As you go on from thence you will come to the Cross-roads, where they say Œdipus murdered his father.[91] There are records indeed of the woes of Œdipus in all parts of Greece. So it seems it was fated. For directly he was born they pierced his ankles, and exposed him on Mount Cithæron in Platæa. He was brought up at Corinth and the country near the Isthmus. And Phocis and the Cross-roads here were polluted by his father’s blood. Thebes has attained even more celebrity from the marriage of Œdipus and the injustice of Eteocles. To Œdipus the Cross-roads here and his bloody deed there caused all his subsequent woes, and the tombs of Laius and his attendant are in the very middle of the place where the 3 roads meet, and there are unhewn stones heaped up on them. They say that Damasistratus, who was king of Platæa, came across their corpses and buried them. The high-road from here to Delphi is very steep, and rather difficult even for a well-equipped traveller. Many varying legends are told about Delphi, and still more about the oracle of Apollo. For they say that in the most ancient times it was the oracle of Earth, and that Earth appointed as priestess of her oracle Daphnis, who was one of the Mountain Nymphs. And the Greeks have a poem called Eumolpia, the author of which was they say Musæus the son of Antiophemus. In this poem Delphi is represented as a joint oracle of Poseidon and Earth, and we read that Earth delivered her own oracles, but Poseidon employed Pyrcon as his interpreter. These are the lines: “Forthwith Earth uttered forth oracular wisdom, And with her Pyrcon, famed Poseidon’s priest.” But afterwards they say Earth gave her share to Themis, and Apollo received it from Themis: and he they say gave Poseidon for his share in the oracle Calauria near Trœzen. I have also heard of some shepherds meeting with the oracle, and becoming inspired by the vapour, and prophesying through Apollo. But the greatest and most widespread fame attaches to Phemonoe, who was the first priestess of Apollo, and the first who recited the oracles in hexameters. But Bœo, a Phocian woman who composed a Hymn for Delphi, says that the oracle was set up to the god by Olen and some others that came from the Hyperboreans, and that Olen was the first who delivered oracles and in hexameters. Bœo has written the following lines, “Here Pegasus and divine Aguieus, sons of the Hyperboreans, raised to thy memory an oracle.” And enumerating other Hyperboreans she mentions at the end of her Hymn Olen, “And Olen who was Phœbus’ first prophet, And first to put in verse the ancient oracles.” Tradition however makes women the first utterers of the oracles.