Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835 edition. Excerpt: ...the dragon at Delphi (7th Munychion), on which ensues the Delphic Festival, the Pythia7: and secondly, that the Attic Court Delphinion took cognizance only of justifiable homicide; plainly an institution of very early times, when it was still generally understood that the Delphinios is the God triumphing over the hostile serpent ( . 67). Now at Delphi dirges were sung over the grave of the Delphine; Apollo himself must do every thing to appease the Dragon--must undergo exile and servitude; and thus it is very probable that the Delphinia also had this object. In Corinth too fourteen children were sent into the temple of Juno, where with shorn heads and black clothes they were to appease the children of Medea by penitential offerings and mournful hymns1: now these children of Medea are either themselves infernal powers, which is indicated by the name of one of them, Mermeros (the Dreadful2); or, to forbear at present a deeper investigation of the origin of this Mythus, at least they are infernal spirits and objects of alarm to the upper world. As the servitude of Apollo begins with the slaying of the Python, as the service of the fourteen Athenian children commences with the Delphinia; so the residence of the fourteen Corinthian children in the temple is a periodic servitude, and therefore called aireviavTia(ws In iEgina the festival Hydrophoria was held during the Delphinian month, as it was at Athens in Anthesterion, the month appointed in the Attic Calendar for the worship of the dead. It may be more conveniently proved in detail upon some other occasion, that these Hydrophoria in Greece were generally vernal solemnities, at which water was poured into chasms, especially such as, according to the old legends, the earth-born brood of...