Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume II.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume II.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
And Smyrna, which was one of the 12 cities of the Æolians, on the site
of what they now call the old city, was taken from the Æolians by the
Ionians who came from Colophon, but some time afterwards the Ionians
admitted its inhabitants to the Pan-Ionic league. But Alexander the
son of Philip built the modern Smyrna in consequence of a dream he
had. For on his return from hunting on Mount Pagus he went they say
to the temple of Nemesis, and there found a well, and a plane-tree in
front of the temple growing in the water. And they say he slept under
this plane-tree and the goddesses of Nemesis appeared to him and bade
him build a town on that site, and remove the people of Smyrna there
from the old Smyrna. And the people of Smyrna sent envoys to Claros to
consult the oracle in the present conjuncture, and the god gave the
following oracular response,
“Thrice happy yea four times happy shall those men be, who shall dwell
near Mount Pagus across the sacred Meles.”
So they willingly removed, and they worship two Nemeses instead of one,
and they say their mother was Night, but the Athenians who worship
Nemesis at Rhamnus say that she was the daughter of Oceanus.
The Ionians have a most magnificent country for the fruits of the
earth, and temples such as there are nowhere else, the finest that
of Ephesian Artemis for size and opulence, and next two to Apollo
not quite finished, one at Branchidæ in Milesia, the other at Claros
in Colophonia. Two temples in Ionia were burnt down by the Persians,
one of Hera in Samos, and one of Athene in Phocæa. They are still
wonderful though the fire has passed upon them. And you would be
delighted with the temple of Hercules at Erythræ, and with the temple
of Athene at Priene, the latter for the statue of the goddess, the
former for its great antiquity. And at Erythræ is a work of art
unlike the most ancient of Æginetan or Attic workmanship: its design
is perfect Egyptian. It is the wooden raft on which the god sailed
from Tyre in Phœnicia, why the people of Erythræ do not say. But to
prove that it came into the Ionian sea they say it was moored at the
promontory called Mid, which is on the mainland about half-way from the
harbour of Erythræ to the island of Chios. And when this raft was at
the promontory, the people of Erythræ and the Chians too had no small
trouble in trying to get it on shore. At last a native of Erythræ, who
got his living from the sea by catching fish, but had lost his eyesight
through some disease, Phormio by name, dreamed that the women of
Erythræ were to cut off their hair, and that the men making a rope out
of this hair were to drag the raft ashore. The women who were citizens
wouldn’t hear of it: but all the women who were slaves of Thracian
race, or who being free had yet to earn their own living, allowed their
hair to be cut off, and so at last the people of Erythræ got the raft
to shore. So Thracian women alone are allowed to enter the temple of
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