DIDYMA Didyma was the site of a stupendous temple to Apollo, where lived an oracle as important as the one at Delphi. The temple and the oracle have been important since very early times. The Temple of Apollo was never finished, though its oracle and its priests were hard at work until, after 1400 years of soothsaying, Christianity became the state religion of the Byzantines and brought an end to pagan practices. Ancient Didyma was not a town, but the home of a god. People did not live there, only priests. The priestly family there, which specialised in oracular temple management, originally came from Delphi. Didyma was the sacred and forbidden place of Miletus, connected to it with a sacred way lined up with statuary. Pausanias relates that the sacred area dedicated to Apollo at Didyma was older than the first Ionian settlement. Thus, it follows that, as in so many other places in Anatolia, the Greeks replaced an indigenous cult. Researches revealed that the first temple in Didyma had been built towards the end of the 8th century B.C. The Didymaion became very famous for a hundred years during the archaic period, i.e., the 6th century when it was in the charge of a family of priests who were known as the Branchids.Gifts were presented to the Didymaion in 600 B.C. by the Egyptian King Necho and later by the Lydian King Croesus. Herodotus also relates that the presents sent by Croesus were comparable to those he dispatched to Delphi, since they were made of gold and were of the same weight and design. The Didymaion was transformed into a big temple in 560 B.C. It was one of the historical monuments which had been the victim of the Persian destruction in Miletus. Recovering from the yoke of the Persians as a consequence of Alexander the Great’s victory in 334 B.C., the town started rebuilding the temple, a toil which continued throughout the 3rd and the 2nd centuries B.C., and pratically never ended. Some parts could only be completed in the Roman period. The Apollo statue taken away by the Persians was repatriated and presented back to the temple in 300 B.C. by the Syrian King Seleucos. The new temple, built by the architects Paionios and Daphnis, was even larger than its original (destroyed in 494 B.C.) and was the third biggest temple of its time after the ones in Ephesus and in Samos. The temple porch held 120 huge columns, the basis of which are richly carved. Behind the porch is a great doorway at which the oracular poems were written and presented to the petitioners. Beyond the doorway is the “cella” where the oracle sat and prophesied after drinking from the sacred spring. In the temple grounds are fragments of its rich decoration, including a striking head of Medusa. There used to be a road lined with statuary which led to a small harbour. The statues stood there for 23 centuries but were then taken to the British Museum in 1858.
Didyma was the site of a stupendous temple to Apollo, where lived an oracle as important as the one at Delphi. The temple and the oracle have been important since very early times.
Gifts were presented to the Didymaion in 600 B.C. by the Egyptian King Necho and later by the Lydian King Croesus. Herodotus also relates that the presents sent by Croesus were comparable to those he dispatched to Delphi, since they were made of gold and were of the same weight and design.
The temple porch held 120 huge columns, the basis of which are richly carved. Behind the porch is a great doorway at which the oracular poems were written and presented to the petitioners. Beyond the doorway is the “cella” where the oracle sat and prophesied after drinking from the sacred spring.