The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, Vol. 1 of 2Müller, Karl Otfried
History
The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, Vol. 1 of 2
Müller, Karl Otfried
Dorians -- History; Greece -- Antiquities, Dorian; Greece -- History -- Dorian Invasions, approximately 1125-1025 B.C.
If then this was the case, Doric mountaineers from the heights of
Parnassus, and Cretan colonists on the sea-coast, met together (according
to a very uncertain computation about 200 years before the Doric migration
into Peloponnesus), in order to establish the Delphian worship. The Doric
dialect, it may be observed, which prevailed at Delphi, was common to both
parties. It is known from many traditions and historical traces, that the
connexion established by the Cretans continued for a long time.(910) The
ancient tents made of feathers, and a wooden statue of Apollo, perhaps one
of the most ancient specimens of rude carving, were also reported to have
been brought from Crete. The fabulous series of Delphic minstrels began
with Chrysothemis, the son of Carmanor, the above-mentioned priest of
Tarrha.(911) Crete, however, did not merely send works of sculpture and
hymns to Delphi, but sometimes even men,(912) for the service of the
Pythian Apollo.
9. I know not whether these accounts are sufficient to afford an
intelligible description of a time when the worship of Apollo, being
established at the foot of Olympus, Parnassus, and in the distant island
of Crete, and producing a certain degree of communication between these
points, had not as yet penetrated to any part of Greece which lay to the
south of Œta and Parnassus.
It is evident, moreover, that the extension of this worship met with a
long opposition. Apollo is in ancient traditions represented as himself
protecting his own temple.(913) The Phlegyans to the east, and the
Ætolians to the west, appear to have been particularly adverse to the
worship of the Delphian Apollo. That there was a national opposition
caused by the Phlegyans possessing the stronghold of Panopeus in the
mountain-passes towards Bœotia, is shown by the legends, that Phorbas
their leader wrestled there with Apollo; that Phlegyas burned the temple
to the ground; and lastly, that Apollo exterminated their whole race with
thunder and lightning.(914) The same people is here represented as waging
war with the great deity of the Dorians, which, under the name of Lapithæ,
opposed the Dorians themselves in Thessaly. And on the other side, Apollo
was related in the Poems of Hesiod, and the Minyad, to have assisted the
Locrian Curetes against the Ætolians, and slain their prince
Meleager.(915)
Chapter II.
§ 1. Propagation of the worship of Apollo from Crete. § 2. in
Lycia. § 3 and 4. in the Troad. § 5. in Thrace. § 6 and 7. on the
Coast of Asia Minor. § 8. at Trœzen, Tænarum, Megara. § 9.
Thoricus. § 10. and Leucatas. § 11 and 12. in Bœotia. § 13. 14.
and 15. and in Attica.
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