Sacred Sites - First Season

The sacred sites of ancient Greece

were among the greatest wonders of the known world,

Temples where humble pilgrims and mighty conquerors

came to hear the voices of the gods.

Some were places of mystery and awe where holy women,

possessed by otherworldly forces,

offered cryptic visions of the future.

Some heralded the approach of terrifying cataclysmic events.

Others unleashed agonizing death upon those who came too close.

Was this really the power of the gods?

Or were there even more powerful elemental forces at work?

For more than a thousand years,

the culture and mythology of ancient Greece

dominated the eastern Mediterranean.

Its Temples and holy places remain legends to this day.

None was more revered than the Oracle at Delphi, a place

of pilgrimage that fascinated and attracted millions

from 800 BC to the end of the 4th century AD.

An ancient sanctuary overlooking the Corinthian Gulf

on the slopes of Mount Parnassus,

Delphi was regarded by the Greeks as

omphalos , or navel... The very center of the world.

Over the last century, archaeologists

have uncovered the awesome scale of the Temple complex

that once stood here.

Like an ancient theme park created

for the amusement of visitors,

Delphi offered accommodation, a great open-air theatre,

gymnasia and a huge athletics stadium.

Delphi served not only pilgrims to the Oracle

but spectators of the Pythian Games,

an athletic contest held every four years

in honor of the god Apollo.

Apollo is the athlete god.

He's an archer but also a young runner and discus thrower,

and so there was a stadium where they would have

their track and field events,

and thousands could gather for the Pythian Games,

which alternated with the famous Olympic Games to Zeus

as one of the four crown games of the Greek athletic calendar.

But what made Delphi so special was its centerpiece,

the Temple of Apollo.

A sacred building home to a priestess

who was believed to have the power to predict the future.

A local woman of high standing

chosen by the priests of the Temple,

she was known as the Pythia.

She was the Oracle, and it was through her

that the god Apollo spoke.

The Pythia was the mouthpiece of Apollo at Delphi.

When she was selected to be Pythia,

she would have to go and live in the sanctuary,

dedicate her life to Apollo and remain chaste.

The Oracle was the messenger of the gods.

The gods were speaking through the oracles to the people.

And it was said that they could foresee the future.

The tradition of the Oracle was rooted

in something even more primal... Mother Earth herself.

In the earliest times of Greek history,

the site at Delphi was already sacred,

but it was not sacred to Apollo.

It was not sacred to any male god.

It was the special place of a primal goddess Ge, G-E.

That's seen in Ge-ology and Ge-ography,

and to a Greek it just meant Earth. Mother Earth.

Well, the Oracle at Delphi can be traced back

to very ancient times.

The ancient Greeks believed that Gaia or Ge the Earth Mother

was the first Oracle to be worshiped at Delphi.

According to ancient legend, Delphi

was the location of a magical spring known as the Kerna.

It was said to have been discovered by a goatherd

who noticed his flock gathered around the bubbling waters.

As he inhaled the aroma of the water,

the man began to speak in tongues.

And so from that day forth, the Kerna

was dedicated to the Earth goddess.

The personnel in the Shrine at Delphi

was women from the beginning.

These women had the power

to channel the voice of Mother Earth.

But eventually a new generation of gods was born,

including Apollo, and Apollo came to Delphi,

where these women would prophesy inspired by Mother Earth.

Even today that ancient belief

in the mystical power of Mother Earth

is enshrined in the ceremonies of modern-day Greek pagans.

In their ritual celebrations, women, not men,

are at the forefront.

Just as the gods of ancient Greece were served by priests,

the female deities had their priestesses.

One of those is Sofia Vlahouli, a modern-day Greek pagan,

whose beliefs are based on the religion

of her ancient ancestors.

Apollo chose a woman to be the messenger of his words

I believe to show that he respected women

just as he did for men because they were just as important.

For more than a thousand years,

pilgrims from across the Mediterranean flocked to Delphi

to climb the steep path to the Temple of Apollo.

Here, they would seek the Pythia's advice on

everything from personal affairs to international politics.

They would trek to Delphi, sail to Delphi,

climb Mount Parnassus, line up at dawn.

The line would begin to move forward, and one by one,

people descended into this crypt

in the heart of the Temple.

Here, on a tripod seat at the Adyton,

the most sacred part of the Temple, the Pythia awaits.

Now she inhales the rising fumes and,

seemingly possessed by the spirit of Apollo,

descends into a bizarre state of hypnosis.

She is in an altered state. She is in a trance state.

Now, the priestess would begin to chant

the prophecies of Apollo,

her voice altered as if the god were speaking through her.

We know that after they've finished their session here

the women would be like a runner after a race.

It was a real physical encounter.

To the faithful, the Pythia's words

were divinely inspired.

From the dawn of the Greek city states

in the 8th century BC

to the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD,

the Oracle at Delphi

was the highest civil and religious authority

of the ancient Greek world.

When it came to matters of state,

nothing happened without first consulting the Oracle.

Anxious to curry favor with the gods,

great rulers showered the Temple with gifts and offerings.

Delphi was hugely important at a political level,

to ancient Greeks

and to the wider ancient Mediterranean world, actually.

Kings, city states would all send representatives

to consult the Oracle on matters of policy.

In time, Delphi would become

one of the richest settlements of ancient Greece,

but its prosperity and influence may have been sustained

by something other than divination.

As the priests of the Temple deciphered

the cryptic utterances of the Oracle,

visitors may have been hearing more

than the prophecies of Apollo.

Like modern-day fairground hucksters, the priests of Apollo

may have put their own informed spin on the Oracle's words.

Either way, the prophecies were notoriously ambiguous.

In 560 BC, King Croesus of Lydia learned this to his cost.

According to ancient historians,

the king consulted the Oracle as he prepared to do battle

with the Persian Army.

The Oracle told him:

If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed.

But when Croesus attacked, the empire ultimately destroyed

was his own.

For nearly a thousand years, the cryptic prophecies

of the Oracle would be famed

throughout the Mediterranean world.

In time, however, the golden age of Delphi

would draw to a close.

At the end of the 4th century, the Roman Emperor Theodosius

was keen to remove all trace of paganism

from what was now a Christian empire.

And so he ordered the destruction

of the Temple complex.

After a thousand years, the Oracle was finally silenced.

As the centuries passed,

all trace of the sacred spring disappeared.

By the 19th century the stories of the prophecies

were dismissed as fantasy or myth.

Then, 1500 years after Delphi was closed,

the secret of the Shrine was finally revealed.

In the late 1990s, a team of scientists

undertook a new investigation of the site.

They discovered that some of the myths of the Oracle

were literally true.

The mystery of Delphi was stranger than anyone imagined.

1600 years after it was destroyed, the Oracle at Delphi

remains a watchword for divination and mystery.

But where did the oracle's prophetic power originate?

In the 1890s a team of French archaeologists

came to Mount Parnassus

in search of the lost Temple of Apollo

and the magical spring said to lie beneath it.

It was called the Grand Fouille... the Big Dig...

And they were determined to find the Sanctuary of Apollo

which they expected to be a grand temple

on the scale of Zeus of Olympia or the Parthenon in Athens

filled with treasures, statues, great artworks.

Despite their best efforts, the team searched in vain

for any sign of the legendary spring.

They found the shattered remains of a foundation.

The few columns that you see today at Delphi,

those were re-erected by the French

to give you an idea of the height of the original columns

and their spacing, but nothing was there when they excavated.

It was maybe the biggest disappointment

in the history of classical archaeology.

The leader of the French dig concluded

that the entire Delphic tradition was nothing more