3. The first half of the Pythian road, which goes through Thessaly, is very accurately determined by a combination of different testimonies. Its first stage was from Tempe to Larissa. Near this place was a village named Deipnias, where the boy who carried the laurel-branch first broke his long fast;(869) as Apollo himself was reported also to have done. That the place received its name from this circumstance is a sufficient proof of the antiquity of the usage. The theoria next proceeded to Pheræ, where the boy, on his way to Tempe, and before his purification, represented the servitude of Apollo when a refugee at the palace of Admetus. This use of slavery as a preparative for the expiation of guilt, is doubtless taken from some very ancient tradition; and it is alluded to by the earliest epic poets; in the Iliad the horses of Eumelus, the son of Admetus, are stated to have derived their excellence from having been under the care of Apollo at Pheræ.(870) The harbour of Pheræ was Pagasæ, in the furthest recess of the Pagasæan bay, in which place there was a celebrated altar of the Pagasæan Apollo, situated in an extensive grove,(871) where there were large numbers of sacred ravens.(872) This sanctuary is the theatre of Hesiod’s poem of the Shield of Hercules; and at no great distance the river Anaurus runs into the sea,(873) which stream, swollen by violent storms of rain carried away the tomb of Cycnus, the son of Mars; “_for thus Apollo, the son of Latona, willed it, because Cycnus had plundered the hecatombs which the nations brought to the temple of Pytho._”(874) Hence it is evident that the Pagasæan sanctuary was situated on the road consecrated by the processions to and from Delphi; and we may perceive also in these words of Hesiod an allusion to a fable perhaps much celebrated by early poets, viz., that Cycnus was slain for having profaned the temple of Apollo.(875) Moreover, the legend related by Heraclides Ponticus, that Trophonius founded the temple of Apollo at Pagasæ,(876) points to the connexion with Delphi; the same Trophonius, a renowned architect of the mythical age, is also said to have built the most ancient temple of Pytho.
4. We thus arrive at DELPHI, the second grand station of the worship of Apollo, and, as it were, a focus, from which it diverged in numberless directions, and to which it was again partially reflected. Now although from early times the singular and striking character of the place might often have raised the feelings to ecstasy, and excited in the spectator dim and shadowy forebodings of the future; yet the establishment of a _fixed_ institution, with its sacred regulations and rights, was intimately connected with the introduction of the worship of Apollo. At what time, however, did this first obtain a footing at Delphi? Probably when the Doric race came from Hestiæotis to Parnassus, and settled above Delphi, which event took place at a very early period. This supposition, to which we are led by the preceding inquiry, is not inconsistent with the celebrated tradition that Cretan navigators landed on this coast in the time of Minos, and there introduced the worship of Apollo. In order, however, to reconcile these two accounts, we must first examine the Cretan worship of that god.