DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52591#0160
144 TEMPLE OF APOLLO AND ITS PEDIMENTS
way was made with the work in 513, when the Alcmaeonidae
took over the superintendence. They were a noble family
driven out of Athens by a feud between them and the reigning
house of tyrants, the Peisistratidae, and they offered to
complete the temple, and made it grander than they had
promised in the contract, thereby to win the Amphictyons
and Spartans for their cause.1 In 510 b.c., the year when
the Alcmaeonid policy conquered, and Hippias was driven
out of Athens,2 the temple was practically finished, but
for some years work went on at the completion of its plastic
decoration.
This temple of the Alcmaeonidae was not the one Pau-
sanias saw and described in the second century A.D., for it
was destroyed in the fourth century b.c., no doubt in 373 b.c.
There is considerable disagreement as to the cause of the
catastrophe. Originally it was thought to have been
produced by one of the earthquakes so frequent at Delphi;
then Courby, who made an exhaustive study of the temple
ruins, thought he could prove that in course of time the
temple was undermined by the springs in situ, and chiefly
by the spring Cassotis ; and finally Pomtow, from a defective
passage in the Parian Chronicle, wanted to draw the inference
that the temple was burned.3 Since this last hypothesis
requires an arbitrary textual emendation, and no traces of
fire can be seen on the remains of the temple preserved,
there is every reason to reject it and suppose that earth-
quakes, springs, and perhaps other causes unknown to us,
brought about the fall of the great temple.
In the year 371 b.c., at a peace congress in Sparta, it was
proposed to raise contributions for the re-erection of the
temple,1 and by explicit inscriptions from Delphi we get
full knowledge of the collection and the work of the inter-
national building commission in the years after 369, especially
for 353-334 b.c.5 Subscription lists were sent out, and
1 Herodotus, v. 6a ; Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 19, 4 ; Plutarch, Solon, n ;
Pindar, Pyth., vii. 10 and scholia. 2 Hdt., vi. 133.
3 Bourguet, Les ruines de Delphes, 253 ; Courby, Fouilles de Delphes, it, text;
Lechat, Revue des etudes anciennes, xix, 1917, 340 ; Dittenberger, Sylloge, i. 295, n. 4.
i Xenophon, Hellenica, vi. 4, 2.
s Bourguet, Bull, de corr. hell., xxii, 1898, 308 if.; L’administration financiere
du sanctuaire Pythique, Paris, 1905, 36 ff.; Les ruines de Delphes, 258 f.; Dittenberger,
Sylloge, 3rd ed., 236-53.
way was made with the work in 513, when the Alcmaeonidae
took over the superintendence. They were a noble family
driven out of Athens by a feud between them and the reigning
house of tyrants, the Peisistratidae, and they offered to
complete the temple, and made it grander than they had
promised in the contract, thereby to win the Amphictyons
and Spartans for their cause.1 In 510 b.c., the year when
the Alcmaeonid policy conquered, and Hippias was driven
out of Athens,2 the temple was practically finished, but
for some years work went on at the completion of its plastic
decoration.
This temple of the Alcmaeonidae was not the one Pau-
sanias saw and described in the second century A.D., for it
was destroyed in the fourth century b.c., no doubt in 373 b.c.
There is considerable disagreement as to the cause of the
catastrophe. Originally it was thought to have been
produced by one of the earthquakes so frequent at Delphi;
then Courby, who made an exhaustive study of the temple
ruins, thought he could prove that in course of time the
temple was undermined by the springs in situ, and chiefly
by the spring Cassotis ; and finally Pomtow, from a defective
passage in the Parian Chronicle, wanted to draw the inference
that the temple was burned.3 Since this last hypothesis
requires an arbitrary textual emendation, and no traces of
fire can be seen on the remains of the temple preserved,
there is every reason to reject it and suppose that earth-
quakes, springs, and perhaps other causes unknown to us,
brought about the fall of the great temple.
In the year 371 b.c., at a peace congress in Sparta, it was
proposed to raise contributions for the re-erection of the
temple,1 and by explicit inscriptions from Delphi we get
full knowledge of the collection and the work of the inter-
national building commission in the years after 369, especially
for 353-334 b.c.5 Subscription lists were sent out, and
1 Herodotus, v. 6a ; Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 19, 4 ; Plutarch, Solon, n ;
Pindar, Pyth., vii. 10 and scholia. 2 Hdt., vi. 133.
3 Bourguet, Les ruines de Delphes, 253 ; Courby, Fouilles de Delphes, it, text;
Lechat, Revue des etudes anciennes, xix, 1917, 340 ; Dittenberger, Sylloge, i. 295, n. 4.
i Xenophon, Hellenica, vi. 4, 2.
s Bourguet, Bull, de corr. hell., xxii, 1898, 308 if.; L’administration financiere
du sanctuaire Pythique, Paris, 1905, 36 ff.; Les ruines de Delphes, 258 f.; Dittenberger,
Sylloge, 3rd ed., 236-53.