Pausanias, Phocis

CHAPTER V.

There is also an ascent by Daulis to the heights of Parnassus, rather longer than the ascent from Delphi but not so steep. As you turn from Daulis on to the high road for Delphi and go forward, you will come to a building on the left of the road called Phocicum, into which the Phocians assemble from each of their towns. It is a large building, and in it are pillars all the length of the building,
and galleries on each side, where the Phocians sit in assembly. But at the end of the building there are neither pillars nor galleries, but statues of Zeus and Athene and Hera, Zeus on his throne, and Hera standing by on the right, Athene on the left.

As you go on from thence you will come to the Crossroads, where they say Oedipus murdered his father. 1 There are records indeed of the woes of Oedipus in all parts of Greece. So it seems it was fated. For directly he was born they pierced his ankles, and exposed him on Mount Cithaeron in Plataea. He was brought up at Corinth and the country near the Isthmus. And Phocis and the Crossroads here were polluted by his father's blood. Thebes has attained even more celebrity from the marriage of Oedipus and the injustice of Eteocles. To Oedipus the Cross-roads here and his bloody deed there caused all his subsequent woes, and the tombs of Laius and his attendant are in the very middle of the place where the 3 roads meet, and there are unhewn stones heaped up on them. They say that Damasistratus, who was king of Plataea, came across their corpses and buried them.

The high-road from here to Delphi is very steep, and rather difficult even for a well-equipped traveller. Many varying legends are told about Delphi, and still more about the oracle of Apollo. For they say that in the most ancient times it was the oracle of Earth, and that Earth appointed as priestess of her oracle Daphnis, who was one of the Mountain Nymphs. And the Greeks have a poem called Eumolpia, the author of which was they say Musaeus the son of Antiophemus. In this poem Delphi is represented as a joint oracle of Poseidon and Earth, and we read that Earth delivered her own oracles, but Poseidon employed Pyrcon as his interpreter. These are the lines :

" Forthwith Earth uttered forth oracular wisdom.
And with her Pyrcon, famed Poseidon's priest."

But afterwards they say Earth gave her share to Themis, and Apollo received it from Themis : and he they say gave Poseidon for his share in the oracle Calauria near Troezen, I have also heard of some shepherds meeting with the oracle, and becoming inspired by the vapour, and prophesying through Apollo. But the greatest and most widespread fame attaches to Phemonoe, who was the first priestess of Apollo, and the first who recited the oracles in hexameters. But Boeo, a Phocian woman who composed a Hymn for Delphi, says that the oracle was set up to the god by Olen and some others that came from the Hyperboreans, and that Olen was the first who delivered oracles and in hexameters. Boeo has written the following lines,

" Here Pegasus and divine Aguieus, sons of the Hyperboreans, raised to thy memory an oracle."
And enumerating other Hyperboreans she mentions at the end of her Hymn Olen,

" And Olen who was Phoebus' first prophet,
And first to put in verse the ancient oracles.“

Tradition however makes women the first utterers of the oracles.

The most ancient temple of Apollo was they say built of laurel, from branches brought from a tree at Tempe. So that temple would resemble a hut. And the people of Delphi say the next temple was built of the wax and wings of bees, and was sent by Apollo to the Hyperboreans. There is also another tradition that this temple was built by a Delphian whose name was Pteras, and tbat it got its name from Its builder, from whom also a Cretan city by the addition of one letter got called Apteraei. For as to the tradition about the fern (Pteris) that grows on mountains, that they made the temple of this while it was still green, this I cannot accept. As to the third temple that it was of brass is no marvel since Acrisius made a brazen chamber for his daughter, and the Lacedaemonians have still a temple of Athene Chalcioecus, 2 and the Romans have a forum remarkable for its size and magnificence with a brazen roof. So that the temple of Apollo should be brazen is not improbable. In other respects however I do not accept the legend about the temple being by Hephaestus, or about the golden songsters that Pindar sang of in reference to that temple,

" Some golden Charmers sang above the gable."

I think Pindar wrote this in imitation of Homer's Sirens. 3 Moreover I found varying accounts about the destruction of this temple, for some say it was destroyed by a landslip, others by fire. And the fourth (built of stone by Trophonius and Agamedes) was burnt down when Erxiclides was Archon at Athens, in the first year of the 58th Olympiad, when Diognetus of Croton was victor. And the temple which still exists was built by the Amphictyones out of the sacred money, and its architect was the Corinthian Spintharus.

1 See Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 733, 734. What I translate in
this Paragraph, "Cross-roads" would be literally "the road called
Cleft," which an English reader would hardly understand.

2 That is, "Athene of the Brazen

3 See Odyssey, xii. 39 .