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invoke with praise, garlanded with reverent myrtle, friend and thrall alike, about his altar; for in his honour they make holiday, and the altars, refreshed by lavish incense, glow through wreaths of smoke.

“Perchance ye may inquire, O youths,” thus says the monarch, “what means this sacrifice, and for what reason we pay Phoebus signal honour. Urged by no ignorant fear, but under stress of dire calamity, the Argive folk aforetime made this offering. Lend me your hearing, and I will recount the tale. When that the god had smitten the dark and sinuous-coiling monster, the earth-born Pytho, who cast about Delphi his sevenfold grisly circles and with his scales ground the ancient oaks to powder, even while sprawling by Castalia’s fountain he gaped with three-tongued mouth athirst to feed his deadly venom: when having spent his shafts on numberless wounds he left him, scarce fully stretched in death over a hundred acres of Cirrhaean^[1] soil, then, seeking fresh expiation of the dead, he came to the humble dwelling of our king Crotopus. A daughter, in the first years of tender maidenhood, and wondrous fair, kept this pious home, a virgin chaste. How happy, had she ne’er kept secret tryst with the Delian, or shared a stolen love with Phoebus! For she suffered the violence of the god by Nemea’s stream, and when Cynthia had twice five times gathered her circle’s visage to the full, she brought forth a child, Latona’s grandson, bright as a star. Then fearing punishment—for her sire would ne’er have pardoned a forced wedlock—she chose the pathless wilds, and stealthily among the sheep-pens gave her child to a mountain-wandering guardian of the flock for nurture. No cradle worthy of a birth so noble, hapless