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 Cardamyle, which Homer[50] has mentioned in the promises of
gifts made by Agamemnon, is subject to Sparta, as the Emperor Augustus
detached it from Messenia. It is eight stades from the sea, and sixty
from Leuctra. And not far from the seashore is a grove sacred to the
daughters of Nereus, for the story goes that they climbed up to this
place from the sea to see Pyrrhus the son of Achilles, when he went off
to Sparta to marry Hermione. In this small town there is a temple of
Athene and Carnean Apollo, whom they worship according to the Dorian
fashion.
And the city called, by Homer[51] Enope, the inhabitants of which
are Messenians though they join the Council of the Eleutherolacones,
is called in our time Gerenia. Some say Nestor was brought up in this
city, others that he fled here when Pylos was taken by Hercules.
Gerenia contains the tomb and temple of Machaon the son of Æsculapius:
from whom men may have possibly learnt the healing of diseases. The
sacred place they call Rhodon, and the statue of Machaon is erect
in brass. And on its head is a garland, which the Messenians call
_ciphos_[52] in their country’s tongue. The writer of the epic poem
called the Little Iliad says that Machaon was killed by Eurypylus
the son of Telephus. That is why (as I myself know) in the rites in
the temple of Æsculapius at Pergamum, they begin with the Hymns of
Telephus, but make no reference in their singing to Eurypylus, nor
will they name him at all in the temple, because they know he was the
murderer of Machaon. And the tradition is that Nestor recovered the
bones of Machaon. And Podalirius, when the Greeks were returning after
the sack of Ilium, was carried they say out of his way to Syrnum a
place in the Continent of Caria, and getting there safe built a town
there.
In the Gerenian district is the mountain Calathium, and on it is a
temple of Clæa and a grotto near the temple, with a narrow entrance:
within there are several objects worth seeing. And from Gerenia to
Alagonia in the interior is about 30 stades, but that town I have
already mentioned amongst the Eleutherolacones. And the sights best
worth seeing there are the temples of Dionysus and Artemis.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] _Odyssey_, xix. 178, 179.
[31] Iliad, xix. 117.
[32] Mentioned ii, 38; iii, i. Pausanias now returns to topography.
[33] _Gymnopædia_, as its name denotes, was a yearly festival at which
boys danced naked and went through gymnastic exercises.
[34] The cornel tree is in Greek κράνεια. Transposition of the ρ will
give κάρνειος as the title of the god. This will explain text.
[35] It means boxers, or football players.
[36] A name for Ares the god of war, the Latin Mars.
[37] So Bacon calls revenge ‘a kind of wild justice.’ _Essay_ iv.
[38] Reading the emendation of _Sylburgius_ κατὰ τὸ Σκύλλαιον τὴν ἄκραν.
[39] Iliad, xiv. 231.
[40] Reading τρεῖς with Facius.
[41] Iliad, xxiv. 41. Pausanias derives from Θήρ or Θηρίον.
[42] Iliad, ii. 584.
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