Pindar, Tr by C a Wheelwright

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OF THE PYTHIAN GAMES. The Pythian Games were instituted in honor of Apollo. Conjectures vary with respect to the origin of the word, which some imagine to have been named from the serpent Python slain by that god. So Ovid (Met. i. 445) describing the generation and death of this monster: Neve operis famam...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OF THE PYTHIAN GAMES. The Pythian Games were instituted in honor of Apollo. Conjectures vary with respect to the origin of the word, which some imagine to have been named from the serpent Python slain by that god. So Ovid (Met. i. 445) describing the generation and death of this monster: Neve operis famam possit delere vetustas, Instituit sacros celebri certamine ludos; Pythia de domito serpentis nomine dictos. Others derive the term caro Tom nvBiaStu, because the serpent lay and putrefied there; others again oiro Tov irvvBaveffOat, from inquiry, because men in doubt went to consult the Pythian Apollo. But the most probable conjecture is that which derives them from Pytho, the ancient name of the town Delphi, situated in a valley of Mount Parnassus, the scene of their celebration, as the other Grecian games, the Olympian, Nemean, and Isthmian, were denominated from the spot on which they were held. The Pythian contests, which the Greeks regarded with the highest reverence, were instituted many years after the Olympic, and before the Isthmian. Some authors maintain that they were established by Adrastus king of Argos, B. C. 1263. At first they were held every ninth, but afterwards every fifth year. It is said that in the first Pythiad the gods themselves were combatants; and that Castor won the prize in the stadic course, Pollux in boxing, Hercules in the pancratium, Calais in the foot race, Zetes in fighting with armor, Telamon in wrestling, and Peleus in throwing the quoit; and that the victor's reward was a laurel crown bestowed by Apollo, afterwards changed for a garland of palm-leaves. Ovid (loc. cit.) says that the wreath w.as arbitrary: His juvenum quicumque manu, pedibusve, rotave Vicerat, esculeae capiebat frondis honorem. Nondum laurus erat j longoque decen...