Apollo Intensa Emozione

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo is very clear about the sequence. Apollo comes to the spring at Delphi. A great she-serpent guards it. He shoots her with his arrows. She dies, rotting in the sun — and from that rotting, in one folk etymology, comes the name Pytho, and from Pytho comes Python, and from Python comes the title of every priestess who has ever prophesied there: the Pythia.

Consider what that means. Apollo does not merely defeat the serpent. He builds his entire institution on the corpse, and he names his oracle after her, permanently. Every prophecy delivered at Delphi for over a thousand years was delivered by a woman carrying the dead snake’s name.

The Apollo Intensa Emozione — the company was previously Gumpert, and the name change is the reason this entry exists — is a low-volume hypercar with a naturally aspirated 6.3-litre V12 built by Autotecnica Motori, revving past nine thousand, ten cars, carbon everywhere, styled in a manner best described as unrepentant.

The Ophidiary includes it in Book V because a bestiary that lists predators must list the gods among them. But it wishes to note that Apollo’s victory is the least sporting in this book. The mongoose fights. The roadrunner works for it. Apollo shot her from a distance with divine arrows and then took her name for his own staff.

That is not predation. That is acquisition.