14. In the second place, the fabulous history of these heroes also concerns the worship of Apollo, in so far as the origin of the Pythian Theorias is contained in it. Ion is even a real son or adopted disciple of the Pythian god; and in all probability there was no more difference originally between his two fathers, Apollo and Xuthus,(1027) than between the two fathers of Theseus, Ægeus and Poseidon. Theseus consecrated his hair to the same god; a place at Delphi was called Thesea.(1028) It is also related of Ægeus, that his kingdom, embracing the plain of Attica, stretched as far as Pythium, where it bordered on Megaris.(1029) This Pythium was situated in the “sacred Œnoë,”(1030) a fortified borough town of the tribe Hippothoontis, on the frontiers of Megaris, Bœotia, and Attica,(1031) to the north of the plain of Eleusis, and in a district of remarkable fertility.(1032)
This temple was manifestly built on the frontiers in order to afford a resting-place to the sacred procession, which in the beginning of the spring went from Athens to Pytho. For if favourable omens had been observed in the town itself, and it was intended to despatch the procession, the prophet in the Pythium at Œnoë performed sacrifices every day, in order to procure a favourable journey, just as the Delian procession was regulated by omens observed in the Delium at Marathon.(1033) The families charged with the preparations for sending the procession (probably all of ancient Ionian extraction) were called Pythaistæ and Deliastæ.(1034) The omens looked for were the _Pythian lightnings_, a very unusual mode of divination in Greece. The Pythaistæ took their station in the town, near the altar of Zeus Astrapæus, between the Olympieium and Pythium, both of which were among the earliest sanctuaries, although they first owed their magnificence to Pisistratus.(1035) From this spot it was the custom to watch for nine nights, during three months, a lofty peak of mount Parnes,(1036) called Harma; and it was only in case the wished-for lightnings flashed favourably over the heights that the embassy could proceed along the Pythian road. This road led from Athens, near mount Corydallus (on which there was a temple of Apollo),(1037) through the Eleusinian plain to Œnoë; from thence through the pass of Dryoscephalæ to Bœotia, where it touched either Thespiæ or Thebes, then Lebadeia and Chæronea, and then passed on by Panopeus and Daulis through the defile between Parnassus and Cirphis to Delphi: a mountain road which the Athenians declared that they had themselves opened,(1038) and which Theseus is said to have freed from robbers,(1039) in the same manner that he purified the road to the Isthmus from monsters. This was also the sacred road for the Peloponnesians, if we except that part of it which traversed Attica.(1040)