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
the legends about the flower Hyacinth, the traditions may possibly be
baseless, but let them stand.
Amyclæ was destroyed by the Dorians, and is now only a village,
which contains a temple and statue of Alexandra well worth seeing, (by
Alexandra the people of Amyclæ mean Cassandra the daughter of Priam).
There is here also an effigy of Clytæmnestra, and a statue of
Agamemnon, and his supposed tomb. And Amyclæan Apollo and Dionysus are
the chief gods worshipped here, the latter they call very properly in
my opinion Psilax (_Winged_). Psila is the Dorian word for wings, and
wine elevates men and lightens their judgment just as wings elevate
birds. And such is all that is memorable about Amyclæ.
Another road from Sparta leads to Therapne. And on the way is a
wooden statue of Athene Alea. And before you cross the Eurotas a little
above the bank stands the temple of Wealthy Zeus. And when you have
crossed the Eurotas, you come to the temple of Cotylean Æsculapius
built by Hercules, who called Æsculapius Cotylean because in the
first conflict with Hippocoon and his sons he received a wound on his
_cotyle_ or hip. And of all the temples built on this road, the most
ancient is one of Ares, on the left of the road, and the statue of the
god was they say brought by Castor and Pollux from Colchi. And Theritas
gets its name they say from Thero, who was the nurse of Ares. And
perhaps they got the name Theritas from the Colchians, for the Greeks
know nothing of a nurse of Ares called Thero. But I cannot but think
that the name Theritas was given to Ares not on account of his nurse,
but because in an engagement with the enemy one must be mild no longer,
but be like the description of Achilles in Homer, “as a lion he knows
savageness.”[41]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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