It is fortunate that all texts of classical antiquity were not lost to the Middle Ages. Had fourteenth-century France not known Ovid's Metamorphoses, Guillaume de Machaut likely would not have composed his late ballade "Photon, le mervilleus serpent." Moreover, the late fourteenth-century composer known to us through manuscript ascriptions as magister Franciscus, most of whose handful of extant compositions make some reference to Machaut by way of musical and/or textual citation, would not have had a model on which to base his own allegorical reworking of the Python myth in his ballade Phiton, Phiton. It is in the context of Machaut's attention to classical mythology and of the tradition of citation of Machaut's music by composers of late fourteenth-century France that Machaut's "Photon, le mervilleus serpent" can best be understood.

The first four lines of Machaut's ballade text introduce the mythological figure Python, who "had the length of a serpent/ As Ovid describes him" (lines 3 and 4). Machaut's reference here is to Book One of the Metamorphoses, in which Ovid recounts the birth of the serpent Python and his death by a thousand arrows of Phoebus Apollo. Machaut uses the image of the serpent to construct a traditional love allegory, in which he favorably compares the serpent's cruelty with that of an illusive female.

Franciscus cites all three voices of the first three tempora of Machaut's ballade at the opening of his own Phiton, Phiton" Franciscus' ballade text is also an allegorical interpretation of the Python myth, but one, as Jehoash Hirshberg has argued, which invokes the politically-charged events of the early 1360s instead of the standard topoi of courtly love. In Franciscus' ballade, Phoebus represents Gaston III, Count of Foix (who would adopt the moniker Febus as an indication of his prowess) and Python represents any one of Gaston's enemies, possibly Jean I d'Armagnac. Franciscus' text describes the events leading up to the 1362 battle of Launac, in which Gaston defeated Jean I d'Armagnac. Based on Franciscus' text, which demonizes the serpent and deifies Phoebus, we can surmise that the poet was loyal to the Count of Foix. Thus, magister Franciscus makes reference to the great Machaut on more than one level by citing Machaut's music and constructing an allegorical ballade on the theme of Python.

Machaut unifies the music of Phyton, le mervilleus serpent by rich motivic interplay among the three voices, and the exact repetition of the last phrases of both of the song's formal sections. The ballade opens with an important snake-like head motif in the tenor voice, which is here scored above the Cantus. Because Machaut's ballade consists of a double cursus (in which both the "A" and "B" sections are repeated, both sections ending first in ouvert and then clos cadences), the opening tenor head motif appears no fewer than four times, as the last phrases of both "A" and "B" sections are identical. Although the tenor and contratenor voices in particular cross frequently, the tenor and contratenor registrally underpin the cantus, which is generally offset in the higher spectrum of the register. Syncopated rhythmic motifs permeate each voice in the musical fabric and give the ballade a feeling of restless intensity—perhaps a musical manifestation of the lady's cruelty.

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