"Live or Find your Myth" a Greece Travel Page by starstudio

For ancient Greece's, this place "Delfoi" was the center of the world. Apollo's holy place.

The pan-Hellenic sanctuary of Delfoi (or Delphi), where the oracle of Apollo spoke, was the site of the omphalos,
the 'navel of the world'.
Blending harmoniously with the superb landscape and charged with sacred meaning, Delphi in the 6th century B.C.
was indeed the religious centre and symbol of unity of the ancient Greek world.

If is true or not, depence on you !
Once a year i go there.
Everyone must visit this place, with the respection for the Myth.

(Every myth, Greek or otherwise, that has ever been told or written, varies in the telling. The basic themes are repeated in many of them, but details, even story lines will differ considerably, from village to village, eon to eon.
When one understands that the myths have been told for many centuries before being written down, which first occurred about 800 BCE, one can relish the differences in the tellings and enjoy the Greek's brilliant and artful imagination throughout the ages.
Daphne Elliott)

A song sung in honor of Apollo is called a paean
The son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis. Apollo was the god of music (principally the lyre, and he directed the choir of the Muses) and also of prophecy, colonization, medicine, archery (but not for war or hunting), poetry, dance, intellectual inquiry and the carer of herds and flocks. He was also a god of light, known as "Phoebus" (radiant or beaming, and he was sometimes identified with Helios the sun god). He was also the god of plague and was worshiped as Smintheus (from sminthos, rat) and as Parnopius (from parnops, grasshopper) and was known as the destroyer of rats and locust, and according to Homer's Iliad, Apollo shot arrows of plague into the Greek camp. Apollo being the god of religious healing would give those guilty of murder and other immoral deeds a ritual purification. Sacred to Apollo are the swan (one legend says that Apollo flew on the back of a swan to the land of the Hyperboreans, he would spend the winter months among them), the wolf and the dolphin. His attributes are the bow and arrows, on his head a laurel crown, and the cithara (or lyre) and plectrum. But his most famous attribute is the tripod, the symbol of his prophetic powers.

The archaeological finds from Delphi has given archaeologists and historians much information, especially from the inscriptions found in abundance around the site. There are hymns to Apollo, lists of officials and even statements regarding temple money written either on walls or stone slabs. The ancient site of Delphi has a lot to offer in regard to giving an insight of ancient Greece but also the mythology attached to it.

True has 2 faces
The Pythia was the priestess at Apollo's oracle in Delphi. The name comes from Python, the dragon that was slain by Apollo. The Pythia operated as a vehicle for Apollo's will to be known to those on earth. A believer would make a sacrifice and present a question to a male priest. The male priest would then present the question to the Pythia. The Pythia sat on a bronze tripod in the adytum, or inner chamber of Apollo's temple. In this sacred chamber the spirit of Apollo overcame the Pythia and inspired the prophecy. Some mythic traditions say the Pythia's trance was induced by vapors from a chasm below the temple or from chewing laurel leaves. Continuing his role of a middleman, the priest would interpret the Pythia's response for the questioner.

Here the question, which had been previously written, was handed to the priest, who in turn asked the Pythia for Apollo's answer. From her sometimes garbled muttering, the priest would translate into hexameter verse. The Pythia never gave a straight answer, Heraclitus the philosopher said. The oracle neither conceals nor reveals the truth, but only hints at it. The historian Herodotus gave an account of this when he reported of king Croesus of Lydia who asked if he should invade Persian territory. His reply from the oracle was, if he did invade a mighty empire would be destroyed. Croesus thinking he would be victorious invaded, but it was his own empire that fell and subsequently destroyed.

Encyclopedia Mythica
article by Ron Leadbetter (pic's by me)
http://www.pantheon.org/