Dancers of Delphi

[6] The fragments were discovered in the same location as the remains of the frontage of the archaic temple of Apollo and it was therefore assumed that they belonged to the same period - that is to say, before the earthquake of 373 BC.

However, other elements of the structure to which the fragments originally belonged were identified at the same location: The base bore the inscription ΠΑΝ, sign of the merchant Pankrates of Argos, whose involvement in the business of the naopes (commissioners) of Delphi is attested in the period 346-345 BC.

In the archonship of Leochares at Delphi and of Hippodamas at Athens, the Athenians and their allies, with the booty taken from the Lacedaemonians, consecrated this tripod and young girls to Pythian Apollo.

Ridgeway considers the style of the acanthus leaves to place the column around the date of the Philippeion at Olympia and the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates at Athens, i.e. shortly before 334 BC.

Assuming that the dedicators were the Athenian people, it has been proposed that the dancers are the three daughters of Cecrops I (the legendary first king of Attica, an autochthonous half-serpent) and of Aglauros.

In Euripides' Ion,[14] the chorus describes them among a procession of dancers on the north flank of the Acropolis, not far from Pythion, the point from which Athenian embassies to Delphi departed.