Apollo and Python

Zeus, the king of the gods, was smitten with the goddess Leto. As he often did, he secretly came to her and begat the twin gods Apollo and Artemis upon her. However, Zeus had been betrothed to his sister goddess Hera, who was understandably furious. She vented her fury on Leto, who was forced to wander the earth pursued by the foes Hera sent against her. One particularly fierce foe was the serpent monster Python, child of the earth goddess Gaia, which pursued Leto from its lair near Delphi. Leto gained no respite until she arrived at the floating island of Delos, which was unconnected to the earth. There she was able to give birth to her divine offspring.

When still a youth, Apollo vowed to avenge his mother; he therefore set out to slay Python. Hephaestus, the smith of the gods, gave Apollo special arrows, the tip of which would penetrate the serpent’s scales. The monster was the guardian of the sanctuary of Gaia, its mother, in the caves of Delphi and guarded the navel of the earth, the Omphalos stone. Undeterred by the sanctity of the place, Apollo penetrated the shrine and found Python curled around the navel stone. Reminding the creature of how it had mistreated his mother, Apollo shot the divinely forged arrows which pierced its scales; with a horrible shriek, the serpent died as its blood poured into the shrine’s deep crevice in the earth which served as the channel to Gaia. Vapours billowed out of the crack as the earth goddess received her child’s blood and signalled her anger at this violation of her sacred place.

Apollo had not only polluted a sacred place with murder but had offended Gaia by killing her child. Although Zeus purified the sanctuary at Delphi from this defilement, he was unable to purify Apollo so easily. Gaia demanded that he be banished to Tartarus, the realm of the dead but, instead, Zeus decreed that the young god be enslaved for nine years to expiate his blood crime. Only after this time was his father able to purify him of the murder.

Apollo returned to Delphi and established it as his oracle. As the vapours of Gaia arose from the crevices in the earth, Apollo would inspire his priestess at Delphi to foretell the future to those who sought it (and paid the appropriate fee). Her utterances were unintelligible and so it was the job of the attendant priests to interpret the oracle, usually given as a riddle. This priestess who sat by the Omphalos was dubbed by Apollo the “Pythia”, in honour of his battle with the great serpent to possess the shrine.