Apollo conflated. A female dragon named Delphyne (; cf. , "womb"), and a male serpent Typhon (; from , "to smoke"), the adversary of Zeus in the Titanomachy, who the narrators confused with Python. Python was the good daemon (ἀγαθὸς δαίμων) of the temple as it appears in Minoan religion, but she was represented as a dragon, as often happens in Northern European folklore as well as in the East. Apollo and his sister Artemis can bring death with their arrows. The conception that diseases and death come from invisible shots sent by supernatural beings, or magicians is common in Germanic
The Worship of the Serpent worship, not just confined to Europe, but indeed all over the world. Deane goes on in his title to list a number of associations to the serpent such as the dragon and the leviathan. So thorough (albeit outdated) is his research, that he has "traced THE WORSHIP OF THE SERPENT from Babylonia, east and west, through Persia, Hindûstan, China, Mexico, Britain, Scandinavia, Italy, Illyricum, Thrace, Greece, Asia Minor, and Phœnicia." (Ch VIII) The Worship of the Serpent The Worship of the Serpent by John Bathurst Deane is an 1833 study of snake worship and specifically the snake mentioned in the