Perched on the crest that forms the watershed between the eastern and western lengths of the valley of the Plistus, the lovely village of Arachova serves as a way-station on the pilgrimage from Kastri to the Forked Roads. The first part of the road leads familiarly through the precinct of Delphi, past the clump of plane trees which keep green the memory of their ancestor planted by Agamemnon, and past Castalia, whose waters, emerging from the gorge below the Shining Rocks, are as “sweet to drink” as Pausanias found them and as clear as when they purified the suppliants at the oracle and the ministering hands of the priests, or laved the golden hair of the god himself. Along the road that now stretches eastward the Persians streamed toward Delphi at the time of Xerxes’s invasion. But near the temple of Athena Pronaia, on the lower terrace, they were repulsed by terrible portents. A storm of thunder burst over their heads; at the same time two crags split off from Mount Parnassus and rolled down upon them with a loud noise, crushing vast numbers beneath their weight, while from the temple there went up the war cry and the shout of victory. The Delphians, who were hiding in the Corycian Cave, seeing their terror, rushed down upon them, causing great slaughter. And barbarian survivors declared afterwards that two armed warriors, of a stature more than human, pursued after their flying ranks, pressing them close and slaying them. These supernatural warriors were two heroes who belonged to Delphi, by name Phylacus and Autonous. For their timely aid they received precincts and worship, Autonous by the Castalian spring, his comrade hard by the road, practically identical with the modern highway, which ran above the temple of Athena. The traces of this Heroon may yet be seen, faint reminders of old-time tumults amid to-day’s oblivious silence. A little farther is the so-called “Logari,” or likeness of a great door chiselled in the face of a rock, representing, perhaps, the Gate of Hell. At least it seems to have marked the entrance to an ancient cemetery which lay below the road along the southern slopes now given over to orchards and to tillage. Through them a road winds down toward the silvery Plistus, twisting in and out among the gray-green olives and the almond trees. In antiquity this was the road to the bustling town of Ambrosus by the pass of Dhesphina over Mount Cirphis. Now the donkeys that saunter along it are bearing peasant girls and their bags to the mills by the river.