Castalia

Castalia was a nymph of the spring of the same name at Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Castalian spring was the water of Apollo’s sanctuary, and its name became a poetic way of speaking about Delphi and about Parnassus itself. The surviving ancient accounts of the nymph are short.

The Spring at Delphi

The spring Castalia rises at Delphi at the foot of Parnassus. Strabo says that the Delphians of his time lived close to the temple, around the Castalian fountain (Strabo 9.3.3). Euripides places Apollo’s oracle beside the streams of Castalia (Iphigenia in Tauris 1256–1258). In the Ion, the servants of Apollo at Delphi are told to go to the silvery eddies of Castalia and bathe in its pure water before they approach the temple (Ion 94–97), and the young temple servant Ion sprinkles the ground with water poured forth by the eddies of Castalia (Ion 144–150). In the Phoenician Women the chorus of girls dedicated to Apollo say that the water of Castalia is waiting for them to wash their hair for the god’s service (Euripides, Phoenician Women 222–225). Virgil, when he writes of the steep heights of Parnassus, speaks of the path that leads to the spring of Castalia (Georgics 3.291–293), and Ovid has Cadmus come down from the Castalian cave at Delphi (Metamorphoses 3.14).

The Nymph Castalia

Pausanias, walking up from the gymnasium to the sanctuary at Delphi, found the water of Castalia on the right of the road, sweet to drink and pleasant to bathe in. Some said the spring was named after a local woman, others after a man called Castalius. The epic poet Panyassis, in his poem on Heracles, made Castalia a daughter of the river god Achelous: Heracles, “crossing with swift feet snowy Parnassus, reached the immortal water of Castalia, daughter of Achelous” (Pausanias 10.8.9). He also reports another account, which he says he heard, that the water was a gift to Castalia from the river Cephisus. The poet Alcaeus told this in his hymn to Apollo, and Pausanias gives as the strongest confirmation of it a custom of the people of Lilaea, who on fixed days throw cakes and other offerings into the spring of the Cephisus and say that these reappear in Castalia (Pausanias 10.8.10).

Castalia and Helicon

Castalia is on Parnassus at Delphi, not on Mount Helicon in Boeotia. The spring on Helicon where the Muses bathe and dance is a different one: Hesiod names there the springs of Permessus, Hippocrene (the Horse’s Spring) and Olmeius (Theogony 1–8).

Castalia Sources

Pausanias 10.8.9–10; Strabo 9.3.3; Euripides, Ion 94–97, 144–150, Phoenician Women 222–225 and Iphigenia in Tauris 1256–1258; Virgil, Georgics 3.291–293; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.14; Hesiod, Theogony 1–8.

See Also: Apollo, Muses, Delphi, Parnassus, Achelous