Pausanias, Phocis

CHAPTER VI.

They say the most ancient town here was built by Parnassus, who was they say the son of the Nymph Cleodora, and his fathers, (for those called heroes had always wo fathers, one a god, one a man), were they say Poseidon among the gods and Cleopompus among men. They say Mount Parnassus and the dell Parnassus got their names from him, and that omens from the flight of birds were discovered by him. The town built, by him was they say destroyed in Deucalion's flood, and all the human beings that escaped the flood followed wolves and other wild beasts to the top of Mount Parnassus, and from this circumstance called the town which they built Lycorea (Wolf-town). There is also a diferent tradition to this, which makes Lycorus the son of Apollo by the Nymph Corycia, and that Lycorea was called after him, and the Corycian cavern from the Nymph. Another tradition is that Celaeno was the daughter of Hyamus the son of Lycorus, and that Delphus from whom Delphi got its name was the son of Celaeno (the daughter of Hyamus) by Apollo. Others say that Castalius an Autochthon had a daughter Thyia, who was the first priestess of Dionysus and introduced his orgies, and that it was from her that females inspired by Dionysus got generally called Thyiades, and they think Delphus was the son of Apollo and this Thyia. But some say his mother was Melaene the daughter of Cephisus. And in course of time the inhabitants called the town Pytho as well as Delphi, as Homer has shown in his Catalogue of the Phocians. Those who wish to make genealogies about everything think that Pythes was the son of Delphus, and that the town got called Pytho after him when he was king. But the prevalent tradition is that the dragon slain by Apollo's arrows rotted here, and that was why the town was called Pytho from the old Greek word to rot, which Homer has employed in his account of the island of the Sirens being full of bones, because those that listened to their song rotted away. 1 The dragon that was slain by Apollo was the poets say posted there by Earth to guard her oracle. It is also said that Crius, the king of Euboea, had a son of an insolent disposition, who plundered the temple of the god, and the houses of the wealthy men. And when he was going to do this a second time, then the Delphians begged Apollo to shield them from the coming danger, and Phemonoe (who was then priestess) gave them the following oracle in hexameters, " Soon will Phoebus
send his heavy arrow against the man who devours Parnassus, and the Cretans shall purify Phoebus from the blood, and his fame shall never die."

1 Odyssey, xii 46.