Note 76.1 — Chapter III · THE SECOND PERIOD, 900-500 B.C.

Influence of Delphi on colonisation.—These Cathartic functions and the general demand for their exercise must have greatly enhanced the influence of Delphi in the earlier part of the post-Homeric period. It was doubtless strengthened even more by the great secular movement of Greek colonisation. With wise foresight the God had undertaken the guidance and encouragement of this already in the earliest days when the Hellenes were pushing across the sea; for it seems as if the first Greek settlements on the Asia Minor coast, the Lycian and the Æolic, were due to his leadership if not to his inspiration. The legends that associate him with the Dorian migration into the Peloponnese are too powerful to be rejected. And after this event, when light begins to shine on Greek history and the Hellenic race was rapidly establishing that chain of colonies across and around the Mediterranean which were to diffuse Greek culture through the world, the power of Delphi and the Delphic oracle reached its zenith. For it is clear that it was the prevailing fashion to consult the Pythian Apollo as to the choice of a site. Hence it came about that in so many Greek cities Apollo was worshipped as Ἀρχηγέτης, that is, as the divine founder, and that the flourishing communities of the West sent back tithe-offerings to his shrine.76.1 Was it by some accident or by something essential in his early cult and character that the God was able to play this momentous political part, such as no other deity has ever played in the secular history of his people? The cause may lie far back in the dim antiquity of the Apolline cult, when he was specially Ἀγυιεύς, a god ‘of the road,’ the leader of the migratory host. And in pre-Homeric times, if not aboriginally, he was already an oracular God; nor was any occasion so urgent for a consultation of the local oracle as when the people were setting forth on their perilous path to find a new home.77.1