Plut. Mor., Greek Questions 9 — Greek Questions

Plut. Mor., Greek Questions 9 — Greek Questions, Plutarch; served verbatim

Question 9. Who is he among the people of Delphi who is called Ὁσιωτήρ? And why do they call one of the months Bysius?Solution. They call the slain sacrifice Ὁσιωτήρ when the ὅσιος (the holy one) is declared. There are five of these holy ones for life, and these transact many things with the prophets, and sacrifice together with them, supposing that they are descended from Deucalion. The month Bysius, as many think, is the same as Φύσιος (natural), for it is in the beginning of the spring, when most things do sprout and put forth buds. But this is not the true reason. For the Delphians do not use b for ph (as the Macedonians, who say Bilippus, Balacrus, and Beronica, for Philippus, Phalacrus, and Pheronica), but instead of p; they for the most part saying βατεῖν for πατεῖν, and βικρόν for πικρόν. Therefore they say Bysius for Pysius, because in that month they enquire of and consult their God Apollo. This is their genuine and country way of speaking. For in that month an oracle is given forth, and they call that week the nativity of Apollo, and the name is Polythous, not because of their baking a sort of cakes called Pthides, but because then their oracle is full of answers and prophecies. For it is but of late that oraculous answers were given to the enquirers every month. In former times Pythia gave answers only once a year, which was on this day, as Callisthenes and Anaxandridas have told us.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

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Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Anaxandridas — a candidate entry Deucalion — a candidate entry Pythia — a candidate entry

Greek Questions, Plutarch — translated by Isaac Chauncy (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)