“. . . navel of earth, where burns the flame
Of fire immortal.”
As the old astronomers made Earth the centre of the planetary system, and as men are everywhere, and at all times, apt to consider their own position and point of view as of more importance in the great whole of things than it really is; so the Greeks, in their ignorant vanity, considered their own Delphi to be the navel, or central point of Earth. As to the immortal fire, Stan. quotes here from Plutarch, who, in his life of Numa (c. ix.), describing the institution of the Vestal Virgins, takes occasion to mention the sacred fire kept alive in Greece at two places, Delphi and Athens, which, if extinguished, was always rekindled from no earthly spark, but from the Sun.
“There is atonement.”
Ἐισιν καθαρμόι, Schütz, Pal.; (ε)᾽ σται καθαρμός, Bothe. Either of these seems preferable to the vulgate ἐισω. Franz has ῟Εις σοι καθαρμὸς. Eins bleibt Dir Sühnung.
“Ye see them not. I see them.”
Ghosts and gods are never visible to the bystander, but only to the person or persons who may be under their special influence at the moment of their appearance—so in the Iliad (I. 197), Pallas Athena—
“There behind him stood, and by the yellow hair she seized Pelides,