Python

Python is the giant serpent of Greek myth that lived at Delphi until the god Apollo shot it with arrows, took over the site, and founded his famous oracle there.

The Story

Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, was the most famous oracle in the Greek world. According to myth, it did not start out as Apollo's. A monstrous serpent lived there first, beside a spring, and Apollo had to kill it before he could build his temple.

The oldest version is in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, probably composed in the 6th century BCE. There the monster is a nameless she-dragon (drakaina), a huge, savage creature that did great harm to the people of the land and their flocks. She had also nursed the monster Typhon for Hera. Apollo shot her with an arrow, and she writhed, gasped, and died. The god then let her body rot in the sun. The hymn explains that this is why the place is called Pytho and the god is called Pythian, from a Greek verb meaning "to rot."

Later writers made Python male and gave the story a new motive. In the Roman mythographer Hyginus, Python is a child of Earth who gave prophecies at Parnassus. Learning that he would be killed by a son of Leto, he hunted the pregnant goddess. A few days after his birth, Apollo came to Parnassus and killed Python with his arrows. Ovid's Metamorphoses says Earth produced Python from the mud left by the great flood, and that Apollo used up nearly all his arrows to bring it down.

Appearance and Powers

Python is a giant serpent with no wings or legs. Ancient sources stress its size and its threat to people and herds rather than any magical power. In some versions it guards or controls an older oracle belonging to Earth (Gaia), which is why its death marks Apollo's takeover of the site. Some later writers give the name Delphyne to the she-dragon, though usage varies.

Origins and Sources

The killing of Python was central to Delphi's identity. The Pythian Games, held there every four years, were said to celebrate it, and the priestess who spoke for Apollo was called the Pythia. Plutarch describes a Delphic festival, the Septerion, that seems to have reenacted the fight. The classic modern study is Joseph Fontenrose's Python (1959), which compares the story to other combat myths across the ancient world, from Typhon to the Babylonian Tiamat.

Legacy

Python is one of the earliest named dragons in European tradition and a model for later god-versus-serpent stories in Greek and Roman art. The scene of Apollo drawing his bow on the serpent was popular with Renaissance and Baroque artists. The name also passed to a real animal: the large constricting snakes of Africa, Asia, and Australia belong to the genus Python. For other Greek serpent-dragons, see the Greek drakon and dragons of Greece and Rome.

Related

• Typhon: Typhon is the most fearsome monster of Greek myth, a giant with a hundred serpent heads who challenged Zeus for rule of the cosmos and was struck down by thunderbolts.
• Ladon: Ladon is the serpent-dragon of Greek myth that coiled around the tree of golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides, guarding it until Heracles came for the apples.
• Ismenian Dragon: The Ismenian Dragon is the serpent sacred to Ares that guarded a spring at the future site of Thebes, killed by Cadmus, whose sown dragon's teeth sprang up as armed warriors.
• Tiamat: Tiamat is the primordial salt-water sea goddess of the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš, who raised an army of monsters against the gods and was split in two by Marduk to make heaven and earth.
• Dragon Species
• Dragons Across Cultures
• The History of Dragons

Sources and Further Reading

• Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer, ed. and trans. Martin L. West (Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 2003)
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville (Oxford World's Classics, 1986)
• Joseph Fontenrose, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins (University of California Press, 1959)
• Daniel Ogden, Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Cite this entry: “Python,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/python.