§ The part of Arcadia that lies next to the Argive land is occupied by Tegeans and Mantineans, who with the rest of the Arcadians inhabit the interior of the Peloponnesus. The first people within the peninsula are the Corinthians, living on the Isthmus, and their neighbours on the side sea-wards are the Epidaurians. Along Epidaurus, Troezen, and Nermion, come the Argolic Gulf and the coast of Argolis; next to Argolis come the vassals of Lacedaemon, and these border on Messenia, which comes down to the sea at Mothone, Pylus and Cyparissiae.

§ On the side of Lechaeum the Corinthians are bounded by the Sicyonians, who dwell in the extreme part of Argolis on this side. After Sicyon come the Achaeans who live along the coast at the other end of the Peloponnesus, opposite the Echinadian islands, dwell the Eleans. The land of Elis, on the side of Olympia and the mouth of the Alpheius, borders on Messenia; on the side of Achaia it borders on the land of Dyme.

§ These that I have mentioned extend to the sea, but the Arcadians are shut off from the sea on every side and dwell in the interior. Hence, when they went to Troy, so Homer says, they did not sail in their own ships, but in vessels lent by Agamemnon.

§ The Arcadians say that Pelasgus was the first inhabitant of this land. It is natural to suppose that others accompanied Pelasgus, and that he was not by himself; for otherwise he would have been a king without any subjects to rule over. However, in stature and in prowess, in beauty and in wisdom, Pelasgus excelled his fellows, and for this reason, I think, he was chosen to be king by them. Asius the poet says of him:—
The godlike Pelasgus on the wooded mountains
Black earth gave up, that the race of mortals might exist.
Asius, unknown location.

§ Pelasgus on becoming king invented huts that humans should not shiver, or be soaked by rain, or oppressed by heat. Moreover; he it was who first thought of coats of sheep-skins, such as poor folk still wear in Euboea and Phocis. He too it was who checked the habit of eating green leaves, grasses, and roots always inedible and sometimes poisonous.

§ But he introduced as food the nuts of trees, not those of all trees but only the acorns of the edible oak. Some people have followed this diet so closely since the time of Pelasgus that even the Pythian priestess, when she forbade the Lacedaemonians to touch the land of the Arcadians, uttered the following verses:—
In Arcadia are many men who eat acorns,
Who will prevent you; though I do not grudge it you.
It is said that it was in the reign of Pelasgus that the land was called Pelasgia.

§ Lycaon the son of Pelasgus devised the following plans, which were more clever than those of his father. He founded the city Lycosura on Mount Lycaeus, gave to Zeus the surname Lycaeus and founded the Lycaean games. I hold that the Panathenian festival was not founded before the Lycaean. The early name for the former festival was the Athenian, which was changed to the Panathenian in the time of Theseus, because it was then established by the whole Athenian people gathered together in a single city.

§ The Olympic games I leave out of the present account, because they are traced back to a time earlier than the human race, the story being that Cronus and Zeus wrestled there, and that the Curetes were the first to race at Olympia. My view is that Lycaon was contemporary with Cecrops, the king of Athens, but that they were not equally wise in matters of religion.

§ For Cecrops was the first to name Zeus the Supreme god, and refused to sacrifice anything that had life in it, but burnt instead on the altar the national cakes which the Athenians still call pelanoi. But Lycaon brought a human baby to the altar of Lycaean Zeus, and sacrificed it, pouring out its blood upon the altar, and according to the legend immediately after the sacrifice he was changed from a man to a wolf (Lycos).

§ I for my part believe this story; it has been a legend among the Arcadians from of old, and it has the additional merit of probability. For the men of those days, because of their righteousness and piety, were guests of the gods, eating at the same board ;the good were openly honoured by the gods, and sinners were openly visited with their wrath. Nay, in those days men were changed to gods, who down to the present day have honours paid to them—Aristaeus, Britomartis of Crete, Heracles the son of Alcmena, Amphiaraus the son of Oicles, and besides these Polydeuces and Castor.

§ So one might believe that Lycaon was turned into a beast, and Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, into a stone. But at the present time, when sin has grown to such a height and has been spreading over every land and every city, no longer do men turn into gods, except in the flattering words addressed to despots, and the wrath of the gods is reserved until the sinners have departed to the next world.

§ All through the ages, many events that have occurred in the past, and even some that occur to-day, have been generally discredited because of the lies built up on a foundation of fact. It is said, for instance, that ever since the time of Lycaon a man has changed into a wolf at the sacrifice to Lycaean Zeus, but that the change is not for life; if, when he is a wolf, he abstains from human flesh, after nine years he becomes a man again, but if he tastes human flesh he remains a beast for ever.

§ Similarly too it is said that Niobe on Mount Sipylus sheds tears in the season of summer. I have also heard that the griffins have spots like the leopard, and that the Tritons speak with human voice, though others say that they blow through a shell that has been bored. Those who like to listen to the miraculous are themselves apt to add to the marvel, and so they ruin truth by mixing it with falsehood.

§ In the third generation after Pelasgus the land increased in the number both of its cities and of its population. For Nyctimus, who was the eldest son of Lycaon, possessed all the power, while the other sons founded cities on the sites they considered best. Thus Pallantium was founded by Pallas, Oresthasium by Orestheus and Phigalia by Phigalus.

§ Pallantium is mentioned by Stesichorus of Himerain his Geryoneid. Phigalia and Oresthasium in course of time changed their names, Oresthasium to Oresteium after Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, Phigalia to Phialia after Phialus, the son of Bucolion. Cities were founded by Trapezeus also, and by Daseatas, Macareus, Helisson, Acacus and Thocnus. The last founded Thocnia, and Acacus Acacesium. It was after this Acacus, according to the Arcadian account, that Homer made a surname for Hermes.

§ Helisson has given a name to both the town and the river so called, and similarly Macaria, Dasea, and Trapezus were named after the sons of Lycaon. Orchomenus became founder of both the town called Methydrium and of Orchomenus, styled by Homer “rich in sheep.” Hypsus and founded Melaeneae and Hypsus, and also Thyraeum and Haemoniae. The Arcadians are of opinion that both the Thyrea in Argolis and also the Thyrean gulf were named after this Thyraeus.

§ Maenalus founded Maenalus, which was in ancient times the most famous of the cities of Arcadia, Tegeates founded Tegea and Mantineus Mantineia. Cromi was named after Cromus, Charisia after Charisius, its founder, Tricoloni after Tricolonus, Peraethenses after Peraethus, Asea after Aseatas, Lycoa after and Sumatia after Sumateus. Alipherus also and Heraeus both gave their names to cities.

§ But Oenotrus, the youngest of the sons of Lycaon, asked his brother Nyctimus for money and men and crossed by sea to Italy; the land of Oenotria received its name from Oenotrus who was its king. This was the first expedition despatched from Greece to found a colony, and if a man makes the most careful calculation possible he will discover that no foreigners either emigrated to another land before Oenotrus.

§ In addition to all this male issue, Lycaon had a daughter Callisto. This Callisto (I repeat the current Greek legend) was loved by Zeus and mated with him. When Hera detected the intrigue she turned Callisto into a bear, and Artemis to please Hera shot the bear. Zeus sent Hermes with orders to save the child that Callisto bore in her womb,

§ and Callisto herself he turned into the constellation known as the Great Bear, which is mentioned by Homer in the return voyage of Odysseus from Calypso:—
Gazing at the Pleiades and late-setting Bootes,
And the Bear, which they also call the Wain.
Hom. Od. 5.272But it may be that the constellation is merely named in honour of Callisto, since her grave is pointed out by the Arcadians.

§ After the death of Nyctimus, Arcas the son of Callisto came to the throne. He introduced the cultivation of crops, which he learned from Triptolemus, and taught men to make bread, to weave clothes, and other things besides, having learned the art of spinning from Adristas. After this king the land was called Arcadia instead of Pelasgia and its inhabitants Arcadians instead of Pelasgians.

§ His wife, according to the legend, was no mortal woman but a Dryad nymph. For they used to call some nymphs Dryads, others Epimeliads, and others Naiads, and Homer in his poetry talks mostly of Naiad nymphs. This nymph they call Erato, and by her they say that Arcas had Azan, Apheidas and Elatus. Previously he had had Autolaus, an illegitimate son.

§ When his sons grew up, Arcas divided the land between them into three parts, and one district was named Azania after Azan; from Azania, it is said, settled the colonists who dwell about the cave in Phrygia called Steunos and the river Pencalas. To Apheidas fell Tegea and the land adjoining, and for this reason poets too call Tegea “the lot of Apheidas.”

§ Elatus got Mount Cyllene, which down to that time had received no name. Afterwards Elatus migrated to what is now called Phocis, helped the Phocians when hard pressed in war by the Phlegyans, and became the founder of the city Elateia. It is said that Azan had a son Cleitor, Apheidas a son Aleus, and that Elatus had five sons, Aepytus, Pereus, Cyllen, Ischys, and Stymphalus.

§ On the death of Axan, the son of Arcas, athletic contests were held for the first time; horse-races were certainly held, but I cannot speak positively about other contests. Now Cleitor the son of Azan dwelt in Lycosura, and was the most powerful of the kings, founding Cleitor, which he named after himself; Aleus held his father’s portion.

§ Of the sons of Elatus, Cyllen gave his name to Mount Cyllene, and Stymphalus gave his to the spring and to the city Stymphalus near the spring. The story of the death of Ischys, the son of Elatus, I have already told in my history of Argolis. Pereus, they say, had no male child, but only a daughter, Neaera. She married Autolycus, who lived on Mount Parnassus, and was said to be a son of Hermes, although his real father was Baedalion.

§ Cleitor, the son of Azan, had no children, and the sovereignty of the Arcadians devolved upon Aepytus, the son of Elatus. While out hunting, Aepytus was killed, not by any of the more powerful beasts, but by a seps that he failed to notice. This species of snake I have myself seen. It is like the smallest kind of adder, of the colour of ash, with spots dotted here and there. It has a broad head and a narrow neck, a large belly and a short tail. This snake, like another called cerastes (“the horned snake”), walks with a sidelong motion, as do crabs.

§ After Aepytus Aleus came to the throne. For Agamedes and Gortys, the sons of Stymphalus, were three generations removed from Arcas, and Aleus, the son of Apheidas, two generations. Aleus built the old sanctuary in Tegea of Athena Alea, and made Tegea the capital of his kingdom. Gortys the son of Stymphalus founded the city Gortys on a river which is also called after him. The sons of Aleus were Lycurgus, Amphidamas and Cepheus; he also had a daughter Auge.

§ Hecataeus says that this Auge used to have intercourse with Heracles when he came to Tegea. At last it was discovered that she had borne a child to Heracles, and Aleus, putting her with her infant son in a chest, sent them out to sea. She came to Teuthras, lord of the plain of the Caicus, who fell in love with her and married her. The tomb of Auge still exists at Pergamus above the Calcus; it is a mound of earth surrounded by a basement of stone and surmounted by a figure of a naked woman in bronze.

§ After the death of Aleus Lycurgus his son got the kingdom as being the eldest; he is notorious for killing, by treachery and riot in fair fight, a warrior called Areithous. Of his two sons, Ancaeus and Epochus, the latter fell ill and died, while the former joined the expedition of Jason to Colchis; afterwards, while hunting down with Meleager the Calydonian boar, he was killed by the brute.

§ So Lycurgus outlived both his sons, and reached an extreme old age. On his death, Echemus, son of Aeropus, son of Cepheus, son of Aleus, became king of the Arcadians. In his time the Dorians, in their attempt to return to the Peloponnesus under the leadership of Hyllus, the son of Heracles, were defeated by the Achaeans at the Isthmus of Corinth, and Echemus killed Hyllus, who had challenged him to single combat. I have come to the conclusion that this is a more probable story than the one I gave before, that on this occasion Orestes was king of the Achaeans, and that it was during his reign that Hyllus attempted to return to the Peloponnesus. If the second account be accepted, it would appear that Timandra, the daughter of Tyndareus, married Echemus, who killed Hyllus.

§ Agapenor, the son of Ancaeus, the son of Lycurgus, who was king after Echemus, led the Arcadians to Troy. After the capture of Troy the storm that overtook the Greeks on their return home carried Agapenor and the Arcadian fleet to Cyprus, and so Agapenor became the founder of Paphos, and built the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Palaepaphos (Old Paphos). Up to that time the goddess had been worshipped by the Cyprians in the district called Golgi.

§ Afterwards Laodice, a descendant of Agapenor, sent to Tegea a robe as a gift for Athena Alea. The inscription on the offering told as well the race of Laodice :—
This is the robe of Laodice; she offered it to her Athena,
Sending it to her broad fatherland from divine Cyprus.

§ When Agapenor did not return home from Troy, the kingdom devolved upon Hippothous, the son of Cercyon, the son of Agamedes, the son of Stymphalus. No remarkable event is recorded of his life, except that he established as the capital of his kingdom not Tegea but Trapezus. Aepytus, the son of Hippothous, succeeded his father to the throne, and Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, in obedience to an oracle of the Delphic Apollo, moved his home from Mycenae to Arcadia.

§ Aepytus, the son of Hippothous, dared to enter the sanctuary of Poseidon at Mantineia, into which no mortal was, just as no mortal today is, allowed to pass; on entering it he was struck blind, and shortly after this calamity he died.

§ Aepytus was succeeded as king by his son Cypselus, and in his reign the Dorian expedition returned to the Peloponnesus, not, as three generations before, across the Corinthian Isthmus, but by sea to the place called Rhium. Cypselus, learning about the expedition, married his daughter to the son of Aristomachus whom he found without a wife, and so winning over Cresphontes he himself and the Arcadians had nothing at all to fear.

§ Holaeas was the son of Cypselus, who, aided by the Heracleidae from Lacedaemon and Argos, restored to Messene his sister’s son Aepytus. Holaeas had a son Bucolion, and he a son Phialus, who robbed Phigalus, the son of Lycaon, the founder of Phigalia, of the honour of giving his name to the city; Phialus changed it to Phialia, after his own name, but the change did not win universal acceptance.

§ In the reign of Simus, the son of Phialus, the people of Phigalia lost by fire the ancient wooden image of Black Demeter. This loss proved to be a sign that Simus himself also was soon to meet his end. Simus was succeeded as king by Pompus his son, in whose reign the Aeginetans made trading voyages as far as Cyllene, from which place they carried their cargoes up country on pack-animals to the Arcadians. In return for this Pompus honoured the Arcadians greatly, and furthermore gave the name Aeginetes to his son out of friendship for the Aeginetans.

§ After Aeginetes his son Polymestor became king of the Arcadians, and it was then that Charillus and the Lacedaemonians for the first time invaded the land of Tegea with an army. They were defeated in battle by the people of Tegea, who, men and women alike, flew to arms; the whole army, including Charillus himself, were taken prisoners. Charillus and his army I shall mention at greater length in my account of Tegea.

§ Polymestor had no children, and Aechmis succeeded to the throne, who was the son of Briacas, and the nephew of Polymestor. For Briacas too was a son of Aeginetes, but younger than Polymestor. After Aechmis came to the throne occurred the war between the Lacedaemonians and the Messenians The Arcadians had from the first been friendly to the Messenians, and on this occasion they openly fought against the Lacedaemonians on the side of Aristodemus, the king of Messenia.

§ Aristocrates, the son of Aechmis, may have been guilty of outrages against the Arcadians of his most impious acts, however, against the gods I have sure knowledge, and I will proceed to relate them. There is a sanctuary of Artemis, surnamed Hymnia, standing on the borders of Orchomenus, near the territory of Mantineia. Artemis Hymnia has been worshipped by all the Arcadians from the most remote period. At that time the office of priestess to the goddess was still always held by a girl who was a virgin.

§ The maiden persisted in resisting the advances of Aristocrates, but at last, when she had taken refuge in the sanctuary, she was outraged by him near the image of Artemis. When the crime came to be generally known, the Arcadians stoned the culprit, and also changed the rule for the future; as priestess of Artemis they now appoint, not a virgin, but a woman who has had enough of intercourse with men.

§ This man had a son Hicetas, and Hicetas had a son Aristocrates the second, named after his grandfather and also meeting with a death like his. For he too was stoned by the Arcadians, who discovered that he had received bribes from Lacedaemon, and that the Messenian disaster at the Great Ditch was caused by the treachery of Aristocrates. This sin explains why the kingship was taken from the whole house of Cypselus.

§ I spent much care upon the history of the Arcadian kings, and the genealogy as given above was told me by the Arcadians themselves. Of their memorable achievements the oldest is the Trojan war; then comes the help they gave the Messeniansin their struggle against Lacedaemon, and they also took part in the action at Plataea against the Persians.

§ It was compulsion rather than sympathy that made them join the Lacedaemonians in their war against Athens and in crossing over to Asia with Agesilaus; they also followed the Lacedaemonians to Leuctra in Boeotia. Their distrust of the Lacedaemonians was shown on many occasions; in particular, immediately after the Lacedaemonian reverse at Leuctra they seceded from them and joined the Thebans. Though they did not fight on the Greek side against Philip and the Macedonians at Chaeroneia, nor later in Thessaly against Antipater, yet they did not actually range themselves against the Greeks.

§ It was because of the Lacedaemonians, they say, that they took no part in resisting the Gallic threat to Thermopylae; they feared that their land would be laid waste in the absence of their men of military age. As members of the Achaean League the Arcadians were more enthusiastic than any other Greeks. The fortunes of each individual city, as distinct from those of the Arcadian people as a whole, I shall reserve for their proper place in my narrative.

§ There is a pass into Arcadia on the Argive side in the direction of Hysiae and over Mount Parthenius into Tegean territory. There are two others on the side of Mantineia: one through what is called Prinus and one through the Ladder. The latter is the broader, and its descent had steps that were once cut into it. Crossing the Ladder you come to a place called Melangeia, from which the drinking water of the Mantineans flows down to their city.

§ Farther off from Melangeia, about seven stades distant from Mantineia, there is a well called the Well of the Meliasts. These Meliasts celebrate the orgies of Dionysus. Near the well is a hall of Dionysus and a sanctuary of Black Aphrodite. This surname of the goddess is simply due to the fact that men do not, as the beasts do, have sexual intercourse always by day, but in most cases by night.

§ The second road is less broad than the other, and leads over Mount Artemisius. I have already made mention of this mountain, noting that on it are a temple and image of Artemis, and also the springs of the Inachus. The river Inachus, so long as it flows by the road across the mountain, is the boundary between the territory of Argos and that of Mantineia. But when it turns away from the road the stream flows through Argolis from this point on, and for this reason Aeschylus among others calls the Inachus an Argive river.

§ After crossing into Mantinean country over Mount Artemisius you will come to a plain called the Untilled Plain, whose name well describes it, for the rain-water coming down into it from the mountains prevents the plain from being tilled; nothing indeed could prevent it from being a lake, were it not that the water disappears into a chasm in the earth.

§ After disappearing here it rises again at Dine (Whirlpool). Dine is a stream of fresh water rising out of the sea by what is called Genethlium in Argolis. In olden times the Argives cast horses adorned with bridles down into Dine as an offering to Poseidon. Not only here in Argolis, but also by Cheimerium in Thesprotis, is there unmistakably fresh water rising up in the sea.

§ A greater marvel still is the water that boils in the Maeander, which comes partly from a rock surrounded by the stream, and partly rises from the mud of the river. In front of Dicaearchia also, in the land of the Etruscans, there is water boiling in the sea, and an artificial island has been made through it, so that this water is not “untilled,” but serves for hot baths.

§ In the territory of the Mantineans on the left of the plain called Untilled is a mountain, on which are the ruins of a camp of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and of a village called Nestane. For it is said that by this Nestane Philip made an encampment, and the spring here they still call Philippium after the king. Philip came to Arcadia to bring over the Arcadians to his side, and to separate them from the rest of the Greek people.

§ Philip may be supposed to have accomplished exploits greater than those of any Macedonian king who reigned either before or after. But nobody of sound mind would call him a good general, for no man has so sinned by continually trampling on oaths to heaven, and by breaking treaties and dishonouring his word on every occasion.

§ The wrath of heaven was not late in visiting him; never in fact have we known it more speedy. When he was but forty-six years old, Philip fulfilled the oracle that it is said was given him when he inquired of Delphi about the Persians:—
The bull is crowned; the consummation is at hand; the sacrificer is ready.
Very soon afterwards events showed that this oracle pointed, not to the Persians, but to Philip himself.

