[Ilustration: PLATE XV. “APOLLO,” FROM ORCHOMENUS
theatrical pose, the Apollo Belvedere, who seemed to our great-grandfathers the most perfect of Greek statues, though he was carved to suit a decadent taste in the days when Greece had lost the very memory of manliness. Another conflicting, but, I believe, equally Dorian type of Apollo represents him in the flowing and almost feminine robes of a musician. This is Apollo the artist, not the athlete, the Apollo who leads the choir of Muses on Parnassus.
To return to the god and his oracle: the Dorians had planted him at Delphi on their way south about 1000 B.C., and when they had overrun the whole Peloponnesus, except Arcadia and Achaia, occupying the southern islands, including Crete, and overflowing even into the south of Asia Minor, Delphi became their central shrine and oracle. So cleverly was that oracle managed by the Delphic priests that it became the common centre for advice to all Greece, until it formed a sort of focus of Greek nationality. Even semi-barbarian monarchs like Crœsus of Lydia applied to it for advice, and paid for its oracles with lavish dedications. As ambassadors kept coming to Delphi from all parts of the Greek world, the priests had good opportunity of collecting information. They were especially strong in geography, and if a city found its population increasing beyond the extent of its wall space, or if there were a gang of mischievous young nobles to be got rid of, or if the city sought new commercial openings, it would send an embassy to Delphi to consult Apollo about a suitable site for a new colony. After due sacrifices and oblations and various mysterious rites to ensure the proper reverential spirit, they would be introduced into the inmost shrine, where a priestess sat upon a tripod over the identical crack in the ground where the old serpent Pytho had once made his den. Here was a conical stone representing the omphalos or navel of the earth. Then the inspiration would seize the Pythian priestess, she would fall into a kind of fit or trance, caused, they say, by burning leaves of laurel, and in the course of it she uttered wild and whirling words. Before you left the priests would hand you the substance of her remarks neatly composed in rather weak hexameter verses. Very often the advice would turn out excellently, for the priests knew their business. If it did not they could usually point out that their words bore quite a different interpretation if you had had the sense to understand them. Thus Crœsus asked whether he should make war on the growing power of Persia; he was told that if he did he would destroy a mighty empire. After the success of Cyrus, the oracle, of course, explained that Crœsus had in fact destroyed a mighty empire--namely, his own.