Didyma, Apollo's unfinished temple and the line of the Branchidae
The oracle of Apollo at Didyma near Miletus: the Branchidae, the gifts of Croesus, the Persian sack, the revival under Alexander and the colossal temple.
About twenty kilometres south of Miletus, on the coast of modern Turkey, the columns of one of the largest temples in the Greek world still stand. This was the sanctuary of Didymaean Apollo, seat of an oracle that for centuries rivalled Delphi and Claros. Its history, marked by destruction and revival, spans the whole of antiquity, from the archaic period to the eve of the empire's Christianisation.
The Branchidae and the gifts of kings
In the archaic period the oracle was run by a priestly clan, the Branchidae, who claimed descent from Branchus, a youth loved by Apollo and granted by him the gift of prophecy. For this reason the Greeks often called the sanctuary itself “of the Branchidae”. A Sacred Way linked it to Miletus, lined with statues of seated figures, some of which are now kept in the British Museum.
Herodotus records that the Lydian king Croesus dedicated offerings there equal in weight and value to those sent to Delphi, and that the pharaoh Necho, after a victory, consecrated to Apollo of the Branchidae the garment he had worn in battle. The oracle's fame had therefore already crossed the borders of the Greek world in the sixth century BC.
The Persian destruction
Prosperity ended with the Ionian Revolt. In 494 BC, after the fall of Miletus, the Persians plundered and burned the sanctuary, as Herodotus relates. According to later traditions, the bronze statue of Apollo, the work of the sculptor Canachus of Sicyon, was carried off to Persia, to Ecbatana, and returned almost two centuries later by Seleucus I.
The fate of the Branchidae is less certain. Some sources claim that they handed over the temple's treasures to Xerxes and that, to escape the vengeance of the Greeks, they were resettled in distant Sogdiana. Curtius Rufus relates that Alexander, finding their descendants, had them massacred as traitors. The episode is reported by few sources and many historians consider it doubtful.
The revival under Alexander
For more than a century and a half the oracle was silent. According to Callisthenes, the historian who accompanied Alexander, quoted by Strabo, when the Macedonian king reached Asia Minor the sacred spring, long dry, began to flow again and the god spoke once more, proclaiming the ruler's divine birth. Miletus then reorganised the cult, entrusting the oracle no longer to a family but to a prophet elected each year.
Around 300 BC work began on a colossal new temple, which Vitruvius attributes to the architects Paeonius of Ephesus and Daphnis of Miletus. The building, surrounded by a double row of columns nearly twenty metres high, was never completed. Its inner courtyard was open to the sky and housed a small shrine with the statue of the god, beside the spring and the sacred laurels.
Didyma continued to be consulted in the Roman period. According to Lactantius, the emperor Diocletian questioned Milesian Apollo before launching the persecution of Christians in AD 303. A few decades later the oracle fell silent for good, but its columns, left standing for centuries, still bear witness to the ambition of a sanctuary that never reached its final form.