Note 77.2 — Chapter III · THE SECOND PERIOD, 900-500 B.C.

The Delphic oracle.—The spiritual history of the Hellenic race in the early history period, when we mark a growing consciousness of nationality and of kinship in the various stocks, is very much a record of the career and activity of the Delphic oracle; and this is too complex and lengthy a theme to be more than adumbrated here.77.2 Due partly to the local position and the immemorial sanctity of the oracle, partly to the devotion and the grateful remembrance of the powerful Dorian states in the Peloponnese, the Pythian worship came to overshadow the Delian, and provided the chief religious centre and the strongest bond of spiritual unity in the Hellenic world. For political unity it could do little, owing to the centrifugal bias of Greek politics; yet the Delphic Amphiktyony, the most powerful of these religious confederations that are recorded here and there in the early history of Greece, contained within it the germs of intertribal morality and concord. Its members were not indeed pledged to perpetual amity, but at least to a certain mutual forbearance even in their warlike dealings with one another. But the chief regulative functions of the oracle were concerned with questions of the institution and administration of cults, with the domains of legislation, colonisation, public and even private morality and conduct. In the sphere of religion it doubtless emphasised the necessity of purification from bloodshed; otherwise it had no high religious message to deliver; but it was enthusiastic for the propagation of the cult of Dionysos, and it authorised and sometimes encouraged the growing tendency towards the posthumous worship of distinguished men. In the sphere of morality its standard was generally high and its influence beneficent, especially—if we can trust the record—in the later period when it played the part of a State-Confessional and in its utterances reflected generally the progress of Greek ethics and the spirit of an enlightened humanitarianism.