Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/434

 404 The European Sky-god.

sanctuary of the god and the liouses of wealthy men," but was shot by Apollo. Plutarch ^^' further speaks of " the wanderings and the service of the boy and the purifications that take place at Tempe," which in connection with his statement that the god fled to Tempe to obtain purifica- tion ^^'^ makes it clear that the boy in the religious drama played the part of Apollo. The sequel is told by others. Aelian ^^'^ in his description of Tempe says : " The sons of the Thessalians declare that here too the Pythian Apollo was purified at the bidding of Zeus, when he had shot the serpent Python that guarded Delphi while Ge still occupied the oracle. Apollo crowned himself with this laurel of Tempe, took a branch of it in his right hand, and came to Delphi, where he took over the oracle as the son of Zeus and Leto .... And down to the present day at intervals of eight years the Delphians send a procession of high-born youths, and one of themselves as leader (ap'^^idecopo';). On their arrival they offer a magni- ficent sacrifice at Tempe and return again when they have wreathed crowns of the same laurel with which the god crowned himself in the past. They traverse the road that is called the Pythian way .... And the crowns that are given to the victors at the Pythian games are made of this laurel."

So, then, the culminating act of the Stepterion was the wreathing or crowning with laurel of the youths who acted the part of the victorious god ; and we are expressly told that victors in the Pythian games, which followed almost immediately,^^^ were crowned with the same laurel. Two inferences are obvious. On the one hand, Stepterion

"" Plut. dc. def. oi-ac, 15. '"= Supra, p. 402.

'"' Ael. var. hist. 3. i, cp. schol. I'ind. />///., p. 298, Bockh. '"* A. Mommsen Delphika, pp. 211, 214, from a comparison of Plut. de def. orac, 2, oKiyov irpo livQuuv and ib., 15, apri.