“Tell to the king that the carven hall is fallen in decay;
Apollo has no chapel left, no prophesying bay, No talking spring. The stream is dry that had so much to say.”
This was the last known oracle of the Pythia given to Julian the Apostate, the last Roman emperor, whose goal was to revive ancient wisdom and establish religious freedom in his Empire.
Time changed after his death in 363 and the Empire was about to fall into the hands of a very dogmatic Christian sect with tremendous ambition to rule out all other cults and beliefs and destroy all temples which are not of their own kind.
It was a lunatic idea, indeed, but it worked very well, as this incredibly dogmatical Christian sect also made a political pact with new Roman Emperors which eventually resulted in The Edict of Thessalonica, 380 AD, which made Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, while outlawing all other cults and judging them for being “foolish madmen”.
The Oracle of Apollo somehow survived until 390 AD. As Emperor Theodosius had ordered the closure of all pagan temples, it was now about the time to destroy this ortacle too.
Like all other Pythias, the last one must also have been a very ethical lady, educated and well read. If she had a family, she had to relinquish all familial duties in order to fill her role in the temple.
When the Roman soldiers came with the Emperor Theodocius’ decree to close the temple, they saw her in a very poor condition like a bagger: old, hungry, forgotten, poor, penniless and abandoned.
Some say that she committed suicide by jumping into the Abyss, while other think that the soldiers just pushed her away from the temple.
Soon after, the site was completely destroyed by zealous Christians in an attempt to remove all traces of Paganism.