Delphyne

In Greek mythology, Delphyne ( el, Δελφύνη) is the name given, by some accounts, to the monstrous serpent killed by Apollo at Delphi. Although, in Hellenistic and later accounts, the Delphic monster slain by Apollo is usually said to be the male serpent Python, in the earliest known account of this story, the ''Homeric Hymn to Apollo'' (6th century BC), the god kills a nameless she-serpent ('' drakaina''), subsequently called Delphyne. According to the ''Suda'', Delphi was named after Delphyne.

Mythology

The ''Homeric Hymn'' describes the serpentess as "the bloated, great she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, to men themselves and to their thin-shanked sheep; for she was a very bloody plague", and says that "whosoever met the dragoness, the day of doom would sweep him away". According to the Hymn, she was the foster mother of the snaky monster Typhon, who was given to the dragoness, "an evil to an evil" (''κακῷ κακόν''), by his mother Hera. Typhon was to eventually battle Zeus for supremacy of the cosmos. The ''Hymn'' goes on to describe how, while building his oracular temple at Delphi, Apollo encountered the she-serpent near a "sweet flowing spring".
Apollo shot the dragoness with an arrow from his bow, and the monster:
: rent with bitter pangs, lay drawing great gasps for breath and rolling about that place. An awful noise swelled up unspeakable as she writhed continually this way and that amid the wood: and so she left her life, breathing it forth in blood.

Apollonius of Rhodes (early 3rd century BC), says that Apollo "slew with his bow the monster Delphyne", "beneath the rocky ridge of Parnassus", and that the victory was cheered by the "Corycian nymphs", who were associated with the Corycian cave on the slopes of Parnassus above Delphi. Plutarch (c. 46 AD – 120 AD), refers to the monster who "fought with Apollo for the oracle at Delphi" as female, and says that although it was recorded that at one time the oracle at Delphi was made "desolate and unapproachable" by a dragoness, in fact, "it was the desolation that attracted the creature rather than that the creature caused the desolation". Delphyne also appears in Apollodorus' account (1st or 2nd century AD) of Typhon's battle with Zeus, where she is called both a "she-dragon" (''drakaina'') and a "half-bestial maiden". According to Apollodorus, Typhon managed to cut away Zeus' sinews from his body. Typhon then hid the severed tendons in the Corycian cave in Cilicia (a different cave than the one above Delphi), and set the dragoness Delphyne, to guard over them. The (2nd-century AD?) geographical poet Dionysius Periegetes mentions a coil of the serpent Delphyne leaning against Apollo's sacrificial tripod. Nonnus in his ''Dionysiaca'' says that Apollo first killed Delphyne and then he went to live at Olympus.

Delphyne shares several similarities with Typhon's mate, the monstrous Echidna. Like Apollodorus' Delphyne, Echidna was half-maid and half-snake, and both were a "plague" (''πῆμα'') to men. Both were also intimately connected to Typhon, and associated with the Corycian cave.

Name

The name Delphyne means "womb" (''δελφύς''), and probably arose by back-formation from Delphi. Other related forms of the name: Delphyna (female) and Delphynes (male), were, apparently, also used for the Delphian dragon. For example, according to the 7th-century chronicler John of Antioch, some said the Pythian Games were held in honor of the male serpent Delphynes, while others said the heroine (''hêrôis'') Delphyne.Ogden 2013a, pp. 179; Fontenrose
p. 15 n. 4
According to Ogden 2013a, p. 187, this perhaps reflected a tradition which turned the dragoness into a woman.

Notes

References

* Aeschylus, '' The Eumenides'' in ''Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes.'' Vol 2. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library

* Anonymous, ''Homeric Hymn to Apollo'', in ''The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White'', Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library

* Apollonius of Rhodes, ''Apollonius Rhodius: the Argonautica'', translated by Robert Cooper Seaton, W. Heinemann, 1912
Internet Archive

* Callimachus, ''Callimachus and Lycophron with an English translation by A. W. Mair ; Aratus, with an English translation by G. R. Mair'', London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921
Internet Archive
* Apollodorus, ''Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes.'' Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library

* Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, ''Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins'', University of California Press, 1959. .
* Gantz, Timothy, ''Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2).
* Hard, Robin, ''The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology"'', Psychology Press, 2004,
Google Books

* Hesiod, ''Theogony'', in ''The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White'', Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library

* Hyginus, Gaius Julius
''The Myths of Hyginus''
Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.
* Lane Fox, Robin, ''Travelling Heroes: In the Epic Age of Homer'', Vintage Books, 2010. .
* Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca''; translated by Rouse, W H D, I Books I–XV. Loeb Classical Library No. 344, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1940
Internet Archive
* Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott. ''A Greek-English Lexicon''. Revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* Ogden, Daniel (2013a), ''Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds'', Oxford University Press, 2013. .
* Ogden, Daniel (2013b), ''Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and early Christian Worlds: A sourcebook'', Oxford University Press. .
* Plutarch, ''Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris. The E at Delphi. The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse. The Obsolescence of Oracles''. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. Loeb Classical Library No. 306. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.
Online version at Harvard University Press

* Plutarch, ''Moralia, Volume XII: Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon. On the Principle of Cold. Whether Fire or Water Is More Useful. Whether Land or Sea Animals Are Cleverer. Beasts Are Rational. On the Eating of Flesh''. Translated by Harold Cherniss, W. C. Helmbold. Loeb Classical Library No. 406. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957. {{ISBN, 978-0-674-99447-8}
Online version at Harvard University Press

Greek dragons
Mythological hybrids
Female legendary creatures
Deeds of Apollo