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 there is a temple in which are statues of Demeter and Proserpine
and Athene and Apollo: but originally the temple was built to Apollo
alone. For they say that Cephalus the son of Deioneus went with
Amphitryon to the Teleboæ, and was the first dweller in the island
which is now called from him Cephallenia: and that he fled from Athens,
and lived for some time at Thebes, because he had murdered his wife
Procris. And in the tenth generation afterwards Chalcinus and Dætus
his descendants sailed to Delphi, and begged of the god permission to
return to Athens: and he ordered them first to sacrifice to Apollo on
the spot where they should see a trireme on land moving. And when they
got to the mountain called Pœcilus a dragon appeared eagerly running
into its hole: and here they sacrificed to Apollo, and afterwards on
their arrival at Athens the Athenians made them citizens. Next to this
is a temple of Aphrodite, and before it a handsome wall of white stone.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Now the channels called Rheti are like rivers only in their flow, for
their water is sea water. And one might suppose that they flow from
the Euripus near Chalcis underground, falling into a sea with a lower
level. These Rheti are said to be sacred to Proserpine and Demeter,
and their priests only may catch the fish in them. And they were,
as I hear, in old times the boundaries between the territory of the
Eleusinians and Athenians. And the first inhabitant on the other side
of the Rheti was Crocon, and that district is called to this day the
kingdom of Crocon. This Crocon the Athenians say married Sæsara the
daughter of Celeus. This at least is the tradition of the occupants
of the township of Scambonidæ. Crocon’s tomb indeed I could not find,
but Eumolpus’ tomb the Athenians and Eubœans both show. This Eumolpus
they say came from Thrace, and was the son of Poseidon and Chione: and
Chione was they say the daughter of Boreas and Orithyia. Homer has
not indeed given us his pedigree, but he calls him in his poem a noble
man. And in the battle between the people of Eleusis and the Athenians
Erechtheus the king of Athens was slain, and also Immaradus the son of
Eumolpus: and peace was concluded on these conditions, that the people
of Eleusis should be in all other respects Athenians, but should have
the private management of their Mysteries. And the rites of the two
goddesses, Demeter and Proserpine, were performed by the daughters of
Celeus. Pamphus and Homer alike call them by the names Diogenea, and
Pammerope, and Sæsara. But on the death of Eumolpus Ceryx the youngest
son was the only one left, who (the heralds say) was not the son of
Eumolpus at all, but the son of Hermes by Aglaurus the daughter of
Cecrops.
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