§ On the death of Philip, his infant son by Cleopatra, the niece of Attalus, was along with his mother dragged by Olympias on to a bronze vessel and burned to death. Afterwards Olympias killed Aridaeus also. It turned out that the god intended to mow down to destruction the family of Cassander as well. Cassander’s sons were by Thessalonice, the daughter of Philip, and both Thessalonice and Aridaeus had Thessalian women for their mothers. The fate of Alexander is familiar to everybody alike.

§ But if Philip had taken to heart the fate of the Spartan Glaucus, and at each of his acts had bethought himself of the verse:—
If a man keeps his oath his family prospers hereafter;
then, I believe, some god would not have extinguished so relentlessly the life of Alexander and, at the same time, the Macedonian supremacy.

§ So much by way of a digression. After the ruins of Nestane is a holy sanctuary of Demeter, and every year the Mantineans hold a festival in her honour. By Nestane there lies, on lower ground, about . . . itself too forming part of the Untilled Plain, and it is called the Dancing Floor of Maera. The road across the Untilled Plain is about ten stades. After crossing it you will descend, a little farther on, into another plain. On it, alongside the highway, is a well called Lamb.

§ The following story is told by the Arcadians. When Rhea had given birth to Poseidon, she laid him in a flock for him to live there with the lambs, and the spring too received its name just because the lambs pastured around it. Rhea, it is said, declared to Cronus that she had given birth to a horse, and gave him a foal to swallow instead of the child, just as later she gave him in place of Zeus a stone wrapped up in swaddling clothes.

§ When I began to write my history I was inclined to count these legends as foolishness, but on getting as far as Arcadia I grew to hold a more thoughtful view of them, which is this. In the days of old those Greeks who were considered wise spoke their sayings not straight out but in riddles, and so the legends about Cronus I conjectured to be one sort of Greek wisdom. In matters of divinity, therefore, I shall adopt the received tradition.

§ The city of the Mantineans is about twelve stades farther away from this spring. Now there are plain indications that it was in another place that Mantineus the son of Lycaon founded his city, which even to-day is called Ptolis (City) by the Arcadians. From here, in obedience to an oracle, Antinoe, the daughter of Cepheus, the son of Aleus, removed the inhabitants to the modern site, accepting as a guide for the pilgrimage a snake; the breed of snake is not recorded. It is for this reason that the river, which flows by the modern city, has received the name Ophis (Snake).

§ If we may base a conjecture on the verses of Homer, we are led to believe that this snake was a dragon. When in the list of ships he tells how the Greeks abandoned Philoctetes in Lemnos suffering from his wound, he does not style the water-serpent a snake. But the dragon that the eagle dropped among the Trojans he does call a snake. So it is likely that Antinoe’s guide also was a dragon.

§ The Mantineans did not fight on the side of the other Arcadians against the Lacedaemonians at Dipaea, but in the Peloponnesian war they rose with the Eleans against the Lacedaemonians, and joined in battle with them after the arrival of reinforcements from Athens. Their friendship with the Athenians led them to take part also in the Sicilian expedition.

§ Later on a Lacedaemonian army under Agesipolis, the son of Pausanias, invaded their territory. Agesipolis was victorious in the battle and shut up the Mantineans within their walls, capturing the city shortly after. He did not take it by storm, but turned the river Ophis against its fortifications, which were made of unburnt brick.

§ Now against the blows of engines brick brings greater security than fortifications built of stone. For stones break and are dislodged from their fittings; brick, however, does not suffer so much from engines, but it crumbles under the action of water just as wax is melted by the sun.

§ This method of demolishing the fortifications of the Mantineans was not discovered by Agesipolis. It was a stratagem invented at an earlier date by Cimon, the son of Miltiades, when he was besieging Boges and the other Persians who were holding Eion on the Strymon. Agesipolis only copied an established custom, and one celebrated among the Greeks. After taking Mantineia, he left a small part of it inhabited, but by far the greater part he razed to the ground, settling the inhabitants in villages.

§ Fate decreed that the Thebans should restore the Mantineans from the villages to their own country after the engagement at Leuctra, but when restored they proved far from grateful. They were caught treating with the Lacedaemonians and intriguing for a peace with them privately without reference to the rest of the Arcadian people. So through their fear of the Thebans they openly changed sides and joined the Lacedaemonian confederacy, and when the battle took place at Mantineia between the Lacedaemonians and the Thebans under Epaminondas, the Mantineans joined the ranks of the Lacedaemonians.

§ Subsequently the Mantineans quarrelled with the Lacedaemonians, and seceded from them to the Achaean League. They defeated Agis, the son of Eudamidas, king of Sparta, in defence of their own country, with the help of an Achaean army under the leadership of Aratus. They also joined the Achaeans in their struggle against Cleomenes and helped to destroy the Lacedaemonian power. Antigonus of Macedonia, who was guardian of Philip, the father of Perseus, before he came of age, was an ardent supporter of the Achaeans, and so the Mantineans, among other honours, changed the name of their city to Antigoneia.

§ Afterwards, when Augustus was about to fight the naval engagement off the cape of Actian Apollo, the Mantineans fought on the side of the Romans, while the rest of Arcadia joined the ranks of Antonius, for no other reason, so it seems to me, except that the Lacedaemonians favoured the cause of Augustus. Ten generations afterwards, when Hadrian became Emperor, he took away from the Mantineans the name imported from Macedonia, and gave back to their city its old name of Mantineia.

§ The Mantineans possess a temple composed of two parts, being divided almost exactly at the middle by a wall. In one part of the temple is an image of Asclepius, made by Alcamenes; the other part is a sanctuary of Leto and her children, and their images were made by Praxiteles two generations after Alcamenes. On the pedestal of these are figures of Muses together with Marsyas playing the flute. Here there is a figure of Polybius, the son of Lycortas, carved in relief upon a slab, of whom I shall make fuller mention later on.

§ The Mantineans have other sanctuaries also, one of Zeus Saviour, and one of Zeus Giver of Gifts, in that he gives good things to men. There is also a sanctuary of the Dioscuri, and in another place one of Demeter and the Maid. Here they keep a fire, taking anxious care not to let it go out. Near the theater I saw a temple of Hera.

§ Praxiteles made the images Hera is sitting, while Athena and Hera’s daughter Hebe are standing by her side. Near the altar of Hera is the grave of Arcas, the son of Callisto. The bones of Arcas they brought from Maenalus, in obedience to an oracle delivered to them from Delphi:—

§ 
Maenalia is storm-swept, where lies
Arcas, from whom all Arcadians are named,
In a place where meet three, four, even five roads;
Thither I bid you go, and with kind heart
Take up Arcas and bring him back to your lovely city.
There make Arcas a precinct and sacrifices.
This place, where the grave of Arcas is, they call Altars of the Sun.

§ Not far from the theater are famous tombs, one called Common Hearth, round in shape, where, they told me, lies Antinoe, the daughter of Cepheus. On it stands a slab, on which is carved in relief a horseman, Grylus, the son of Xenophon.

§ Behind the theater I found the remains, with an image, of a temple of Aphrodite surnamed Ally. The inscription on the pedestal announced that the image was dedicated by Nicippe, the daughter of Paseas. This sanctuary was made by the Mantineans to remind posterity of their fighting on the side of the Romans at the battle of Actium. They also worship Athena Alea, of whom they have a sanctuary and an image.

§ Antinous too was deified by them; his temple is the newest in Mantineia. He was a great favourite of the Emperor Hadrian. I never saw him in the flesh, but I have seen images and pictures of him. He has honours in other places also, and on the Nile is anEgyptian city named after Antinous. He has won worship in Mantineia for the following reason. Antinous was by birth from Bithynium beyond the river Sangarius, and the Bithynians are by descent Arcadians of Mantineia.

§ For this reason the Emperor established his worship in Mantineia also; mystic rites are celebrated in his honour each year, and games every four years. There is a building in the gymnasium of Mantineia containing statues of Antinous, and remarkable for the stones with which it is adorned, and especially so for its pictures. Most of them are portraits of Antinous, who is made to look just like Dionysus. There is also a copy here of the painting in the Cerameicus which represented the engagement of the Athenians at Mantineia.

§ In the market-place is a bronze portrait-statue of a woman, said by the Mantineans to be Diomeneia, the daughter of Arcas, and a hero-shrine of Podares, who was killed, they say, in the battle with the Thebaus under Epaminondas. Three generations ago they changed the inscription on the grave and made it apply to a descendant of this Podares with the same name, who was born late enough to have Roman citizenship.

§ In my time the elder Podares was honoured by the Mantineans, who said that he who proved the bravest in the battle, of themselves and of their allies, was Grylus, the son of Xenophon; next to Grylus was Cephisodorus of Marathon, who at the time commanded the Athenian horse. The third place for valor they give to Podares.

§ There are roads leading from Mantineia into the rest of Arcadia, and I will go on to describe the most noteworthy objects on each of them. On the left of the highway leading to Tegea there is, beside the walls of Mantineia, a place where horses race, and not far from it is a race-course, where they celebrate the games in honour of Antinous. Above the race-course is Mount Alesium, so called from the wandering (ale) of Rhea, on which is a grove of Demeter.

§ By the foot of the mountain is the sanctuary of Horse Poseidon, not more than six stades distant from Mantineia. About this sanctuary I, like everyone else who has mentioned it, can write only what I have heard. The modern sanctuary was built by the Emperor Hadrian, who set overseers over the workmen, so that nobody might look into the old sanctuary, and none of the ruins be removed. He ordered them to build around the new temple. Originally, they say, this sanctuary was built for Poseidon by Agamedes and Trophonius, who worked oak logs and fitted them together.

§ They set up no barrier at the entrance to prevent men going inside; but they stretched across it a thread of wool. Perhaps they thought that even this would strike fear into the religious people of that time, and perhaps there was also some power in the thread. It is notorious that even Aepytus, the son of Hippothous, entered the sanctuary neither by jumping over the thread nor by slipping under it, but by cutting it through. For this sin he was blinded by a wave that dashed on to his eyes, and forthwith his life left him.

§ There is an old legend that a wave of sea-water rises up in the sanctuary. A like story is told by the Athenians about the wave on the Acropolis, and by the Carians living in Mylasa about the sanctuary of the god called in the native tongue Osogoa. But the sea at Phalerum is about twenty stades distant from Athens, and the port of Mylasa is eighty stades from the city. But at Mantineia the sea rises after a very long distance, and quite plainly through the divine will.

§ Beyond the sanctuary of Poseidon is a trophy made of stone commemorating the victory over the Lacedaemonians under Agis. The course of the battle was, it is said, after this wise. The right wing was held by the Mantineans themselves, who put into the field all of military age under the command of Podares, the grandson of the Podares who fought against the Thebans. They had with them also the Elean seer Thrasybulus, the son of Aeneas, one of the Iamids. This man foretold a victory for the Mantineans and took a personal part in the fighting.

§ On the left wing was stationed all the rest of the Arcadian army, each city under its own leader, the contingent of Megalopolis being led by Lydiades and Leocydes. The center was entrusted to Aratus, with the Sicyonians and the Achaeans. The Lacedaemonians under Agis, who with the royal staff officers were in the center, extended their line so as to make it equal in length to that of their enemies.

§ Aratus, acting on an arrangement with the Arcadians, fell back with his command, as though the pressure of the Lacedaemonians was too severe. As they gave way they gradually made their formation crescent-shaped. The Lacedaemonians under Agis, thinking that victory was theirs, pressed in close order yet harder on Aratus and his men. They were followed by those on the wings, who thought it a great achievement to put to flight Aratus and his host.

§ But the Arcadians got in their rear unperceived, and the Lacedaemonians were surrounded, losing the greater part of their army, while King Agis himself fell, the son of Eudamidas. The Mantineans affirmed that Poseidon too manifested himself in their defence, and for this reason they erected a trophy as an offering to Poseidon.

§ That gods were present at war and slaughter of men has been told by the poets who have treated of the sufferings of heroes at Troy, and the Athenians relate in song how gods sided with them at Marathon and at the battle of Salamis. Very plainly the host of the Gauls was destroyed at Delphi by the god, and manifestly by demons. So there is precedent for the story of the Mantineans that they won their victory by the aid of Poseidon.

§ Arcesilaus, an ancestor, ninth in descent, of’ Leocydes, who with Lydiades was general of the Megalopolitans, is said by the Arcadians to have seen, when dwelling in Lycosura, the sacred deer, enfeebled with age, of the goddess called Lady. This deer, they say, had a collar round its neck, with writing on the collar:—
I was a fawn when captured, at the time when Agapenor went to Troy.
This story proves that the deer is an animal much longer-lived even than the elephant.

§ After the sanctuary of Poseidon you will come to a place full of oak trees, called Sea, and the road from Mantineia to Tegea leads through the oaks. The boundary between Mantineia and Tegea is the round altar on the highroad. If you will turn aside to the left from the sanctuary of Poseidon, you will reach, after going just about five stades, the graves of the daughters of Pelias. These, the Mantineans say, came to live with them when they were fleeing from the scandal at their father’s death.

§ Now when Medea reached Iolcus, she immediately began to plot against Pelias; she was really conspiring with Jason, while pretending to be at variance with him. She promised the daughters of Pelias that, if they wished, she would restore his youth to their father, now a very old man. Having butchered in some way a ram, she boiled his flesh with drugs in a pot, by the aid of which she took out of the pot a live lamb.

§ So she took Pelias and cut him up to boil him, hut what the daughters received was not enough to bury. This result forced the women to change their home to Arcadia, and after their death mounds were made there for their tombs. No poet, so far as I have read, has given them names, but the painter Micon inscribed on their portraits Asteropeia and Antinoe.

§ A Place called Phoezon is about twenty stades distant from these graves. Phoezon is a tomb of stone surrounded with a basement, raised only a little above the ground. At this point the road becomes very narrow, and here, they say, is the tomb of Areithous, surnamed Corynetes (Clubman) because of his weapon.

§ As you go along the road leading from Mantineia to Pallantium, at a distance of about thirty stades, the highway is skirted by the grove of what is called the Ocean, and here the cavalry of the Athenians and Mantineans fought against the Boeotian horse. Epaminondas, the Mantineans say, was killed by Machaerion, a man of Mantineia. The Lacedaemonians on their part say that a Spartan killed Epaminondas, but they too give Machaerion as the name of the man.

§ The Athenian account, with which the Theban agrees, makes out that Epaminondas was wounded by Grylus. Similar is the story on the picture portraying the battle of Mantineia. All can see that the Mantineans gave Grylus a public funeral and dedicated where he fell his likeness on a slab in honour of the bravest of their allies. The Lacedaemonians also speak of Machaerion as the slayer, but actually at Sparta there is no Machaerion, nor is there at Mantineia, who has received honours for bravery.

§ When Epaminondas was wounded, they carried him still living from the ranks. For a while he kept his hand to the wound in agony, with his gaze fixed on the combatants, the place from which he looked at them being called Scope (Look) by posterity. But when the combat came to an indecisive end, he took his hand away from the wound and died, being buried on the spot where the armies met.

§ On the grave stands a pillar, and on it is a shield with a dragon in relief. The dragon means that Epaminondas belonged to the race of those called the Sparti, while there are slabs on the tomb, one old, with a Boeotian inscription, the other dedicated by the Emperor Hadrian, who wrote the inscription on it.

§ Everybody must praise Epaminondas for being the most famous Greek general, or at least consider him second to none other. For the Lacedaemonian and the Athenian leaders enjoyed the ancient reputation of their cities, while their soldiers were men of a spirit, but the Thebans, whom Epaminondas raised to the highest position, were a disheartened people, accustomed to obey others.

§ Epaminondas had been told before by an oracle from Delphi to beware of “ocean.” So he was afraid to step on board a man-of-war or to sail in a merchant-ship, but by “ocean” the god indicated the grove “Ocean” and not the sea. Places with the same name misled Hannibal the Carthaginian, and before him the Athenians also.

§ Hannibal received an oracle from Ammon that when he died he would be buried in Libyan earth. So he hoped to destroy the Roman empire, to return to his home in Libya, and there to die of old age. But when Flamininus the Roman was anxious to take him alive, Hannibal came to Prusias as a suppliant. Repulsed by Prusias he jumped upon his horse, but was wounded in the finger by his drawn sword. when he had proceeded only a few stades his wound caused a fever, and he died on the third day. The place where lie died is called Libyssa by the Nicomedians.

§ The Athenians received an oracle from Dodona ordering them to colonize Sicily, and Sicily is a small hill not far from Athens. But they, not understanding the order, were persuaded to undertake expeditions overseas, especially the Syracusan war. More examples could be found similar to those I have given.

§ Just about a stade from the grave of Epaminondas is a sanctuary of Zeus surnamed Charmon. The oaks in the groves of the Arcadians are of different sorts; some of them are called “broad-leaved,” others “edible oaks.” A third kind have a porous bark, which is so light that they actually make from it floats for anchors and nets. The bark of this oak is called “cork” by the Ionians, for example by Hermesianax, the elegiac poet.

§ From Mantineia there is a road leading to Methydrium, which to-day is not a city, but only a village belonging to Megalopolis. Thirty stades farther is a plain called Alcimedon, and beyond the plain is Mount Ostracina, in which is a cave where dwelt Alcimedon, one of those called heroes.

§ This man’s daughter, Phialo, had connection, say the Phigalians, with Heracles. When Alcimedon realized that she had a child, he exposed her to perish on the mountain, and with her the baby boy she had borne, whom the Arcadians call Aechmagoras. On being exposed the babe began to cry, and a jay heard him wailing and began to imitate his cries.

§ It happened that Heracles, passing along that road, heard the jay, and, thinking that the crying was that of a baby and not of a bird, turned straight to the voice. Recognizing Phialo he loosed her from her bonds and saved the baby. Wherefore the spring hard by is named Cissa (Jay) after the bird. Forty stades distant from the spring is the place called Petrosaca, which is the boundary between Megalopolis and Mantineia.

§ In addition to the roads mentioned there are two others, leading to Orchomenus. On one is what is called the stadium of Ladas, where Ladas practised his running, and by it a sanctuary of Artemis, and on the right of the road is a high mound of earth. It is said to be the grave of Penelope, but the account of her in the poem called Thesprotis is not in agreement with this saying.

§ For in it the poet says that when Odysseus returned from Troy he had a son Ptoliporthes by Penelope. But the Mantinean story about Penelope says that Odysseus convicted her of bringing paramours to his home, and being cast out by him she went away at first to Lacedaemon, but afterwards she removed from Sparta to Mantineia, where she died.

§ Adjoining this grave is a plain of no great size, and on the plain is a mountain whereon still stand the ruins of old Mantineia. To-day the place is called Ptolis. Advancing a little way to the north of it you come to the spring of Alalcomeneia, and thirty stades from Ptolis are the ruins of a village called Maera, with the grave of Maera, if it be really the case that Maera was buried here and not in Tegean land. For probably the Tegeans, and not the Mantineans, are right when they say that Maera, the daughter of Atlas, was buried in their land. Perhaps, however, the Maera who came to the land of Mantineia was another, a descendant of Maera, the daughter of Atlas.

§ There still remains the road leading to Orchomenus, on which are Mount Anchisia and the tomb of Anchises at the foot of the mountain. For when Aeneas was voyaging to Sicily, he put in with his ships to Laconia, becoming the founder of the cities Aphrodisias and Etis; his father Anchises for some reason or other came to this place and died there, where Aeneas buried him. This mountain they call Anchisia after Anchises.

§ The probability of this story is strengthened by the fact that the Aeolians who to-day occupy Troy nowhere point out a tomb of Anchises in their own land. Near the grave of Anchises are the ruins of a sanctuary of Aphrodite, and at Anchisiae is the boundary between Mantineia and Orchomenus.

§ In the territory of Orchomenus, on the left of the road from Anchisiae, there is on the slope of the mountain the sanctuary of Artemis Hymnia. The Mantineans, too, share it . . . a priestess also and a priest. It is the custom for these to live their whole lives in purity, not only sexual but in all respects, and they neither wash nor spend their lives as do ordinary people, nor do they enter the home of a private man. I know that the “entertainers” of the Ephesian Artemis live in a similar fashion, but for a year only, the Ephesians calling them Essenes. They also hold an annual festival in honour of Artemis Hymnia.

§ The former city of Orchomenus was on the peak of a mountain, and there still remain ruins of a market-place and of walls. The modern, inhabited city lies under the circuit of the old wall. Worth seeing here is a spring, from which they draw water, and there are sanctuaries of Poseidon and of Aphrodite, the images being of stone. Near the city is a wooden image of Artemis. It is set in a large cedar tree, and after the tree they call the goddess the Lady of the Cedar.

