Python- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster"Guardian of the Oracle"

Guardian of Delphi

Python was a serpent born from the earth — child of Gaia, according to the Homeric Hymn, or spawned from the mud left behind after Deucalion's flood in Ovid's telling. The Hymn calls the creature a she-dragon who nursed the infant Typhon at Hera's request. Python guarded the prophetic site at Delphi, which sat beside the Castalian Spring on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Vapors rose from a fissure in the rock, and whoever breathed them spoke prophecy. The sanctuary had belonged first to Gaia and then to Themis before any Olympian set foot there. Python coiled around the sacred ground, and nothing dared approach while the serpent lived.

The Pursuit of Leto

When Hera learned that Leto carried Zeus's children, she sent Python to hunt the pregnant Titaness across the earth and prevent her from finding a place to give birth. Python chased Leto over land and sea, and every place she approached turned her away — too afraid of the serpent and of Hera's anger to risk sheltering her. Only the tiny island of Delos — barren and still floating free on the sea — agreed to receive Leto, and there she gave birth to the twins Apollo and Artemis.

The Slaying

Apollo traveled to Delphi only four days after his birth. Armed with his silver bow, the young god drove arrow after arrow into the serpent's coils. The Homeric Hymn describes the creature rolling in agony on the earth, and Apollo standing over it: "Now rot here upon the soil that feeds man." The name Pytho derives from that rotting — pythein, "to rot." Apollo claimed the oracle and set his own priestess at the fissure. She took the title Pythia after the dead serpent. To atone for killing Gaia's child, Apollo traveled to the vale of Tempe for purification and established the Pythian Games at Delphi, held every four years.