Python

Python was the huge serpent that dwelt at Delphi, killed by the young god Apollo with his arrows. Several ancient writers make it a child of Earth (Gaia) and the guardian of her oracle on Mount Parnassus; Apollo’s victory gave him the sanctuary, and the place was named Pytho after the serpent’s rotting body. The sources differ on its sex, its parentage and its motives, so the details below are labelled by author.

Python’s Role and Significance

Python's Name

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo derives the place-name from the verb pythein, “to rot”: the sun’s strength made the dead creature rot where it lay, so the site is now called Pytho and the god is called Pythian (Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo 363–374). Pausanias gives the same explanation as the most widespread tradition, noting that in early Greek the verb pythesthai meant “to rot,” and mentions a rival derivation from a certain Pythes, son of Delphus (Pausanias 10.6.5).

Python's Portrayal and Symbolism

The Hymn describes a she-dragon (drakaina), large and well fed, a savage portent that did much harm to people and to their long-legged sheep at a fair-flowing spring near the new temple (Homeric Hymn 3, 300–304). Euripides calls the creature a huge monster of Earth, coiled in the shade of a laurel (Iphigenia among the Taurians 1245–1248). Ovid makes it a serpent that Earth brought forth after the flood, a terror to the new peoples, covering a great part of the mountain (Metamorphoses 1.438–440). Hyginus and Ovid call the creature Python and treat it as male (Hyginus, Fabulae 140; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.438), while the Hymn’s creature is female; Apollonius gives it the name Delphyne (Argonautica 2.705–707).

Python's Roles and Epithets

Python is the guardian of the Delphic oracle, a role the poets gave it: Pausanias says the poets called Apollo’s victim a dragon posted by Earth to guard the oracle (Pausanias 10.6.6). In the Hymn, the she-dragon also has a second part: Hera, angry with Zeus, bore the monster Typhaon alone and gave him to the she-dragon to raise (Homeric Hymn 3, 305–309, 349–355). No ancient epithets for Python are preserved apart from the name Delphyne.

Python’s Biography

Origins and Lineage

Hyginus calls Python a huge dragon, son of Earth, who used to give oracular answers on Mount Parnassus before Apollo did (Fabulae 140). Ovid says Earth produced it from the mud after the flood (Metamorphoses 1.434–440). The Hymn gives it no parents. No ancient source makes it a child of Echidna and Typhon; in the Hymn Typhaon is only its foster-child. Apollodorus uses the name Delphyne for a different figure, a half-beast maiden set by Typhon to guard the severed sinews of Zeus (Library 1.6.3).

Guardian of Delphi

Ancient writers disagree about who held the oracle first. Aeschylus gives the sequence Earth, then her daughter Themis, then the Titan Phoebe, who gave the oracle to Phoebus Apollo as a birthday gift, with no serpent in the story (Eumenides 1–8). Pausanias says it first belonged to Earth (10.5.5). Apollodorus says that Themis gave oracles at Delphi and that the snake Python, who guarded the oracle, would have kept Apollo from the chasm, so he killed it and took over the oracle (Library 1.4.1).

Confrontation with Apollo

Apollo's Quest for Delphi

In the Hymn, Apollo chooses Crisa under snowy Parnassus as the place for a temple where people from the Peloponnese, Europe and the islands will consult him; he lays the foundations, and Trophonius and Agamedes set the stone threshold (Homeric Hymn 3, 282–299). In Hyginus’s version, Python was fated to die by Leto’s offspring, so when he learned Leto was pregnant by Zeus he chased her to kill her; at Zeus’s command the north wind carried her to Poseidon, who hid her on the island Ortygia, later called Delos, and Apollo, born on Delos, killed Python four days later to avenge his mother (Fabulae 140).

The Battle and Victory

In the Hymn, Apollo shoots the she-dragon at the spring with his strong bow. She writhes, gasping, and rolls about in the forest before she dies, and Apollo boasts over her: she will no longer be a plague to mortals, and neither Typhoeus nor the Chimaera will save her, for black Earth and shining Hyperion will make her rot (Homeric Hymn 3, 300–304, 357–369). Ovid says it was the first time Apollo used his bow on anything but fleeing deer and goats, and that he nearly emptied his quiver into the serpent, which died as poison streamed from its dark wounds (Metamorphoses 1.441–444).

Python’s Downfall and Aftermath

Establishment of the Oracle

Euripides gives a different aftermath. Apollo killed the dragon while still a baby leaping in his mother’s arms and took the oracle. Earth, jealous for her daughter Themis, sent night visions of dreams to mortals and so deprived Apollo of his honor; Apollo hurried to Olympus; Zeus laughed that the child wanted such honors, shook his hair, and put an end to the night voices, restoring Apollo’s honors (Iphigenia among the Taurians 1234–1282).

Legacy of Python

Ovid and Hyginus connect the Pythian Games with the killing. Ovid says Apollo founded the sacred games so that the fame of his deed would not fade, naming them Pythian for the serpent he had conquered (Metamorphoses 1.445–447). Hyginus adds that Apollo put the serpent’s bones in a cauldron, placed it in his temple, and held funeral games for it, called the Pythian Games (Fabulae 140). Pausanias also reports a rationalizing story that Apollo’s victim was a violent man, a son of Crius, who plundered the sanctuary (Pausanias 10.6.6).

Python in Literature

The story is told or alluded to in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, in Euripides, in Apollonius, in Ovid, in Hyginus and by Pausanias. Hesiod’s Theogony does not mention the serpent.

Python Sources

Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo, 282–309, 349–374; Aeschylus, Eumenides 1–8; Euripides, Iphigenia among the Taurians 1234–1282; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 2.705–707; Apollodorus, Library 1.4.1, 1.6.3; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.434–451; Hyginus, Fabulae 140; Pausanias 10.5.5, 10.6.5–6.

See Also: Apollo, Delphi, Gaea, Leto, Typhoeus, Themis