§ Beneath the city are heaps of stones at intervals, which were piled over men who fell in war. With what Peloponnesians, whether Arcadians or other, the war was fought, was set forth neither by inscriptions on the graves nor in Orchomenian tradition.

§ Opposite the city is Mount Trachy (Rough). The rain-water, flowing through a deep gully between the city and Mount Trachy, descends to another Orchomenian plain, which is very considerable in extent, but the greater part of it is a lake. As you go out of Orchomenus, after about three stades, the straight road leads you to the city Caphya, along the side of the gully and afterwards along the water of the lake on the left. The other road, after you have crossed the water flowing through the gully, goes under Mount Trachy.

§ On this road the first thing is the tomb of Aristocrates, who once outraged the virgin priestess of the goddess Hymnia, and after the grave of Aristocrates are springs called Teneiae, and about seven stades distant from the springs is a place Amilus, which once, they say, was a city. Here the road forks again, one way leading to Stymphalus, the other to Pheneus.

§ On the road to Pheneus you will come to a mountain. On this mountain meet the boundaries of Orchomenus, Pheneus and Caphya. Over the boundaries extends a high crag, called the Caphyatic Rock. After the boundaries of the cities I have mentioned lies a ravine, and the road to Pheneus leads through it. Just about the middle of the ravine water rises up from a spring, and at the end of the ravine is a place called Caryae.

§ The plain of Pheneus lies below Caryae, and they say that once the water rose on it and flooded the ancient city of Pheneus, so that even to-day there remain on the mountains marks up to which, it is said, the water rose. Five stades distant from Caryae is a mountain called Oryxis, and another, Mount Sciathis. Under each mountain is a chasm that receives the water from the plain.

§ These chasms according to the people of Pheneus are artificial, being made by Heracles when he lived in Pheneus with Laonome, the mother of Amphitryo, who was, it is said, the son of Alcaeus by Laonome, the daughter of Guneus, a woman of Pheneus, and not by Lysidice, the daughter of Pelops. Now if Heracles really migrated to Pheneus, one might believe that when expelled by Eurystheus from Tiryns he did not go at once to Thebes, but went first to Pheneus.

§ Heracles dug a channel through the middle of the plain of Pheneus for the river Olbius, which some Arcadians call, not Olbius but Aroanius. The length of the cutting is fifty stades, its depth, where it has not fallen in, is as much as thirty feet. The river, however, no longer flows along it, but it has gone back to its old bed, having left the work of Heracles.

§ About fifty stades from the chasms made in the mountains I have mentioned is the city, founded, say the Pheneatians, by Pheneus, an aboriginal. Their acropolis is precipitous on all sides, mostly so naturally, but a few parts have been artificially strengthened, to make it more secure. On the acropolis here is a temple of Athena surnamed Tritonia, but of it I found ruins only remaining.

§ There stands also a bronze Poseidon, surnamed Horse, whose image, it is said, was dedicated by Odysseus. The legend is that Odysseus lost his mares, traversed Greece in search of them, and on the site in the land of Pheneus where he found his mares founded a sanctuary of Artemis, calling the goddess Horse-finder, and also dedicated the image of Horse Poseidon.

§ When Odysseus found his mares he was minded, it is said, to keep horses in the land of Pheneus, just as he reared his cows, they say, on the mainland opposite Ithaca. On the base of the image the people of Pheneus pointed out to me writing, purporting to be instructions of Odysseus to those tending his mares.

§ The rest of the account of the people of Pheneus it will be reasonable to accept, but I cannot believe their statement that Odysseus dedicated the bronze image. For men had not yet learned how to make bronze images in one piece, after the manner of those weaving a garment. Their method of working bronze statues I have already described when speaking of the image of Zeus Most High in my history of theSpartans.

§ The first men to melt bronze and to cast images were the Samians Rhoecus the son of Philaeus and Theodorus the son of Telecles. Theodorus also made the emerald signet, which Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, constantly wore, being exceedingly proud of it.

§ As you go down from the acropolis of Pheneus you come to a stadium, and on a hill stands a tomb of Iphicles, the brother of Heracles and the father of Iolaus. Iolaus, according to the Greek account, shared most of the labours of Heracles, but his father Iphicles, in the first battle fought by Heracles against the Eleans and Augeas, was wounded by the sons of Actor, who were called after their mother Moline. In a fainting condition he was carried by his relatives to Pheneus, where he was carefully nursed by Buphagus, a citizen of Pheneus, and by his wife Promne, who also buried him when he died of his wound.

§ They still sacrifice to Iphicles as to a hero, and of the gods the people of Pheneus worship most Hermes, in whose honour they celebrate the games called Hermaea; they have also a temple of Hermes, and a stone image, made by an Athenian, Eucheir the son of Eubulides. Behind the temple is the grave of Myrtilus. The Greeks say that he was the son of Hermes, and that he served as charioteer to Oenomaus. Whenever a man arrived to woo the daughter of Oenomaus, Myrtilus craftily drove on the mares, while Oenomaus on the course shot down the wooer when he came near.

§ Myrtilus himself, too, was in love with Hippodameia, but his courage failing him he shrank from the competition and served Oenomaus as his charioteer. At last, it is said, he proved a traitor to Oenomaus, being induced thereto by an oath sworn by Pelops that he would let him be with Hippodameia for one night. So when reminded of his oath Pelops threw him out of the ship. The people of Pheneus say that the body of Myrtilus was cast ashore by the tide, that they took it up and buried it, and that every year they sacrifice to him by night as to a hero.

§ It is plain that Pelops did not make a long coasting voyage, but only sailed from the mouth of the Alpheius to the harbor of Elis. So the Sea of Myrto is obviously not named after Myrtilus, the son of Hermes, as it begins at Euboea and reaches the Aegaean by way of the uninhabited island of Helene. I think that a probable account is given by the antiquarians of Euboea, who say that the sea is named after a woman called Myrto.

§ The people of Pheneus have also a sanctuary of Demeter, surnamed Eleusinian, and they perform a ritual to the goddess, saying that the ceremonies at Eleusis are the same as those established among themselves. For Naus, they assert, came to them because of an oracle from Delphi, being a grandson of Eumolpus. Beside the sanctuary of the Eleusinian has been set up Petroma, as it is called, consisting of two large stones fitted one to the other.

§ When every other year they celebrate what they call the Greater Rites, they open these stones. They take from out them writings that refer to the rites, read them in the hearing of the initiated, and return them on the same night. Most Pheneatians, too, I know, take an oath by the Petroma in the most important affairs.

§ On the top is a sphere, with a mask inside of Demeter Cidaria. This mask is put on by the priest at the Greater Rites, who for some reason or other beats with rods the Folk Underground. The Pheneatians have a story that even before Naus arrived the wanderings of Demeter brought her to their city also. To those Pheneatians who received her with hospitality into their homes the goddess gave all sorts of pulse save the bean only.

§ There is a sacred story to explain why the bean in their eyes is an impure kind of pulse. Those who, the Pheneatians say, gave the goddess a welcome, Trisaules and Damithales, had a temple of Demeter Thesmia (Law-goddess) built under Mount Cyllene, and they established for her rites also, which they celebrate even to this day. This temple of the goddess Thesmia is just about fifteen stades away from the city.

§ As you go from Pheneus to Pellene and Aegeira, an Achaean city, after about fifteen stades you come to a temple of Pythian Apollo. I found there only its ruins, which include a large altar of white marble. Here even now the Pheneatians still sacrifice to Apollo and Artemis, and they say that the sanctuary was made by Heracles after capturing Elis. Here also are tombs of heroes, those who joined the campaign of Heracles against Elis and lost their lives in the fighting.

§ They are Telamon, buried quite near the river Aroanius, a little farther away than is the sanctuary of Apollo, and Chalcodon, not far from the spring called Oenoe. Nobody could admit that there fell in this battle the Chalcodon who was the father of the Elephenor who led the Euboeans to Troy, and the Telamon who was the father of Ajax and Teucer. For how could Heracles have been helped in his task by a Chalcodon who, according to trustworthy tradition, had before this been killed in Thebes by Amphitryon?

§ And how would Teucer have founded the city of Salamis in Cyprus if nobody had expelled him from his native city after his return from Troy? And who else would have driven him out except Telamon? So it is plain that those who helped Heracles in his campaign against Elis were not the Chalcodon of Euboea and the Telamon of Aegina. It is, and always has been, not unknown that undistinguished persons have had the same names as distinguished heroes.

§ The borders of Pheneus and Achaia meet in more places than one; for towards Pellene the boundary is the river called Porinas, and towards Aegeira the “road to Artemis.” Within the territory of the Pheneatians themselves, shortly after passing the sanctuary of the Pythian Apollo you will be on the road that leads to Mount Crathis.

§ On this mountain is the source of the river Crathis, which flows into the sea by the side of Aegae, now a deserted spot, though in earlier days it was a city of the Achaeans. After this Crathis is named the river in Bruttium in Italy. On Mount Crathis is a sanctuary of Artemis Pyronia (Fire-goddess), and in more ancient days the Argives used to bring from this goddess fire for their Lernaean ceremonies.

§ Going east from Pheneus you come to a mountain peak called Geronteium and a road by it. This mountain is the boundary between the territories of Pheneus and Stymphalus. On the left of it, as you travel through the land of Pheneus, are mountains of the Pheneatians called Tricrena (Three Springs), and here are three springs. In them, says the legend, Hermes was washed after birth by the nymphs of the mountain, and for this reason they are considered sacred to Hermes.

§ Not far from Tricrena is another mountain called Sepia, where they say that Aepytus, the son of Elatus, was killed by the snake, and they also made his grave on the spot, for they could not carry the body away. These snakes are still to be found, the Arcadians say, on the mountain, even at the present day; not many, however, for they are very scarce. The reason is that, as for the greater part of the year snow falls on the mountain, the snakes die that are cut off by the snow from their holes, while should any make good their escape to the holes, nevertheless some of them are killed by the snow, as the frost penetrates even into the very holes themselves.

§ The grave of Aepytus I was especially anxious to see, because Homer in his verses about the Arcadians makes mention of the tomb of Aepytus. It is a mound of earth of no great size, surrounded by a circular base of stone. Homer naturally was bound to admire it, as he had never seen a more noteworthy tomb, just as he compares the dance worked by Hephaestus on the shield of Achilles to a dance made by Daedalus, because he had never seen more clever workmanship.

§ I know many wonderful graves, and will mention two of them, the one at Halicarnassus and one in the land of the Hebrews. The one at Halicarnassus was made for Mausolus, king of the city, and it is of such vast size, and so notable for all its ornament, that the Romans in their great admiration of it call remarkable tombs in their country “Mausolea.”

§ The Hebrews have a grave, that of Helen, a native woman, in the city of Jerusalem, which the Roman Emperor razed to the ground. There is a contrivance in the grave whereby the door, which like all the grave is of stone, does not open until the year brings back the same day and the same hour. Then the mechanism, unaided, opens the door, which, after a short interval, shuts itself. This happens at that time, but should you at any other try to open the door you cannot do so; force will not open it, but only break it down.

§ After the grave of Aepytus you come to the highest mountain in Arcadia, Cyllene, on the top of which is a dilapidated temple of Cyllenian Hermes. It is clear that Cyllen, the son of Elatus, gave the mountain its name and the god his surname.

§ In days of old, men made wooden images, so far as I have been able to discover, from the following trees ebony, cypress, cedar, oak, yew, lotus. But the image of Cyllenian Hermes is made of none of these, but of juniper wood. Its height, I conjecture, is about eight feet.

§ Cyllene can show also the following marvel. On it the blackbirds are entirely white. The birds so called by the Boeotians are a somewhat different breed, which does not sing. Eagles called swan-eagles, very like to swans for whiteness, I am acquainted with, as I have seen them on Mount Sipylus round the lake called the Lake of Tantalus. White wild boars and Thracian white bears have been known to be acquired by private individuals.

§ White hares are bred in Libya, and white deer I have seen in Rome to my great astonishment, though it never occurred to me to ask from what continent or island they had been brought. I have made these few remarks concerning the blackbirds in Cyllene that nobody may disbelieve what has been said about their colour.

§ Adjoining Cyllene is another mountain, Chelydorea, where Hermes is said to have found a tortoise, taken the shell from the beast, and to have made therefrom a harp. Here is the boundary between Pheneus and Pellene, and the greater part of Mount Chelydorea is inhabited by the Achaeans.

§ As you go from Pheneus to the west, the left road leads to the city Cleitor, while on the right is the road to Nonacris and the water of the Styx. Of old Nonacris was a town of the Arcadians that was named after the wife of Lycaon. When I visited it, it was in ruins, and most of these were hidden. Not far from the ruins is a high cliff; I know of none other that rises to so great a height. A water trickles down the cliff, called by the Greeks the water of the Styx.

§ Hesiod in the Theogony —for there are some who assign this hexameter poem to Hesiod—speaks of Styx as the daughter of Ocean and the wife of Pallas. Men say that Linus too gives a like account in his verses, though when I read these they struck me as altogether spurious.

§ Epimenides of Crete, also, represented Styx as the daughter of Ocean, not, however, as the wife of Pallas, but as bearing Echidna to Peiras, whoever Peiras may be. But it is Homer who introduces most frequently the name of Styx into his poetry. In the oath of Hera he says :—
Witness now to this be Earth, and broad Heaven above,
And the water of Styx down-flowing.
Hom. Il. 15.36-37These verses suggest that the poet had seen the water of the Styx trickling down. Again in the list of those who came with Guneus he makes the river Titaresius receive its water from the Styx.

§ He also represents the Styx as a river in Hades, and Athena says that Zeus does not remember that because of her he kept Heracles safe throughout the labours imposed by Eurystheus.
For if I had known this in my shrewd heart
When he sent him to Hades the gate-keeper,
To fetch out of Erebus the hound of hateful Hades,
He would never have escaped the sheer streams of’ the river Styx.
Homer, unknown location.

§ The water trickling down the cliff by the side of Nonacris falls first to a high rock, through which it passes and then descends into the river Crathis. Its water brings death to all, man and beast alike. It is said too that it once brought death even upon goats, which drank of the water first; later on all the wonderful properties of the water were learnt.

§ For glass, crystal, murrhine vessels, other articles men make of stone, and pottery, are all broken by the water of the Styx, while things of horn or of bone, with iron, bronze, lead, tin, silver and electrum, are all corroded by this water. Gold too suffers just like all the other metals, and yet gold is immune to rust, as the Lesbian poetess bears witness and is shown by the metal itself.

§ So heaven has assigned to the most lowly things the mastery over things far more esteemed than they. For pearls are dissolved by vinegar, while diamonds, the hardest of stones, are melted by the blood of the he-goat. The only thing that can resist the water of the Styx is a horse’s hoof. When poured into it the water is retained, and does not break up the hoof. Whether Alexander, the son of Philip, met his end by this poison I do not know for certain, but I do know that there is a story to this effect.

§ Above Nonacris are the Aroanian Mountains, in which is a cave. To this cave, legend says, the daughters of Proetus fled when struck with madness; Melampus by secret sacrifices and purifications brought them down to a place called Lusi. Most of the Aroanian mountain belongs to Pheneus, but Lusi is on the borders of Cleitor.

§ They say that Lusi was once a city, and Agesilas was proclaimed as a man of Lusi when victor in the horse-race at the eleventh Pythian festival held by the Amphictyons; but when I was there not even ruins of Lusi remained. Well, the daughters of Proetus were brought down by Melampus to Lusi, and healed of their madness in a sanctuary of Artemis. Wherefore this Artemis is called Hemerasia (She who soothes) by the Cleitorians.

§ There is a clan of the Arcadians, called the Cynaetheans, the same folk who dedicated the image of Zeus at Olympia with a thunderbolt in either hand. These Cynaetheans live more than forty stades from . . . and in their marketplace have been made altars of the gods and a statue of the Emperor Hadrian.

§ The most notable things here include a sanctuary of Dionysus, to whom they hold a feast in the winter, at which men smeared with grease take up from a herd of cattle a bull, whichever one the god suggest to them, and carry it to the sanctuary. This is the manner of their sacrifice. Here there is a spring of cold water, about two stades away from the city, and above it grows a plane-tree.

§ If a rabid dog turn a man mad, or wound or otherwise endanger him, to drink this water is a cure. For this reason they call the spring Alyssus (Curer of madness). So it would appear that the Arcadians have in the water near Pheneus, called the Styx, a thing made to be a mischief to man, while the spring among the Cynaetheans is a boon to make up for the bane in the other place.

§ One of the roads from Pheneus, which go westward, remains, the one on the left. This road leads to Cleitor, and extends by the side of the work of Heracles, which made a course for the river Aroanius. By it the road goes down to a place called Lycuria, which is the boundary between Pheneus and Cleitor.

§ Advancing about fifty stades from Lycuria, you will come to the source of the Ladon. I heard that the water making a lake in the territory of Pheneus, descending into the chasms in the mountains, rises here and forms the source of the Ladon, but I cannot say for certain whether this is true or not. The Ladon is the most lovely river in Greece, and is also famous for the legend of Daphne that the poets tell.

§ I pass over the story current among the Syrians who live on the river Orontes, and give the account of the Arcadians and Eleans. Oenomaus, prince of Pisa, had a son Leucippus. Leucippus fell in love with Daphne, but despaired of winning her to be his wife by an open courtship, as she avoided all the male sex. The following trick occurred to him by which to get her. Leucippus was growing his hair long for the river Alpheius.

§ Braiding his hair as though he were a maiden, and putting on woman’s clothes, he came to Daphne and said that he was a daughter of Oenomaus, and would like to share her hunting. As he was thought to be a maiden, surpassed the other maidens in nobility of birth and skill in hunting, and was besides most assiduous in his attentions, he drew Daphne into a deep friendship.

§ The poets who sing of Apollo’s love for Daphne make an addition to the tale; that Apollo became jealous of Leucippus because of his success in his love. Forthwith Daphne and the other maidens conceived a longing to swim in the Ladon, and stripped Leucippus in spite of his reluctance. Then, seeing that he was no maid, they killed him with their javelins and daggers.

§ Such is the tale. From the source of the Ladon, Cleitor is sixty stades away, and the road from the source of the Ladon is a narrow gorge alongside the river Aroanius. Near the city you will cross the river called the Cleitor. The Cleitor flows into the Aroanius, at a point not more than seven stades from the city.

§ Among the fish in the Aroanius is one called the dappled fish. These dappled fish, it is said, utter a cry like that of the thrush. I have seen fish that have been caught, but I never heard their cry, though I waited by the river even until sunset, at which time the fish were said to cry most.

§ Cleitor got its name from the son of Azan, and is situated on a level spot surrounded by low hills. The most celebrated sanctuaries of the Cleitorians are those of Demeter, Asclepius and, thirdly, Eileithyia . . . to be, and gave no number for them. The Lycian Olen, an earlier poet, who composed for the Delians, among other hymns, one to Eileithyia, styles her “the clever spinner,” clearly identifying her with fate, and makes her older than Cronus.

§ Cleitor has also, at a distance of about four stades from the city, a sanctuary of the Dioscuri, under the name of the Great Gods. There are also images of them in bronze. There is also built upon a mountain-top, thirty stades away from the city, a temple of Athena Coria will, an image of the goddess.

§ My narrative returns to Stymphalus and to Geronteium, as it is called, the boundary between Stymphalus and Pheneus. The Stymphalians are no longer included among the Arcadians, but are numbered with the Argive League, which they joined of their own accord. That they are by race Arcadians is testified by the verses of Homer, and Stymphalus their founder was a grandson of Arcas, the son of Callisto. It is said that it was originally founded on another site, and not on that of the modern city.

§ The story has it that in the old Stymphalus dwelt Temenus, the son of Pelasgus, and that Hera was reared by this Temenus, who himself established three sanctuaries for the goddess, and gave her three surnames when she was still a maiden, Girl; when married to Zeus he called her Grown-up; when for some cause or other she quarrelled with Zeus and came back to Stymphalus, Temenus named her Widow. This is the account which, to my own knowledge, the Stymphalians give of the goddess.

§ The modern city contains none of these sanctuaries, but I found the following notable things. In the Stymphalian territory is a spring, from which the emperor Hadrian brought water to Corinth. In winter the spring makes a small lake in Stymphalus, and the river Stymphalus issues from the lake; in summer there is no lake, but the river comes straight from the spring. This river descends into a chasm in the earth, and reappearing once more in Argolis it changes its name, and is called Erasinus instead of Stymphalus.

