something came from the gods, there was no question about it. You didn’t doubt the gods,” said M/V Athena program director Antun said. “Delphi was not just a place to pray but a place to show off. You can imagine what it looked like back then.”

At Delphi we are exploring the ruins and the famous Delphi Archaeological Museum. Delphi is said to be the second-most visited place in Greece, next to the Acropolis in Athens.

First stop was the fabulous museum filled with masterpieces from the Archaic, Classical and Roman periods. A large drawing helped illustrate how grand Delphi had been at one time when Pythia the priestess of Apollo would answer questions about the future.

“Her answers were cryptic and could be interpreted several different ways, usually the way you would want them to be,” Penny said.  “It was probably methane gas causing the hallucinations but they didn’t know that so they thought it was divine communication with Apollo.”

Might seem strange that in male-dominated Greece, the most influential voice in Delphi belonged to a woman. The Pythia would fall into a trance and deliver a message from Apollo. Most of the time people were pretty happy with the prophesies but the messages were usually so vague that many interpretations were available so it was hard to say the prophesy was incorrect.

One legendary example is retold from 560 BC. “If you cross the river, a great empire will fall,” Pythia told Croesus, King of Lydia. A proud man, the king assumed that the enemy Persians would be the doomed empire. So he crossed the river. And it was Croesus’ empire that fell. But, hey, the priestess was right – a great empire did fall. It was Croesus who interpreted it wrong.

Most of the grand statues, buildings and works of art formerly at Delphi were destroyed over the centuries but the ones housed in the museum show what beauty and wealth must have once been here. My favorite – a larger than life bronze charioteer – dates back to about 470 BC and is said to be one of the finest surviving works of antiquity.

“The Charioteer is considered the highlight of our museum,” Penny said, pointing out the onyx stones used for eyes and such details as the strength in his feet and hands. “His hair is wet because of how hard he worked to win the race.”

The Charioteer was part of a larger bronze composition and a nearby drawing shows how it would have looked. It would have been four horses pulling the chariot with the charioteer guiding them on. Alongside would have been a young boy leading another horse.  Found near the statue were two horse hind legs, a tail, pieces from the yoke and a youth’s arm with remains of reins which let archaeologists know how the full sculpture must have once looked.

The fact that the Charioteer survived at all is a miracle, Penny said. The great earthquake of 373 BC buried the statue, otherwise it would probably have met the fate of so many others –  plundered, destroyed or melted down to make tools and weapons. The discovery of the Charioteer in 1896 was greeted by great enthusiasm since no other bronze statue of the Classical period and of natural size had been recovered before then.

After the museum, we walked the Sacred Way used by ancient Greeks such as historian Plutarch, who was a priest of Apollo at Delphi. This ancient sanctuary is beautifully set in a landscape fit for a god, at the foot of a mountain with a vista over olive groves to the Bay of Itea.

The steep path snakes up through the sanctuary toward the Temple of Apollo. Along the way, supplicants seeking a message from Pythia would file past bronze statues, war monuments and treasure houses dedicated by grateful followers. The monuments are gone but many of the bases remain as we climb along.

The treasure houses were called “treasuries” because they contained treasures or offerings made to Apollo, often a portion of the spoils of war which believers felt meant they had Apollo on their side. One of the best of these treasuries is the Athenian Treasury which was built to commemorate the Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.

While we walked, Penny pointed out what was there and what had once been there, using photographs and descriptions to recreate long ago scenes. “At one time, there were 3,000 statues,” she said. “These were highly competitive people. They wanted to be the best and be seen as the best. In competitions there was only first place, the winner. There were no second or third places because there was only one winner. Everyone else was a loser.”

Etched on the walls of Delphi were life lessons that visitors were to carry away with them. Those wise words are even more relevant today   –  “Know thyself.” “Everything in moderation.” “Harmony in difference.”

Stones still show some writings such as the names of freed slaves. In ancient Greece almost anyone could become a slave due to a bad turn of events, Penny said. Famed philosopher Plato was sold into slavery by an angry tyrant and his freedom had to be bought back. Having a former slave’s name carved on the wall was very important because it meant that no one could dispute that the former slave was free because it was “written in stone.”

“Every stone has history slowly being erased by time and nature,” Penny said, gesturing to the faint writing. “But we don’t want to cover it up or keep people from seeing it the way it was meant to be seen … Our whole country is an open-air museum.”

Powerful Delphi and its Pythia finally came to an end in the 4^th century AD when a new religion – Christianity – began sweeping away ancient gods like Apollo. The hallucinatory fumes also had disappeared, Penny said.

“We think an earthquake probably closed the crack in the earth where the fumes were coming,” Penny said. “We think that was why the oracle was built here and why it lost power when the fumes were gone.”

Story and photo by Jackie Sheckler Finch