Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/265

 the character, and the arrangements of Apollo's Delian temple

A question at once occurs. Was this temple (which M. Homolle would refer to thie beginning of the fourth century B.C.) the earliest which Apollo possessed at Delos? And if not, can any earlier temple of Apollo be traced? M. Lebégue holds that the grotto on Cynthus was the primitive temple and oracle of Apollo, who succeeded a solar god previously worshipped there; that, when the later temple was built in the plain, some of the legends, migrating from Cynthus, attached themselves to the new site; but that the grotto continued to be the oracle, just as the temple of Apollo is distinguished from the oracle  at Claros and at Branchidae. Among the texts on which this view relies, two are prominent: (1) Leto, according to the Homeric hymn (v. 17), bears her children, "reclining against the lofty hill, the slope of Cynthus, close to the palm, by the streams of Inopus." And Leto promises (v. 80) that Apollo shall build "a beauteous shrine, to be an oracle of men," at Delos first of all, before he builds his temples elsewhere. This, it is argued, shows (i) that the birthplace of Apollo was originally placed on Cynthus, not in the plain; (ii) that there was an oracular shrine of such immemorial age that the building of it could be ascribed to Apollo himself. This latter point may be allowed. As to the first, the words of the hymn would, I think, be