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.
7. The twin brother of the Didymæan god, both in origin and in the
similarity of worship, is the Clarian Apollo. However fabulous the
particular circumstances of its foundation, still it was impossible in
ancient times to invent a religious colonial connexion where none in fact
existed. The traditions manifestly imply a double dependence of the
establishment at Claros: viz., upon Delphi and Crete. Manto, the daughter
of Teiresias the Theban soothsayer, was, according to the epic poets,
consecrated by the Epigoni to the Delphian Apollo after the taking of
Thebes,(978) and she was afterwards sent by Apollo to the spot on which
the Ionians at a later period founded the city of Colophon; having, in
obedience to the commands of the oracle, married on her way Rhacius the
Cretan, whose name, according to the dialect of Crete, had the double form
Rhacius and Lacius.(979) Augias, the Cyclic poet, mentioned the tomb of
her father Teiresias at Colophon,(980) which was generally supposed to be
in Bœotia. The offspring of this marriage was Mopsus, who was probably
called the progenitor of the family from which, even in the Roman time,
the priests of the oracle were selected.(981) The forms of prophecy were
in this temple also similar to those at Delphi.
The other temples of Apollo on the coast of Asia Minor were generally
connected with some one of the four already mentioned. The temple of
Leucæ, between Smyrna and Phocæa (where the Cumæans celebrated a
festival),(982) was probably a member of the Trojan family, to which the
Grynean Apollo, in the territory of Myrina near Cume (where there was also
an oracle), appears to be related.(983) Apollo Malloeis, in the territory
of Mytilene, in Lesbos, was an off-shoot of the Clarian worship:(984) to
the same branch also belonged the oracle of Apollo at Mallus in
Cilicia,(985) inasmuch as it was said to have been founded by Mopsus the
son of Manto.
8. The worship of Apollo also penetrated to several parts of European
Greece, where it was established by Cretan adventurers on capes and
headlands—particularly at Trœzen, Tænarum, Megara, and Thoricus.
TRŒZEN, as has been above remarked,(986) shared with Athens both the race
of her inhabitants and her worship, together with the connexion between
Athens and Crete; the meaning of which will be explained hereafter.(987)
Hence we may conjecture the Cretan origin of the nine families, which were
in existence at a late date at Trœzen, and in early times performed the
rites of atonement and purification (of which Orestes was said to have
been the first subject) near a laurel-tree in front of the temple of
Apollo, and a sacred stone in front of the temple of the Lycean
Artemis.(988)
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