There is also an ascent through Daulis to the summit of Parnassus, a longer one than that from Delphi, though not so difficult. Turning back from Daulis to the straight road to Delphi and going forwards, you see on the left of the road a building called the Phocian Building of the People of Phokis, where assemble the delegates from each city of Phokis.

The building is large, and within are pillars standing throughout its length. From the pillars rise steps to each wall, on which steps the delegates of Phokis take their seats. At the end are neither pillars nor steps, but images of Zeus, Athena, and Hērā. That of Zeus is on a throne; on his right stands Hērā, on his left, Athena.

THE CLEFT ROAD

Going forward from here, you will come to a road called the Cleft Road, the very road on which Oedipus slew his father. Fate would have it that memorials of the sufferings of Oedipus should be left throughout the length and width of Greece. At his birth, they pieced his ankles with goads and exposed him on Mount Kithairon in Plataean territory.¹ Corinth and the land at the Isthmus were the scenes of his upbringing. Phokis and the Cleft Road received the pollution of his murdered father’s blood. Thebes is even more notorious for the marriage of Oedipus and for the sin of Eteokles.

The Cleft Road and the rash deed committed on it by Oedipus were the beginning of his troubles, and the tombs of Laios and the servant who followed him are still just as they were in the very middle of the place where the three roads meet, and over them have been piled unhewn stones. According to the story, it was Damasistratos, king of Plataea, who found the bodies lying and buried them.

DELPHI, MYTHICAL HISTORY

From here, the high road to Delphi becomes both steeper and more difficult for the walker. Many and different are the stories told about Delphi, and even more so about the oracle of Apollo. For they say that in the earliest times, the oracular seat belonged to Earth, who appointed as prophetess at it Daphnis, one of the nymphs of the mountain.

There is extant among the Greeks an hexameter poem, the name of which is Eumolpia, and it is assigned to Musaeus, son of Antiophemus. In it, the poet states that the oracle belonged to Poseidon and Earth in common; that Earth gave her oracles herself, but Poseidon used Pyrcon as his mouthpiece in giving responses. The verses are these:

I have heard too that shepherds feeding their flocks came upon the oracle, were inspired by the vapor, and prophesied as the mouthpiece of Apollo. The most prevalent view, however, is that Phemonoe was the first prophetess of the god, and first sang in hexameter verse. Boeo, a native woman who composed a hymn for the Delphians, said that the oracle was established for the god by comers from the Hyperboreans, Olen, and others and that he was the first to prophesy and the first to chant the hexameter oracles.

The verses of Boeo are:

They say that the most ancient temple of Apollo was made of laurel, the branches of which were brought from the laurel in Tempe. This temple must have had the form of a hut. The Delphians say that the second temple was made by bees from bees’ wax and feathers and that it was sent to the Hyperboreans by Apollo.

Another story is current, that the temple was set up by a Delphian, whose name was Pteras, and so the temple received its name from the builder. After this, Pteras, so they say, the city in Crete was named, with the addition of a letter, Apterei. The story that the temple was built of the fern [pteris] that grows on the mountains, by interweaving fresh stalks of it, I do not accept at all.

It is no wonder that the third temple was made of bronze, seeing that Akrisios made a bedchamber of bronze for his daughter, the Lacedaemonians still possess a sanctuary of Athena of the Bronze House, and the Roman forum, a marvel for its size and style, possesses a roof of bronze. So it would not be unlikely that a temple of bronze was made for Apollo.

The rest of the story I cannot believe, either that the temple was the work of Hephaistos, or what they say about the golden singers, referred to by Pindar in his verses about this bronze temple:

The fourth temple was made by Trophonios and Agamedes; the tradition is that it was made of stone. It was burned down in the year when Erxikleides was archon [arkhōn] in Athens, in the first year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad, when Diognetos of Kroton was victorious.¹ The modern temple was built for the god by the Amphiktyones from the sacred treasures, and the architect was one Spintharus of Corinth.