Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
head of a state; it was adopted as the official title of the Arkons of Athens in 1024
B.C., by Akatus the second Arkon, 1 who, however, but continued in this the title
which used only to he applied to kings. Between 357 and 346 B.C. the Phokians
used the rich treasures of Delphi to the great scandal of the pious world, but to the
necessary protection of themselves against all the rest of Greece, they being merely
the custodians of the world-wide shrine, for its treasures were not Phokian, nor
the property of any particular province. After its destruction in 548. B.C., all states
and even foreign kings and nations voluntarily subscribed to rebuild it, among whom
was Amasis or Psametik II. of Egypt.
The general features of Parnassus, taking a bird’s-eye view of it, from the front of
the Shrine, is a huge block of mountain, slumbering behind two rising mounts—
themselves of great height and grandeur; these falling towards the south are broken
into a fearful chasm, which has torn down the base of the mountains and thus
formed undulating and gently swelling terraces, now clothed for the most part
with scraggy brushwood, amidst which various Pietists and Shrines have found a safe
abiding-place. The general features of Delphi have been so abundantly described by
abler writers, as well as by good artists, that I will not enter on any details beyond
what pertains to the Phallo-Pythic-Solar features, such as I have not anywhere seen
adequately dwelt upon.
Parnassus has two great east and west summits colled Tuthorea and Lukorea.
“Immediately above Delphi the mountain forms a semi-circular range of lofty rocks at
the foot of which the sacred town was built. These rocks were called Phaidriades, or
‘the Resplendent,’ from their facing the south and thus receiving the full rays of the
sun during the most brilliant part of the day. The sides of Parnassus are well
wooded . . . . . and its summit is covered with snow during the greater part of the
year . . . . It has numerous caves, glens, and romantic ravines. . . . . On Mount
Lycorea was the Corycian Cave (Kor-ak, or Sun-Cave), from which the muses are
sometimes called the Corycean nymphs. Just above Delphi was the far-famed Castalian
spring which issued from between two cliffs called the Nauplia and Hyamplia . . . .
Between Parnassus proper and Mount Cirphus (Kirsus?) was the valley of Peleistus
(Pal-i.s-theus?), through which the sacred road ran from Delphi to Daulis and Stiria,”
says the writer in “Smith’s Classical Dictionary.” The names of the cliffs evidently
signify N-omphe and H-omphe, Nin and Hea, or female and male. Nauplia was the port
of Argos, and Hyampolis was a very aneient town of this provine (Phokis), founded
by the Hyantes, whom Kadmeans drove out of Beotia, and which therefore probably
flourished here some eighteen centuries B.C. Pococke tells us that the Phokians were
our Northern Indian Bojas, and the Beotians, our Baihootias. whose ancestors lived on
the banks of the Behoot or Jailum; and without committing myself to the details of
his or Moore’s most interesting and erudite writings on the Indian origin of
1 Philander in Smith’s Greek and Roman Antiquities, articles “Basilica” and “Archon.”
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