Python (mythology)

Thus, when Apollo was born and was four days old he pursued Python, making his way straight for Mount Parnassus where the serpent dwelled and chased it to the oracle of Gaia at Delphi; there he dared to penetrate the sacred precinct and kill it with his arrows beside the rock cleft where the priestess sat on her tripod.

Robert Graves, who habitually read into primitive myths a retelling of archaic political and social turmoil, saw in this the capture by Hellenes of a pre-Hellenic shrine.

"To placate local opinion at Delphi," he wrote in The Greek Myths, "regular funeral games were instituted in honor of the dead hero Python, and her priestess was retained in office."

Erwin Rohde wrote that the Python was an earth spirit, who was conquered by Apollo, and buried under the omphalos and that it is a case of one god setting up his temple on the grave of another.

[11] The priestess of the oracle at Delphi became known as the Pythia, after the place-name Pytho, which Greeks explained as named after the rotting (πύθειν) of the slain serpent's corpse in the strength of Hyperion (day) or Helios (the sun).