and half snake. There are various versions of Python's birth and death at the hands of Apollo. In the earliest, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, little detail is given about Apollo's combat with the serpent or its parentage. The version related by Hyginus holds that when Zeus lay with the goddess Leto, and she was to deliver Artemis and Apollo, Hera sent Python to pursue her throughout the lands, so that she could not be delivered wherever the sun shone. Thus when the infant was grown he pursued the python, making his way straight for Mount Parnassus where the serpent dwelled, and chased it to the oracle of Gaia at Delphi, and dared to penetrate the sacred precinct and kill it with his arrows beside the rock cleft where the priestess sat on her tripod. The priestess of the oracle at Delphi became known as the Pythia, after the place-name Pytho, which was named after the rotting (πύθειν) of the serpent's corpse after it was slain. The Colchian dragon Known as Drakôn Kolkhikos, (, , Dragon of Colchis) this immense serpent, a child of Typhon and Echidna, guarded the Golden Fleece at Colchis. It was said to never sleep, rest, or lower its vigilance. According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, the monster had a crest and three tongues. When Jason went to retrieve the Fleece, the witch Medea put the dragon to sleep with her magic and drugs, or perhaps Orpheus lulled it to sleep with his lyre. Afterwards, Medea herself had dragons pull her chariot. The Ismenian dragon The Ismenian Serpent, of the spring of Ismene at Thebes, Greece, was slain by the hero Cadmus. It was the offspring of Ares, who later turned the hero into a serpent. Helios' dragons According to Apollodorus, the sun god Helios had a chariot, drawn by "winged dragons", which he gave to his granddaughter Medea. Scythian Dracaena She was a woman from the waist up with a serpent's tail in place of legs. When Heracles was traveling through Scythia with the cattle of Geryon, she stole some of the herd when the hero was sleeping. When Heracles woke he searched for them, visiting every part of the country, and he came to the land called the Hylaea (), and there he found in a cave the creature, which was the queen of that country. She insisted the hero mate with her before she would