TFBT: What's Up With the Python?

 "[Apollo] made his way to Delphi, where Themis gave the oracles at that time. When the serpent Python, which guarded the oracle, moved to prevent Apollo from approaching the oracular opening, he slew it and thus took command of the oracle."  Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 22  

So in order to gain control of his grandmother Phoebe’s oracle at Delphi[i] Apollo had to slay the monstrous guard-dog of the place, the Python.  A serpent born of the antedivullean slime.  No big deal right?  Heroes do it all time.  

But if it is no big deal why did Apollo organise funeral games in honour of Python; the Pythian Games of Delphi? [ii]   Why did the mythical musician Olympos play on his pipes a lament for the Python?[iii]  Why did Apollo (and Artemis) have to get purified at least three time to wash away the sin of manslaughter?  In Aigialeia, formerly know as Sicyon,[iv]  Carmanor of Krete[v] and finally the river-god Peneus purified Apollo in his waters.[vi]   The sons of the Thessalians say, Apollo the Pythian-Slayer was purified here according to the command of Zeus.[vii]

 

Cadmus

"(Cadmus) sent some of his men to fetch water from the spring of Ares, but a Serpent, said by many to be a child of Ares, guarded the spring and destroyed most of those who had been sent. In outrage Kadmos killed the Serpent, (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 22 )   

Robert Graves says “Cadmus killed the serpent in the same sense as Apollo killed the Python at Delphi.”  Cadmus is often consider a doublet of Apollo.  So for Kadmos, to atone for the death

• ”He served Ares as a laborer for an 'everlasting' year, for a year then was equal to eight years now."  Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 22
•   "Cadmus, (and Harmonia), were turned into snakes in the region of Illyria by the wrath of Mars, because Cadmus had slain the Dragon, guardian of the fountain of Castalia." (Hyginus, Fabulae 6)

It was just another snake, why did Apollo and Cadmus suffer for their slaying of a serpent? 

Other Snakes

Echidna, “a Nymphe who never dies, and all her days she is ageless." (295)  “bore the grisly-minded Lernaian Hydra, whom the goddess white-armed Hera nourished because of her quenchless grudge against the strong Heracles. Yet he, Herakles …killed this beast with the pitiless bronze sword." (Hesiod, Theogony 313)  And no need for atonement, purification, games or laments.  

Jason slew the Hydra’s sibling the Colchian Dragon[viii]  and didn’t have to atone.  Phorbas of Thessaly became a Rhodian hero for slaying their serpents, according to Hyginus in Astronomica 2.14.  In this same source Heracles kills a rampaging snake for Omphale and no harm befalls the pair. Apparently, (to my surprise) Heracles also killed the serpent that guarded the golden fruit of the Hesperies.  I have killed a few snake myself with no divine penalty, 

So what’s with the Python?  Why was slaying it such a big no-no?

 PS  It seems ironic to me and maybe pertinent that Apollo is purified, re-born, born-again at the exact spot where he was supposed to be born in the first place. 

Leto stretched forth both her arms and spoke in vain: `You nymphs of Thessaly, offspring of a river [Peneus], tell your sire to hush his great stream. Entwine your hands about his beard and entreat him that the children of Zeus be born in his waters.” [i]  And the river-god consents.   

More at https://shortstories-bill.blogspot.com/2012/08/tfbt-peneus-thy-favor-shall-be-rewarded.html

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[i] Callimachus, Hymn 4 to Delos 104 ff

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[i] Aeschylus Eumenides

[ii] Ptolemy Hephaestion, New History Book 7 (summary from Photius, Myriobiblon 190) 

[iii] Melanippides, Fragment 5 (from Plutarch, On Music) (from Julian, Letters) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric V).  

[iv] Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 7. 7);

[v] Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 30. 3)

[vi] The Encyclopedia Britannica says of “the Vale of Tempe”

[vii] Theopompus, The Historian by Gordon S Shrimpton.

