Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
And hard by is the temple of Hilaira and Phœbe, who the writer of the
Cyprian poems says were the daughters of Apollo. And their priestesses
are maidens, called also Leucippides as well as the goddesses. One of
their statues was touched up by a priestess of the goddesses, who with
an art not unknown in our days put a new face on the old statue, but
a dream prevented her treating the other statue in the same way. Here
is hung up an egg, fastened to the roof by fillets; they say it is the
egg which Leda is said to have laid. And every year the women weave a
coat for Apollo at Amyclæ, and they call the place where they weave it
_Coat_. Near the temple is a house which they say the sons of Tyndareus
originally lived in, but afterwards Phormio a Spartan got possession
of it. To him Castor and Pollux came as strangers, they said they had
come from Cyrene and desired to lodge at his house, and asked for a
chamber, (with which they were greatly pleased), as long as they should
remain at Sparta. But he bade them go to some other house where they
might like to dwell, he could not give them that chamber, for it was
the apartment of his daughter a maiden. And the next day maiden and
her attendants had all vanished, but statues of Castor and Pollux were
found in the chamber, and a table with some assa-fœtida on it. Such at
least is the tradition.
And as you go to the gates from the place called _Coat_ there is a
hero-chapel of Chilo, who was accounted one of the seven wise men, and
of an Athenian hero who accompanied Dorieus, the son of Anaxandrides,
on the expedition to colonize Sicily. And they put in at Eryx thinking
that district belonged to the descendants of Hercules, and not to
barbarians who really held it. For there is a tradition that Eryx
and Hercules wrestled on the following conditions, that if Hercules
conquered the land of Eryx should be his, but if Eryx conquered the
oxen of Geryon, (which Hercules was then driving,) should be his, for
these oxen had swum across to Sicily from the promontory at Scylla,[38]
and Hercules had crossed over after them to find them, and Eryx should
have them if he came off victor. But the good will of the gods did not
speed Dorieus the son of Anaxandrides as it had done Hercules, for
Hercules killed Eryx, but the people of Segeste nearly annihilated
Dorieus and his army. And the Lacedæmonians have built a temple to
their legislator Lycurgus as to a god. And behind this temple is the
tomb of Eucosmus, the son of Lycurgus, near the altar of Lathria and
Anaxandra, who were twins, (and the sons of Aristodemus who married
them were also twins), and the daughters of Thersander the son of
Agamedidas, the king of the Cleestonæans, and the great grandson of
Ctesippus the son of Hercules. And right opposite the temple are the
tombs of Theopompus the son of Nicander, and Eurybiades, who fought
against the Medes in the Lacedæmonian gallies at Artemisium and
Salamis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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