The most ancient temple of Apollo was they say built of laurel, from branches brought from a tree at Tempe. So that temple would resemble a hut. And the people of Delphi say the next temple was built of the wax and wings of bees, and was sent by Apollo to the Hyperboreans. There is also another tradition that this temple was built by a Delphian whose name was Pteras, that it got its name from its builder, from whom also a Cretan city by the addition of one letter got called Apteræi. For as to the tradition about the fern (_Pteris_) that grows on mountains, that they made the temple of this while it was still green, this I cannot accept. As to the third temple that it was of brass is no marvel since Acrisius made a brazen chamber for his daughter, and the Lacedæmonians have still a temple of Athene Chalciœcus,[92] and the Romans have a forum remarkable for its size and magnificence with a brazen roof. So that the temple of Apollo should be brazen is not improbable. In other respects however I do not accept the legend about the temple being by Hephæstus, or about the golden songsters that Pindar sang of in reference to that temple, “Some golden Charmers sang above the gable.” I think Pindar wrote this in imitation of Homer’s Sirens.[93] Moreover I found varying accounts about the destruction of this temple, for some say it was destroyed by a landslip, others by fire. And the fourth (built of stone by Trophonius and Agamedes) was burnt down when Erxiclides was Archon at Athens, in the first year of the 58th Olympiad, when Diognetus of Croton was victor. And the temple which still exists was built by the Amphictyones out of the sacred money, and its architect was the Corinthian Spintharus. [91] See Sophocles, _Œdipus Tyrannus_, 733, 734. What I translate in this Paragraph “Cross-roads” would be literally “the road called Cleft,” which an English reader would hardly understand. [92] That is, “_Athene of the Brazen House_.” [93] See Odyssey, xii. 39 _sq._ CHAPTER VI.