§ There is a story current about the water of the Stymphalus, that at one time man-eating birds bred on it, which Heracles is said to have shot down. Peisander of Camira, however, says that Heracles did not kill the birds, but drove them away with the noise of rattles. The Arabian desert breeds among other wild creatures birds called Stymphalian, which are quite as savage against men as lions or leopards.

§ These fly against those who come to hunt them, wounding and killing them with their beaks. All armour of bronze or iron that men wear is pierced by the birds; but if they weave a garment of thick cork, the beaks of the Stymphalian birds are caught in the cork garment, just as the wings of small birds stick in bird-lime. These birds are of the size of a crane, and are like the ibis, but their beaks are more powerful, and not crooked like that of the ibis.

§ Whether the modern Arabian birds with the same name as the old Arcadian birds are also of the same breed, I do not know. But if there have been from all time Stymphalian birds, just as there have been hawks and eagles, I should call these birds of Arabian origin, and a section of them might have flown on some occasion to Arcadia and reached Stymphalus. Originally they would be called by the Arabians, not Stymphalian, but by another name. But the fame of Heracles, and the superiority of the Greek over the foreigner, has resulted in the birds of the Arabian desert being called Stymphalian even in modern times.

§ In Stymphalus there is also an old sanctuary of Stymphalian Artemis, the image being of wood, for the most part gilded. Near the roof of the temple have been carved, among other things, the Stymphalian birds. Now it was difficult to discern clearly whether the carving was in wood or in gypsum, but such evidence as I had led me to conclude that it was not of gypsum but of wood. There are here also maidens of white marble, with the legs of birds, and they stand behind the temple.

§ Even in our own day the following miracle is said to have occurred. The festival of Stymphalian Artemis at Stymphalus was carelessly celebrated, and its established ritual in great part transgressed. Now a log fell into the mouth of the chasm into which the river descends, and so prevented the water from draining away, and (so it is said) the plain became a lake for a distance of four hundred stades.

§ They also say that a hunter chased a deer, which fled and plunged into the marsh, followed by the hunter, who, in the excitement of the hunt, swam after the deer. So the chasm swallowed up both the deer and her pursuer. They are said to have been followed by the water of the river, so that by the next day the whole of the water was dried up that flooded the Stymphalian plain. Hereafter they put greater zeal into the festival in honour of Artemis.

§ After Stymphalus comes Alea, which too belongs to the Argive federation, and its citizens point to Aleus, the son of Apheidas, as their founder. The sanctuaries of the gods here are those of Ephesian Artemis and Athena Alea, and there is a temple of Dionysus with an image. In honour of Dionysus they celebrate every other year a festival called Sciereia, and at this festival, in obedience to a response from Delphi, women are flogged, just as the Spartan lads are flogged at the image of the Orthian goddess.

§ In my account of Orchomenus, I explained how the straight road runs at first beside the gully, and afterwards to the left of the flood water. On the plain of Caphyae has been made a dyke of earth, which prevents the water from the Orchomenian territory from doing harm to the tilled land of Caphyae. Inside the dyke flows along another stream, in size big enough to be called a river, and descending into a chasm of the earth it rises again at Nasi, as it is called. The place where it reappears is called Rheunus; the stream having risen here, hereafter the water forms an ever-flowing river, the Tagus.

§ The name of the city is clearly derived from Cepheus, the son of Aleus, but its form in the Arcadian dialect, Caphyae, is the one that has survived. The inhabitants say that originally they were from Attica, but on being expelled from Athens by Aegeus they fled to Arcadia, threw themselves on the mercy of Cepheus, and found a home in the country. The town is on the border of the plain at the foot of some inconsiderable mountains. The Caphyatans have a sanctuary of the god Poseidon, and one of the goddess Artemis, surnamed Cnacalesia.

§ They have also a mountain called Cnacalus, where every year they celebrate mysteries in honour of their Artemis. A little beyond the city is a spring, and by the spring grows a large and beautiful plane tree. They call it Menelais, saying that the plane was planted by the spring by Menelaus, who came to the spot when he was collecting his army against Troy. To-day they give the name Menelais to the spring as well as to the plane.

§ If I am to base my calculations on the accounts of the Greeks in fixing the relative ages of such trees as are still preserved and flourish, the oldest of them is the withy growing in the Samian sanctuary of Hera, after which come the oak in Dodona, the olive on the Acropolis and the olive in Delos. The third place in respect of age the Syrians would assign to the bay-tree they have in their country. Of the others this plane-tree is the oldest.

§ About a stade distant from Caphyae is a place called Condylea, where there are a grove and a temple of Artemis called of old Condyleatis. They say that the name of the goddess was changed for the following reason. Some children, the number of whom is not recorded, while playing about the sanctuary found a rope, and tying it round the neck of the image said that Artemis was being strangled.

§ The Caphyans, detecting what the children had done, stoned them to death. When they had done this, a malady befell their women, whose babies were stillborn, until the Pythian priestess bade them bury the children, and sacrifice to them every year as sacrifice is made to heroes, because they had been wrongly put to death. The Caphyans still obey this oracle, and call the goddess at Condyleae, as they say the oracle also bade them, the Strangled Lady from that day to this.

§ Going up about seven stades from Caphyae you will go down to what is called Nasi. Fifty stades farther on is the Ladon. You will then cross the river and reach a grove called Soron, passing through Argeathae, Lycuntes, as it is called, and Scotane. Now the road to Psophis passes by way of Soron,

§ which, like other Arcadian groves, breeds the following beasts wild boars, bears, and tortoises of vast size. One could of the last make harps not inferior to those made from the Indian tortoise. At the end of Soron are the ruins of the village Paus, and a little farther what is called Seirae; this Seirae forms a boundary between Cleitor and Psophis.

§ The founder of Psophis, according to some, was Psophis, the son of Arrhon, the son of Erymanthus, the son of Aristas, the son of Parthaon, the son of Periphetes, the son of Nyctimus. Others say that Psophis was the daughter of Xanthus, the son of Erymanthus, the son of Arcas. Such are the Arcadian traditions concerning their kings,

§ but the most accurate version is that Eryx, the despot of Sicania, had a daughter named Psophis, whom Heracles, though he had intercourse with her, refused to take to his home, but left with child in the care of his friend Lycortas, who lived at Phegia, a city called Erymanthus before the reign of Phegeus. Having been brought up here, Echephron and Promachus, the sons of Heracles and the Sicanian woman, changed the name of Phegia to Psophis, the name of their mother.

§ Psophis is also the name of the Zacynthian acropolis, because the first man to sail across to the island was Zacynthus, the son of Dardanus, a Psophidian who became its founder. From Seirae it is thirty stades to Psophis, by the side of which runs the river Aroanius, and a little farther away the river Erymanthus.

§ The Erymanthus has its source in Mount Lampeia, which is said to be sacred to Pan. One might regard Lampeia as a part of Mount Erymanthus. Homer says that in Taygetus and Erymanthus . . . hunter . . . so . . . of Lampeia, Erymanthus, and passing through Arcadia, with Mount Pholoe on the right and the district of Thelpusa on the left, flows into the Alpheius.

§ There is also a legend that Heracles at the command of Eurystheus hunted by the side of the Erymanthus a boar that surpassed all others in size and in strength. The people of Cumae among the Opici say that the boar’s tusks dedicated in their sanctuary of Apollo are those of the Erymanthian boar, but the saying is altogether improbable.

§ In Psophis there is a sanctuary of Aphrodite surnamed Erycine; I found only ruins of it remaining, but the people said that it was established by the sons of Psophis. Their account is probable, for in Sicily too, in the territory of Eryx, is a sanctuary of Erycine, which from the remotest times has been very holy, and quite as rich as the sanctuary in Paphos.

§ The hero-shrines, however, of Promachus and Echephron, the sons of Psophis, were no longer distinguished when I saw them. In Psophis is buried Alcmaeon also, the son of Amphiaraus, and his tomb is a building remarkable for neither its size nor its ornament. About it grow cypresses, reaching to such a height that even the mountain by Psophis was overshadowed by them. These the inhabitants will not cut down, holding them to be sacred to Alcmaeon.

§ They are called “maidens” by the natives. Alcmaeon, after killing his mother, fled from Argos and came to Psophis, which was still called Phegia after Phegeus, and married Alphesiboea, the daughter of Phegeus. Among the presents that he naturally gave her was the necklace. While he lived among the Arcadians his disease did not grow any better, so he had recourse to the oracle at Delphi. The Pythian priestess informed him that the only land into which the avenging spirit of Eriphyle would not follow him was the newest land, one brought up to light by the sea after the pollution of his mother’s death.

§ On discovering the alluvial deposit of the Achelous he settled there, and took to wife Callirhoe, said by the Acarnanians to have been the daughter of Achelous. He had two sons, Acarnan and Amphoterus; after this Acarnan were called by their present name (so the story runs) the dwellers in this part of the mainland, who previously were called Curetes. Senseless passions shipwreck many men, and even more women.

§ Callirhoe conceived a passion for the necklace of Eriphyle, and for this reason sent Alcmaeon against his will to Phegia. Temenus and Axion, the sons of Phegeus, murdered him by treachery. The sons of Phegeus are said to have dedicated the necklace to the god in Delphi, and it is said that the expedition of the Greeks to Troy took place when they were kings in the city that was still called Phegia. The people of Psophis assert that the reason why they took no part in the expedition was because their princes had incurred the enmity of the leaders of the Argives, who were in most cases related by blood to Alcmaeon, and had joined him in his campaign against Thebes.

§ That the Echinades islands have not been made mainland as yet by the Achelous is due to the Aetolian people, who have been driven from their homes and all their land has been laid waste. Accordingly, as Aetolia remains untilled, the Achelous does not bring as much mud upon the Echinades as it otherwise would do. My reasoning is confirmed by the fact that the Maeander, flowing through the land of the Phrygians and Carians, which is ploughed up each year, has turned to mainland in a short time the sea that once was between Priene and Miletus.

§ The people of Psophis have also by the side of the Erymanthus a temple and image of Erymanthus. The images of all rivers except the Nile in Egypt are made of white marble; but the images of the Nile, became it descends to the sea through Aethiopia, they are accustomed to make of black stone.

§ I heard in Psophis a statement about one Aglaus, a Psophidian contemporary with Croesus the Lydian. The statement was that the whole of his life was happy, but I could not believe it.

§ The truth is that one man may receive fewer ills than his contemporaries, just as one ship may be less tossed by storms than another ship. But we shall not be able to find a man never touched by misfortune or a ship never met by an unfavourable breeze. For Homer too says in his poetry that by the side of Zeus is set a jar of good things, and another jar of evil things, taught by the god at Delphi, who once declared that Homer himself was both unhappy and blessed, being destined by birth to both states alike.

§ As you go from Psophis to Thelpusa you first reach on the left of the Ladon a place called Tropaea, adjoining which is a grove, Aphrodisium. Thirdly, there is ancient writing on a slab:—
The boundary between Psophis and Thelpusa.”
In the Thelpusian territory is a river called Arsen (Male). Cross this and go on for about twenty-five stades, when you will arrive at the ruins of the village Caus, with a sanctuary of Causian Asclepius, built on the road.

§  Thelpusa is some forty stades distant from this sanctuary. It is said that it was named after Thelpusa, a nymph, and that she was a daughter of Ladon. The Ladon rises in springs within the territory of Cleitor, as my account has already set forth. It flows first beside a place Leucasium and Mesoboa, through Nasi to Oryx, also called Halus, and from Halus it descends to Thaliades and a sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter.

§ This sanctuary is on the borders of Thelpusa. In it are images, each no less than seven feet high, of Demeter, her daughter, and Dionysus, all alike of stone. After the sanctuary of the Eleusinian goddess the Ladon flows by the city Thelpusa on the left, situated on a high hill, in modern times so deserted that the market-place, which is at the extremity of it, was originally, they say, right in the very middle of it. Thelpusa has a temple of Asclepius and a sanctuary of the twelve gods; the greater part of this, I found, lay level with the ground.

§ After Thelpusa the Ladon descends to the sanctuary of Demeter in Onceium. The Thelpusians call the goddess Fury, and with them agrees Antimachus also, who wrote a poem about the expedition of the Argives against Thebes. His verse runs thus:—
There, they say, is the seat of Demeter Fury.
Antimachus, unknown location.Now Oncius was, according to tradition, a son of Apollo, and held sway in Thelpusian territory around the place Oncium; the goddess has the surname Fury for the following reason.

§ When Demeter was wandering in search of her daughter, she was followed, it is said, by Poseidon, who lusted after her. So she turned, the story runs, into a mare, and grazed with the mares of Oncius; realizing that he was outwitted, Poseidon too changed into a stallion and enjoyed Demeter.

§ At first, they say, Demeter was angry at what had happened, but later on she laid aside her wrath and wished to bathe in the Ladon. So the goddess has obtained two surnames, Fury because of her avenging anger, because the Arcadians call being wrathful “being furious,” and Bather (Lusia) because she bathed in the Ladon. The images in the temple are of wood, but their faces, hands and feet are of Parian marble.

§ The image of Fury holds what is called the chest, and in her right hand a torch; her height I conjecture to be nine feet. Lusia seemed to be six feet high. Those who think the image to be Themis and not Demeter Lusia are, I would have them know, mistaken in their opinion. Demeter, they say, had by Poseidon a daughter, whose name they are not wont to divulge to the uninitiated, and a horse called Areion. For this reason they say that they were the first Arcadians to call Poseidon Horse.

§ They quote verses from the Iliad and from the Thebaid in confirmation of their story. In the Iliad there are verses about Areion himself:
Not even if he drive divine Areion behind,
The swift horse of Adrastus, who was of the race of the gods.
Hom. Il. 23.346In the Thebaid it is said that Adrastus fled from Thebes:
>Wearing wretched clothes, and with him dark-maned Areion.
Thebaid, unknown location.They will have it that the verses obscurely hint that Poseidon was father to Areion, but Antimachus says that Earth was his mother:

§ 
Adrastus, son of Talaus, son of Cretheus,
The very first of the Danai to drive his famous horses,
Swift Caerus and Areion of Thelpusa,
Whom near the grove of Oncean Apollo
Earth herself sent up, a marvel for mortals to see.
Antimachus, unknown location.

§ But even though sprung from Earth the horse might be of divine lineage and the colour of his hair might still be dark. Legend also has it that when Heracles was warring on Elis he asked Oncus for the horse, and was carried to battle on the back of Areion when he took Elis, but afterwards the horse was given to Adrastus by Heracles. Wherefore Antimachus says about Areion:
Adrastus was the third lord who tamed him.
Antimachus, unknown location.

§ The Ladon, leaving on the left the sanctuary of the Fury, passes on the left the temple of Oncaeatian Apollo, and on the right a sanctuary of Boy Asclepius, where is the tomb of Trygon, who is said to have been the nurse of Asclepius. For the story is that Asclepius, when little, was exposed in Thelpusa, but was found by Autolaus, the illegitimate son of Arcas, who reared the baby, and for this reason Boy Asclepius . . . I thought more likely, as also I set forth in my account of Epidaurus.

§ There is a river Tuthoa, and it falls into the Ladon at the boundary between Thelpusa and Heraea, called Plain by the Arcadians. Where the Ladon itself falls into the Alpheius is an island called the Island of Crows. Those who have thought that Enispe, Stratia and Rhipe, mentioned by Homer, were once inhabited islands in the Ladon, cherish, I would tell them, a false belief.

§ For the Ladon could never show islands even as large as a ferry-boat. As far as beauty is concerned, it is second to no river, either in Greece or in foreign lands, but it is not big enough to carry islands on its waters, as do the Danube and the Eridanus.

§ The founder of Heraea was Heraeeus the son of Lycaon, and the city lies on the right of the Alpheius, mostly upon a gentle slope, though a part descends right to the Alpheius. Walks have been made along the river, separated by myrtles and other cultivated trees; the baths are there, as are also two temples to Dionysus. One is to the god named Citizen, the other to the Giver of Increase, and they have a building there where they celebrate their mysteries in honour of Dionysus.

§ There is also in Heraea a temple of Pan, as he is native to Arcadia, and of the temple of Hera I found remaining various ruins, including the pillars. Of Arcadian athletes the most renowned has been Damaretus of Heraea, who was the first to win the race in armour at Olympia.

§ As you go down to the land of Elis from Heraea, at a distance of about fifteen stades from Heraea you will cross the Ladon, and from it to the Erymanthus is a journey of roughly twenty stades. The boundary between Heraea and the land of Elis is according to the Arcadians the Erymanthus, but the people of Elis say that the grave of Coroebus bounds their territory.

§ But when the Olympic games, after not being held for a long period, were revived by Iphitus, and the Olympic festival was again held, the only prizes offered were for running, and Coroebus won. On the tomb is an inscription that Coroebus was the first man to win at Olympia, and that his grave was made at the end of Elean territory.

§ There is a town, Aliphera, of no great size, for it was abandoned by many of its inhabitants at the union of the Arcadians into Megalopolis. As you go to this town from Heraea you will cross the Alpheius, and after going over a plain of just about ten stades you will reach a mountain, and ascending across the mountain for some thirty stades more you will come to the town.

§ The city of Aliphera has received its name from Alipherus, the son of Lycaon, and there are sanctuaries here of Asclepius and Athena; the latter they worship more than any other god, saying that she was born and bred among them. They also set up an altar of Zeus Lecheates (In child-bed), because here he gave birth to Athena. There is a stream they call Tritonis, adopting the story about the river Triton.

§ The image of Athena is made of bronze, the work of Hypatodorus, worth seeing for its size and workmanship. They keep a general festival in honour of some god or other; I think in honour of Athena. At this festival they sacrifice first to Fly-catcher, praying to the hero over the victims and calling upon the Fly-catcher. When they have done this the flies trouble them no longer.

§ On the road from Heraea to Megalopolis is Melaeneae. It was founded by Melaeneus, the son of Lycaon; in my time it was uninhabited, but there is plenty of water flowing over it. Forty stades above Melaeneae is Buphagium,and here is the source of the Buphagus, which flows down into the Alpheius. Near the source of the Buphagus is the boundary between Megalopolis and Heraea.

§  Megalopolis is the youngest city, not of Arcadia only, but of Greece, with the exception of those whose inhabitants have been removed by the accident of the Roman domination. The Arcadians united into it to gain strength, realizing that the Argives also were in earlier times in almost daily danger of being subjected by war to the Lacedaemonians, but when they had increased the population of Argos by reducing Tiryns, Hysiae, Orneae, Mycenae, Mideia, along with other towns of little importance in Argolis, the Argives had less to fear from the Lacedaemonians, while they were in a stronger position to deal with their vassal neighbours.

§ It was with this policy in view that the Arcadians united, and the founder of the city might fairly be considered Epaminondas of Thebes. For lie it was who gathered the Arcadians together for the union and despatched a thousand picked Thebans under Pammenes to defend the Arcadians, if the Lacedaemonians should try to prevent the union. There were chosen as founders by the Arcadians, Lycomedes and Hopoleas of Mantineia, Timon and Proxenus of Tegea, Cleolaus and Acriphius of Cleitor, Eucampidas and Hieronymus of Maenalus, Possicrates and Theoxenus of the Parrhasians.

§ The following were the cities which the Arcadians were persuaded to abandon through their zeal and because of their hatred of the Lacedaemonians, in spite of the fact that these cities were their homes: Alea, Pallantium, Eutaea, Sumateium, Asea, Peraethenses, Helisson, Oresthasium, Dipaea, Lycaea; these were cities of Maenalus. Of the Eutresian cities Tricoloni, Zoetium, Charisia, Ptolederma, Cnausum, Paroreia.

§ From the Aegytae: Aegys, Scirtonium, Malea, CROM4, Blenina, Leuctrum. Of the Parrhasians Lycosura, Thocnia, Trapezus, Prosenses, Acacesium, Acontium, Macaria, Dasea. Of the Cynurians in Arcadia: Gortys, Theisoa by Mount Lycaeus, Lycaea, Aliphera. Of those belonging to Orchomenus: Theisoa, Methydrium, Teuthis. These were joined by Tripolis, as it is called, Callia, Dipoena, Nonacris.

§ The Arcadians for the most part obeyed the general resolution and assembled promptly at Megalopolis. But the people of Lycaea, Tricoloni, Lycosura and Trapezus, but no other Arcadians, repented and, being no longer ready to abandon their ancient cities, were, with the exception of the last, taken to Megalopolis by force against their will,

§ while the inhabitants of Trapezus departed altogether from the Peloponnesus, such of them as were left and were not immediately massacred by the exasperated Arcadians. Those who escaped with their lives sailed away to Pontus and were welcomed by the citizens of Trapezus on the Euxine as their kindred, as they bore their name and came from their mother-city. The Lycosurians, although they had disobeyed, were nevertheless spared by the Arcadians because of Demeter and the Mistress, in whose sanctuary they had taken refuge.

