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
Therapne got its name from Therapne, the daughter of Lelex, and it
has a temple of Menelaus, and they say that Menelaus and Helen were
buried here. But the Rhodians have a different account to that of the
Lacedæmonians, and say that Helen after the death of Menelaus, while
Orestes was still on his travels, was driven away by Nicostratus and
Megapenthes and went to Rhodes, as she was a connection of Polyxo the
wife of Tlepolemus, for Polyxo was of Argive descent, and being the
wife of Tlepolemus fled with him to Rhodes, and there became Queen,
being left with one fatherless child. This Polyxo they say desired
to avenge on Helen the death of Tlepolemus, and when she got her in
her power sent to her as she was bathing some attendants dressed like
the Furies, and they laid hold of Helen and hung her on a tree, and
for this reason the Rhodians have a temple to Helen Hung on the Tree.
And I will record the tradition of the people of Croton about Helen,
which is the same as that of the people of Himera. There is in the
Euxine sea, near the mouth of the Ister, an island sacred to Achilles
called Leuce. It is 20 stades in extent, entirely thick forest and full
of beasts domesticated and wild, and contains a temple and statue of
Achilles. They say Leonymus of Croton was the first that ever sailed
to it. For when there was a war between the people of Croton and the
Locrians in Italy, and the Locrians invited in Ajax the son of Oileus
to aid them because of their kinsmanship to the Opuntians, Leonymus the
general of the Crotonians attacked that part of the enemy’s army where
he was told that Ajax was stationed, and got wounded in the breast,
and, as he suffered very much from his wound, went to Delphi. And the
Pythian Priestess sent him to the island Leuce, and told him that Ajax
would appear there and heal his wound. And in process of time getting
well he returned from Leuce, and said that he had seen Achilles, and
Ajax the son of Oileus, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and that Patroclus
and Antilochus were in the company, and that Helen was married to
Achilles and had told him to sail to Himera, and tell Stesichorus
that the loss of his eyesight was a punishment to him from her. In
consequence of this Stesichorus composed his palinode.
CHAPTER XX.
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