Behind, Orestes, hitherto the last, Had kept back his coursers for the close; Now one sole rival left--on, on he flew, And the sharp sound of the impelling scourge Rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds. He nears--he reaches--they are side by side; Now one--now th' other--by a length the victor. The courses all are past, the wheels erect-- All safe--when, as the hurrying coursers round The fatal pillar dashed, the wretched boy Slackened the left rein. On the column's edge Crashed the frail axle--headlong from the car, Caught and all mesh'd within the reins, he fell; And! masterless, the mad steeds raged along! Loud from that mighty multitude arose A shriek--a shout! But yesterday such deeds-- To-day such doom! Now whirled upon the earth, Now his limbs dashed aloft, they dragged him, those Wild horses, till, all gory, from the wheels Released--and no man, not his nearest friends, Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes. They laid the body on the funeral pyre, And, while we speak, the Phocian strangers bear, In a small, brazen, melancholy urn, That handful of cold ashes to which all The grandeur of the beautiful hath shrunk. Within they bore him--in his father's land To find that heritage, a tomb. The Pythian games are said to have been established in honor of the victory that Apollo gained at Delphi over the serpent Py'thon, on setting out to erect his temple. This monster, said to have sprung from the stagnant waters of the deluge of Deucalion, may have been none other than the malaria which laid waste the surrounding country, and which some early benefactor of the race overcame by draining the marshes; or, perhaps, as the English writer, Dodwell, suggests, the true explanation of the allegorical fiction is that the serpent was the river Cephis'sus, which, after the deluge had overflowed the plains, surrounded Parnassus with its serpentine involutions, and was at length reduced, by the rays of the sun-god, within its due limits. The poet OVID gives the following relation of the fable: Apollo's Conflict with Python. From hence the surface of the ground, with mud And slime besmeared (the refuse of the flood), Received the rays of heaven, and sucking in The seeds of heat, new creatures did begin. Some were of several sorts produced before; But, of new monsters, earth created more. Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light Thee, Python, too, the wondering world to fright, And the new nations, with so dire a sight, So monstrous was his bulk; so large a space Did his vast body and long train embrace; Whom Phoebus, basking on a bank, espied. Ere now the god his arrows had not tried But on the trembling deer or mountain-goat: At this new quarry he prepares to shoot.