§ Of the other cities I have mentioned, some are altogether deserted in our time, some are held by the people of Megalopolis as villages, namely Gortys, Dipoenae, Theisoa near Orchomenus, Methydrium, Teuthis, Calliae, Helisson. Only one of them, Pallantium, was destined to meet with a kindlier fate even then. Aliphera has continued to be regarded as a city from the beginning to the present day.

§  Megalopolis was united into one city in the same year, but a few months later, as occurred the defeat of the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, when Phrasicleides was archon at Athens, in the second year of the hundred and second Olympiad, when Damon of Thurii was victor in the foot-race.

§ When the citizens of Megalopolis had been enrolled in the Theban alliance they had nothing to fear from the Lacedaemonians. But when the Thebans became involved in what was called the Sacred War, and they were hard pressed by the Phocians, who were neighbours of the Boeotians, and wealthy because they had seized the sanctuary at Delphi,

§ then the Lacedaemonians, if eagerness would have done it, would have removed bodily the Megalopolitans and the other Arcadians besides; but as the Arcadians of the day put up a vigorous defence, while their vassal neighbours gave them wholehearted assistance, no achievement of note was accomplished by either side. But the hatred felt by the Arcadians for the Lacedaemonians was not a little responsible for the rise of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and of the Macedonian empire, and the Arcadians did not help the Greeks at Chaeroneia or again in the struggle in Thessaly.

§ After a short time a tyrant arose at Megalopolis in the person of Aristodemus, a Phigalian by birth and a son of Artylas, who had been adopted by Tritaeus, an influential citizen of Megalopolis. This Aristodemus, in spite of his being a tyrant, nevertheless won the surname of “the Good.” During his tyranny the territory of Megalopolis was invaded by the Lacedaemonians under Acrotatus, the eldest of the sons of King Cleomenes, whose lineage I have already traced with that of all the other Spartan kings. A fierce battle took place, and after many had fallen on both sides the army of Megalopolis had the better of the encounter. Among the Spartan killed was Acrotatus, who never succeeded to the throne of his fathers.

§ Some two generations after the death of Aristodemus, Lydiades became tyrant, a man of distinguished family, by nature ambitious and, as he proved later, a devoted patriot. For he came to power while still young, but on reaching years of discretion he was minded to resign voluntarily the tyranny, although by this time his power was securely established. At this time Megalopolis was already a member of the Achaean League, and Lydiades became so famous among not only the people of Megalopolis but also all the Achaeans that he rivalled the fame of Aratus.

§ The Lacedaemonians with all their forces under Agis, the son of Eudamidas, the king of the other house, attacked Megalopolis with larger and stronger forces than those collected by Acrotatus. They overcame in battle the men of Megalopolis, who came out against them, and bringing up a powerful engine against the wall they shook by it the tower in this place, and hoped on the morrow to knock it down by the engine.

§ But the north wind was not only to prove a help to the whole Greek nation, when it dashed the greater part of the Persian fleet on the Sepiad rocks, but it also saved Megalopolis from being captured. For it blew violently and continuously, and broke up the engine of Agis, scattering it to utter destruction. The Agis whom the north wind prevented from taking Megalopolis is the man from whom was taken Pellene in Achaia by the Sicyonians under Aratus, and later he met his end at Mantineia.

§ Shortly afterwards Cleomenes the son of Leonidas seized Megalopolis during a truce. Of the Megalopolitans some fell at once on the night of the capture in the defence of their country, when Lydiades too met his death in he battle, fighting nobly; others, about two-thirds of those of military age along with the women and children, escaped to Messenia with Philopoemen the son of Craugis.

§ But those who were caught in the city were massacred by Cleomenes, who razed it to the ground and burnt it. How the Megalopolitans restored their city, and their achievements on their return, will be set forth in my account of Philopoemen. The Lacedaemonian people were in no way responsible for the disaster to Megalopolis, because Cleomenes had changed their constitution from a kingship to a tyranny.

§ As I have already related, the boundary between Megalopolis and Heraea is at the source of the river Buphagus. The river got its name, they say, from a hero called Buphagus, the son of Iapetus and Thornax. This is what they call her in Laconia also. They also say that Artemis shot Buphagus on Mount Pholoe because he attempted an unholy sin against her godhead.

§ As you go from the source of the river, you will reach first a place called Maratha, and after it Gortys, which to-day is a village, but of old was a city. Here there is a temple of Asclepius, made of Pentelic marble, with the god, as a beardless youth, and an image of Health. Scopas was the artist. The natives also say that Alexander the son of Philip dedicated to Asclepius his breastplate and spear. The breastplate and the head of the spear are still there to-day.

§ Through Gortys flows a river called by those who live around its source the Lusius (Bathing River), because Zeus after his birth was bathed in it; those farther from the source call it the Gortynius after the village. The water of this Gortynius is colder than that of any other river. The Danube, Rhine, Hypanis, Borysthenes, and all rivers the streams of which freeze in winter, as they flow through land on which there is snow the greater part of the time, while the air about them is full of frost, might in my opinion rightly be called wintry;

§ I call the water cold of those which flow through a land with a good climate and in summer have water refreshing to drink and to bathe in, without being painful in winter. Cold in this sense is the water of the Cydnus which passes through Tarsus, and of the Melas which flows past Side in Pamphylia. The coldness of the Ales in Colophon has even been celebrated in the verse of elegiac poets. But the Gortynius surpasses them all in coldness, especially in the season of summer. It has its source in Theisoa, which borders on Methydrium. The place where its stream joins the Alpheius is called Rhaeteae.

§ Adjoining the land of Theisoa is a village called Teuthis, which in old days was a town. In the Trojan war the inhabitants supplied a general of their own. His name according to some was Teuthis, according to others Ornytus. When the Greeks failed to secure favourable winds to take them from Aulis, but were shut in for a long time by a violent gale, Teuthis quarrelled with Agamemnon and was about to lead the Arcadians under his command back home again.

§ Whereupon, they say, Athena in the guise of Melas, the son of Ops, tried to turn Teuthis aside from his journey home. But Teuthis, his wrath swelling within him, struck with his spear the thigh of the goddess, and actually did lead his army back from Aulis. On his return to his native land the goddess appeared to him in a vision with a wound in her thigh. After this a wasting disease fell on Teuthis, and its people, alone of the Arcadians, suffered from famine.

§ Later, oracles were delivered to them from Dodona, telling them what to do to appease the goddess, and in particular they had an image of Athena made with a wound in the thigh. This image I have myself seen, with its thigh swathed in a purple bandage. There are also at Teuthis sanctuaries of Aphrodite and Artemis.

§ These are the notable things at Teuthis. On the road from Gortys to Megalopolis stands the tomb of those who were killed in the fight with Cleomenes. This tomb the Megalopolitans call Paraebasium (Transgression) because Cleomenes broke his truce with them. Adjoining Paraebasium is a plain about sixty stades across. On the right of the road are ruins of a city Brenthe, and here rises a river Brentheates, which some five stades farther on falls into the Alpheius.

§ After crossing the Alpheius you come to what is called Trapezuntian territory and to the ruins of a city Trapezus. On the left, as you go down again from Trapezus to the Alpheius, there is, not far from the river, a place called Bathos (Depth), where they celebrate mysteries every other year to the Great Goddesses. Here there is a spring called Olympias which, during every other year, does not flow, and near the spring rises up fire. The Arcadians say that the fabled battle between giants and gods took place here and not at Pellene in Thrace, and at this spot sacrifices are offered to lightnings, hurricanes and thunders.

§ Homer does not mention giants at all in the Iliad, but in the Odyssey he relates how the Laestrygones attacked the ships of Odysseus in the likeness not of men but of giants, and he makes also the king of the Phaeacians say that the Phaeacians are near to the gods like the Cyclopes and the race of giants. In these places then he indicates that the giants are mortal, and not of divine race, and his words in the following passage are plainer still:—
Who once was king among the haughty giants;
But he destroyed the infatuate folk, and was destroyed himself.
Hom. Od. 7.59-60“Folk” in the poetry of Homer means the common people.

§ That the giants had serpents for feet is an absurd tale, as many pieces of evidence show, especially the following incident. The Syrian river Orontes does not flow its whole course to the sea on a level, but meets a precipitous ridge with a slope away from it. The Roman emperor wished ships to sail up the river from the sea to Antioch. So with much labour and expense he dug a channel suitable for ships to sail up, and turned the course of the river into this.

§ But when the old bed had dried up, an earthenware coffin more than eleven cubits long was found in it, and the corpse was proportionately large, and human in all parts of its body. This corpse the god in Clarus, when the Syrians came to his oracle there, declared to be Orontes, and that he was of Indian race. If it was by warming the earth of old when it was still wet and saturated with moisture that the sun made the first men, what other land is likely to have raised men either before India or of greater size, seeing that even to-day it still breeds beasts monstrous in their weird appearance and monstrous in size?

§ Some ten stades distant from the place named Depth is what is called Basilis. The founder of it was Cypselus, who gave his daughter in marriage to Cresphontes, the son of Aristomachus. To-day Basilis is in ruins, among which remains a sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter. Going on from here you will cross the Alpheius again and reach Thocnia, which is named after Thocnus, the son of Lycaon, and to-day is altogether uninhabited. Thocnus was said to have built the city on the hill. The river Aminius, flowing by the hill, falls into the Helisson, and not far away the Helisson falls into the Alpheius.

§ This Helisson, beginning at a village of the same name—for the name of the village also is Helisson—passes through the lands of Dipaea and Iycaea, and then through Megalopolis itself, descending into the Alpheius twenty stades away from the city of Megalopolis. Near the city is a temple of Poseidon Overseer. I found the head of the image still remaining.

§ The river Helisson divides Megalopolis just as Cnidus and Mitylene are cut in two by their straits, and in the north section, on the right as one looks down the river, the townsfolk have made their market-place. In it is an enclosure of stones and a sanctuary of Lycaean Zeus, with no entrance into it. The things inside, however, can be seen —altars of the god, two tables, two eagles, and an image of Pan made of stone.

§ His surname is Sinoeis, and they say that Pan was so surnamed after a nymph Sinoe, who with others of the nymphs nursed him on her own account. There is before this enclosure a bronze image of Apollo worth seeing, in height twelve feet, brought from Phigalia as a contribution to the adornment of Megalopolis.

§ The place where the image was originally set up by the Phigalians is named Bassae. The surname of the god has followed him from Phigalia, but why he received the name of Helper will be set forth in my account of Phigalia. On the right of the Apollo is a small image of the Mother of the Gods, but of the temple there remains nothing save the pillars.

§ Before the temple of the Mother is no statue, but I found still to be seen the pedestals on which statues once stood. An inscription in elegiacs on one of the pedestals says that the statue was that of Diophanes, the son of Diaeus, the man who first united the whole Peloponnesus into what was named the Achaean League.

§ The portico of the marketplace, called the Philippeium, was not made by Philip, the son of Amyntas, but as a compliment to him the Megalopolitans gave his name to the building. Near it I found a temple of Hermes Acacesius in ruins, with nothing remaining except a tortoise of stone. Adjoining this Philippeium is another portico, smaller in size, where stand the government offices of Megalopolis, six rooms in number. In one of them is an image of Ephesian Artemis, and in another a bronze Pan, surnamed Scoleitas, one cubit high.

§ It was brought from the hill Scoleitas, which is within the walls, and from a spring on it a stream descends to the Helisson. Behind the government offices is a temple of Fortune with a stone image not less than five feet high. The portico called Myropolis, situated in the market-place, was built from the spoils taken when the Lacedaemonians fighting under Acrotatus, the son of Cleomenes, suffered the reverse sustained at the hands of Aristodemus, then tyrant of Megalopolis.

§ In the marketplace of that city, behind the enclosure sacred to Lycaean Zeus, is the figure of a man carved in relief on a slab, Polybius, the son of Lycortas. Elegiac verses are inscribed upon it saying that he roamed over every land and every sea, and that he became the ally of the Itomans and stayed their wrath against the Greek nation. This Polybius wrote also a history of the Romans, including how they went to war with Carthage, what the cause of the war was, and how at last, not before great dangers had been run, Scipio . . . whom they name Carthaginian, because he put an end to the war and razed Carthage to the ground.

§ Whenever the Romans obeyed the advice of Polybius, things went well with them, but they say that whenever they would not listen to his instructions they made mistakes. All the Greek cities that were members of the Achaean League got permission from the Itomans that Polybius should draw up constitutions for them and frame laws. On the left of the portrait-statue of Polybius is the Council Chamber.

§ Here then is the Chamber, but the portico called “Aristander’s” in the market-place was built, they say, by Aristander, one of their townsfolk. Quite near to this portico, on the east, is a sanctuary of Zeus, surnamed Saviour. It is adorned with pillars round it. Zeus is seated on a throne, and by his side stand Megalopolis on the right and an image of Artemis Saviour on the left. These are of Pentelic marble and were made by the Athenians Cephisodotus and Xenophon.

§ At the other end, the western, of the portico is an enclosure sacred to the Great Goddesses. The Great Goddesses are Demeter and the Maid, as I have already explained in my account of Messenia, and the Maid is called Saviour by the Arcadians. Carved in relief before the entrance are, on one side Artemis, on the other Asclepius and Health.

§ Of the Great Goddesses, Demeter is of stone throughout, but the Saviour has drapery of wood. The height of each is about fifteen feet. The images . . . and before them he made small maids in tunics reaching to the ankles, each of whom carries on her head a basket full of flowers. They are said to be daughters of Damophon, but those inclining to a more religious interpretation hold that they are Athena and Artemis gathering the flowers with Persephone.

§ By the side of Demeter there is also a Heracles about a cubit high. This Heracles, says Onomacritus in his poem, is one of those called Idaean Dactyls. Before it stands a table, on which are carved in relief two seasons, Pan with pipes, and Apollo playing the harp. There is also an inscription by them saying that they are among the first gods.

§ Nymphs too are carved on the table: Neda carrying an infant Zeus, Anthracia, another Arcadian nymph, holding a torch, and Hagno with a water-pot in one hand and a bowl in the other. Anchirhoe and Myrtoessa carry water-pots, with what is meant to be water coming down from them. Within the precinct is a temple of Zeus Friendly. Polycleitus of Argos made the image; it is like Dionysus in having buskins as footwear and in holding a beaker in one hand and a thyrsus in the other, but an eagle sitting on the thyrsus does not fit in with the received accounts of Dionysus.

§ Behind this temple is a small grove of trees surrounded by a wall; nobody may go inside, and before it are images of Demeter and the Maid some three feet high. Within the enclosure of the Great Goddesses is also a sanctuary of Aphrodite. Before the entrance are old wooden images of Hera, Apollo and the Muses, brought, it is said, from Trapezus,

§ and in the temple are images made by Damophon, a wooden Hermes and a wooden Aphrodite with hands, face and feet of stone. The surname Deviser given to the goddess is, in my opinion, a most apt one; for very many are the devices, and most varied are the forms of speech invented by men because of Aphrodite and her works.

§ In a building stand statues also, those of Callignotus, Mentas, Sosigenes and Polus. These men are said to have been the first to establish at Megalopolis the mysteries of the Great Goddesses, and the ritual acts are a copy of those at Eleusis. Within the enclosure of the goddesses are the following images, which all have a square shape: Hermes, surnamed Agetor, Apollo, Athena, Poseidon, Sun too, surnamed Saviour, and Heracles. There has also been built for them a <sanctuary> of vast size, and here they celebrate the mysteries in honour of the goddesses.

§ To the right of the temple of the Great Goddesses there is also a sanctuary of the Maid. The image is of stone, about eight feet high; ribbons cover the pedestal all over. Women may enter this sanctuary at all times, but men enter it only once every year. Adjoining the market-place on the west there is built a gymnasium.

§ Behind the portico called after Philip of Macedon are two hills, rising to no great height. Ruins of a sanctuary of Athena Polias are on one, while on the other a temple of Hera Full-grown, this too being in ruins. Under this hill is a spring called Bathyllus, which is one of the tributaries that swell the Helisson.

§ Such are the notable things on this site. The southern portion, on the other side of the river, can boast of the largest theater in all Greece, and in it is a spring which never fails. Not far from the theater are left foundations of the council house built for the Ten Thousand Arcadians, and called Thersilium after the man who dedicated it. Hard by is a house, belonging to-day to a private person, which originally was built for Alexander, the son of Philip. By the house is an image of Ammon, like the square images of Hermes, with a ram’s horns on his head.

§ The sanctuary built in common for the Muses, Apollo and Hermes had for me to record only a few foundations, but there was still one of the Muses, with an image of Apollo after the style of the square Hermae. The sanctuary of Aphrodite too was in ruins, save that there were left the fore-temple mid three images, one surnamed Heavenly, the second Common, and the third without a surname.

§ At no great distance is an altar of Ares, and it was said that originally a sanctuary too was built for the god. Beyond the Aphrodite is built also a race-course, extending on one side to the theater (and here they have a spring, held sacred to Dionysus), while at the other end of the race-course a temple of Dionysus was said to have been struck by lightning two generations before my time, and a few ruins of it were still there when I saw it. The temple near the race-course shared by Heracles and Hermes was no longer there, only their altar was left.

§ There is also in this district a hill to the east, and on it a temple of Artemis Huntress this too was dedicated by Aristodemus. To the right of the Huntress is a precinct. Here there is a sanctuary of Asclepius, with images of the god and of Health, and a little lower down there are gods, also of square shape, surnamed Workers, Athena Worker and Apollo, God of Streets. To Hermes, Heracles and Eileithyia are attached traditions from the poems of Homer: that Hermes is the minister of Zeus and leads the souls of the departed down to Hades, and that Heracles accomplished many difficult tasks; Eileithyia, he says in the Iliad, cares for the pangs of women.

§ Under this hill there is another sanctuary of Boy Asclepius. His image is upright and about a cubit in height, that of Apollo is seated on a throne and is not less than six feet high. Here are also kept bones, too big for those of a human being, about which the story ran that they were those of one of the giants mustered by Hopladamus to fight for Rhea, as my story will relate hereafter. Near this sanctuary is a spring, the water flowing down from which is received by the Helisson.

§  Megalopolis was founded by the Arcadians with the utmost enthusiasm amidst the highest hopes of the Greeks, but it has lost all its beauty and its old prosperity, being to-day for the most part in ruins. I am not in the least surprised, as I know that heaven is always willing something new, and likewise that all things, strong or weak, increasing or decreasing, are being changed by Fortune, who drives them with imperious necessity according to her whim.

§ For Mycenae, the leader of the Greeks in the Trojan war, and Nineveh, where was the royal palace of the Assyrians, are utterly ruined and desolate; while Boeotian Thebes, once deemed worthy to be the head of the Greek people, why, its name includes only the acropolis and its few inhabitants. Of the opulent places in the ancient world, Egyptian Thebes and Minyan Orchomenus are now less prosperous than a private individual of moderate means, while Delos, once the common market of Greece, has no Delian inhabitant, but only the men sent by the Athenians to guard the sanctuary.

§ At Babylon the sanctuary of Belus still is left, but of the Babylon that was the greatest city of its time under the sun nothing remains but the wall. The case of Tiryns in the Argolid is the same. These places have been reduced by heaven to nothing. But the city of Alexander in Egypt, and that of Seleucus on the Orontes, that were founded but yesterday, have reached their present size and prosperity because fortune favours them.

§ The following incident proves the might of fortune to be greater and more marvellous than is shown by the disasters and prosperity of cities. No long sail from Lemnos was once an island Chryse, where, it is said, Philoctetes met with his accident from the water-snake. But the waves utterly overwhelmed it, and Chryse sank and disappeared in the depths. Another island called Hiera (Sacred) . . . was not during this time. So temporary and utterly weak are the fortunes of men.

§ As you go from Megalopolis to Messene, after advancing about seven stades, there stands on the left of the highway a sanctuary of goddesses. They call the goddesses themselves, as well as the district around the sanctuary, Maniae (Madnesses). In my view this is a surname of the Eumenides; in fact they say that it was here that madness overtook Orestes as punishment for shedding his mother’s blood.

§ Not far from the sanctuary is a mound of earth, of no great size, surmounted by a finger made of stone; the name, indeed, of the mound is the Tomb of the Finger. Here, it is said, Orestes on losing his wits bit off one finger of one of his hands. Adjoining this place is another, called Ace (Remedies) because in it Orestes was cured of his malady. Here too there is a sanctuary for the Eumenides.

