Delphi to the Vale of Tempe, was the grand mass of the worship. Once in a certain number of years, the death of the Pythoness was enacted in pantomime by a beautiful boy, representing Apollo. Having discharged his arrow, he fled away, along a road always kept in order by the Grecian nations for the express purpose; and, when he arrived at Pheræ, he went through certain pantomimes which represented servitude. This done, he proceeded on the road to Tempe, where he passed the night, and returned next morning with the sacred bough, to break his fast at Pherae. Thence he proceeded back to Delphi, and was met by processions from the sacred city, shouting Io Pæan; and a festival celebrated the laying of the bough upon the altar.
The importance of this great act of worship is apt to be overlooked, especially by England Old and New, who, on account of their Puritan pre-occupations, are not accustomed to look for important results from a form of worship whose festive air and entertaining character give it, in their eyes, the trifling tone of mere amusement. But these nations of the South of Europe are merely not sanctimonious. They live seriously, while they dress the festival of life. The symbolic language of their festivals harmonizes with the symbolic language of nature. They see God in the sunshine and the flowers, rather than in the storm and wilderness. It is utterly impossible for any persons to understand Greece, who persist in believing that Greek festivals and processions were mere amusements, and had not the higher aim and effect of awakening all human energies, by the expression of serious ideas. Every thing in Greece became artistic, and overflowed with beauty, precisely because the people were so intellectual, they caught, and were continually expressing symbolically, the grand ideas of order and harmony which pervade the universe. They neglected nothing, and trifled about nothing, because, by the wayside or the hearthstone, alone as well as in company, they recognized that "the gods were there." See Hesiod, in his "Works and Days," where he gives the minutest directions about the small moralities of paring nails, and other decencies, and sanctions his counsels by these very words.
