Next to Sicyonia is Phliasia. Its chief town Phlius is 40 stades at most distant from Titane, and the road to it from Sicyon is straight. That the Phliasians have no connection with the Arcadians is plain from the catalogue of the Arcadians in Homer’s Iliad, for they are not included among them. And that they were Argives originally, and became Dorians after the return of the Heraclidæ to the Peloponnese, will appear in the course of my narrative. As I know there are many different traditions about among the Phliasians, I shall give those which are most generally accepted among them. The first person who lived in this land was they say Aras an Autochthon, and he built a city on that hill which is still in our time called the Arantine hill, (not very far from another hill, on which the Phliasians have their citadel and a temple of Hebe.) Here he built his city, and from him both land and city got called of old Arantia. It was in his reign that Asopus (said to be the son of Celusa and Poseidon) found the water of the river which they still call Asopus from the name of the person who found it.[17] And the sepulchre of Aras is in a place called Celeæ, where they say also Dysaules, an Eleusinian, is buried. And Aras had a son Aoris and a daughter Aræthyrea, who the Phliasians say were cunning hunters and brave in war. And, Aræthyrea dying first, Aoris changed the name of the city into Aræthyrea. Homer has made mention of it (when recording those who went with Agamemnon to Ilium) in the line “They lived at Orneæ and lovely Aræthyrea.”[18] And I think the tombs of the sons of Aras are on the Arantine hill. And at their tombs are some remarkable pillars, and before the rites which they celebrate to Ceres they look at these tombs, and call Aras and his sons to the libations. As to Phlias, the third who gave his name to the land, I cannot at all accept the Argive tradition that he was the son of Cisus the son of Temenus, for I know that he was called the son of Dionysus, and was said to have been one of those who sailed in the Argo. And the lines of the Rhodian poet bear me out, “Phlias also came with the men of Aræthyrea, where he dwelt, wealthy through his sire Dionysus, near the springs of Asopus.” And Aræthyrea was the mother of Phlias and not Chthonophyle, for Chthonophyle was his wife and he had Andromedas by her. CHAPTER XIII.