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Read Ebook: 商君書 by Shang Yang BCE
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Ebook has 56 lines and 3925 words, and 2 pages
A PYTHIAN GOD.
The slime with which the earth was covered by the waters of the flood, caused so excessive a fertility as to produce every variety of life, both good and bad. An enormous serpent, called Python, crept forth and lurking in the caves of Mt. Parnassus, became the terror of the people.
Apollo encountered this reptile, and, after a fearful battle, slew him with his arrows. In commemoration of this conquest he instituted the Pythian games, in which the victor in feats of strength, swiftness of foot or in the chariot race, was crowned with a wreath of beech leaves.
INTERPRETATION.
Apollo's conflict with the serpent, Python, is a symbol of the victory of light and warmth over darkness and cold. He used his bright beams against the demon of darkness . His shafts slay men as does sun-stroke. Andrew Lang relates a strange coincidence of a German scholar, Otfried Muller, who had always opposed Apollo's claim to being a sun-god. He was killed by a sun-stroke at Delphi. The god thus avenged himself in his ancient home.
"The sunbeams are my shafts With which I kill Deceit, that loves the night And fears the day. All men who do, or even Imagine ill Fly me.
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