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 within Altis there is a separate grove to Pelops: who of the heroes
at Olympia is as much held in the highest honour as Zeus is among the
gods. This grove is on the right of the temple of Zeus towards the
North, just at such a distance from the temple as to admit of statues
and votive offerings between, and it extends from the middle of the
temple to the back, and is surrounded by a stone wall, and has trees
planted in it, and statues. And the entrance to it is from the west.
And it is said to have been dedicated to Pelops by Hercules the son of
Amphitryon, who was fourth in descent from Pelops. And he is said to
have sacrificed in the trench to Pelops. And the magistrates for the
year sacrifice to him even now a black ram. The seer has no portion
of this sacrifice, the neck of the ram only is usually given to the
person called the wood-cutter. He is one of the temple servants, and
his function is to furnish wood for the sacrifices at a fixed price,
both to cities and to any private individual. And the wood is always
of the white poplar tree. And whatever stranger or native of Elis eats
the flesh of the victim sacrificed to Pelops may not enter the temple
of Zeus. Those who sacrifice to Telephus at Pergamum north of the river
Caicus are in a similar predicament: they may not enter the temple of
Æsculapius till they have had a bath. And the following tradition is
still told about Pelops. During the protracted siege of Ilium the seers
are said to have prophesied that they would never capture the town
till they procured the bows of Hercules and a bone of Pelops. So they
sent it is said for Philoctetes to the camp, and the shoulder-blade of
Pelops was brought from Pisa. And on the return home of the Greeks,
the ship that had the shoulder-blade of Pelops was wrecked near Eubœa.
And many years after the capture of Ilium Damarmenus, a fisherman
of Eretria, cast his net into the sea and fished up this bone, and
marvelling at the size of it hid it in the sand. And eventually he went
to Delphi, desiring to know who the bone belonged to, and what he
should do with it. And it chanced providentially that some persons of
Elis, seeking a cure for the pestilence, were at Delphi at this period.
And the Pythian Priestess told them to preserve the bones of Pelops,
and told Damarmenus to give what he had found to the people of Elis.
And when he had done so the people of Elis gave him several presents,
and made Damarmenus and his descendants custodians of this bone. But
this shoulder-blade of Pelops has not survived to our day, because in
my opinion it was buried too deep, partly also from time and the action
of the sea. And there are still traces even to our day of Pelops and
Tantalus having brought colonies to Greece, as the marsh called after
Tantalus, and his well-known grave. And the throne of Pelops is at
Sipylus on the top of the mountain above the temple of the Placianian
mother, and after you have crossed the river Hermus there is a statue
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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