In the Hymn to Apollo, pseudo-Homer has the archer god cast about the earth for a place to found his temple. After some globetrotting, he alights upon a foothill below snowy Mount Parnassus where a cliff overshadows a broad glade beneath. There he causes his temple to be built, and states that all those who live in the Peloponnesus, Europe beyond it, and the islands surrounding, can come to his temple to pay sacrifice and obtain counsel that cannot fail. Incidentally, this was also considered to be the center—the navel, in fact—of the world.
Problematically, a giant serpent also found the place amenable habitat and had taken up residence beside a nearby stream. This Python was a terrible scourge of the enchorial inhabitants in all the ways we can imagine an enormous snake might be, so we can easily hear the eruption of joy when lord Apollo, who deals death from afar, sent her to monster heaven with a single well-placed arrow from his golden bow. The spot where she sloughed off her mortal coil became known as Pytho, which gives its name to Pythian Apollo, the slayer of the Python, and his priestess who delivers his oracles there, the Pythia.
Tomorrow, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meets in Washington, DC as it does eight times a year to set monetary policy. The meeting comes tight on the heels of countless trips by economists and journalists to the Oracle at Delphi, where, after sacrificing hecatombs to the foreseeing god, they presumably obtained failproof counsel on the future path of interest rates. For this can be the only explanation for the seeming ubiquity, prolificity, and certainty of reporting in the financial press that the Federal Reserve plans a larger-than-usual half-percent interest rate cut.
The Oracle Is Silent