Note 32 — Chapter III · CAVE DEITIES: SUBTERRANEAN TRANSLATION

Modern writers have adopted the view that Dionysos was buried under the Omphalos: e.g. Enmann, Kypros u. Ursp. Aphrod., S. Petersb., 1886, p. 47 ff. But closer examination shows that all that we have good authority for is that the ὀμφαλός was Pythonis tumulus (Varro, LL. vii, 17, p. 124 Sp.), τάφος τοῦ Πύθωνος (Hesych. s. Τοξίου βουνός). Dionysos, on the other hand, was buried at Delphi, παρὰ τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα τὸν χρυσοῦν (Philochoros ap. Sync. 307, 4 ff. Di.; Eus. Arm. = Hier. Chr., pp. 44–5 Sch.; Malal., p. 45, 7 Di., from Africanus acc. to Gelzer, Afric. i, 132 f.), i.e. he was buried in the ἄδυτον (cf. Paus. 10, 24, 5), or, what comes to the same thing, παρὰ τὸ χρηστήριον (Plu., Is. et O. 35, 365 A.), παρὰ τὸν τρίποδα (Call. ap. Tz. Lyc. 208; cf. E.M. Δελφοί). The tripod stood in the Adyton (D.S. 16, 26; Str. 419; cf. Hdt. vii, 140). Whether the ὀμφαλός also stood in the Adyton (or whether as some think, in the Cella of the Temple) cannot be made out for certain though it seems probable. No one, however, made the grave of Dionysos under the Omphalos except Tat., Gr. viii, p. 40 Ott. [p. 9, 16 ff. Schw.]: ὁ ὀμφαλὸς τάφος ἐστὶ Διονύσου, and the statement of this very careless pamphleteer cannot stand against the witness of Varro, etc. It is plain that Tatian confused the two “graves”, as Hyg. 140 and Serv. (A. iii, 92; iii, 360; vi, 347) did, reversing the process and making the tripod into the grave of the Python. The real tradition knew, besides the grave of Dionysos near the tripod, the grave of Python in the Omphalos of his mother Gaia. This was never seriously denied; doubt might rather have been believed to linger over the question, who then was preserved in the tripod? Porph., VP. 18, p. 25, 6 ff. N., says that it was Apollo himself, or possibly an Apollo the son of Silenos. This absurdity seems to go back to Euhemeros (cf. Minuc. xxi, 1; worthless is Fulgentius Expos., 2, p. 769 Stav. = p. 112, 3 ff. Helm), and may be merely a frivolous jest. (Too much respect is paid to this tradition by K. O. Müller, Introd. to Scient. Myth., p. 246.)