Opposite the brazen head of this bison is the statue of a man with a coat of mail on and a cloak over it: the Delphians say it is a votive offering of the people of Andros, and that it is Andreus their founder. And the statues of Apollo and Athene and Artemis are votive offerings of the Phocians from spoil of the Thessalians, their constant enemies, and neighbours except where the Epicnemidian Locrians come in. Votive offerings have been also made by the Thessalians of Pharsalus, and by the Macedonians who dwell at Dium under Pieria, and by the Greeks of Cyrene in Libya. These last sent a chariot and statue of Ammon on the chariot, and the Macedonians at Dium sent an Apollo who has hold of a doe, and the Pharsalians sent an Achilles on horseback, and Patroclus is running by the side of the horse. And the Dorians of Corinth built a treasury also, and the gold from the Lydians was stored there. And the statue of Hercules was the votive offering of the Thebans at the time they fought with the Phocians what is called The Sacred War. Here also are the brazen effigies erected by the Phocians, when in the second encounter they routed the Thessalian cavalry. The people of Phlius also sent to Delphi a brazen Zeus, and an effigy of Ægina with Zeus.[99] And from Mantinea in Arcadia there is an offering of a brazen Apollo, not far from the treasury of the Corinthians.
Hercules and Apollo are also to be seen close to a tripod for the possession of which they are about to fight, but Leto and Artemis are trying to appease the anger of Apollo, and Athene that of Hercules. This was the votive offering of the Phocians when Tellias of Elis led them against the Thessalians. The other figures in the group were made jointly by Diyllus and Amyclæus, but Athene and Artemis were made by Chionis, all 3 Corinthian statuaries. It is also recorded by the Delphians that, when Hercules the son of Amphitryon came to consult the oracle, the priestess Xenoclea would not give him any response because of his murder of Iphitus: so he took the tripod and carried it out of the temple, and the prophetess said,
“This is another Hercules, the one from Tiryns not from Canopus.”
For earlier still the Egyptian Hercules had come to Delphi. Then the son of Amphitryon restored the tripod to Apollo, and got the desired answer from Xenoclea. And poets have handed down the tradition, and sung of the contest of Hercules and Apollo for the tripod.
After the battle of Platæa the Greeks in common made a votive offering of a gold tripod standing on a bronze dragon. The bronze part of the votive offering was there in my time, but the golden part had been abstracted by the Phocian leaders.[100] The Tarentines also sent to Delphi another tenth of spoil taken from the Peucetian barbarians. These votive offerings were the works of art of Onatas the Æginetan and Calynthus, and are effigies of footsoldiers and cavalry, Opis king of the Iapyges come to the aid of the Peucetii. He is represented in the battle as a dying man, and as he lies on the ground there stand by him the hero Taras and the Lacedæmonian Phalanthus, and at no great distance a dolphin: for Phalanthus before he went to Italy suffered shipwreck in the Crissæan Gulf, and was they say brought safe to shore by a dolphin.
[99] Ægina was the daughter of the river-god Asopus, and was carried off from Phlius by Zeus. See Book ii. ch. 5. Hence the offering of the people of Phlius.
[100] See Rawlinson’s Herodotus, Book ix. ch. 81.
CHAPTER XIV.
The axes which were the votive offering of Periclytus, the son of Euthymachus of Tenedos, have an old legend connected with them. Cycnus was they say the son of Poseidon, and king at Colonæ, a town in the Troad near the island Leucophrys. This Cycnus had a daughter Hemithea and a son Tennes by Proclea, daughter of Clytius, and sister of that Caletor of whom Homer says in the Iliad[101] that he was slain by Ajax when he tried to set on fire the ship of Protesilaus,—and, Proclea dying, Cycnus married for his second wife Phylonome, the daughter of Cragasus, who failing to win the love of Tennes told her husband that Tennes wanted to have illicit dealings with her against her will, and Cycnus believed this lie, and put Tennes and his sister into a chest, and sent them to sea in it. And they got safe to the island Leucophrys, since called Tenedos from Tennes. And Cycnus, who was not destined to be ignorant of his wife’s deception all his life, when he learned the truth sailed after his son to implore his forgiveness, and to admit his unwitting error. And as he was anchoring at the island, and was fastening his vessel by ropes to some tree or piece of rock, Tennes in his rage cut the ropes with his axe. Hence it is passed into a proverb, when people obstinately decline a conference, that they resemble him who cut the matter short with his Tenedian axe. Tennes was afterwards slain the Greeks say by Achilles as he was defending Tenedos, and in process of time the people of Tenedos, as they were weak, joined themselves to the people of Alexandria on the mainland of the Troad.
The Greeks who fought against the King of the Persians erected at Olympia a brazen Zeus, and an Apollo at Delphi, after the actions of Artemisium and Salamis. It is said also that Themistocles, when he went to Delphi, brought of the spoils of the Medes as a present to Apollo, and when he asked if he should offer them inside the temple, the Pythian Priestess bade him at once take them away altogether. And these were the words of her oracular response: “Put not in my temple the beautiful spoils of the Persians, send them home as quickly as possible.” It is wonderful that the god declined to accept the spoils of the Medes only from Themistocles. Some think the god would have rejected all the Persian spoil equally, if those who offered it had first asked (like Themistocles) if the god would accept it. Others say that, as the god knew that Themistocles would be a suppliant of the Persians, he refused on that account to accept the spoil from him, that he might not win for him by acceptance the undying hate of the Medes. This invasion of Greece by the barbarian you may find foretold in the oracles of Bacis, and earlier still in the verses of Euclus.