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But the Pythia served a greater master, the. sun god Apollo, who daily led his flaming chariot across the heavens.

It was the powerful Apollo, son of Zeus, to whom Nausicaa silently prayed as she made her way up the well-trampled road to the temple on the hill.

Her question for the Pythia would surely seem petty to some. Her uncle had arranged for her to marry the son of a prosperous neighboring farmer, but Nausicaa was opposed to the union. She would slaughter the goat before the Pythia and then ask the Oracle if the marriage was her true destiny. If the Pythia foretold this was her future, she would surrender herself to the will of her uncle and return with her slave, Tyrtaeus, to Thebes. Reluctantly.

When Nausicaa finally laid eyes on the magnificent Temple of Apollo, she was awed by the sight. The building was huge. Bigger than any other man-made structure Nausicaa had seen in all of her fifteen years.

The walls were towering vertical sheets of the smoothest quarry rock. Creamy white marble statuary dotted the landscape along the path up to the main entrance of the temple. Gleaming bronze likenesses of Apollo, carved with painstaking detail by the finest craftsmen in Greece, stood watch over the huge archway into the temple. Particular attention was paid in many of the statues to Apollo's defeat of the mighty scrpi-iit Python near Delphi, when the sun god was only an inlant. The Pythia was named thusly because of this event in the young god's life.

At the cntryway Nausicaa was confronted by one of the white-robed temple priests who demanded the customary fee before he would allow her entry. Meekly

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Nausicaa offered him the cloth sack that she had brought. In the bag she had placed the pelanos, which was a type of cake, for payment to the lesser priests.

After inspecting it, the man seemed satisfied with the gift and he pulled the drawstring closed on the bag. Putting the sack aside, he led Nausicaa into the bowels of the temple.