But, oh, the further marvel! Theria was to go up to the Precinct to see the sacred rite. She was older now. Had she not already dedicated her girlhood toys to Artemis? Soon she would be a woman and for women there were certain rare occasions when they might visit the temple place.
The new white himation which she was to wear she hung on a peg in her room. Gazing at this, fingering it, she could almost realize she was about to go to the Precinct. The joy caught strongly at her throat. Every day she begged her mother to name over each temple that she was to see, each treasury, each statue that flanked the Sacred Way until Melantho clapped hands over her ears and ordered her out of the room.
Theria never moved quietly about the house. She always ran or skipped. Now as she ran, she sang aloud or, leaping into her swing in the court, she swept upward like a swallow, until she could see high over the balcony into the second-story rooms. The whole house felt the contagion of her joy.
“I’m to attend little mistress,” boasted Nerea in the kitchen. “By Hermes, the best o’ the festival will be to see her face goin’ into the gates.”
The Strepterion was a festival which like the Pythia came every fourth year. At the Strepterion was performed the sacred drama, “Apollo Killing the Python,” the very same which Dryas had acted in play when a baby, and now he was to act it in earnest.
Midway in the Precinct was built a temporary hut called the Palace of the Snake. And the snake would be there, a marvel of contrivance, his ugly dragon head, with open mouth and teeth, resting on the threshold. Dryas, arrayed as the boy Apollo, must in mimic dance and gesture fight the dragon. A chorus of boys carrying torches would sing the story. Then after the struggle Apollo must lift his silver bow and shoot the dragon. It would die with great writhings and agony—a joy to the crowd.
Presently all the actors would come in solemn, silent procession down the Sacred Way. They would pass out of the gate of the Precinct, through the village, and away on the western road.
Thus would begin a long journey which would take from moon to moon. Symbolically, the actors would journey to the land of the Hyperboreans beyond the north wind. Actually they would trace an ancient way of pilgrimage, the Pythian Way, to the Vale of Tempè.
At Tempè Dryas, as the Sacred Boy, would gather boughs from a certain famous laurel tree, and bring them home to be woven into crowns for the Pythian victors. For the Pythian festival and games always fell in the same year, a few weeks later than the Strepterion.