Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I. — John Shaqi
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
account which the Argives themselves give of the death of Pyrrhus;
this is also what Lyceas, the expounder of his country’s usages, has
written in his verses. And on the spot where Pyrrhus died was erected
a temple to Demeter in accordance with the oracle of the god: and in
it was Pyrrhus buried. I am astonished that of all those who were
called Æacidæ their end happened in the same supernatural manner, since
Homer says Achilles was slain by Alexander the son of Priam and by
Apollo; and Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, was ordered to be slain by
the Pythian oracle at Delphi; and this son of Æacides met his fate as
has been recorded by the Argives and sung by Lyceas. And yet this is
different to the account given by Hieronymus of Cardia: for one that
lives with a king must needs write history like a courtier. And if
Philistus, hoping for a return to Syracuse, was justified in concealing
the most flagitious acts of Dionysius, then Hieronymus, I ween, had
good excuse for writing to please Antigonus. Such was the end of the
glory of Epirus.
CHAPTER XIV.
And as one enters the Odeum at Athens, there is a Dionysus and other
things worth seeing. And near is a spring called the Nine Springs
constructed so by Pisistratus: for there are wells all over the city
but this is the only spring. And two temples have been built over the
spring, one to Demeter and the other to Proserpine; in one of them
is a statue to Triptolemus, about whom I will record the traditions,
omitting what is said about Deiope. Now the Argives are those of the
Greeks who chiefly dispute with the Athenians their rival claims to
antiquity, and assert that they have received gifts from the gods,
just as among the barbarians the Egyptians have similar disputes with
the Phrygians. The story goes then that when Demeter came to Argos
Pelasgus received her into his house, and that Chrysanthis, knowing of
the rape of Proserpine, informed her of it: and afterwards Trochilus
the initiating priest fled they say from Argos in consequence of the
hatred of Agenor, and came to Attica, and there married a wife from
Eleusis, and had children by her, Eubules and Triptolemus. This is
the account of the Argives. But the Athenians and neighbouring tribes
know that Triptolemus, the son of Celeus, was the first who sowed
corn in the fields. And it is sung by Musæus, (if indeed the lines
are by Musæus), that Triptolemus was the son of Ocean and Earth, and
it is sung by Orpheus, (if these lines again are by Orpheus, which I
doubt), that Dysaules was the father of Eubules and Triptolemus, and
that Demeter taught them how to sow corn because they had given her
information about the rape of her daughter. But the Athenian Chœrilus,
in the play called “Alope,” says that Cercyon and Triptolemus were
brothers, that their mother was a daughter of Amphictyon, and that the
father of Triptolemus was Rharus, and the father of Cercyon Poseidon.
And as I was intending to go further into the account, and narrate all
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