_Bochart_ thinks, he fixt his habitation first at _Delos_, and his family, and thence the fable of his being born there. I have an ancient brass coin, with the heroical effigies of his mother _Latona_. Her head in the adverse ΙΕΡΑ ϹΥΝΚΛΕΙΤΟϹ, reverse, the goddess sitting, a _hasta pura_ held oblique in her right hand. ΛΗΤΩΤΡΙΠΟΛΕΙΤΩΝ.
_The Kistvaen in Clatford bottom. Jun. 30. 1723 from yᵉ Northwest_]
In this island of _Delos_ he had a most magnificent temple, built to him in after ages, when idolatry began. The noble remains of it are to be seen there still. For his great fame and exploits, posterity consecrated him, calling him the son of _Jupiter_, meaning _Jupiter Ammon_, or more properly of _Saturn_.
But in no place was _Phut_ more famous than in _Phocis_. He planted the country about the mountain _Parnassus_, where he built, as I apprehend, a great serpentine temple, like ours of _Abury_, at the bottom of that mountain, by the city of _Delphos_. This I gather from the _Greek_ reports of the serpent _Python_ of an immense bulk, bred of the slime left on the earth, by the general deluge, which _Apollo_ here overcame; and instituted annual games call’d _Pythia_, plainly from his own name. These were the first and most ancient games we hear of in _Greece_.
Change the places, _Abury_ for _Parnassus_, and we have both the natural, as well as chronological history of the place; a vast temple in form of a serpent, made out of stones left on the surface of the earth after the deluge: not only so but the very name too. The name of _Parnassus_ was originally _Larnassus_, says _Stephanus Byzantinus_. The letter L is not a radical in this word, as the learned _Dickenson_ observes in _Delphi phœnic._ therefore the word is _Harnassus_, _Har_ is a headland or promontory of a hill, and _nahas_ a serpent, which is no other than our _Hakpen_ of _Abury_. Whence we conclude, the snaky temple extended its huge length along the bottom of _Parnassus_, and laid its head upon a promontory of it, just as ours at _Abury_, on _Overton-hill_. Whence _Ovid_ not merely poetically, describes it;
This was the original patriarchal temple dedicated to the true God, where oracles were originally given by _Themis_ says _Apollodorus_ I. 4. Which name I take to be a corruption made in after times from the _Jewish Thummim_, for a divine and true oracle; which _Dickenson_ asserts to have been at this place, page 104. in time turn’d into an idolatrous one. Many built one after another, as the former ones were sack’d and destroy’d.