Delphi Complete Works of Pausanias

by Pausanias

  [8.1.6] 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.

  [8.2.1] II. 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.

  [8.2.2] 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.

  [8.2.3] 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).

  [8.2.4] 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 honored 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 honors paid to them – Aristaeus, Britomartis of Crete, Heracles the son of Alcmena, Amphiaraus the son of Oicles, and besides these Polydeuces and Castor.

  [8.2.5] 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.

  [8.2.6] 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.

  [8.2.7] 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.

  [8.3.1] III. 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.

  [8.3.2] Pallantium is mentioned by Stesichorus of Himera in 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.

  [8.3.3] 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.

  [8.3.4] 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.

  [8.3.5] 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,

  [8.3.6] 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. 5.272

  But it may be that the constellation is merely named in honor of Callisto, since her grave is pointed out by the Arcadians.

  [8.4.1] IV. 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.

  [8.4.2] 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.

  [8.4.3] 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.”

  [8.4.4] 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.

  [8.4.5] 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.

 
; [8.4.6] 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.

  [8.4.7] 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 color 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.

  [8.4.8] 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.

  [8.4.9] 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.

  [8.4.10] 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.

  [8.5.1] V. 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.

  [8.5.2] 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.

  [8.5.3] 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.

  [8.5.4] 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.

  [8.5.5] 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.

  [8.5.6] 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.

  [8.5.7] 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 honor of giving his name to the city; Phialus changed it to Phialia, after his own name, but the change did not win universal acceptance.

  ARCADIA, HISTORY

  [8.5.8] 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 honored the Arcadians greatly, and furthermore gave the name Aeginetes to his son out of friendship for the Aeginetans.

  [8.5.9] 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.

  [8.5.10] 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.

  [8.5.11] 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.

  [8.5.12] 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.

  [8.5.13] 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.

  [8.6.1] VI. 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 Messenians in their struggl
e against Lacedaemon, and they also took part in the action at Plataea against the Persians.

  [8.6.2] 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.

  [8.6.3] 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.

  MELANGEIA & MT ARTEMISIUS

  [8.6.4] 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.

  [8.6.5] 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.