Greek PantheonSacred Site
Delphi
The site of the oracle of Apollo, considered the center of the world (omphalos) by the ancient Greeks.
About Delphi
Navel of consultation
Delphi is Apollo's oracular workplace. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo has him kill the serpent and take the shrine from an older earth-power. The Pythia spoke from the adyton; cities sent theoroi and paid in gold and trouble. The omphalos stone marked a navel the Greeks were willing to argue about. Cult here is dense and documented; the poetry explains why a cliff above the Pleistos became the place to ask a god a question.
On the map
Delphi among other places of the Greek Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Homeric Hymn to Apollo
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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