Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/78

 60 HISTORY OF GREECE. its eastern part immediately under the Kirphis, where the sea- port Kirrha was placed. 1 The temple, the oracle, and the wealth of Pyrho, belong to the very earliest periods of Grecian antiquity ; but the octennial solemnity in honor of the god included at first no other competition except that of bards, who sang each a posau with the harp. It has been already mentioned, in my preceding volume, that the Amphiktyonic assembly held one of its half- yearly meetings near the temple of Pytho, the other at Ther- mopylae. In those early times when the Homeric Hymn to Apollo wa5 composed, the town of Krissa appears to have been great ar.d . powerful, possessing all the broad plain between Parnassus, Kirphis, and the gulf, to which latter it gave its name, and possessing also, what was a property not less valuable, the 1 There is considerable perplexity respecting Kri.*sa and Kirrha, and it still remains a question among scholars whether the two names denote the same place or different places; the former is the opinion of O. Miiller (Orchomenos, p. 495). Strabo distinguishes the two, Pausanias identifies them, conceiving no other town to have ever existed except the seaport (x, 37, 4). Mannert (Geogr. Gr. Rom. viii, p. 148) follows Strabo, and represents them as different. I consider the latter to be the correct opinion, upon the grounds, and partly, also, on the careful topographical examination of Profes.-or Ulrichs, which affords an excellent account of the whole scenery of Delphi (Reisen and Forschungen in Griechenland, Bremen, 1840, chapters 1. 2. 3). The rains described by him on the high ground near Kastri, called the Forty Saints, may fairly be considered as the ruins of Krissa; the ruins of Kirrha are on the sea-shore near the mouth of the Pleistus. The plain beneath might without impropriety be called either the Krissoean or the Kirrhaean plain (Herodot. viii, 32; Strabo, ix, p. 419). Though Strabo was right in distinguishing Krissa from Kirrha, and right also in the position of the latter under Kirphis, he conceived incorrectly the situation of Krissa ; and his representation that there were two wars, in the first of which, Kirrha was destroyed by the Krissaeans, while in the second, Krissa itself was conquered by the Amphiktyons, is not confirmed by any other authority. The mere circumstance that Pindar gives us in three separate passages, K.piaa, Kpiaalov, Kpiaaioie (Isth. ii, 26; Pyth. v, 49, vi, 18), and in rive other passages, Kippa, Kippaf, Kippa&ev (Pyth. iii, 33, vii, 14, viii, 26. x, 24, xi, iiO), renders it almost certain that the two names belong to diuVvem places, and are not merely two different names for the same piace ; tho poet could not in this case have any metrical reason for varying tl e tienota . as the metre of the two words is similar.