And as you go towards the hill of Ithome, where the Messenians have their citadel, is the spring called Clepsydra. However willing one may be it is a matter of no small difficulty to enumerate all the people who put in the claim that Zeus was born and bred among them. The people of Messene have this tradition among others. They say that Zeus was reared among them, and that Ithome and Neda were his nurses, and that Neda gave her name to the river, and Ithome hers to the mountain. And these Nymphs they say, when Zeus was stolen away by the Curetes from fear of Cronos, washed him here at Clepsydra, and the spring got its name from the theft of the Curetes: and every day they take water from this spring to the temple of Zeus of Ithome. And the statue of Zeus is the work of Ageladas, and was made originally for the Messenians that dwelt at Naupactus. And a priest chosen annually keeps the statue in his house. And they have an annual feast at Ithome, and originally they had a musical contest, as one may infer from other sources, but especially from the lines of Eumelus, which are part of his Processional Hymn at Delos, “Welcome to Zeus of Ithome was the pure muse with free sandals.” I think from these verses that Eumelus knew that they had a musical contest at the Feast of Zeus of Ithome. At the gates in the direction of Megalopolis in Arcadia there is a statue of Hermes of Athenian design: the busts of Hermes among the Athenians are square, and others have borrowed this design from them. And if you go about 30 stades down from these gates you come to the river Balyra. It was so called they say because Thamyris threw his lyre away there in his blindness, Thamyris the son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope. Argiope they say lived at Parnassus for a while, but when she became pregnant removed to Odrysæ, because Philammon would not marry her. And this is the reason why they call Thamyris Odrysian and Thracian. And the rivers Leucasia and Amphitus are tributaries of the Balyra.