Amongst these settlements we must probably also reckon that on the promontory of Corycus in Cilicia, since we find in its vicinity the temple of Zeus Sarpedon. The name of the place, if compared with that of the Corycian grotto on Parnassus, is of itself sufficient evidence that the worship of Apollo prevailed there, which is still further proved by the tradition that stags swam over from thence to Curium in Cyprus.[935] Here also stood an altar of Apollo, of particular sanctity, which no one was allowed to touch on pain of being thrown from the rocks of the neighbouring promontory. In this punishment we shall presently [pg 239] recognise one form of the expiatory rites, which every where accompanied the worship of Apollo.
3. No place contained so many temples of Apollo within so small a space as the coast of Troy; Cilia, in the recess of the Adramyttian gulf; Chryse, in the territory of the Hypoplacian Thebes;[936] the Smintheum, in its immediate neighbourhood;[937] the island of Tenedos (whose religious ceremonies were by some unaccountable means transplanted to Corinth and Syracuse),[938] are all mentioned in a few verses of the Iliad.[939] No less celebrated was Thymbra, situated at the confluence of the Thymbrius and Scamander, where Cassandra was reported to have been brought up in the temple of Apollo, and thus to have learnt the art of prophecy.[940] On the Trojan citadel of Pergamus itself was a temple of Apollo, with Artemis and Latona; and hence Homer represents these three deities as protecting the falling city.[941] It is however important to remark, that the inhabitants of Zelea, a town on the [pg 240] northern foot of mount Ida, and the native place of the archer Pandarus, the son of Lycaon, worshipped Apollo under the title of Lycius, or Lycegenes; and that Zelea was also called Lycia;[942] for these facts show that there was a real connexion between the name of Lycia and the worship of Apollo, and that it was the worship of Apollo which gave the name to this district of Troy, as it had done to the country of the Solymi. In Chryse also Apollo was called Lycæus.[943] The origin of this worship can neither be attributed to the native Trojan and Dardan race, nor yet to the later Æolians, although these for the most part adopted it into their religious ceremonies.[944] It is however certain, from an ancient tradition, that the Cretans also colonized this coast; though we are not aware what was the precise account of Callinus, the ancient elegiac poet,[945] who preserved it. It was however the popular belief that Apollo Smintheus, and indeed the whole Trojan nation, were derived from Crete.[946] The last notion, that all the Trojans were of Cretan origin, is in the highest degree improbable; but it will hardly [pg 241] be denied that there came to Troy a Cretan colony in connexion with Apollo Smintheus. Indeed the Cretans who inhabited the district of Troy must often have been mentioned in ancient traditions, as a strange account of their strict administration of justice has been preserved.[947] Could we but obtain a more authentic source of traditions relating to the religious worship than the deceitful accounts of poets, we might perhaps discover in it many confirmations of the historical traces to which we have just adverted. Even now we may perceive that the servitude of Apollo under Laomedon[948] is the same fable as that of Admetus at Pheræ, the locality alone being changed.
4. By observing Homer's accounts of the worship of Apollo in different Trojan families, we may discover a remarkable consistency and connexion in the ancient tradition.
In the first place he represents it as belonging chiefly to the family of the Panthoidæ. Panthus (from whom a tribe in modern Ilium derived its name Πανθωῒς)[949] was a priest of the god,[950] and hence his sons were protected by Apollo in battle.[951] Hence also Euphorbus, the descendant of Panthus, is selected to kill Patroclus, who, as well as all the other Æacidæ, was in the heroic mythology represented as odious to Apollo.[952]
The other family, described in the Iliad as connected with Apollo, is that of Æneas, whom, when wounded by Diomed, the god himself conducted to his temple on the citadel of Troy, and delivered over to the care of Latona and Artemis.[953] Now that this history was not a mere arbitrary fiction of the poet may be distinctly proved. For we know that, after Troy had fallen, the remaining Trojans still maintained themselves in the mountains; they are mentioned by Herodotus as a separate state existing in the stronghold of Gergis, in the defiles of Ida;[954] and, even after the Peloponnesian war, Dardan princes reigned here and at Scepsis.[955] It can, we think, be shown that Homer's prophecy[956] respecting the future dominion of the descendants of Æneas over the remnant of the Trojan nation, refers solely to the town of Gergis, and perhaps to the neighbouring valleys. Now the chief temple at Gergis was that of Apollo,[957] and in the same town there was an ancient Sibylline oracle, known by the name of the Hellespontine or Mermessian. We now see that the ancient poet, being well acquainted with the existence of the Æneadæ at Gergis, their festivals and sacrifices, felt himself bound, according [pg 243] to the spirit of mythology, to represent Apollo as the ancient guardian of that family.
