And as you enter the market-place is a temple of Persuasion, also without a statue. Persuasion is worshipped by them on the following ground. Apollo and Artemis after slaying Pytho went to Ægialea to purify themselves. But being seized with some panic fear in the place which they now call Fear, they turned aside to Crete to Carmanor, and a pestilence came upon the people at Ægialea, and they were ordered by the seers to propitiate Apollo and Artemis. And they sent 7 lads and 7 maidens to the river Sythas to supplicate Apollo and Artemis, and persuaded by them these deities went to what was then the citadel, and the place they first reached was the temple of Persuasion. A Pageant of all this goes on to this day. On the Festival of Apollo the lads go to the river Sythas, and, after bringing Apollo and Artemis to the temple of Persuasion, take them back again to the temple of Apollo. And that temple is in the middle of the present market-place, and they say it was originally built by Prœtus, because his daughters got cured of madness here. They say also that Meleager hung up in this temple the spear with which he killed the Calydonian boar: here too (they say) are deposited the flutes of Marsyas: for after his awful death the river Marsyas carried them to Mæander, and they turned up again at the Asopus and were landed at Sicyon, and given to Apollo by a shepherd who found them. Of these votive offerings there is no vestige: for they were burnt with the temple. And the temple and statue were re-erected in my time by Pythocles. CHAPTER VIII.