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 as you go from Corinth towards Sicyon you come to the tomb of
Messenian Lycus, whoever this Lycus was. For I find no Messenian Lycus
that practised in the pentathlum, or carried off the prize at Olympia.
This tomb is a mound of earth, and the Sicyonians mostly bury in the
following manner. The body they deposit in the ground, and over it a
stone slab with pillars on the top, on which are figures, generally
like the eagles in the temples. But they write no epitaph, but simply
the name of the deceased, not even his parentage, and bid the dead
farewell. And next to the tomb of Lycus, when you have crossed over the
Asopus, is on the right hand the temple of Olympian Zeus, and a little
further on, on the left side of the road, is the tomb of Eupolis the
Athenian Comedian. Further on in the direction of the city is the tomb
of Xenodice, who died in childbirth: it is unlike the tombs in this
part of the country, and has a painting, which is very fine. A little
further is the tomb of the Sicyonians, who died at Pellene, and Dyme in
Achaia, and at Megalopolis and Sellasia, whose exploits I shall relate
fully later on. And they have near the gate a well in a cave, which
oozes through the roof of the cave, so it is called the Dripping Well.
And in the present citadel there is a temple to Fortune Dwelling on
the Heights, and next it one to the Dioscuri. Both these and the statue
of Fortune are of wood. And in the theatre built under the citadel the
person represented on the stage-curtain is, they say, Aratus the son
of Clinias. And next to the theatre is a temple of Dionysus: the god
is fashioned in gold and ivory, and near him some Bacchantes in white
stone. These women they say are sacred to Dionysus, and full of Bacchic
fury. And the Sicyonians have other statues in a secret place, which
one night in every year they bring to the temple of Dionysus from the
place called Ornament Room, and they bring them with lighted torches
and national Hymns. The leader of the procession is called Baccheus,
this functionary was appointed by Androdamas the son of Phlias, and
the next in the procession is called Lysius, whom the Theban Phanes
brought from Thebes at the bidding of the Pythian Priestess. And Phanes
came to Sicyon, when Aristomachus the son of Cleodæus, mistaking the
oracle, lost thereby his return to the Peloponnese. And as you go from
the temple of Dionysus to the market-place there is a shrine of Artemis
Limnæa on the right hand. And that the roof has fallen in is clear to
the spectator. But as to the statue of the goddess--for there is none
now--the people of Sicyon do not say whether it was carried away to
some other place, or how it was destroyed (if destroyed).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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