The Struggle for the Tripod and the First Sacred War

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to try to show that the legend of the rape of the Delphic tripod by Herakles became associated as symbolic with the First Sacred War and that this association is a chief factor in the great popularity of that subject in late archaic art. We should begin with the First Sacred War itself, an event whose historical importance is inadequately matched by the quality of our literary sources. The earliest account of it occurs in Aeschines' speech against Ktesiphon (iii. 107 ff.), where he introduced the subject because it provided the theological justification for the line which he had taken when attending the meeting of the Delphic Amphictyony in the autumn of 340. So it is not a simple narrative, but a tendentious statement, carefully designed to bring out the points which suited the orator's case. At the same time it has real value as historical evidence, because it is based to some extent on an ancient stele, a memorial of the war, to whose text Aeschines had referred in his original speech at Delphi. A copy of the inscription was read to the jury, and the extant speech contains quotations and paraphrases of portions of it.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 90 citations exist upstream.