[viii] Pindar, Pythian Ode 4. 241

TFBT: Ben’s Curriculum, Part II

A nice, wild-haired young man named Ben, contacted me one day.  He was wanted to learn about Greek mythology in the esoteric sense.    It was an opportunity for our own personal spiritual growth by studying these old “truths”.   Here is the basic out-line of the curriculum for our one-on-one course. 

3.  East Meets West.  The concept of the “Yellow Peril” was not something new invented by Kaiser Wilhelm, but is a European notion as old as Homer.  The Poet Lycohron and Historian Herodotus both agree the trouble started with the abduction of women.  The Greek Princess Io by Phoenician sailors,  the Phoenician Princess Europa by Cretan sailors, Princes Medea of far Colchis by Jason and most famously Helen Queen of Sparta by Prince Paris of Troy.  Crete and Phoenicia aren’t that far from one another.  As the Greek world expanded the “Other” had to be found further and further away.  Both Lychohron and Herodotus make the Persian Wars part of this

on-going conflict.  According to the lost epic Cypria the war at Troy and the wars at Thebes were meant to be the wars to end all wars.  In Thebes the gods were divided into two camps, those supporting the destruction of the seven-gated city and those opposed.  The faction defending the city were called the “Tyrian deities” in the Thebaid.  Tyre being a famous Phoenician city.  At Troy the most avid defender of the city was Apollo Λυκηγενὴς (Il. 4.101) "born in Lycia”.  His mother was local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia,   Apollo,  his mother Leto and sister Artemis are referred to as the "national gods" of the country as discussed by T. R. Bryce, "The Arrival of the Goddess Leto in Lycia".  The fact that Apollo became the principal god of the Hellenistic culture didn’t stop him (via his Oracle at Delphi) from continuing to be (anti-Greek and) notoriously pro-Persian during the historical wars. 


PS  Paint is (Peoples of Europe, Protect Your Most Sacred Possessions), by  the artist Hermann Knackfuss.  The allegory is of the European nations looking on as Archangel Michael points out the onrushing “yellow peril”.  Reported to be in the public domain.   

 

TFBT: Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles

At Hour 25, the book club that just finished reading The Orestia continued on with the “Oedipus at Colonus” by Sophocles.  As with The Orestia, I concentrated on the appearances of the Erinyes, the goddesses of revenge, rather than the human plot. 

If you don’t know the story, elderly, blind Oedipus accompanied by his daughter arrive at a beautiful garden on the outskirts of Athens seeking sanctuary and a place to be laid to rest.  The locales are aghast to discover who he is, because everyone in Greece knows he killed his father and married his mother.  Anyone who shelters this outcast is asking to have their land cursed by the Erinyes.  (As they threatened to do near the end of the Oresteia.)  The catch is that apparently Oedipus accidently sought sanctuary, that is, became  a suppliant at the very altar of the Erinyes themselves.  Oedipus relatives show up to claim his body. (He’s still not dead yet, by the way.)  Apollo told them that if Oedipus is laid to rest in Athens that Thebes will someday be defeated in battle by the Athenians. Not that they want to bury him at home, because then the fated curse falls on them, again.  They just don’t want him buried in Athens.  He double curses them and strolls off with King Theseus to the mysterious secret  spot where he will pass to the other world.  The last anyone sees, Oedipus disappeared into "the sacred tomb where tis my portion to be buried" and Theseus is left mumbling silent praise to the gods below and the gods above. The end. 

In The Orestia, the Eumenides are called everything, but “goddesses” until three quarters of the way through the third play.  Here they are addressed as the goddesses “The all-seeing Eumenides the people here would call them…”  around line 40

At line 85, Oedipus lets it slip out that the seeming accident of his arrival  at this “inviolable” spot, was contrived by Apollo.  Line 665 suggests that Apollo“ has been your escort here.”  In retrospect, just like in “The Oresteia” Apollo was the god that started this whole disaster by his enigmatic response to the Corinthian prince’s question about his paternity.  Just as in the Oresteia the “sweet daughters of primeval Darkness” don’t drink wine (don’t require wine libations) because Apollo tricked the sisters the Fates once by getting them drunk on wine.   We might wonder here was Loriax is up to.

