Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/432

 402 The European Sky-god.

running, long jump, quoit-throwing, and wrestling) as well as in other sports. In the first contest ever held Heracles challenged any who would to wrestle with him. When no man dared to do so, Zeus likened himself to a wrestler and faced Heracles. The bout lasted long and was indecisive, till Zeus made himself known to his son."

Almost equal in importance to the Olympic festival was that celebrated in the territory of Delphi, the ancient Pytho. Here too there are reasons for thinking that the public contest was originally a method of determining who should be priestly king. These reasons are chiefly con- nected with certain rites performed at Delphi once in every eight years. Plutarch ^^"^ states that at intervals of eight years the Delphians held a series of three solemnities {ivveeT7]piBa<;) called the Stepterion}'^^ the Hero'is, and the Charila. The Stepterion was a mimetic representation of the fight between Python and Apollo, and of the god's subsequent flight or pursuit to Tempe : some said that he had fled to obtain purification ; others that he had pursued the wounded Python along the sacred road and had come up with it just dead and buried by its son Aix. The Hero'is was a sort of drama representing apparently the ascent of Semele from the under-world : a mystic tale, known to the Thyiades, was told concerning it. The Charila ^^^ too was a ritual performance. The king {^aaiXeix;) sat on a throne distributing food to all and sundry. The figure of a virgin called Charila was brought in, held by all in turn, and beaten by the king with his

'*• Plut. ^ucsst. Gr., 12.

'" The vulgate has SeTrr^piov ; but Bernardakis, the most recent editor, reads ^TEirrrfpiov, which according to D. Wyttenbach animadv. in Pkd. op. mor., iii., 46, is found in Aid. E. Voss. P. II. van Herwerden, Appendix Lexici Gmci, p. 203, is confident that '!£.Tf:iTTi]piov is the true reading : " Iniuria ae-n-Trjpiov olim habitum est pro genuina lectione." On the meaning of the variants see A. Mommsen Delphika, p. 210 n. I, and infra, p. 404 f.

"* See Folk- Lore, xv., 313 f.