¹ I have taken as a basis the ‘Teubner’ text of Baumeister, but any other text will do.

² V. 361: read for the corrupt The correction has no doubt been suggested before.

³ The adytum, a name which by Pythian usage was sometimes applied to the eave, is mentioned twice (443, 523), once in terms which a reader, if previously informed, might perceive to mean that it was subterranean, But that it was in any way peculiar or essential to the act of prophecy is not even hinted, and of the tripod there is no word. The ‘costly tripods’ of the verse cited, whatever they are, are not that, and for anything that appears they might be mere ornaments. Indeed there is nothing anywhere to show how the oracle was supposed to operate. All is vagueness and unreality.

⁴ Pausanias 9. 37. 3: 10. 5. 9.

⁵ See Pausanias l.c., and the opening of Aeschylus' Eumenides. The Aeschylean account is a harmonistic version, and in some points a late invention; but it properly recognizes the history before Apollo.

⁶ that the writer, for the nonce at least, connected this word with , to call or name, seems to me clear. And indeed why not, since the moderns have connected it with to lay to rest?

⁷ δνσώννμος.

⁸ 370 foll. The awkwardness, and indeed incorrectness, of the second following the first, is of the sort which almost inevitably results, unless the composer be very careful and adroit, from the putting on of a patch.

⁹ 397.

¹⁰ 453.

¹¹ The passage may originally have had a different colour, if there is really a lacuna (see Baumeister) after v. 465; but in that case it was the compiler probably who excised what is lost.

¹² 388 foll. 392. So the MSS. according to Baumeister (preface, p. xi.): in the actual text the passage is converted (after Hermann) by transposition of lines into unintelligible fragments with a ‘lacuna,’ the construction and connexion of (392—393) having been apparently missed.

¹³ 244–276, 375–387.

¹⁴ See Smith's Diet. Geog. Boeotia: the details of the topography are not ascertained and are of no importance to the legend. For it will he observed that, as the legend presumes, the old fountain of Telphusa, the fountain to which it referred, was buried and gone. As topographical evidence moreover, or evidence about anything except the mind of the compiler, the hymn is almost useless; the materials have certainly been remodelled, and we cannot say at what point or to what extent.

¹⁵ See Baumeister's text.

¹⁶ 30–44; of. 142–145.

¹⁷ See vv. 20–24, beginning with This last is the lino for the sake of which the piece has been inserted; in fact the rest is little more than a verbal repetition of vv. 143–145.

¹⁸ 80–82: MSS., but the clerical error is common enough, and more probable than the bad grammar. The meaning at any rate seems clear.

¹⁹ See Baumeister's text.

²⁰ Cf. 252, and again 292

²¹ v. 214. It is significant that the locus classicus for the oracle of Delos should be the Aeneid (3.73 foll.) of Virgil, who imagines there a copy of Delphi. Doubtless he had authority for it in the ‘Cyclic poems’, or as Aeschylus would have said in the ‘Homer’, which he used for this part of his work : and how it came into ‘Homer’ the reader of this essay will easily guess.

²² Compare that in the opening of the Delian hymn itself (2–13).

²³ In the conception of ‘Olympus’ the Hymn to Apollo wavers between sky and mountain. Here it is rather the sky, but the Pierian mountain apparently in 216, and a mountain (the Trojan?) certainly in 98. The compiler, having no interest in the doubt, has left it as it stood in his materials.

²⁴ See Hymn. Apoll. 214 foll., which, if we suppose it detached from the Delian narrative, probably represents the Pythian conception very well. Several places on the mainland claimed the birth.

²⁵ Eum. 1 foll.

²⁶ To the sanctuary of Apollo Pythius at Athens Pisistratus and his family were conspicuously attentive (Thuc. vi. 54; Harrison, , Mythology, etc. of Athens, p. 203)Google Scholar. If these benefactions were intended to propitiate Delphi, they failed, as they naturally would. To fix the god in Athens would be the best possible way of deterring his admirers from going elsewhere; and under the circumstances there can be little doubt that this was the object. The party of Pisistratus, as we shall see, did not admit that Apollo Pythius belonged to Pytho.

²⁷ Eum. 10–14, with the commentaries.

²⁸ Preller, , Gr. Mythol. i. 164Google Scholar.

²⁹ The line is commonly suspected of corruption, but only because of the unexplained δέλφιος,. in which is in fact the point of it.

³⁰ 298—299. perhaps rightly, Ernesti.

³¹ 305—355.

³² And perhaps that Typhaon was the mate of the snake. The language of the hymn (353–355) is obscure, as well it might be.

³³ Chios, the home of the poet, is λίπαρωτάτν; but whatever this vague praise may imply (a modern may without shame confess an ignorance common to Aristophanes), it did not require richness of soil, for it was the favourite designation of Attica.

³⁴ Od. ix. 133.

³⁵ Schol, on Aeschylus, Aesehylus Evan, 9Google Scholar.

³⁶ See 438.

³⁷ 264—266.

³⁸ 149–150. For authorities on the foundation of the Pythia see Grote, Hist. Greece, ii. chap. 28. The contrast between the story of Telphusa in the hymn and the subsequent fortunes of Pytho is noticed by Grote; but as he assumes what appears to me impossible, that the hymn is an unadulterated product of Pythian religion dating from the seventh century, he sees this matter and others in a false light.

³⁹ 183.

⁴⁰ The fact that Onchestus was sacred to Poseidon (v. 230) is taken by Grote as explaining why Apollo did not settle there. This however is not easy to understand, since at Pytho also Apollo had predecessors, Poseidon himself for one (Pausanias 10, 5, 6), and he might have negotiated with Poseidon for Onchestus as well as for Pytho. The arranger of the existing ‘hymn’ ignores the early history of Pytho, because it is his purpose to diminish its dignity. But it is incredible that any true Pythian ever did so.

⁴¹ The last word simply means ‘was missing,’ and marks the hiatus. Possibly (Schneidewin cited in Baumeister's preface) is a spurious insertion. As I have said before, I see no reason to think that the passage in this document ever was completed. It is a mere ‘common form’ (cf. Hymn. Ap. 19 foll.), such as the reciter might fill up according to his taste or the taste of his audience. All that the compiler has done (and for this we are much obliged to him) is to indicate how he would fill it up. The legends alluded to are imperfectly known and probably varied. They are manifestly here supposed to be all of the same erotic type, and this is the only point of significance.