The European Sky-god. 403
sandal ; it was then taken off by the principal Thyiad to a rocky glen and buried with a cord round its neck. The tale told to account for this rite spoke of a certain drought during which the king had failed to provide food for his subjects and had beaten a young girl who begged for it : she had gone away and hanged herself, and famine and disease had followed until the king at the bidding of the Pythian priestess undertook this expiatory sacrifice {lJieiJbL'y[jievr]v riva KaOapfim Ovcrlav). In order to grasp the meaning of these peculiar ceremonies we must compare a few other passages in which reference is made to them. Plutarch ^^"^ elsewhere gives us further information about the Stepterion, though he does not describe it by that name. Apollo, he says, once fought with a snake for the possession of the Delphic oracle ; and he proceeds to indicate various details in the ritual representation of the fight. " The hut [KoXid^) which is erected here near the threshing-floor at intervals of eight years is not a cavernous serpent's hole, but an imitation of a royal or kingly dwelling." At this point Plutarch's text has suffered corruption ; ^^^ but it is clear that certain persons, taking with them a boy whose parents were both alive, made a silent and stealthy attack upon the hut, and, having fired it with torches and upset the table-altar, fled through the doors of the precinct without looking behind them. In substantial agreement with this is the account of Ephorus,-^^^ who stated that Apollo shot with his bow a fierce man named Python and surnamed Serpent, the Delphians burning his hut {aKr/vq) ; in memory of which achievement the ritual was still kept up. Pausanias ^^^ too records the statement that Python was not a mere snake, but " an over- bearing son of Crius, a chieftain of Euboea, who rifled the
'8' Plut. de def. orac, 15.
'*" Conjectures are collected by A. Mommsen Delphika, p. 208 n. 2 f.
'*' Ephor. ap. Strab., 422.
"» Paus., 10. 6. 6 f.
