Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/136

128 upon them that a version quite different from the literary versions usually traced back to the Panchatantra or the Vinaya Pitaka was already localised in Greece in the second century of our era. Pausanias in his account of Phocis (I quote for convenience from Thomas Taylor's translation) says: "From Lilæa there is a road of about sixty stadia in length, which leads to Amphiclea. The inhabitants of this place have corrupted the name of the city; for Herodotus, following the most ancient reports, calls it Ophitea; and the Amphictyons, when a decree was passed for destroying the cities of the Phocenses, gave it the name of Ophitea. But the natives relate the following particulars concerning this city: A certain powerful man, suspecting the stratagems of his enemies, placed his son in a vessel, such as is used for the reception of liquor, trusting that in this place he would be concealed with security. A wolf, however, rushed on the boy in his place of concealment; but a strong dragon, winding himself round the vessel, defended him from the assaults of the wolf. The father, some time after this, came to see his son, and, supposing that the dragon had destroyed him, hurled his dart at the animal, and, together with the dragon, slew his son. But when he understood, from certain shepherds, that the boy was slain by his own hands, and that the dragon had been the benevolent guardian of his son, he raised a funeral pile for the dragon and the boy in common; and they say that the place retains vestiges of this funeral-pile even at present, and that the city was denominated Ophitea from the dragon." Here the story is connected with serpent-worship. The allusions (for example, to "the stratagems of his enemies" and to the shepherds) are evidence that Pausanias' report is much condensed; and they point to a larger body of local tradition dealing perhaps with the foundation of the city and the establishment of the dragon-cult. I have not discovered in a cursory search the passage where Herodotus mentions the city. Nor can it be assumed as certain that the story was current