Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Python

 
Dictionary: Py·thon   ('thŏn', -thən) pronunciation
n.
  1. Greek Mythology. A dragon or serpent that was the tutelary demon of the oracular cult at Delphi until killed and expropriated by Apollo.
  2. python
    1. A soothsaying spirit or demon.
    2. A person possessed by such a spirit.

[Latin Pȳthōn, from Greek Pūthōn.]


Search unanswered questions...
Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics
 
Python, in Greek mythology, a huge serpent. In some myths the infant Apollo slew Python at the oracle of Gaea in Delphi; in others Apollo killed the serpent in order to claim the oracle for himself. The Pythian games celebrated the victory of Apollo over Python.


WordNet: Python
Top
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: (Greek mythology) dragon killed by Apollo at Delphi


Wikipedia: Python (mythology)
Top
Apollo killing Python. A 1581 engraving by Virgil Solis for Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book I

In Greek mythology Python, serpent, was the earth-dragon of Delphi, always represented in Greek sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent. She[1] presided at the Delphic oracle, which existed in the cult center for her mother, Gaia, Earth, Pytho being the place name that was substituted for the earlier Krisa.[2] Hellenes considered the site to be the center of the earth, represented by a stone, the omphalos or navel, which Python guarded.

Pytho became the chthonic enemy of the later Olympian deity Apollo, who slew her and remade her former home and the oracle, the most famous[3] in Classical Greece, as his own. Changes such as these in ancient myths may reflect a profound change in the religious concepts of Hellenic culture. Some were gradual over time and others occurred abruptly following invasion.

Contents

Versions and interpretations

There are various versions of Python's birth and death at the hands of Apollo. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, now thought rather to be composed in 522 BCE during Classical times,[4] a little detail is given about Apollo's combat with the serpent, in some sections identified as the deadly Drakaina, or her parentage. The version related by Hyginus[5] holds that when Zeus lay with the goddess Leto, and she was to deliver Artemis and Apollo, Hera sent Python to pursue her throughout the lands, so that she could not deliver wherever the sun shone. Thus when Apollo the infant was grown he pursued the python, making his way straight for Mount Parnassus where the serpent dwelled, and chased it to the oracle of Gaia at Delphi,; there he dared to penetrate the sacred precinct and kill her with his arrows beside the rock cleft where the priestess sat on her tripod. Robert Graves, who habitually read into primitive myths a retelling of archaic political and social turmoil, saw in this the capturing by Hellenes of a pre-Hellenic shrine. "To placate local opinion at Delphi," he wrote in The Greek Myths, "regular funeral games were instituted in honour of the dead hero Python, and her priestess was retained in office." The politics are conjectural, but the myth reports that Zeus ordered Apollo to purify himself for the sacrilege and instituted the Pythian Games, over which Apollo was to preside, as penance for his act.

Erwin Rohde wrote that the Python was an earth spirit, who was conquered by Apollo, and buried under the Omphalos, and that it is a case of one god setting up his temple on the grave of another.[6]

The priestess of the oracle at Delphi became known as the Pythia, after the place-name Pytho, which Greeks explained as named after the rotting (πύθειν) of the slain serpent's corpse in the strength of Hyperion (day) or Helios (the sun).[7]

Karl Kerenyi points out[8] that the older tales mentioned two dragons, who were perhaps intentionally conflated; the other was a female dragon (drakaina) named Delphyne in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, with whom dwelt a male serpent named Typhon: "The narrators seem to have confused the dragon of Delphi, Python, with Typhon or Typhoeus, the adversary of Zeus". The enemy dragoness "... actually became an Apollonian serpent, and Pythia, the priestess who gave oracles at Delphi, was named after him. Many pictures show the serpent Python living in amity with Apollon and guarding the Omphalos, the sacred navel-stone and mid-point of the earth, which stood in Apollon's temple" (Kerenyi 1951:136).

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Sometimes he, as in Hyginus and Pausanias..
  2. ^ Hymn to Pythian Apollo, l. 254-74: Telphousa recommends to Apollo to build his oracle temple at the site of "Krisa below the glades of Parnassus".
  3. ^ But also see Dodona, famous in the earliest traditions.
  4. ^ Walter Burkert, "Kynaithos, Polycrates and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo" in Arktouros: Hellenic studies presented to B. M. W. Knox ed. G. W. Bowersock, W. Burkert, M. C. J. Putnam (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979) pp. 53-62.
  5. ^ Fabulae 140.
  6. ^ cf. Rohde, Psyche, p.97.
  7. ^ Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo, 363-369.
  8. ^ Kerenyi The Gods of the Greeks 1951:136.

References


Best of the Web: Python
Top

Some good "Python" pages on the web:


Greek Mythology
www.pantheon.org
 
Shopping: Python
Top
 
 
Learn More
Constrictor constrictor
diamond snake
pythonomorpha

Can pythons swim? Read answer...
Are pythons poisious? Read answer...
What is the smallest python? Read answer...

Help us answer these
What is the threat of a python?
What are python food?
Where do python's live?

Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Python (mythology)" Read more