Chapter 2 - Cosmography and Epiphany

Summary

The second chapter, closely aligned with the first chapter, continues the earlier discussion of cult and divine movement to further reflect on the visual depiction of divine arrival and absence in different media. A first section reviews key texts for reflecting on the visuality of Apollo's arrival from Hyperborea. The second section turns to relevant physical images of Apollo as the travelling god. The third section expands the discussion to assess what has often been read as stone epiphanies of Apollo's return on the metopes of late Archaic and Classical temples. The fourth section continues the reflection on stone epiphanies through focus on the single most prominent visual depiction of Apollo's return, and one of the most significant divine representations of the Greek world: the late-sixth century BCE East pediment of the Alcmaeonid temple at Delphi. The fifth section looks at Plutarch's reading of the pediments of the fourth-century BCE temple in De E apud Delphos (387f–389c), and his cosmographical reconfiguration of the theology of Delphic divine alternance between Apollo and Dionysus. The sixth section focuses on Pausanias' reading of the Galatian shields set up on the north and west metopes of the same fourth-century temple.