Gifts to Apollo: Tracking Delphi’s Changing Role through Dedicatory Practice

This text analyzes the offerings dedicated to Delphi by autocrats during the site’s lifetime as a sanctuary to Apollo in order to understand Delphi’s role as perceived by Mediterranean powers, and how this role changed through time. Using a combined approach from the fields of art history and classics, the evidence for this paper comes primarily from visual analysis of surviving dedications, as well as study of ancient texts written by classical historians and ancient witnesses to Delphi, such as Herodotus. Through chronological examination of autocrats’ dedications to Delphi, from the site’s genesis as a religious sanctuary in the 8th century BC until it’s decline under the Christian Roman Empire, this paper seeks to understand Delphi’s changing role and level of influence as perceived by both mainland Greeks and foreigners