Myth of the Day: Python

Region/Culture: Ancient Greece (Delphi, Mount Parnassus)
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A massive earth-born serpent of primordial age, charged by Gaia with guarding the oracular cleft at the center of the world and credited in older sources with chthonic prophetic power of her own.
Role in Mythos: Original guardian of the Delphic oracle whose death at Apollo’s hands marked the passage of prophecy from earth-bound chthonic power to Olympian rule.
Relation to Humans: Before Apollo’s arrival Python kept the oracular chamber against any intruder, and in some accounts brought plague and ruin to the countryside around Parnassus. After her death the priestesses of Delphi took the title Pythia in her memory, delivering oracles from the same chasm where the serpent’s body was said to fume beneath the temple floor.

Before the temple stood at Delphi, before the bronze tripod and the chanting priestess, there was the cleft in the rock and the creature curled around it. Pilgrims who climbed the mountain heard her first as a dry sound moving over stone, then saw the slow shifting of coils thick as the trunks of olive trees, scaled in the colour of old iron. The earth itself had set her there. Gaia, the first power, had given the oracle to her own offspring to guard, and Python had wound her body across the rocky chasm at the navel of the world and watched.

That, in any case, is one version. The stories of how she came to be guardian of Delphi disagree, as old stories do. Some say Python rose dripping from the mud and slime left behind by the Great Deluge, born of decay the moment the floodwaters drew back from the slopes of Parnassus. Others say she was Gaia’s own creature from the beginning, set in place when the world was young, charged with keeping the prophetic chamber inviolate. The Homeric Hymn calls her not Python but Drakaina, the she-dragon, and credits her with the nursing of the monstrous Typhoeus, taken from Hera and given over to the serpent to be raised in the shadow of the holy mountain. Later writers, beginning with the historian Ephorus in the fourth century BC, settled on the name Python and on a single great myth that has carried her through the centuries.

For Apollo was coming.

The reason for his coming changes from poet to poet. In one telling the young god simply wants the oracle for himself and walks up the mountain looking for a shrine. In another, preserved by Hyginus, Python had hunted his pregnant mother Leto across the world at Hera’s order, and Apollo arrived at Delphi already grieving and furious, ready to kill the thing that had chased the woman who carried him. Whatever the cause, he climbed Parnassus with the silver bow on his back and the great quiver heavy at his shoulder.

The fight, as the sources tell it, was not really a fight. Apollo drew, and the arrows came in numbers. The Homeric Hymn gives him a single great shot. Later poets like Ovid raise the count to a thousand, the bowstring singing as shaft after shaft sank into the heaving coils until the whole body lay shuddering in its own blood. The earth around the cleft went dark with it. The smell rose into the warm air above the mountain.

That smell is the centre of the next part of the story. As the serpent’s enormous corpse decomposed under the sun, the place itself took its name from the rotting, from the Greek verb *pythō*, to decay. Pytho the Greeks called the site for centuries after, and the priestess who sat on the tripod above the chasm was the Pythia, the one who breathed in the vapours rising from where Python’s body had sunk into the ground. The oracle did not stop. It only changed hands. What had been Gaia’s seat of prophecy became Apollo’s, and the chthonic voice of the earth was made to speak through an Olympian mouth.

The killing, however, was not free. Even a god could not slaughter a creature given by the earth herself without consequence. Zeus ordered Apollo to be purified, and the young god went down into the valley of Tempe to wash the stain from his hands. To commemorate the deed, and to seal it into the rhythm of Greek civic life, Apollo instituted the Pythian Games, held every four years at Delphi in athletic and musical contest. The victor wore a crown of laurel. The serpent, by then, was a long time dead.

In appearance Python belonged to the oldest stratum of Greek monstrosity, the drakon, a class of beings that sat somewhere between snake and dragon in the imaginations of the people who told their stories. Vase painters showed her as a vast coiled serpent rearing up against the god, scales overlapping like roof tiles, head raised, mouth open. Ovid speaks of her covering acres of ground with her pestilential coils, of poison rising from her in a cloud. No source dresses her in wings or limbs. She is enormous, low to the earth, and old, and that is enough.

Her powers were those of the chthonic guardian. She held the prophetic chamber against intrusion. She poisoned the air around her with her breath. She moved with the slow weight of the earth itself, and she could outlast any mortal that wandered up the mountain looking for the voice of Gaia. Some versions credit her with prophecy in her own right, the earth speaking through her as it would later speak through the women who took her name.

Her weakness was simply Apollo, and what he represented. She was a creature of the older world, of caves and damp ground and the slow turning of seasons, and she fell to a god of distance, sunlight, and the perfect arc of the arrow. She had no defense against a weapon that arrived from above, again and again, while she could only writhe along the rocks she had guarded for so long. The earth had given her every advantage that earth could give. It was not enough.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who killed Python in Greek mythology?

Apollo killed Python at Delphi, shooting the serpent with arrows from his silver bow. The Homeric Hymn describes a single decisive shot, while Ovid’s later account raises the number to a thousand arrows. The slaying allowed Apollo to claim the oracle at Delphi for himself.

Why did Apollo kill Python?

Ancient sources give different reasons. In one tradition Apollo simply wanted the Delphic oracle and removed its guardian to take possession of the shrine. Another version, preserved by the Roman writer Hyginus, says Python had hunted Apollo’s pregnant mother Leto across the world at Hera’s order, and Apollo killed the serpent in revenge once he was grown.

What is the connection between Python and the Pythia?

The priestess of the Delphic oracle took the title Pythia directly from Python’s name. After Apollo killed the serpent, the place itself was renamed Pytho from the Greek word *pythō*, meaning to rot, in reference to the decay of Python’s corpse beneath the temple. The Pythia then delivered her prophecies while seated above the same chasm Python had once guarded.

What did Python look like?

Ancient sources describe Python as a colossal drakon, an earth-born serpent of immense size, her body said by Ovid to cover acres of ground. Vase paintings show Python as a vast coiled snake with overlapping scales, rearing up against Apollo. No surviving source gives her wings or limbs; she is purely serpentine, low to the ground, and primordial.

How was Apollo punished for killing Python?

Zeus ordered Apollo to undergo ritual purification for slaying the earth-born serpent, even though Apollo was a god. Apollo travelled to the valley of Tempe to wash the blood from his hands, and he was made to institute the Pythian Games at Delphi, held every four years in athletic and musical contest, as both penance and commemoration of the deed.

Related Entries

Apollo, Gaia, Leto, Themis, Typhon, Hera, Zeus, Echidna, Hydra, Ladon, Drakaina, Cadmus, Apep/Apophis, Tiamat, Jörmungandr

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