§ The story is that, when these goddesses were about to put Orestes out of his mind, they appeared to him black; but when he had bitten off his finger they seemed to him again to be white and he recovered his senses at the sight. So he offered a sin-offering to the black goddesses to avert their wrath, while to the white deities he sacrificed a thank-offering. It is customary to sacrifice to the Graces also along with the Eumenides. Near to the place called Ace is another . . . a sanctuary called . . . because here Orestes cut off his hair on coming to his senses.

§ Historians of Peloponnesian antiquities say that what Clytaemnestra’s Furies did to Orestes in Arcadia took place before the trial at the Areopagus; that his accuser was not Tyndareus, who no longer lived, but Perilaus, who asked for vengeance for the mother’s murder in that he was a cousin of Clytaemnestra. For Perilaus, they say, was a son of Icarius, to whom afterwards daughters also were born.

§ The road from Maniae to the Alpheius is roughly fifteen stades long. At this point the river Gatheatas falls into the Alpheius, and before this the Carnion flows into the Gatheatas. The source of the Carnion is in Aegytian territory beneath the sanctuary of Apollo Cereatas; that of the Gatheatas is at Gatheae in Cromitian territory.

§ The Cromitian territory is about forty stades up from the Alpheius, and in it the ruins of the city Cromi have not entirely disappeared. From Cromi it is about twenty stades to Nymphas, which is well supplied with water and covered with trees. From Nymphas it is twenty stades to the Hermaeum, where is the boundary between Messenia and Megalopolis. Here they have made a Hermes also on a slab.

§ This road leads to Messene, and there is another leading from Megalopolis to Carnasium in Messenia. The first thing you come to on the latter road is the Alpheius at the place where it is joined by the Malus and the Scyrus, whose waters have already united. From this point keeping the Malus on the right after about thirty stades you will cross it and ascend along a rather steep road to a place called Phaedrias.

§ About fifteen stades distant from Phaedrias is an Hermaeum called “by the Mistress”; it too forms a boundary between Messenia and Megalopolis. There are small images of the Mistress and Demeter; likewise of Hermes and Heracles. I am of opinion that the wooden image also, made for Heracles by Daedalus, stood here on the borders of Messenia and Arcadia.

§ The road from Megalopolis to Lacedaemon is thirty stades long at the Alpheius. After this you will travel beside a river Theius, which is a tributary of the Alpheius, and some forty stades from the Alpheius leaving the Theius on the left you will come to Phalaesiae. This place is twenty stades away from the Hermaeum at Belemina.

§ The Arcadians say that Belemina belonged of old to Arcadia but was severed from it by the Lacedaemonians. This account struck me as improbable on various grounds, chiefly because the Thebans, I think, would never have allowed the Arcadians to suffer even this loss, if they could have brought about restitution with justice.

§ There are also roads from Megalopolis leading to the interior of Arcadia; to Methydrium it is one hundred and seventy stades, and thirteen stades from Megalopolis is a place called Scias, where are ruins of a sanctuary of Artemis Sciatis, said to have been built by Aristodemus the tyrant. About ten stades from here are a few memorials of the city Charisiae, and the journey from Charisiae to Tricoloni is another ten stades.

§ Once Tricoloni also was a city, and even to-day there still remains on a hill a sanctuary of Poseidon with a square image, and around the sanctuary stands a grove of trees. These cities had as founders the sons of Lycaon; but Zoetia, some fifteen stades from Tricoloni, not lying on the straight road but to the left of Tricoloni, was founded, they say, by Zoeteus, the son of Tricolonus. Paroreus, the younger of the sons of Tricolonus, also founded a city, in this case Paroria, ten stades distant from Zoetia.

§ To-day both towns are without inhabitants. In Zoetia, however, there still remains a temple of Demeter and Artemis. There are also other ruins of cities: of Thyraeum, fifteen stades from Paroria, and of Hypsus, lying above the plain on a mountain which is also called Hypsus. The district between Thyraeum and Hypsus is all mountainous and full of wild beasts. My narrative has already pointed out that Thyraeus and Hypsus were sons of Lycaon.

§ To the right of Tricoloni there is first a steep road ascending to a spring called Cruni. Descending from Cruni for about thirty stades you come to the grave of Callisto, a high mound of earth, whereon grow many trees, both cultivated and also those that bear no fruit. On the top of the mound is a sanctuary of Artemis, surnamed Calliste (Most Beautiful). I believe it was because he had learnt it from the Arcadians that Pamphos was the first in his poems to call Artemis by the name of Calliste.

§ Twenty-five stades from here, a hundred stades in all from Tricoloni, there is on the Helisson, on the straight road to Methydrium, the only city left to be described on the road from Tricoloni, a place called Anemosa, and also Mount Phalanthus, on which are the ruins of a city Phalanthus. It is said that Phalanthus was a son of Agelaus, a son of Stymphalus.

§ Beyond this is a plain called the Plain of Polus, and after it Schoenus, so named from a Boeotian, Schoeneus. If this Schoeneus emigrated to Arcadia, the race-courses of Atalanta, which are near Schoenus, probably got their name from his daughter. Adjoining is . . . in my opinion called, and they say that the land here is Arcadia to all.

§ From this point nothing remains to be recorded except Methydrium itself, which is distant from Tricoloni one hundred and thirty-seven stades. It received the name Methydrium (Between the Waters) because there is a high knoll between the river Maloetas and the Mylaon, and on it Orchomenus built his city. Methydrium too had citizens victorious at Olympia before it belonged to Megalopolis.

§ There is in Methydrium a temple of Horse Poseidon, standing by the Mylaon. But Mount Thaumasius (Wonderful) lies beyond the river Maloetas, and the Methydrians hold that when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, she came to this mountain and enlisted as her allies, in case Cronus should attack her, Hopladamus and his few giants:

§ They allow that she gave birth to her son on some part of Mount Lycaeus, but they claim that here Cronus was deceived, and here took place the substitution of a stone for the child that is spoken of in the Greek legend. On the summit of the mountain is Rhea’s Cave, into which no human beings may enter save only the women who are sacred to the goddess.

§ About thirty stades from Methydrium is a spring Nymphasia, and it is also thirty stades from Nymphasia to the common boundaries of Megalopolis, Orchomenus and Caphyae.

§ Passing through the gate at Megalopolis named the Gate to the Marsh, and proceeding by the side of the river Helisson towards Maenalus, there stands on the left of the road a temple of the Good God. If the gods are givers of good things to men, and if Zeus is supreme among gods, it would be consistent to infer that this surname is that of Zeus. A short distance farther on is a mound of earth which is the grave of Aristodemus, whom in spite of his being a tyrant they could not help calling the Good and there is also a sanctuary of Athena surnamed Contriver, because the goddess is the inventor of plans and devices of all sorts.

§ On the right of the road there has been made a precinct to the North Wind, and the Megalopolitans offer sacrifices every year, holding none of the gods in greater honour than the North Wind, because he proved their saviour from the Lacedaemonians under Agis. Next is the tomb of Oicles, the father of Amphiaraus, if indeed he met his end in Arcadia, and not after he had joined Heracles in his campaign against Laomedon. After it comes a temple of Demeter styled in the Marsh and her grove, which is five stades away from the city, and women only may enter it.

§ Thirty stades away is a place named Paliscius. Going on from Paliscius and leaving on the left the Elaphus, an intermittent stream, after an advance of some twenty stades you reach ruins of Peraethenses, among which is a sanctuary of Pan. If you cross the torrent and go straight on for fifteen stades you come to a plain, and after crossing it to the mountain called, like the plain, Maenalian. Under the fringe of the mountain are traces of a city Lycoa, a sanctuary of Artemis Lycoan, and a bronze image of her.

§ On the southern slope of the mountain once stood Sumetia. On this mountain is what is called the Meeting of the Three Ways, whence the Mantineans fetched the bones of Arcas, the son of Callisto, at the bidding of the Delphic oracle. There are still left ruins of Maenalus itself: traces of a temple of Athena, one race-course for athletes and one for horses. Mount Maenalus is held to be especially sacred to Pan, so that those who dwell around it say that they can actually hear him playing on his pipes.

§ From the sanctuary of the Mistress to the city of Megalopolis it is forty stades. From Megalopolis to the stream of the Alpheius is half this distance. After crossing the river it is two stades from the Alpheius to the ruins of Macareae, from these to the ruins of Daseae seven stades, and seven again from Daseae to the hill called Acacesian Hill.

§ At the foot of this hill used to be a city Acacesium, and even to-day there is on the hill a stone image of Acacesian Hermes, the story of the Arcadians about it being that here the child Hermes was reared, and that Acacus the son of Lycaon became his foster-father. The Theban legend is different, and the people of Tanagra, again, have a legend at variance with the Theban.

§ From Acacesium it is four stades to the sanctuary of the Mistress. First in this place is a temple of Artemis Leader, with a bronze image, holding torches, which I conjecture to be about six feet high. From this place there is an entrance into the sacred enclosure of the Mistress. As you go to the temple there is a portico on the right, with reliefs of white marble on the wall. On the first relief are wrought Fates and Zeus surnamed Guide of Fate, and on the second Heracles wresting a tripod from Apollo. What I learned about the story of the two latter I will tell if I get as far as an account of Delphi in my history of Phocis.

§ In the portico by the Mistress there is, between the reliefs I have mentioned, a tablet with descriptions of the mysteries. On the third relief are nymphs and Pans; on the fourth is Polybius, the son of Lycortas. On the latter is also an inscription, declaring that Greece would never have fallen at all, if she had obeyed Polybius in everything, and when she met disaster her only help came from him. In front of the temple is an altar to Demeter and another to the Mistress, after which is one of the Great Mother.

§ The actual images of the goddesses, Mistress and Demeter, the throne on which they sit, along with the footstool under their feet, are all made out of one piece of stone. No part of the drapery, and no part of the carvings about the throne, is fastened to another stone by iron or cement, but the whole is from one block. This stone was not brought in by them, but they say that in obedience to a dream they dug up the earth within the enclosure and so found it. The size of both images just about corresponds to the image of the Mother at Athens.

§ These too are works of Damophon. Demeter carries a torch in her right hand; her other hand she has laid upon the Mistress. The Mistress has on her knees a staff and what is called the box, which she holds in her right hand. On both sides of the throne are images. By the side of Demeter stands Artemis wrapped in the skin of a deer, and carrying a quiver on her shoulders, while in one hand she holds a torch, in the other two serpents; by her side a bitch, of a breed suitable for hunting, is lying down.

§ By the image of the Mistress stands Anytus, represented as a man in armour. Those about the sanctuary say that the Mistress was brought up by Anytus, who was one of the Titans, as they are called. The first to introduce Titans into poetry was Homer, representing them as gods down in what is called Tartarus; the lines are in the passage about Hera’s oath. From Homer the name of the Titans was taken by Onomacritus, who in the orgies he composed for Dionysus made the Titans the authors of the god’s sufferings.

§ This is the story of Anytus told by the Arcadians. That Artemis was the daughter, not of Leto but of Demeter, which is theEgyptian account, the Greeks learned from Aeschylus the son of Euphorion. The story of the Curetes, who are represented under the images, and that of the Corybantes (a different race from the Curetes), carved in relief upon the base, I know, but pass them by.

§ The Arcadians bring into the sanctuary the fruit of all cultivated trees except the pomegranate. On the right as you go out of the temple there is a mirror fitted into the wall. If anyone looks into this mirror, he will see himself very dimly indeed or not at all, but the actual images of the gods and the throne can be seen quite clearly.

§ When you have gone up a little, beside the temple of the Mistress on the right is what is called the Hall, where the Arcadians celebrate mysteries, and sacrifice to the Mistress many victims in generous fashion. Every man of them sacrifices what he possesses. But he does not cut the throats of the victims, as is done in other sacrifices; each man chops off a limb of the sacrifice, just that which happens to come to hand.

§ This Mistress the Arcadians worship more than any other god, declaring that she is a daughter of Poseidon and Demeter. Mistress is her surname among the many, just as they surname Demeter’s daughter by Zeus the Maid. But whereas the real name of the Maid is Persephone, as Homer and Pamphos before him say in their poems, the real name of the Mistress I am afraid to write to the uninitiated.

§ Beyond what is called the Hall is a grove, sacred to the Mistress and surrounded by a wall of stones, and within it are trees, including an olive and an evergreen oak growing out of one root, and that not the result of a clever piece of gardening. Beyond the grove are altars of Horse Poseidon, as being the father of the Mistress, and of other gods as well. On the last of them is an inscription saying that it is common to all the gods.

§ Thence you will ascend by stairs to a sanctuary of Pan. Within the sanctuary has been made a portico, and a small image; and this Pan too, equally with the most powerful gods, can bring men’s prayers to accomplishment and repay the wicked as they deserve. Beside this Pan a fire is kept burning which is never allowed to go out. It is said that in days of old this god also gave oracles, and that the nymph Erato became his prophetess, she who wedded Arcas, the son of Callisto.

§ They also remember verses of Erato, which I too myself have read. Here is an altar of Ares, and there are two images of Aphrodite in a temple, one of white marble, and the other, the older, of wood. There are also wooden images of Apollo and of Athena. Of Athena a sanctuary also has been made.

§ A little farther up is the circuit of the wall of Lycosura, in which there are a few inhabitants. Of all the cities that earth has ever shown, whether on mainland or on islands, Lycosura is the oldest, and was the first that the sun beheld; from it the rest of mankind have learned how to make them cities.

§ On the left of the sanctuary of the Mistress is Mount Lycaeus. Some Arcadians call it Olympus, and others Sacred Peak. On it, they say, Zeus was reared. There is a place on Mount Lycaeus called Cretea, on the left of the grove of Apollo surnamed Parrhasian. The Arcadians claim that the Crete, where the Cretan story has it that Zeus was reared, was this place and not the island.

§ The nymphs, by whom they say that Zeus was reared, they call Theisoa, Neda and Hagno. After Theisoa was named a city in Parrhasia; Theisoa to-day is a village in the district of Megalopolis. From Neda the river Neda takes its name; from Hagno a spring on Mount Lycaeus, which like the Danube flows with an equal volume of water in winter just as in the season of summer.

§ Should a drought persist for a long time, and the seeds in the earth and the trees wither, then the priest of Lycaean Zeus, after praying towards the water and making the usual sacrifices, lowers an oak branch to the surface of the spring, not letting it sink deep. When the water has been stirred up there rises a vapor, like mist; after a time the mist becomes cloud, gathers to itself other clouds, and makes rain fall on the land of the Arcadians.

§ There is on Mount Lycaeus a sanctuary of Pan, and a grove of trees around it, with a race-course in front of which is a running-track. Of old they used to hold here the Lycaean games. Here there are also bases of statues, with now no statues on them. On one of the bases an elegiac inscription declares that the statue was a portrait of Astyanax, and that Astyanax was of the race of Arceas.

§ Among the marvels of Mount Lycaeus the most wonderful is this. On it is a precinct of Lycaean Zeus, into which people are not allowed to enter. If anyone takes no notice of the rule and enters, he must inevitably live no longer than a year. A legend, moreover, was current that everything alike within the precinct, whether beast or man, cast no shadow. For this reason when a beast takes refuge in the precinct, the hunter will not rush in after it, but remains outside, and though he sees the beast can behold no shadow. In Syene also just on this side of Aethiopia neither tree nor creature casts a shadow so long as the sun is in the constellation of the Crab, but the precinct on Mount Lycaeus affects shadows in the same way always and at every season.

§ On the highest point of the mountain is a mound of earth, forming an altar of Zeus Lycaeus, and from it most of the Peloponnesus can be seen. Before the altar on the east stand two pillars, on which there were of old gilded eagles. On this altar they sacrifice in secret to Lycaean Zeus. I was reluctant to pry into the details of the sacrifice; let them be as they are and were from the beginning.

§ On the east side of the mountain there is a sanctuary of Apollo surnamed Parrhasian. They also give him the name Pythian. They hold every year a festival in honour of the god and sacrifice in the market-place a boar to Apollo Helper, and after the sacrifice here they at once carry the victim to the sanctuary of Parrhasian Apollo in procession to the music of the flute; cutting out the thigh-bones they burn them, and also consume the meat of the victim on the spot.

§ This it is their custom to do. To the north of Mount Lycaeus is the Theisoan territory. The inhabitants of it worship most the nymph Theisoa. There flow through the land of Theisoa the following tributaries of the Alpheius, the Mylaon, Nus, Achelous, Celadus, and Naliphus. There are two other rivers of the same name as the Achelous in Arcadia, and more famous than it.

§ One, falling into the sea by the Echinadian islands, flows through Acarnania and Aetolia, and is said by Homer in the Iliad to be the prince of all rivers. Another Achelous, flowing from Mount Sipylus, along with the mountain also, he takes occasion to mention in connection with his account of Niobe. The third river called the Achelous is the one by Mount Lycaeus.

§ On the right of Lycosura are the mountains called Nomian, and on them is a sanctuary of Nomian Pan; the place they name Melpeia, saying that here Pan discovered the music of the pipes. It is a very obvious conjecture that the name of the Nomian Mountains is derived from the pasturings (nomai) of Pan, but the Arcadians themselves derive the name from a nymph.

§ By Lycosura to the west passes the river Plataniston. No traveller can possibly avoid crossing the Plataniston who is going to Phigalia. Afterwards there is an ascent for some thirty stades or so.

§ The story of Phigalus, the son of Lycaon, who was the original founder of the city, how in course of time the city made a change and called itself after Phialus, the son of Bucolion, and again restored its old name, I have already set forth. Another account, but not worthy of credit, is current, that Phigalus was not a son of Lycaon but an aboriginal. Others have said that Phigalia was one of the nymphs called Dryads.

§ When the Lacedaemonians attacked the Arcadians and invaded Phigalia, they overcame the inhabitants in battle and sat down to besiege the city. When the walls were in danger of capture the Phigalians ran away, or perhaps the Lacedaemonians let them come out under a truce. The taking of Phigalia and the flight of the Phigalians from it took place when Miltiades was Archon at Athens, in the second year of the thirtieth Olympiad, when Chionis the Laconian was victorious for the third time.

§ The Phigalians who escaped resolved to go to Delphi and ask the god about their return. The Pythian priestess said that if they made the attempt by themselves she saw no return for them; but if they took with them one hundred picked men from Oresthasium, these would die in the battle, but through them the Phigalians would be restored to their city. When the Oresthasians heard of the oracle delivered to the Phigalians, all vied with one another in their eagerness to be one of the picked hundred and take part in the expedition to Phigalia.

§ They advanced against the Lacedaemonian garrison and fulfilled the oracle in all respects. For they fought and met their end gloriously; expelling theSpartans they enabled the Phigalians to recover their native land. Phigalia lies on high land that is for the most part precipitous, and the walls are built on the cliffs. But on the top the hill is level and flat. Here there is a sanctuary of Artemis Saviour with a standing image of stone. From this sanctuary it is their custom to start their processions.

§ The image of Hermes in the gymnasium is like to one dressed in a cloak; but the statue does not end in feet, but in the square shape. A temple also of Dionysus is here, who by the inhabitants is surnamed Acratophorus, but the lower part of the image cannot be seen for laurel-leaves and ivy. As much of it as can be seen is painted . . . with cinnabar to shine. It is said to be found by the Iberians along with the gold.

§ The Phigalians have on their market-place a statue of the pancratiast Arrhachion; it is archaic, especially in its posture. The feet are close together, and the arms hang down by the side as far as the hips. The statue is made of stone, and it is said that an inscription was written upon it. This has disappeared with time, but Arrhachion won two Olympic victories at Festivals before the fifty-fourth, while at this Festival he won one due partly to the fairness of the Umpires and partly to his own manhood.

§ For when he was contending for the wild olive with the last remaining competitor, whoever he was, the latter got a grip first, and held Arrhachion, hugging him with his legs, and at the same time he squeezed his neck with his hands. Arrhachion dislocated his opponent’s toe, but expired owing to suffocation; but he who suffocated Arrhachion was forced to give in at the same time because of the pain in his toe. The Eleans crowned and proclaimed victor the corpse of Arrhachion.

§ I know that the Argives acted similarly in the case of Creugas, a boxer of Epidamnus. For the Argives too gave to Creugas after his death the crown in the Nemean games, because his opponent Damoxenus of Syracuse broke their mutual agreement. For evening drew near as they were boxing, and they agreed within the hearing of witnesses, that each should in turn allow the other to deal him a blow. At that time boxers did not yet wear a sharp thong on the wrist of each hand, but still boxed with the soft gloves, binding them in the hollow of the hand, so that their fingers might be left bare. These soft gloves were thin thongs of raw ox-hide plaited together after an ancient manner.

