The intriguing myth of the first temples at Delphi is first attested in Pindar's fragmentary eighth Paean. This text, and Pausanias 10.5.9–13, are the only two sources that actually tell the story of the first temples, while a few others simply mention, en passant, one or more-but not all-of these legendary temples, without setting out to give an account of the myth.

Two fragments of a vase by Sophilos are remnants of the earliest extant representation of the myth of the contest between Athena and Poseidon at Athens.

The notion that texts are not read neutrally, but through perceptual filters shaped by culturally determined assumptions which determine perception and reaction would, I believe, be accepted—in some form—by most literary critics by now. But the extent and radical nature of the cultural determination of reading and their methodological implications are often not fully realized. For they entail that, if we wish to read a text such as theAntigoneas closely as possible to the ways in which its contemporary audience did, (...) we must reconstruct in detail their cultural assumptions, by means of which meaning was created, and try to read through perceptual filters created by those assumptions; otherwise we will inevitably read through our own assumptions by default, and as these are very different from those of the Athenians of the late 440s, they will inevitably produce very different meanings from theirs. (shrink)