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Updated: May 13, 2025
And now on the bodies of four others hast thou hurled thyself with fierce intent, to whom the Pythian feast might not award, as unto thee, the glad return, nor the sweet smile that welcometh thee to thy mother's side; nay but by secret ways they shrink from meeting their enemies, stricken down by their evil hap.
True to that dark article of Grecian faith which punished remote generations for ancestral crimes, the Pythian replied, that Croesus had been fated to expiate in his own person the crimes of Gyges, the murderer of his master; that, for the rest, the declarations of the oracle had been verified; the mighty empire, denounced by the divine voice, had been destroyed, for it was his own, and the mule, Cyrus, was presiding over the Lydian realm: a mule might the Persian hero justly be entitled, since his parents were of different ranks and nations.
In the latter particular, in the upright attitude, and in the distant and noble gaze which so often elevated his front, there was a close affinity to the statue of the Pythian Apollo; while in the full, though slightly effeminate chest, there was an equal resemblance to that look of animal indulgence, which is to be traced in the severe representations of Bacchus.
The Amphiktyons, prevailed upon by his eloquence, declared war, as we learn from Aristotle, among other writers, in his book about the winners of the prize at the Pythian games, in which he attributes this decision to Solon.
For in the first place those great gymnastic contests in which all Hellas took part, and which gave the tone to their whole athletic life, were primarily religious festivals. The Olympic and Nemean Games were held in honour of Zeus, the Pythian, of Apollo, the Isthmean, of Poseidon.
Such were the sad predictions uttered by the Pythian priestess, and this old oracle cited out of the Sibyl's verses: The battle on Thermodon that shall be Safe at a distance I desire to see, Far, like an eagle, watching in the air. Conquered shall weep, and conqueror perish there. This Thermodon, they say, is a little rivulet here in our country in Chaeronea, running into the Cephisus.
Thou, who canst water turn to wine, Transform my bum, by power divine, Into a lantern, that may light My neighbour in the darkest night. Panurge then proceeds in his rapture, and says: From Pythian Tripos ne'er were heard More truths, nor more to be revered. I think from Delphos to this spring Some wizard brought that conjuring thing.
"Awaken to their utmost sense, even to pain and torture, the naked nerves of that Great Power thou callest the Imagination; that Power which presides over dreams and visions, which kindles song, and lives in the heart of Melodies; which inspired the Magian of the East and the Pythian voices and, in the storms and thunder of savage lands originated the notion of a God and the seeds of human worship; that vast presiding Power which, to the things of mind, is what the Deity is to the Universe itself the creator of all.
The vanity of Nero was astonishing, but so was that of most of his successors. The Roman emperors were the sublimest coxcombs in history. In men born to stations which are beyond ambition, all aspirations run to seed. Plut. in Sympos. It does not appear that at Elis there were any of the actual contests in music and song which made the character of the Pythian games.
Before the fleet sailed into the Mareotic harbor of Alexandria, Pontius revealed his happy secret to the Emperor. Hadrian smiled for the first time since the death of his favorite, and desired the architect to bring Balbilla to him. "I was wrong in my interpretation of the Pythian oracle," said he, as he laid the poetess's hand in that of Pontius.
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