§ On the occasion to which I refer Creugas aimed his blow at the head of Damoxenus, and the latter bade Creugas lift up his arm. On his doing so, Damoxenus with straight fingers struck his opponent under the ribs; and what with the sharpness of his nails and the force of the blow he drove his hand into the other’s inside, caught his bowels, and tore them as he pulled them out.

§ Creugas expired on the spot, and the Argives expelled Damoxenus for breaking his agreement by dealing his opponent many blows instead of one. They gave the victory to the dead Creugas, and had a statue of him made in Argos. It still stood in my time in the sanctuary of Lycian Apollo.

§ In the market-place of Phigalia there is also a common tomb of the picked men of Oresthasium, and every year they sacrifice to them as to heroes.

§ A river called the Lymax flowing just beside Phigalia falls into the Neda, and the river, they say, got its name from the cleansing of Rhea. For when she had given birth to Zeus, the nymphs who cleansed her after her travail threw the refuse into this river. Now the ancients called refuse “lymata.” Homer, for example, says that the Greeks were cleansed, after the pestilence was stayed, and threw the lymata into the sea.

§ The source of the Neda is on Mount Cerausius, which is a part of Mount Lycaeus. At the place where the Neda approaches nearest to Phigalia the boys of the Phigalians cut off their hair in honour of the river. Near the sea the Neda is navigable for small ships. Of all known rivers the Maeander descends with the most winding course, which very often turns back and then bends round once more; but the second place for its twistings should be given to the Neda.

§ Some twelve stades above Phigalia are hot baths, and not far from these the Lymax falls into the Neda. Where the streams meet is the sanctuary of Eurynome, a holy spot from of old and difficult of approach because of the roughness of the ground. Around it are many cypress trees, growing close together.

§ Eurynome is believed by the people of Phigalia to be a surname of Artemis. Those of them, however, to whom have descended ancient traditions, declare that Eurynome was a daughter of Ocean, whom Homer mentions in the Iliad, saying that along with Thetis she received Hephaestus. On the same day in each year they open the sanctuary of Eurynome, but at any other time it is a transgression for them to open it.

§ On this occasion sacrifices also are offered by the state and by individuals. I did not arrive at the season of the festival, and I did not see the image of Eurynome; but the Phigalians told me that golden chains bind the wooden image, which represents a woman as far as the hips, but below this a fish. If she is a daughter of Ocean, and lives with Thetis in the depth of the sea, the fish may be regarded as a kind of emblem of her. But there could be no probable connection between such a shape and Artemis.

§  Phigalia is surrounded by mountains, on the left by the mountain called Cotilius, while on the right is another, Mount Elaius, which acts as a shield to the city. The distance from the city to Mount Cotilius is about forty stades. On the mountain is a place called Bassae, and the temple of Apollo the Helper, which, including the roof, is of stone.

§ Of the temples in the Peloponnesus, this might be placed first after the one at Tegea for the beauty of its stone and for its symmetry. Apollo received his name from the help he gave in time of plague, just as the Athenians gave him the name of Averter of Evil for turning the plague away from them.

§ It was at the time of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians that he also saved the Phigalians, and at no other time; the evidence is that of the two surnames of Apollo, which have practically the same meaning, and also the fact that Ictinus, the architect of the temple at Phigalia, was a contemporary of Pericles, and built for the Athenians what is called the Parthenon. My narrative has already said that the tile image of Apollo is in the market-place of Megalopolis.

§ On Mount Cotilius is a spring of water, but the author who related that this spring is the source of the stream of the river Lymax neither saw it himself nor spoke to a man who had done so. But I did both. We saw the river actually flowing, and the water of the spring on Mount Cotilius running no long way, and within a short distance disappearing altogether. It did not, however, occur to me to take pains to discover where in Arcadia the source of the Lymax is. Beyond the sanctuary of Apollo the Helper is a place named Cotilum, and in Cotilum is an Aphrodite. She also has a temple, the roof of which is now gone, and an image of the goddess.

§ The second mountain, Mount Elaius, is some thirty stades away from Phigalia, and has a cave sacred to Demeter surnamed Black. The Phigalians accept the account of the people of Thelpusa about the mating of Poseidon and Demeter, but they assert that Demeter gave birth, not to a horse, but to the Mistress, as the Arcadians call her.

§ Afterwards, they say, angry with Poseidon and grieved at the rape of Persephone, she put on black apparel and shut herself up in this cavern for a long time. But when all the fruits of the earth were perishing, and the human race dying yet more through famine, no god, it seemed, knew where Demeter was in hiding,

§ until Pan, they say, visited Arcadia. Roaming from mountain to mountain as he hunted, he came at last to Mount Elaius and spied Demeter, the state she was in and the clothes she wore. So Zeus learnt this from Pan, and sent the Fates to Demeter, who listened to the Fates and laid aside her wrath, moderating her grief as well. For these reasons, the Phigalians say, they concluded that this cavern was sacred to Demeter and set up in it a wooden image.

§ The image, they say, was made after this fashion. It was seated on a rock, like to a woman in all respects save the head. She had the head and hair of a horse, and there grew out of her head images of serpents and other beasts. Her tunic reached right to her feet; on one of her hands was a dolphin, on the other a dove. Now why they had the image made after this fashion is plain to any intelligent man who is learned in traditions.They say that they named her Black because the goddess had black apparel.

§ They cannot relate either who made this wooden image or how it caught fire. But the old image was destroyed, and the Phigalians gave the goddess no fresh image, while they neglected for the most part her festivals and sacrifices, until the barrenness fell on the land. Then they went as suppliants to the Pythian priestess and received this response:—

§ 
Azanian Arcadians, acorn-eaters, who dwell
In Phigaleia, the cave that hid Deo, who bare a horse,
You have come to learn a cure for grievous famine,
Who alone have twice been nomads, alone have twice lived on wild fruits.
It was Deo who made you cease from pasturing, Deo who made you pasture again
After being binders of corn and eaters of cakes,
Because she was deprived of privileges and ancient honours given by men of former times.
And soon will she make you eat each other and feed on your children,
Unless you appease her anger with libations offered by all your people,
And adorn with divine honours the nook of the cave.

§ When the Phigalians heard the oracle that was brought back, they held Demeter in greater honour than before, and particularly they persuaded Onatas of Aegina, son of Micon, to make them an image of Demeter at a price. The Pergamenes have a bronze Apollo made by this Onatas, a most wonderful marvel both for its size and workmanship. This man then, about two generations after the Persian invasion of Greece, made the Phigalians an image of bronze, guided partly by a picture or copy of the ancient wooden image which he discovered, but mostly (so goes the story) by a vision that he saw in dreams. As to the date, I have the following evidence to produce.

§ At the time when Xerxes crossed over into Europe, Gelon the son of Deinomenes was despot of Syracuse and of the rest of Sicily besides. When Gelon died, the kingdom devolved on his brother Hieron. Hieron died before he could dedicate to Olympian Zeus the offerings he had vowed for his victories in the chariot-race, and so Deinomenes his son paid the debt for his father.

§ These too are works of Onatas, and there are two inscriptions at Olympia. The one over the offering is this:—
Having won victories in thy grand games, Olympian Zeus,
Once with the four-horse chariot, twice with the race-horse,
Hieron bestowed on thee these gifts: his son dedicated them,
Deinomenes, as a memorial to his Syracusan father.

§ The other inscription is:—
Onatas, son of Micon, fashioned me,
Who had his home in the island of Aegina.
Onatas was contemporary with Hegias of Athens and Ageladas of Argos.

§ It was mainly to see this Demeter that I came to Phigalia. I offered no burnt sacrifice to the goddess, that being a custom of the natives. But the rule for sacrifice by private persons, and at the annual sacrifice by the community of Phigalia, is to offer grapes and other cultivated fruits, with honeycombs and raw wool still full of its grease. These they place on the altar built before the cave, afterwards pouring oil over them.

§ They have a priestess who performs the rites, and with her is the youngest of their “sacrificers,” as they are called, who are citizens, three in number. There is a grove of oaks around the cave, and a cold spring rises from the earth. The image made by Onatas no longer existed in my time, and most of the Phigalians were ignorant that it had ever existed at all.

§ The oldest, however, of the inhabitants I met said that three generations before his time some stones had fallen on the image out of the roof; these crushed the image, destroying it utterly. Indeed, in the roof I could still discern plainly where the stones had broken away.

§ My story next requires me to describe whatever is notable at Pallantium, and the reason why the emperor Antoninus the first turned it from a village to a city, giving its inhabitants liberty and freedom from taxation.

§ Well, the story is that the wisest man and the best soldier among the Arcadians was one Evander, whose mother was a nymph, a daughter of the Ladon, while his father was Hermes. Sent out to establish a colony at the head of a company of Arcadians from Pallantium, he founded a city on the banks of the river Tiber. That part of modern Rome, which once was the home of Evander and the Arcadians who accompanied him, got the name of Pallantium in memory of the city in Arcadia. Afterwards the name was changed by omitting the letters L and N. These are the reasons why the emperor bestowed boons upon Pallantium.

§ Antoninus, the benefactor of PalIantium, never willingly involved the Romans in war; but when the Moors (who form the greatest part of the independent Libyans, being nomads, and more formidable enemies than even the Scythians in that they wandered, not on wagons, but on horseback with their womenfolk), when these, I say, began an unprovoked war, he drove them from all their country, forcing them to flee to the extreme parts of Libya, right up to Mount Atlas and to the people living on it.

§ He also took away from the Brigantes in Britain the greater part of their territory, because they too had begun an unprovoked war on the province of Genunia, a Roman dependency. The cities of Lycia and of Caria, along with Cos and Rhodes, were overthrown by a violent earthquake that smote them. These cities also were restored by the emperor Antoninus, who was keenly anxious to rebuild them, and devoted vast sums to this task. As to his gifts of money to Greeks, and to such non-Greeks as needed it, and his buildings in Greece, Ionia, Carthage and Syria, others have written of them most exactly.

§ But there is also another memorial of himself left by this emperor. There was a certain law whereby provincials who were themselves of Roman citizenship, while their children were considered of Greek nationality, were forced either to leave their property to strangers or let it increase the wealth of the emperor. Antoninus permitted all such to give to the children their heritage, choosing rather to show himself benevolent than to retain a law that swelled his riches. This emperor the Romans called Pius, because he showed himself to be a most religious man.

§ In my opinion he might also be justly called by the same title as the elder Cyrus, who was styled Father of Men. He left to succeed him a son of the same name. This Antoninus the second brought retribution both on the Germans, the most numerous and warlike barbarians in Europe, and also on the Sarmatian nation, both of whom had been guilty of beginning a war of aggression.

§ To complete my account of Arcadia I have only to describe the road from Megalopolis to Pallantium and Tegea, which also takes us as far as what is called the Dyke. On this road is a suburb named Ladoceia after Ladocus, the son of Echemus, and after it is the site of what was in old times the city of Haemoniae. Its founder was Haemon the son of Lycaon, and the name of the place has remained Haemoniae to this day.

§ After Haemoniae on the right of the road are some noteworthy remains of the city of Oresthasium, especially the pillars of a sanctuary of Artemis, which still are there. The surname of Artemis is Priestess. On the straight road from Haemoniae is a place called Aphrodisium, and after it another, called Athenaeum. On the left of it is a temple of Athena with a stone image in it.

§ About twenty stades away from Athenaeum are ruins of Asea, and the hill that once was the citadel has traces of fortifications to this day. Some five stades from Asea are the sources of the Alpheius and of the Eurotas, the former a little distance from the road, the latter just by the road itself. Near the source of the Alpheius is a temple of the Mother of the Gods without a roof, and two lions made of stone.

§ The waters of the Eurotas mingle with the Alpheius, and the united streams flow on for some twenty stades. Then they fall into a chasm, and the Eurotas comes again to the surface in the Lacedaemonian territory, the Alpheius at Pegae (Sources) in the land of Megalopolis. From Asea is an ascent up Mount Boreius, and on the top of the mountain are traces of a sanctuary. It is said that the sanctuary was built in honour of Athena Saviour and Poseidon by Odysseus after his return from Troy.

§ What is called the Dyke is the boundary between Megalopolis on the one hand and Tegea and Pallantium on the other. The plain of Pallantium you reach by turning aside to the left from the Dyke. In Pallantium is a temple with two stone images, one of Pallas, the other of Evander. There is also a sanctuary of the Maid, the daughter of Demeter, and not far away is a statue of Polybius. The hill above the city was of old used as a citadel. On the crest of the hill there still remains a sanctuary of certain gods.

§ Their surname is the Pure, and here it is customary to take the most solemn oaths. The names of the gods either they do not know, or knowing will not divulge; but it might be inferred that they were called Pure because Pallas did not sacrifice to them after the same fashion as his father sacrificed to Lycaean Zeus.

§ On the right of the so-called Dyke lies the Manthuric plain. The plain is on the borders of Tegea, stretching just about fifty stades to that city. On the right of the road is a small mountain called Mount Cresius, on which stands the sanctuary of Aphneius. For Ares, the Tegeans say, mated with Aerope, daughter of Cepheus, the son of Aleus.

§ She died in giving birth to a child, who clung to his mother even when she was dead, and sucked great abundance of milk from her breasts. Now this took place by the will of Ares, and because of it they name the god Aphneius (Abundant); but the name given to the hill was, it is said, Aeropus. There is on the way to Tegea a fountain called Leuconian. They say that Apheidas was the father of Leucone, and not far from Tegea is her tomb.

§ The Tegeans say that in the time of Tegeates, son of Lycaon, only the district got its name from him, and that the inhabitants dwelt in parishes, Gareatae, Phylacenses, Caryatae, Corythenses, Potachidae, Oeatae, Manthyrenses, Echeuethenses. But in the reign of Apheidas a ninth parish was added to them, namely Apheidantes. Of the modern city Aleus was founder.

§ Besides the exploits shared by the Tegeans with the Arcadians, which include the Trojan war, the Persian wars and the battle at Dipaea with the Lacedaemonians, the Tegeans have, besides the deeds already mentioned, the following claims of their own to fame. Ancaeus, the son of Lycurgus, though wounded, stood up to the Calydonian boar, which Atalanta shot at, being the first to hit the beast. For this feat she received, as a prize for valor, the head and hide of the boar.

§ When the Heracleidae returned to the Peloponnesus, Echemus, son of Aeropus, a Tegean, fought a duel with Hyllus, and overcame him in the fight. The Tegeans again were the first Arcadians to overcome Lacedaemonians; when invaded they defeated their enemies and took most of them prisoners.

§ The ancient sanctuary of Athena Alea was made for the Tegeans by Aleus. Later on the Tegeans set up for the goddess a large temple, worth seeing. The sanctuary was utterly destroyed by a fire which suddenly broke out when Diophantus was archon at Athens, in the second year of the ninety-sixth Olympiad, at which Eupolemus of Elis won the foot-race.

§ The modern temple is far superior to all other temples in the Peloponnesus on many grounds, especially for its size. Its first row of pillars is Doric, and the next to it Corinthian; also, outside the temple, stand pillars of the Ionic order. I discovered that its architect was Scopas the Parian, who made images in many places of ancient Greece, and some besides in Ionia and Caria.

§ On the front gable is the hunting of the Calydonian boar. The boar stands right in the center. On one side are Atalanta, Meleager, Theseus, Telamon, Peleus, Polydeuces, Iolaus, the partner in most of the labours of Heracles, and also the sons of Thestius, the brothers of Althaea, Prothous and Cometes.

§ On the other side of the boar is Epochus supporting Ancaeus who is now wounded and has dropped his axe; by his side is Castor, with Amphiaraus, the son of Oicles, next to whom is Hippothous, the son of Cercyon, son of Agamedes, son of Stymphalus. The last figure is Peirithous. On the gable at the back is a representation of Telephus fighting Achilles on the plain of the Caicus.

§ The ancient image of Athena Alea, and with it the tusks of the Calydonian boar, were carried away by the Roman emperor Augustus after his defeat of Antonius and his allies, among whom were all the Arcadians except the Mantineans.

§ It is clear that Augustus was not the first to carry away from the vanquished votive offerings and images of gods, but was only following an old precedent. For when Troy was taken and the Greeks were dividing up the spoils, Sthenelus the son of Capaneus was given the wooden image of Zeus Herceius (Of the Courtyard); and many years later, when Dorians were migrating to Sicily, Antiphemus the founder of Gela, after the sack of Omphace, a town of the Sicanians, removed to Gela an image made by Daedalus.

§ Xerxes, too, the son of Dareius, the king of Persia, apart from the spoil he carried away from the city of Athens, took besides, as we know, from Brauron the image of Brauronian Artemis, and furthermore, accusing the Milesians of cowardice in a naval engagement against the Athenians in Greek waters, carried away from them the bronze Apollo at Branchidae. This it was to be the lot of Seleucus afterwards to restore to the Milesians, but the Argives down to the present still retain the images they took from Tiryns; one, a wooden image, is by the Hera, the other is kept in the sanctuary of Lycian Apollo.

§ Again, the people of Cyzicus, compelling the people of Proconnesus by war to live at Cyzicus, took away from Proconnesus an image of Mother Dindymene. The image is of gold, and its face is made of hippopotamus teeth instead of ivory. So the emperor Augustus only followed a custom in vogue among the Greeks and barbarians from of old. The image of Athena Alea at Rome is as you enter the Forum made by Augustus.

§ Here then it has been set up, made throughout of ivory, the work of Endoeus. Those in charge of the curiosities say that one of the boar’s tusks has broken off; the remaining one is kept in the gardens of the emperor, in a sanctuary of Dionysus, and is about half a fathom long.

§ The present image at Tegea was brought from the parish of Manthurenses, and among them it had the surname of Hippia (Horse Goddess). According to their account, when the battle of the gods and giants took place the goddess drove the chariot and horses against Enceladus. Yet this goddess too has come to receive the name of Alea among the Greeks generally and the Peloponnesians themselves. On one side of the image of Athena stands Asclepius, on the other Health, works of Scopas of Paros in Pentelic marble.

§ Of the votive offerings in the temple these are the most notable. There is the hide of the Calydonian boar, rotted by age and by now altogether without bristles. Hanging up are the fetters, except such as have been destroyed by rust, worn by the Lacedaemonian prisoners when they dug the plain of Tegea. There have been dedicated a sacred couch of Athena, a portrait painting of Auge, and the shield of Marpessa, surnamed Choera, a woman of Tegea;

§ of Marpessa I shall make mention later. The priest of Athena is a boy; I do not know how long his priesthood lasts, but it must be before, and not after, puberty. The altar for the goddess was made, they say, by Melampus, the son of Amythaon. Represented on the altar are Rhea and the nymph Oenoe holding the baby Zeus. On either side are four figures: on one, Glauce, Neda, Theisoa and Anthracia; on the other Ide, Hagno, Alcinoe and Phrixa. There are also images of the Muses and of Memory.

§ Not far from the temple is a stadium formed by a mound of earth, where they celebrate games, one festival called Aleaea after Athena, the other Halotia (Capture Festival) because they captured the greater part of the Lacedaemonians alive in the battle. To the north of the temple is a fountain, and at this fountain they say that Auge was outraged by Heracles, therein differing from the account of Auge in Hecataeus. Some three stades away from the fountain is a temple of Hermes Aepytus.

§ There is at Tegea another sanctuary of Athena, namely of Athena Poliatis (Keeper of the City) into which a priest enters once in each year. This sanctuary they name Eryma (Defence) saying that Cepheus, the son of Aleus, received from Athena a boon, that Tegea should never be captured while time shall endure, adding that the goddess cut off some of the hair of Medusa and gave it to him as a guard to the city.

§ Their story about Artemis, the same as is called Leader, is as follows. Aristomelidas, despot of Orchomenus in Arcadia, fell in love with a Tegean maiden, and, getting her somehow or other into his power, entrusted her to the keeping of Chronius. The girl, before she was delivered up to the despot, killed herself for fear and shame, and Artemis in a vision stirred up Chronius against Aristomelidas. He slew the despot, fled to Tegea, and made a sanctuary for Artemis.

§ The market-place is in shape very like a brick, and in it is a temple of Aphrodite called “in brick,” with a stone image. There are two slabs; on one are represented in relief Antiphanes, Crisus, Tyronidas and Pyrrhias, who made laws for the Tegeans, and down to this day receive honours for it from them. On the other slab is represented Iasius, holding a horse, and carrying in his right hand a branch of palm. It is said that Iasius won a horse-race at Olympia, at the time when Heracles the Theban celebrated the Olympian festival.

