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
[43] Iliad, xviii. 140, 141.
[44] We coin a word to keep the Paronomasia.
[45] Iliad, i. 158-160.
[46] Is this a slip of Pausanias for _Menelaus_? See Iliad, xxiii. 587,
588.
[47] Only found as a fragment now.
[48] In Odyssey, xi. 623, he is simply called κύνα, in Iliad, viii.
368, κύνα στυγερoῦ Ἀΐδαο. And κύων has various senses.
[49] Herodotus, i. 23, 24.
[50] Iliad, ix. 292.
[51] Iliad, ix. 292.
[52] Our _coif_.
BOOK IV.--MESSENIA.
CHAPTER I.
The border of Messenia towards Laconia, as fixed by Augustus, is at
Gerenia, and in our time is called the Chœrian dell. This country,
originally without inhabitants, is described to have been inhabited
by the first colonists in the following manner. After the death of
Lelex, who reigned in what is now called Laconia, but was then called
Lelegia after him, Myles who was the elder of his sons succeeded him,
and Polycaon the younger was only a private person till he married
the Argive Messene, the daughter of Triopas, the son of Phorbas. But
Messene, being full of pride owing to her father, who was foremost of
all the Greeks in merit and power, did not think it tolerable that
her husband should be a private person. So they gathered together
an army from Argos and Lacedæmon and invaded this country, and the
whole district was called Messene from her. And several other cities
were built, as well as the place where the royal headquarters were
established, _viz._ Andania. Before the battle which the Thebans fought
with the Lacedæmonians at Leuctra, and the building of Messene in our
day close to Ithome, I know of no city that was previously called
Messene. My inference is very much confirmed by Homer. For in the
catalogue of those who went to Ilium, when enumerating Pylos and Arene
and other cities, he mentions no Messene. And in the Odyssey he shews
that by this time the Messenians were a race and not a city,
‘For the Messenians took cattle from Ithaca,’[53]
and clearer still in speaking of the bow of Iphitus,
‘They two in Messene met one another,
In the house of Ortilochus.’[54]
By the house of Ortilochus in Messene he meant the town of Pheræ, as he
has shewn in the visit of Pisistratus to Menelaus,
‘They went to Pheræ to the house of Diocles,
The son of Ortilochus.’[55]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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