Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

ix] The Python as Snake-King 429
people of Epiros had a snake-cult which they believed to be
derived from Delphi, and which we may suppose was, if not
actually derived, at least analogous. ./Elian 1 thus describes it:
The people of Epiros sacrifice in general to Apollo, and to him they
celebrate their greatest feast on one day of the year, a feast of great
magnificence and much reputed. There is a grove dedicated to the god,
and it has a circular enclosure and within are snakes, playthings surely for
the god. Now only the maiden priestess approaches them, and she is naked
(yvfivrj), and she brings the snakes their food. These snakes are said by the
people of Epiros to be descended from the Python at Delphi. Now if when the
priestess comes near them the snakes are seen to be gentle, and if they take
to their food kindly, that is taken to mean that there will be a plentiful year
and free from disease ; but if they frighten her, and do not take the honeycakes
she offers them, then they portend the reverse.
The snake here is not slain by Apollo, it is taken on peaceably
as a plaything (ddvp/xa). The snake has a maiden priestess.
The omen, as at Athens, is by food. When the snake of Pytho,
feminine of course at first, as guardian of Gaia, had to be killed,
he became a male serpent, a foeman worthy of Apollo's steel 2 .
But all this goes to show the harmlessness of the local genius
loci, and does not explain how men came to think he had to die.
The clue is given by the ' kingly palace ' at the nine-years Festival,
the Stepteria. Minos reigned for nine years 3 . The
king as
daimon incarnate of the Year reigned at Delphi for nine years.
At the end he is killed or deposed. And—this is the important
point—the king as hero-daimon is envisaged as a snake. Cecrops
was a snake, Kychreus was a snake 4 . The old snake dies, the
young snake lives.
Kadmos and Jason as Snake-Slayers.
The myth of the slaying of the snake is not of course confined
to Delphi, though only at Delphi is it the deed of a god. Kadmos
slays the snake of Ares, and his snake-slaying is singularly in-
structive.
The chorus in the Phoenissae 5 tell the story of how Kadmos
1 De Nat. An. xi. 2.
"- The Homeric Hymn has, however [v. 300), 8pa.Ka.iva. Euripides (I. in T. 1245)
has bpa.Kwv.
3 Od. xix. 179 evviwpos fiacrlXeve Aibs /j.eyd\ov oapiarrjs. See Prof. Murray, Rise
p. 156, note 1.
4 Supra, p. 297.
of the Greek Epic 2 ,
5 Eur. Phoen. 638.