The locales initiate Oedipus into the rituals to placate the dread goddesses at Lines 125 & 480; “a wanderer, not a dweller in the land; otherwise he never would have advanced into this untrodden grove of the maidens with whom none may strive. Their name we tremble to speak, we pass them by with eyes turned away, mouthing the words, without sound or word,”

Another daughter arrives and the audience and chorus are told the situation in Thebes.  “At first it was their decision that the throne should be left to Creon, and the city spared pollution, when they thought calmly about the ancient blight on our family, 370“  Creon is the once and forever regent of Thebes generation after generation cleaning up the messes made by the royal family.  The “ancient blight on our family” was caused by the crime of their ancestor Laius.  As Oedipus admits at Line 530, he has two blessing; his daughters and two curses; Laius’ and his own.  However, when things calmed down the royal family designed to retain the throne  “And the younger son has stripped the elder, Polyneikes, of the throne, (375)"   Per primordial law as mentioned in Homer, the erinyes will support the elder brother in the fratricidal war to come.

Creon arrives around line 760 and say, “Oedipus, in the name of your ancestral gods, listen to me!”  Sort of ironic and ineffectual calling upon the very gods that laid this curse on his family and chased him to Athens.  “… consent to return to the city and the house of your ancestors, … since it was she that nurtured you long ago.”  In point of fact it was the city of Corinth that nurtured and raised Oedipus.  Creon  is driven by his need to save his people from the grief to come. His heartless stern actions reek of desperation. He is wrong. But at the same time Oedipus is just as heartless and stern. For all his whining and begging, Oedipus is not giving in to Creon’s demands. Oedipus, as "implacable, inexorable" as the Erinyes. He is willing to curse his sons and sacrifice his daughters to get his revenge. This is a battle of titans on a cosmic scale for the sanctity of human life

Next up is his Oedipus’ son who did nothing to save his father from exile, who comes for his father’s blessing in the approving war for the throne called “The Seven Against Thebes”.  Oedipus’ response is to re-double the family curse with all the power latent in his polluted self.  He is as unforgiving and unmovable as the Erinyes themselves.  His doomed son saying  “This path now will be my destiny, ill-fated and evil, because of my father here and his Furies.”  Oedipus can summon the Erinyes just like Clytemnestra did in the “Libation Bearers” of the Oresteia

The son’s parting words are “forgo your fierce mēnis against me, as I go forth to punish my brother, (1330)”  “Menis” is a Greek word for wrath and generally reserved for the gods.  It is anger of cosmic consequence.  In the Oresteia the god Apollo admits to fearing the menis of Orestes “And I will aid the suppliant and rescue him! For the mēnis of the suppliant would be awesome to mortals and gods, if I intentionally abandoned him” The menis of Orestes would have unravelled the divine plot to establish the rule of law amongst mankind.  Of what concern to the gods was the wrath of Oedipus at his sons?  The answer is what happens next in Greek mythology.  The banishment  of Oedipus ultimately ignited the Theban wars.  The Theban Wars, like the Trojan war were arranged by Zeus and Themis to lighten the load of the tribes of demi-gods upon Mother earth.  (Cypria and Works&Days ll. 156-169b)

Oedipus and Theseus go apart from the others.  Oedipus disappears and Theseus performs the required prayers “mouthing the words, without sound or word,”

 

 PS

 

A little something off topic hear I read in “Oedipus at Colonus”

 

“I say this because you, son of Kronos, lord Poseidon, have set the city on the throne of these words of praise by inventing, first of all on our own roadways, the bit that cures the rage of horses. Meanwhile the oar, well-shaped for rowing on the sea, is gliding past the land as it leaps to keep time with the singing and dancing of the hundred-footed Nereids.” 714

 

This is the clearest explantion I’ve seen as to how Poseidon could be the god of the horse and of the sea.  With horse and bit  he rules the roadway.  With boat and oar he rules the sea-ways.  He is master of horses;  the steeds of earth and ships; the steeds of the sea.