A site must be chosen
The mainland portion of the Hymn to Apollo follows the god as he searches for a place to establish an oracle. At the spring Telphousa, he proposes a sanctuary, but the spring divinity redirects him toward Crisa beneath Parnassus. Her advice protects her own prominence by moving the new institution elsewhere. Apollo reaches the chosen ground and announces a place where people will bring offerings and seek counsel. The hymn thus imagines a sacred landscape already occupied by powers with interests of their own; the sanctuary does not emerge into an empty world.
Source: Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo · Homeric Hymn 3.214–299
Conflict enters the foundation
Near the site lives a destructive female dragon, associated in the hymn with the upbringing of Typhaon. Apollo kills her with his arrows and tells her body to decay on the ground. The poem connects the name Pytho with that decay through its own wordplay. It does not use the later familiar proper name Python for this dragon in the same straightforward way as many modern summaries. Apollo also returns to Telphousa, recognizes her deception, and covers her spring with stones. Establishing his sanctuary involves suppressing rivals as well as making a place available to human petitioners.
Source: Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo · Homeric Hymn 3.300–387
The sanctuary needs people
Apollo then encounters Cretan sailors and takes control of their ship in dolphin form. He guides them to the coast and leads them to the sanctuary, where they will serve him. When they worry about obtaining food in an unfamiliar place, he points to the offerings visitors will bring and warns them against wrongdoing. The ending grounds a divine institution in the practical questions of labor, supply, and proper conduct. Its dolphin episode also supplies a narrative explanation for an epithet of the god. Reading the foundation alongside the birth on Delos shows how one hymn collection can connect Apollo to different places through different stories.
Source: Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo · Homeric Hymn 3.388–546
- Period / witness
- Homeric Hymn to Apollo, archaic Greek period; Evelyn-White translation 1914
- Recording context
- The hymn’s account of Pytho belongs to a literary tradition about Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi. It is not an archaeological chronology of the surviving buildings or the origin of all local worship.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
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Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo ↗
Anonymous ancient Greek poet(s); translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White · Individual ancient dates disputed; translation 1914; digital edition updated 2020
Edition & rights note