Greek Texts & Translations

The image of Heracles is a votive offering of the Thebans, sent when they had fought what is called the Sacred War against the Phocians. There are also bronze statues, which the Phocians dedicated when they had put to flight the Thessalian cavalry in the second engagement. ^note The Phliasians brought to Delphi a bronze Zeus, and with the Zeus an image of Aegina. The Mantineans of Arcadia dedicated a bronze Apollo, which stands near the treasury of the Corinthians.

Heracles and Apollo are holding on to the tripod, and are preparing to fight about it. Leto and Artemis are calming Apollo, and Athena is calming Heracles. This too is an offering of the Phocians, dedicated when Tellias of Elis led them against the Thessalians. Athena and Artemis were made by Chionis, the other images are works shared by Diyllus and Amyclaeus. They are said to be Corinthians.

The Delphians say that when Heracles the son of Amphitryon came to the oracle, the prophetess Xenocleia refused to give a response on the ground that he was guilty of the death of Iphitus. Whereupon Heracles took up the tripod and carried it out of the temple. Then the prophetess said:— Then there was another Heracles, of Tiryns, not the Canopian.
For before this the Egyptian Heracles had visited Delphi. On the occasion to which I refer the son of Amphitryon restored the tripod to Apollo, and was told by Xenocleia all he wished to know. The poets adopted the story, and sing about a fight between Heracles and Apollo for a tripod.

The Greeks in common dedicated from the spoils taken at the battle of Plataea a gold tripod set on a bronze serpent. The bronze part of the offering is still preserved, but the Phocian leaders did not leave the gold as they did the bronze.

The Tarentines sent yet another tithe to Delphi from spoils taken from the Peucetii, a non-Greek people. The offerings are the work of Onatas the Aeginetan, and Ageladas the Argive, and consist of statues of footmen and horsemen—Opis, king of the Iapygians, come to be an ally to the Peucetii. Opis is represented as killed in the fighting, and on his prostrate body stand the hero Taras and Phalanthus of Lacedaemon, near whom is a dolphin. For they say that before Phalanthus reached Italy, he suffered shipwreck in the Crisaean sea, and was brought ashore by a dolphin.

He had a daughter, by name Hemithea, and a son, called Tennes, by Procleia, who was a daughter of Clytius and a sister of Caletor. Homer in the Iliad
^note says that this Caletor, as he was putting the fire under the ship of Protesilaus, was killed by Ajax. Procleia died before Cycnus, and his second wife, Philonome, daughter of Cragasus, fell in love with Tennes. Rejected by him she falsely accused him before her husband, saying that he had made love to her, and she had rejected him. Cycnus was deceived by the trick, placed Tennes with his sister in a chest and launched it out to sea.

The young people came safely to the island Leucophrys, and the island was given its present name from Tennes. Cycnus, however, was not to remain for ever ignorant of the trick, and sailed to his son to confess his ignorance and to ask for pardon for his mistake. He put in at the island and fastened the cables of his ship to something—a rock or a tree—but Tennes in a passion cut them adrift with an axe.

For this reason a by-word has arisen, which is used of those who make a stern refusal: “So and so has cut whatever it may be with an axe of Tenedos.” The Greeks say that while Tennes was defending his country he was killed by Achilles. In course of time weakness compelled the people of Tenedos to merge themselves with the Alexandrians on the Troad mainland.

The Greeks who fought against the king, besides dedicating at Olympia a bronze Zeus, dedicated also an Apollo at Delphi, from spoils taken in the naval actions at Artemisium and Salamis. There is also a story that Themistocles came to Delphi bringing with him for Apollo some of the Persian spoils. He asked whether he should dedicate them within the temple, but the Pythian priestess bade him carry them from the sanctuary altogether. The part of the oracle referring to this runs as follows:— The splendid beauty of the Persian's spoils
Set not within my temple. Despatch them home speedily.