Thus was the world forever pouring itself into Delphi and again, like a retreating wave, bearing something of Delphi away with it, something larger and richer even than the golden honours that were symbolized by the crown of laurel so eagerly borne home by the victors in the games. And yet there was a further significance in the fragile wreath itself, however infrequently realized by athletes and spectators, which pointed beyond the artistic and moral power of the Pythian God. The wreath was made of leaves brought from, the Vale of Tempe, where Apollo had plucked his own crown of victory, when, as lord of light, he had vanquished the powers of darkness and had been purified from the evil which the struggle had entailed. Laurel (or bay) trees grew in the valley of Delphi itself, lingering on until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the last one is said to have drooped and died in the little garden of the church of St. Nicholas which, before Kastri was removed, stood in front of the spring of Cassotis. This spring, not yet exhausted, was the feeder of the oracular chasm and watered the grove of Apollo, “freshening with an ever-living stream the undying gardens” from which Ion gathered his laurel broom. Not only did the acolytes use laurel in their simple tasks, but the Priestess fumigated herself with burning boughs before she sat upon the tripod, and chewed laurel leaves before she delivered her prophecies. But the meaning of Apollo’s crowning, from which the sacred uses of the laurel sprang, was beyond the reach of Ion, untroubled “worshipper within the Temple’s inner shrine.” Nor to moderns is the revelation likely to come until the Shining Rocks grow pale and night obliterates the lively daylight of the spring. Into the dark void left by the withdrawal of Apollo swings the moon, no longer compassionate but majestic. Suddenly upon the receptive imagination descends the Delphic awe. The almond trees slip into shadowy insignificance. The hills stand out dark and brooding, while their ravines deepen unfathomably. And through the fearful silence sounds the prophetic voice of an unseen god vaster than the consciousness of the race which created him. The quality of sublimity and awfulness now apparent in the landscape explains the influence of that ideal of omnipotent righteousness which, among a singularly intellectual people, gradually formed for itself a living centre. For an understanding of such a god at Delphi one must turn to Æschylus. To him Apollo was a god “who knew not how to do unrighteousness,” in whose hands were loosed the tangled skeins of human sin. Sophocles, in his dramas of Œdipus’s life, represented the folly and wrong-doing of a noble nature forgiven by the Pythian god after the willing endurance of a just punishment. But Æschylus, in the “Eumenides,” deals with a much subtler aspect of divine law. That its opening scene is laid at Delphi is appropriate to the overshadowing importance of its religious meaning.