We shall seize this opportunity of briefly pointing out the results which may be drawn from these facts, in illustration of the fable of Æneas. We must first assume that the above oracle of Apollo at Gergis announced to the Trojan Gergithians the re-establishment of their nation under the dominion of the descendants of Æneas. Such a prophecy, in fact, agrees so exactly with the spirit and system of the ancient oracles, that its existence can scarcely be doubted. The hopes, the longing after a restoration of their ancient power, must necessarily have assumed this form among the distressed and conquered Trojans. Now a colony of Gergithians also inhabited the territory of the Æolian Cume,[958] where Apollo possessed a magnificent temple;[959] and if these oracles had been known to the Cumæans, they would readily have passed over to their kinsmen the Cumans of Campania. At this last place there was, on the summit of a rock, a temple of Apollo (one of the most ancient in the whole settlement, and, as it was pretended, built by Dædalus);[960] underneath was the grotto of the sibyl. Here it was said that Æneas landed; and here, according to Stesichorus, he remained, and never went further to the north.[961] Nothing was more probable than that these oracles should in both cases have been applied locally, and that a new Troy should in consequence have been [pg 244] founded both in Asia and Italy. Hence, when the Greek sibylline oracles, in connexion with the worship of Apollo, became the state-oracles of Rome, all that had been prophesied of districts near the Hellespont was, without scruple or ceremony (though not without the ingenuity of commentators and interpreters), applied to Rome. It is evident that the origin of the strange fable of Æneas, the father of Romulus, and all that was afterwards added to it, may be explained in this simple manner.
5. The most ancient temple of Apollo in Thrace was also founded by Cretans, as well as that at Ismarus or Maroneia;[962] Maron its priest being, according to tradition, a Cretan adventurer.[963] With this sanctuary was probably connected the ancient oracular temple of Apollo at Deræa near Abdera,[964] alluded to in the device on the coins of Abdera; on one side of which Apollo is seen with the arrow in his hand; and on the reverse is a griffin, a symbol which appears to have been adopted by the Teians in consequence of their having resided for some time in their colony of Abdera.
6. The Cretan worshippers of Apollo also established some considerable temples on the Ionian coast. The principal of these was the Didymæum, in the territory of Miletus. Before the Ionic migration, Miletus was a Cretan fortress, on the coast, in a country at that time called Caria.[965] The disagreement of traditions as to whether Sarpedon or Miletus (the Cretan) was the founder, confirms, rather than weakens, the [pg 245] principal fact of its settlement from Crete, both traditions describing the same fact in a different manner. With the founding of this stronghold was connected that of a temple, which is ascribed to Branchus, an expiatory priest[966] of Delphi, whose name (which was well fitted for a prophet),[967] moulded into a patronymic form, was afterwards adopted by the priests of the temple;[968] the temple itself, and even the place (which was also called Didyma). Thus we here again see a fresh connexion between the Delphians and Cretans, there being indeed hardly any distinction between them before they were dispersed by the different migrations of the Doric race. The worship at Didyma was in fact the same with that of Crete and Delphi; expiatory ceremonies and prophecies being united, and the latter delivered with rites very similar to those observed at the Pythian oracle. Apollo was here called Philesius and Delphinius, which names were afterwards adopted by other Ionians;[969] with him was connected Zeus, both, according to Callimachus, being the ancestors of Didyma; and also Artemis, who, in an ancient hymn ascribed to Branchus, is with Apollo addressed under the titles of ἑκάεργος and ἑκαέργη.[970] The ruins of this temple, so highly honoured in Asia, still bear witness to its ancient fame and splendour. From the temple [pg 246] to the harbour[971] Panormus there was a sacred road adorned on both sides with more than sixty statues in a very ancient style of workmanship: amongst these, an Egyptian lion attests the connexion of king Necho with the oracle.[972] The Ionians of Miletus, however, acknowledged the god of Branchidæ as the principal deity in their town, and introduced him into their numerous colonies, from Naucratis[973] to Cyzicus,[974] Parium,[975] Apollonia Pontica,[976] and the distant Taurica: the coins and inscriptions of which place agree in representing him as the guardian deity (προστάτης).[977]
7. The twin brother of the Didymæan god, both in origin and in the similarity of worship, is the Clarian Apollo. However fabulous the particular circumstances of its foundation, still it was impossible in ancient times to invent a religious colonial connexion where none in fact existed. The traditions manifestly imply a double dependence of the establishment at Claros: viz., upon Delphi and Crete. Manto, the daughter of Teiresias the Theban soothsayer, was, according to the epic poets, consecrated by the Epigoni to the Delphian Apollo after the [pg 247] taking of Thebes,[978] and she was afterwards sent by Apollo to the spot on which the Ionians at a later period founded the city of Colophon; having, in obedience to the commands of the oracle, married on her way Rhacius the Cretan, whose name, according to the dialect of Crete, had the double form Rhacius and Lacius.[979] Augias, the Cyclic poet, mentioned the tomb of her father Teiresias at Colophon,[980] which was generally supposed to be in Bœotia. The offspring of this marriage was Mopsus, who was probably called the progenitor of the family from which, even in the Roman time, the priests of the oracle were selected.[981] The forms of prophecy were in this temple also similar to those at Delphi.
The other temples of Apollo on the coast of Asia Minor were generally connected with some one of the four already mentioned. The temple of Leucæ, between Smyrna and Phocæa (where the Cumæans celebrated a festival),[982] was probably a member of the Trojan family, to which the Grynean Apollo, in the territory of Myrina near Cume (where there was also an oracle), appears to be related.[983] Apollo [pg 248] Malloeis, in the territory of Mytilene, in Lesbos, was an off-shoot of the Clarian worship:[984] to the same branch also belonged the oracle of Apollo at Mallus in Cilicia,[985] inasmuch as it was said to have been founded by Mopsus the son of Manto.