Greek Lands and Letters

by Francis Greenleaf Allinson; Anne C. E. Allinson

But mortal women were not the only companions of Dionysus. The exuberant play of nature, the change from death to life as winter made way for spring, not only goaded human hearts with a divine torture, but peopled the hills with lithe nymphs of untouched soul, rollicking with Pan and even with the greater god whose joy, to spirits touched to finer issues, was more terrible than sweet. Pan and the nymphs had their special dwelling-place in the Corycian Cave, which Pausanias mentions as one of the four most famous caverns of the whole world, “among a total number past finding out.” It was certainly the most remarkable one in Greece, a country abounding in “caves that open upon the beach or in the deep sea,” and in mountain caverns due to the frequent honeycombing by earthquake and subterranean currents. Very large and containing two chambers, it lies about seven miles northeast of Delphi, near the top of one of the low hills which form the northern boundary of the Parnassian uplands. According to the descriptions of travellers, the greater chamber has slender stalactites hanging from the roof at both ends, and at the inner end stalagmites rise from the ground to meet them. The other chamber, like a remote shrine, must be reached through a narrow passage and lies in almost total darkness. At the mouth of the cave an inscription was found containing a dedication to Pan and the nymphs. Certainly a fit abode for divine embodiments of soulless nature was this vaulted, echoing grotto, whose cavernous mouth opens upon the widespread beauty of an untamed world. Æschylus may have seen the “Corycian Rock” or he may have trusted to the eyes of others in describing its hollow loneliness, “the home of birds, and the resort of deities.”

If it is difficult to disentangle the myths which connect several gods with one place, it is still more difficult to understand the legends which hint at the infinite complexity of each god in any one of his own several spheres. In studying the Delphic Apollo, the clear outlines of the great god as he governed the Greek world will best be preserved by noticing those stories which have been preferred by the poets. It was natural that Æschylus should penetrate beyond any individualized form of divine activity to primeval forces, following the legend which made Apollo a late heir to the first owners of the oracle, to Earth herself and to her daughter, holy Law. It was equally characteristic that Euripides, with his eye for vivid detail, should have been attracted by the story which begins with Leto’s golden-haired son coming from the fruitful meadows of his birthplace, Delos, to the Dionysus-haunted summit of Parnassus. Under its shadow, amid the thick-leaved laurel, lay as guardian of the holy place a dragon with gleaming talons. This horrid monster the young god slew, thereafter taking his seat upon the golden tripod. Earth, appearing only as the mother of the dragon, sought to wrest from him the right of prophecy. But, swift of foot, he fled to Olympus and the throne of Zeus, and the king of the gods laughed and shook his awful hair and gave to his youthful son in perpetuity the sovereignty over the Delphic abode.

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which contains the oldest account of the killing of the dragon, also relates that the god chose Cretans to be his first ministers. Whatever the historical basis of this story may be, its telling gives the riotous Ionian poet a chance to transform Phœbus Apollo into a dolphin deflecting from its course a swift ship sent out from Cretan Cnossus to Pylos on the border of the Ionian Sea. The dolphin caused it to traverse strange waters, beyond Peloponnesus and the ford of Alpheus, past the steep ridge of Ithaca and wooded Zacynthus, into the harbour of Crisa. Here the dolphin disappeared and the god leaped from the ship in the guise of a star at high noon, while sparks of frequent fire flew from him and flash of splendour reached the sky. On shore he appeared as a man, lusty and strong, and persuaded the Cretans to dance in his train and to take charge of the temple. By suggesting that they might use for themselves the flocks brought for sacrifice, he overcame their fear that they would fare but meagrely in a country neither vine-bearing nor rich in meadows.

The story of the hymn is too confused to be worthy of Apollo. He was no music-hall performer, making lightning transformations, but lord, in simplicity and dignity, of music and all harmonies, elder brother and guide in the paths of conduct. So at least he reveals himself on a spring morning beneath the Shining Rocks lit by his sunlight from the south.

But homelier memories also come to life. It may have been in the “fragrant dawn” of a day like this that the boy Odysseus, while he was on a visit to his grandfather, went hunting with his uncles in the windy hollows of wood-clad Parnassus and killed a great boar. From its white tusks he had received a wound which was to leave an indelible scar and years later betray his identity to his aged nurse. Certainly it must have been on such a morning that another boy, Ion the acolyte, was performing his early tasks for the temple when visitors from Athens arrived to question him about the sights. They were women who had accompanied the queen Creusa when she and her husband, like many others, came to Delphi in their childlessness[childlessness]. In her youth, before her marriage to Xuthus, she had been loved by Apollo and had borne him a son in his cave below the Athenian Acropolis. The baby had been abandoned by her, but a servant had carried it to Delphi and left it as a foundling with the priestess. Unknown to Creusa, he had grown into the boyish minister of his divine father. The plot of the Euripidean drama which uses the story is sensational, including attempted murders and many complications before mother and child recognize and accept each other. But the boy Ion is one of the happiest creations of a poet whom Aristophanes accused of skepticism. His unstained youth consecrates his daily work of sweeping the temple floor, adorning the doorway with fresh wreaths and laurel boughs and driving away the wild pigeons. Reared by a holy woman in the remote quiet of the sanctuary, he has become a vessel, crystal clear, to hold the purest essence of religious feeling. His morning hymn reflects the unspoiled reverence with which, among the greedy hordes, many must have turned to Delphi:—

“Lo! the radiant Sun, his four horses a-span!

Now with splendour his car flingeth light o’er the earth,

And the stars from the sky at this dazzle of fire

Flee for refuge and hide in the temple of Night,

And inviolate peaks of Parnassus are lit