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 the Milesians have in front of their city the island
Lade, which breaks off into two little islands, one of which is called
Asterius. And they say that Asterius was buried here, and that he
was the son of Anax, and Anax was the son of Earth: his corpse is
two cubits, no less. The following circumstance also appears to me
wonderful. In Upper Lydia there is a small town called the Gates of
Temenus. Some bones were discovered here, when a piece of cliff broke
off in a storm, in shape like those of a man, but on account of their
size no one would have thought them a man’s. And forthwith a rumour
spread among the populace that it was the dead body of Geryon the son
of Chrysaor, and that a man’s seat fashioned in stone on the hillside
was his seat. And they called the mountain torrent Oceanus, and said
that people ploughing often turned up horns of oxen, for the story goes
that Geryon bred most excellent oxen. But when I opposed their theory,
and proved to them that Geryon lived at Gades, and that he has no known
tomb but a tree of various forms, hereupon the Lydian Antiquarians told
the real truth, that it was the dead body of Hyllus, and that Hyllus
was the son of Earth, and gave his name to the river Hyllus. They said
also that Hercules on account of his former intercourse with Omphale
called his son Hyllus after the same river.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
At Salamis, to return to my subject, there is a temple of Artemis, and
a trophy erected for the victory which Themistocles the son of Neocles
won for the Greeks. There is also a temple to Cychreus. For when the
Athenians were fighting the naval engagement with the Persians it is
said that a dragon was seen in the Athenian fleet, and the oracle
informed the Athenians that it was the hero Cychreus. And there is an
island facing Salamis called Psyttalea, on which they say as many as
400 Persians landed: who after the defeat of Xerxes’ fleet were they
say slain by the Greeks who passed over into Psyttalea. There is not
one statue in the island which is a work of art, but there are some
rude images of Pan made anyhow.
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