§ The reason why at Olympia the victor receives a crown of wild-olive I have already explained in my account of Elis; why at Delphi the crown is of bay I shall make plain later. At the Isthmus the pine, and at Nemea celery became the prize to commemorate the sufferings of Palaemon and Archemorus. At most games, however, is given a crown of palm, and at all a palm is placed in the right hand of the victor.

§ The origin of the custom is said to be that Theseus, on his return from Crete, held games in Delos in honour of Apollo, and crowned the victors with palm. Such, it is said, was the origin of the custom. The palm in Delos is mentioned by Homer in the passage where Odysseus supplicates the daughter of Alcinous.

§ There is also an image of Ares in the marketplace of Tegea. Carved in relief on a slab it is called Gynaecothoenas (He who entertains women). At the time of the Laconian war, when Charillus king of Lacedaemon made the first invasion, the women armed themselves and lay in ambush under the hill they call today Phylactris (Sentry Hill). When the armies met and the men on either side were performing many remarkable exploits,

§ the women, they say, came on the scene and put the Lacedaemonians to flight. Marpessa, surnamed Choera, surpassed, they say, the other women in daring, while Charillus himself was one of the Spartan prisoners. The story goes on to say that he was set free without ransom, swore to the Tegeans that the Lacedaemonians would never again attack Tegea, and then broke his oath; that the women offered to Ares a sacrifice of victory on their own account without the men, and gave to the men no share in the meat of the victim. For this reason Ares got his surname.

§ There is also an altar of Zeus Teleius (Full-grown), with a square image, a shape of which the Arcadians seem to me to be exceedingly fond. There are also here tombs of Tegeates, the son of Lycaon, and of Maera, the wife of Tegeates. They say that Maera was a daughter of Atlas, and Homer makes mention of her in the passage where Odysseus tells to Alcinous his journey to Hades, and of those whose ghosts he beheld there.

§ The Tegeans surname Eileithyia, a temple of whom, with art image, they have in their market-place, Auge on her knees, saying that Aleus handed over his daughter to Nauplius with the order to take and drown her in the sea. As she was being carried along, they say, she fell on her knees and so gave birth to her son, at the place where is the sanctuary of Eileithyia. This story is different from another, that Auge was brought to bed without her father’s knowing it, and that Telephus was exposed on Mount Parthenius, the abandoned child being suckled by a deer. This account is equally current among the people of Tegea.

§ Close to the sanctuary of Eileithyia is an altar of Earth, next to which is a slab of white marble. On this is carved Polybius, the son of Lycortas, while on another slab is Elatus, one of the sons of Arcas.

§ Not far from the market-place is a theater, and near it are pedestals of bronze statues, but the statues themselves no longer exist. On one pedestal is an elegiac inscription that the statue is that of Philopoemen. The memory of this Philopoemen is most carefully cherished by the Greeks, both for the wisdom he showed and for his many brave achievements.

§ His father Craugis was as nobly born as any Arcadian of Megalopolis, but he died while Philopoemen was still a baby, and Cleander of Mantineia became his guardian. This man was an exile from Mantineia, resident in Megalopolis because of his misfortunes at home, and his house and that of Craugis had ties of guest-friendship. Among the teachers of Philopoemen, they say, were Megalophanes and Ecdelus, pupils, it is said, of Arcesilaus of Pitane.

§ In size and strength of body no Peloponnesian was his superior, but he was ugly of countenance. He scorned training for the prizes of the games, but he worked the land he owned and did not neglect to clear it of wild beasts. They say that he read books of scholars of repute among the Greeks, stories of wars, and all that taught him anything of strategy. He wished to model his whole life on Epaminondas, his wisdom and his achievements, but could not rise to his height in every respect. For the temper of Epaminondas was calm and, in particular, free from anger, but the Arcadian was somewhat passionate.

§ When Megalopolis was captured by Cleomenes, Philopoemen was not dismayed by the unexpected disaster, but led safely to Messene about two-thirds of the men of military age, along with the women and children, theMesseniansbeing at that time friendly allies. To some of those who made good their escape Cleomenes offered terms, saying that he was beginning to repent his crime, and would treat with the Megalopolitans if they returned home; but Philopoemen induced the citizens at a meeting to win a return home by force of arms, and to refuse to negotiate or make a truce.

§ When the battle had joined with the Lacedaemonians under Cleomenes at Sellasia, in which Achaeans and Arcadians from all the cities took part, along with Antigonus at the head of a Macedonian army, Philopoemen served with the cavalry. But when he saw that the infantry would be the decisive factor in the engagement, he voluntarily fought on foot, showed conspicuous daring, and was pierced through both thighs by one of the enemy.

§ Although so seriously impeded, he bent in his knees and forced himself forward, so that he actually broke the spear by the movement of his legs. After the defeat of the Lacedaemonians under Cleomenes, Philopoemen returned to the camp, where the surgeons pulled out from one thigh the spike, from the other the blade. When Antigonus learned of his valor and saw it, he was anxious to take Philepoemen to Macedonia.

§ But Philopoemen was not likely to care much about Antigonus. Sailing across to Crete, where a civil war was raging, he put himself at the head of a band of mercenaries. Going back to Megalopolis, he was at once chosen by the Achaeans to command the cavalry, and he turned them into the finest cavalry in Greece. In the battle at the river Larisus between the Achaeans with their allies and the Eleans with the Aetolians, who were helping the Eleans on grounds of kinship, Philopoemen first killed with his own hand Demophantus, the leader of the opposing cavalry, and then turned to flight all the mounted troops of Aetolia and Elis.

§ As the Achaeans now turned their gaze on Philopoemen and placed in him all their hopes, he succeeded in changing the equipment of those serving in their infantry. They had been carrying short javelins and oblong shields after the fashion of the Celtic “door” or the Persian “wicker” Philopoemen, however, persuaded them to put on breast-plates and greaves, and also to use Argolic shields and long spears.

§ When Machanidas the upstart became despot of Lacedaemon, and war began once again between that city under Machanidas and the Achaeans, Philopoemen commanded the Achaean forces. A battle took place at Mantineia. The light troops of the Lacedaemonians overcame the light-armed of the Achaeans, and Machanidas pressed hard on the fugitives. Philopoemen, however, with the phalanx of infantry put to flight the Lacedaemonian men-at-arms, met Machanidas returning from the pursuit and killed him. The Lacedaemonians were unfortunate in the battle, but their good fortune more than compensated for their defeat, for they were delivered from their despot.

§ Not long afterwards the Argives celebrated the Nemean games, and Philopoemen chanced to be present at the competition of the harpists. Pylades, a man of Megalopolis, the most famous harpist of his time, who had won a Pythian victory, was then singing the Persians, an ode of Timotheus the Milesian. When he had begun the song:
Who to Greece gives the great and glorious jewel of freedom,
Timotheus, unknown location.the audience of Greeks looked at Philopoemen and by their clapping signified that the song applied to him. I am told that a similar thing happened to Themistocles at Olympia, for the audience there rose to do him honour.

§ But Philip, the son of Demetrius, king of Macedonia, who poisoned Aratus of Sicyon, sent men to Megalopolis with orders to murder Philopoemen. The attempt failed, and Philip incurred the hatred of all Greece. The Thebans had defeated the Megarians in battle, and were already climbing the wall of Megara, when the Megarians deceived them into thinking that Philopoemen had come to Megara. This made the Thebans so cautious that they went away home, and abandoned their military operation.

§ In Lacedaemon another despot arose, Nabis, and the first of the Peloponnesians to be attacked by him were the Messenians Coming upon them by night, when they by no means were expecting an assault, he took the city except the citadel; but when on the morrow Philopoemen arrived with an army, he evacuated Messene under a truce.

§ When Philopoemen’s term of office as general expired, and others were chosen to be generals of the Achaeans, he again crossed to Crete and sided with the Gortynians, who were hard pressed in war. The Arcadians were wroth with him for his absence; so he returned from Crete and found that the Romans had begun a war against Nabis.

§ The Romans had equipped a fleet against Nabis, and Philopoemen was too enthusiastic to keep out of the quarrel. But being entirely ignorant of nautical affairs he unwittingly embarked on a leaky trireme, so that the Romans and their allies were reminded of the verses of Homer, where in the Catalogue he remarks on the ignorance of the Arcadians of nautical matters.

§ A few days after the sea-fight, Philopoemen and his band, waiting for a moonless night, burnt down the camp of the Lacedaemonians at Gythium. Thereupon Nabis caught Philopoemen himself and the Arcadians with him in a disadvantageous position. The Arcadians, though few in number, were good soldiers,

§ and Philopoemen, by changing the order of his line of retreat, caused the strongest positions to be to his advantage and not to that of his enemy. He overcame Nabis in the battle and massacred during the night many of the Lacedaemonians, so raising yet higher his reputation among the Greeks.

§ After this Nabis secured from the Romans a truce for a fixed period, but died before this period came to an end, being assassinated by a man of Calydon, who pretended that he had come about an alliance, but was in reality an enemy who had been sent for this very purpose of assassination by the Aetolians.

§ At this time Philopoemen flung himself into Sparta and forced her to join the Achaean League. Shortly afterwards Titus, the Roman commander in Greece, and Diophanes, the son of Diaeus, a Megalopolitan who had been elected general of the Achaeans, attacked Lacedaemon, accusing the Lacedaemonians of rebellion against the Romans. But Philopoemen, though at the time holding no office, shut the gates against them.

§ For this reason, and because of his courage shown against both the despots, the Lacedaemonians offered him the house of Nabis, worth more than a hundred talents. But he scorned the wealth, and bade the Lacedaemonians court with gifts, not himself, but those who could persuade the many in the meeting of the Achaeans—a suggestion, it is said, directed against Timolaus. He was again appointed general of the Achaeans.

§ At this time the Lacedaemonians were involved in civil war, and Philopoemen expelled from the Peloponnesus three hundred who were chiefly responsible for the civil war, sold some three thousandHelots, razed the walls of Sparta, and forbade the youths to train in the manner laid down by the laws of Lycurgus, ordering them to follow the training of the Achaean youths. The Romans, in course of time, were to restore to the Lacedaemonians the discipline of their native land.

§ When the Romans under Manius defeated at Thermopylae Antiochus the descendant of Seleucus, named Nicator, and the Syrian army with him, Aristaenus of Megalopolis advised the Achaeans to approve the wishes of the Romans in all respects, and to oppose them in nothing. Philopoemen looked angrily at Aristaenus, and said that he was hastening on the doom of Greece. Manius wished the Lacedaemonian exiles to return, but Philopoemen opposed his plan, and only when Manius had gone away did he allow the exiles to be restored.

§ But, nevertheless, Philopoemen too was to be punished for his pride. After being appointed commander of the Achaeans for the eighth time, he reproached a man of no little distinction for having been captured alive by the enemy. Now at this time the Achaeans had a grievance against the Messenians, and Philopoemen, despatching Lycortas with the army to lay waste the land of the Messenians, was very anxious two or three days later, in spite of his seventy years and a severe attack of fever, to take his share in the expedition of Lycortas. He led about sixty horsemen and targeteers.

§ Lycortas, however, and his army were already on their way back to their country, having neither suffered great harm nor inflicted it on the Messenians Philopoemen, wounded in the head during the battle, fell from his horse and was taken alive to Messene. A meeting of the assembly was immediately held, at which the most widely divergent opinions were expressed.

§ Deinocrates, and all the Messenianswhose wealth made them influential, urged that Philopoemen should be put to death; but the popular party were keen on saving his life, calling him Father, and more than Father, of all the Greek people. But Deinocrates, after all, and in spite of Messenian opposition, was to bring about the death of Philopoemen, for he sent poison in to him.

§ Shortly afterwards Lycortas gathered a force from Arcadia and Achaia and marched against Messene. The Messenian populace at once went over to the side of the Arcadians, and those responsible for the death of Philopoemen were caught and punished, all except Deinocrates, who perished by his own hand. The Arcadians also brought back to Megalopolis the bones of Philopoemen.

§ After this Greece ceased to bear good men. For Miltiades, the son of Cimon, overcame in battle the foreign invaders who had landed at Marathon, stayed the advance of the Persian army, and so became the first benefactor of all Greece, just as Philopoemen, the son of Craugis, was the last. Those who before Miltiades accomplished brilliant deeds, Codrus, the son of Melanthus, Polydorus the Spartan, Aristomenes the Messenian, and all the rest, will be seen to have helped each his own country and not Greece as a whole.

§ Later than Miltiades, Leonidas, the son of Anaxandrides, and Themistocles, the son of Neocles, repulsed Xerxes from Greece, Themistocles by the two sea-fights, Leonidas by the action at Thermopylae. But Aristeides the son of Lysimachus, and Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus, commanders at Plataea, were debarred from being called benefactors of Greece, Pausanias by his subsequent sins, Aristeides by his imposition of tribute on the island Greeks; for before Aristeides all the Greeks were immune from tribute.

§ Xanthippus, the son of Ariphron, with Leotychidaes the king of Sparta destroyed the Persian fleet at Mycale, and with Cimon accomplished many enviable achievements on behalf of the Greeks. But those who took part in the Peloponnesian war against Athens, especially the most distinguished of them, might be said to be murderers, almost wreckers, of Greece.

§ When the Greek nation was reduced to a miserable condition, it recovered under the efforts of Conon, the son of Timotheus, and of Epaminondas, the son of Polymnis, who drove out the Lacedaemonian garrisons and governors, and put down the boards of ten, Conon from the islands and coasts, Epaminondas from the cities of the interior. By founding cities too, of no small fame, Messene and Arcadian Megalopolis, Epaminondas made Greece more famous.

§ I reckon Leosthenes also and Aratus benefactors of all the Greeks. Leosthenes, in spite of Alexander’s opposition, brought back safe by sea to Greece the force of Greek mercenaries in Persia, about fifty thousand in number, who had descended to the coast. As for Aratus, I have related his exploits in my history of Sicyon.

§ The inscription on the statue of Philopoemen at Tegea runs thus:—
The valor and glory of this man are famed throughout Greece, who worked
Many achievements by might and many by his counsels,
Philopoemen, the Arcadian spearman, whom great renown attended,
When he commanded the lances in war.
Witness are two trophies, won from the despots
Of Sparta; the swelling flood of slavery he stayed.
Wherefore did Tegea set up in stone the great-hearted son of Craugis,
Author of blameless freedom.

§ Such is the inscription at Tegea on Philopoemen. The images of Apollo, Lord of Streets, the Tegeans say they set up for the following reason. Apollo and Artemis, they say, throughout every land visited with punishment all the men of that time who, when Leto was with child and in the course of her wanderings, took no heed of her when she came to their land.

§ So when the divinities came to the land of Tegea, Scephrus, they say, the son of Tegeates, came to Apollo and had a private conversation with him. And Leimon, who also was a son of Tegeates, suspecting that the conversation of Scephrus contained a charge against him, rushed on his brother and killed him.

§ Immediate punishment for the murder overtook Leimon, for he was shot by Artemis. At the time Tegeates and Maera sacrificed to Apollo and Artemis, but afterwards a severe famine fell on the land, and an oracle of Delphi ordered a mourning for Scephrus. At the feast of the Lord of Streets rites are performed in honour of Scephrus, and in particular the priestess of Artemis pursues a man, pretending she is Artemis herself pursuing Leimon.

§ It is also said that all the surviving sons of Tegeates, namely, Cydon, Archedius and Gortys, migrated of their own free will to Crete, and that after them were named the cities Cydonia, Gortyna and Catreus. The Cretans dissent from the account of the Tegeans, saying that Cydon was a son of Hermes and of Acacallis, daughter of Minos, that Catreus was a son of Minos, and Gortys a son of Rhadamanthys.

§ As to Rhadamanthys himself, Homer says, in the talk of Proteus with Menelaus, that Menelaus would go to the Elysian plain, but that Rhadamanthys was already arrived there. Cinaethon too in his poem represents Rhadamanthys as the son of Hephaestus, Hephaestus as a son of Talos, and Talos as a son of Cres. The legends of Greece generally have different forms, and this is particularly true of genealogy.

§ At Tegea the images of the Lord of Streets are four in number, one set up by each of the tribes. The names given to the tribes are Clareotis, Hippothoetis, Apolloniatis, and Athaneatis; they are called after the lots cast by Arcas to divide the land among his sons, and after Hippothous, the son of Cercyon.

§ There is also at Tegea a temple of Demeter and the Maid, whom they surname the Fruit-bringers, and hard by is one of Aphrodite called Paphian. The latter was built by Laodice, who was descended, as I have already said, from Agapenor, who led the Arcadians to Troy, and it was in Paphos that she dwelt. Not far from it are two sanctuaries of Dionysus, an altar of the Maid, and a temple of Apollo with a gilded image.

§ The artist was Cheirisophus; he was a Cretan by race, but his date and teacher we do not know. The residence of Daedalus with Minos at Cnossus secured for the Cretans a reputation for the making of wooden images also, which lasted for a long period. By the Apollo stands Cheirisophus in stone.

§ The Tegeans also have what they call a Common Hearth of the Arcadians. Here there is an image of Heracles, and on his thigh is represented a wound received in the first fight with the sons of Hippocoon. The lofty place, on which are most of the altars of the Tegeans, is called the place of Zeus Clarius (Of Lots), and it is plain that the god got his surname from the lots cast for the sons of Arcas. Here the Tegeans celebrate a feast every year.

§ It is said that once at the time of the feast they were invaded by the Lacedaemonians. As it was snowing, these were chilled, and thus distressed by their armour, but the Tegeans, without their enemies knowing it, lighted a fire. So untroubled by the cold they donned, they say, their armour, went out against the Lacedaemonians, and had the better of the engagement. I also saw in Tegea:—the house of Aleus, the tomb of Echemus, and the fight between Echemus and Hyllus carved in relief upon a slab.

§ On the left of the road as you go from Tegea to Laconia there is an altar of Pan, and likewise one of Lycaean Zeus. The foundations, too, of sanctuaries are still there. These altars are two stades from the wall; and about seven stades farther on is a sanctuary of Artemis, surnamed Lady of the Lake, with an image of ebony. The fashion of the workmanship is what the Greeks call Aeginetan. Some ten stades farther on are the ruins of a temple of Artemis Cnaceatis.

§ The boundary between the territories of Lacedaemon and Tegea is the river Alpheius. Its water begins in Phylace, and not far from its source there flows down into it another water from springs that are not large, but many in number, whence the place has received the name Symbola (Meetings).

§ It is known that the Alpheius differs from other rivers in exhibiting this natural peculiarity; it often disappears beneath the earth to reappear again. So flowing on from Phylace and the place called Symbola it sinks into the Tegean plain; rising at Asea, and mingling its stream with the Eurotas, it sinks again into the earth.

§ Coming up at the place called by the Arcadians Pegae (Springs), and flowing past the land of Pisa and past Olympia, it falls into the sea above Cyllene, the port of Elis. Not even the Adriatic could check its flowing onwards, but passing through it, so large and stormy a sea, it shows in Ortygia, before Syracuse, that it is the Alpheius, and unites its water with Arethusa.

§ The straight road from Tegea to Thyrea and to the villages its territory contains can show a notable sight in the tomb of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon; from here, say the Tegeans, a Spartan stole his bones. In our time the grave is no longer within the gates. By the road flows also the river Garates. Crossing the Garates and advancing ten stades you come to a sanctuary of Pan, by which is an oak, like the sanctuary sacred to Pan.

§ The road from Tegea to Argos is very well suited for carriages, in fact a first-rate highway. On the road come first a temple and image of Asclepius. Next, turning aside to the left for about a stade, you see a dilapidated sanctuary of Apollo surnamed Pythian which is utterly in ruins. Along the straight road there are many oaks, and in the grove of oaks is a temple of Demeter called “in Corythenses.” Hard by is another sanctuary, that of Mystic Dionysus.

§ At this point begins Mount Parthenius. On it is shown a sacred enclosure of Telephus, where it is said that he was exposed when a child and was suckled by a deer. A little farther on is a sanctuary of Pan, where Athenians and Tegeans agree that he appeared to Philippides and conversed with him.

§ Mount Parthenius rears also tortoises most suitable for the making of harps; but the men on the mountain are always afraid to capture them, and will not allow strangers to do so either, thinking them to be sacred to Pan. Crossing the peak of the mountain you are within the cultivated area, and reach the boundary between Tegea and Argos; it is near Hysiae in Argolis.These are the divisions of the Peloponnesus, the cities in the divisions, and the most noteworthy things in each city.