But homelier memories also come to life. It may have been in the “fragrant dawn” of a day like this that the boy Odysseus, while he was on a visit to his grandfather, went hunting with his uncles in the windy hollows of wood-clad Parnassus and killed a great boar. From its white tusks he had received a wound which was to leave an indelible scar and years later betray his identity to his aged nurse. Certainly it must have been on such a morning that another boy, Ion the acolyte, was performing his early tasks for the temple when visitors from Athens arrived to question him about the sights. They were women who had accompanied the queen Creusa when she and her husband, like many others, came to Delphi in their childlessness. In her youth, before her marriage to Xuthus, she had been loved by Apollo and had borne him a son in his cave below the Athenian Acropolis. The baby had been abandoned by her, but a servant had carried it to Delphi and left it as a foundling with the priestess. Unknown to Creusa, he had grown into the boyish minister of his divine father. The plot of the Euripidean drama which uses the story is sensational, including attempted murders and many complications before mother and child recognize and accept each other. But the boy Ion is one of the happiest creations of a poet whom Aristophanes accused of skepticism. His unstained youth consecrates his daily work of sweeping the temple floor, adorning the doorway with fresh wreaths and laurel boughs and driving away the wild pigeons. Reared by a holy woman in the remote quiet of the sanctuary, he has become a vessel, crystal clear, to hold the purest essence of religious feeling. His morning hymn reflects the unspoiled reverence with which, among the greedy hordes, many must have turned to Delphi:— “Lo! the radiant Sun, his four horses a-span! Now with splendour his car flingeth light o’er the earth, And the stars from the sky at this dazzle of fire Flee for refuge and hide in the temple of Night, And inviolate peaks of Parnassus are lit As they welcome the Day’s car for mortals. And the wilderness myrrh to Apollo’s high roof Curls fragrant and dim, And from tripod divine now the Delphian dread For the Hellenes intones with oracular cries What Apollo proclaims from his portals. “Up, ye Delphians all who to Phœbus give aid! To Castalian fount with its silvery whirl Go, wash ye, be cleansed in its pure running stream, And enter the shrine, Your lips guarding well, that in silence refrained, Or with words that are good, you interpret his voice Unto those who his counsels would follow. While I’ll serve at the tasks which from childhood are mine And with consecrate wreaths and with branches of bay I will make the ways pure to Apollo within.