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 at no great distance from the statue of Epaminondas is the temple
of Ammon, the statue by Calamis and a votive offering from Pindar, who
also sent a Hymn in honour of Ammon to the Ammonians in Libya, which
Hymn is now inscribed on a triangular pillar near the altar which
Ptolemy the son of Lagus dedicated to Ammon. Next to the temple of
Ammon the Thebans have what is called Tiresias’ tower to observe the
omens, and near it is a temple of Fortune carrying in her arms Wealth
as a child. The Thebans say that Xenophon the Athenian made the hands
and face of the statue, and Callistonicus a native of Thebes all the
other parts. The idea is ingenious of putting Wealth in the hands of
Fortune as her mother or nurse, as is also the idea of Cephisodotus who
made for the Athenians a statue of Peace holding Wealth.
The Thebans have also some wooden statues of Aphrodite, so ancient
that they are said to be votive offerings of Harmonia, made out
of the wood of the gunwales of the ships of Cadmus. One they call
the Celestial Aphrodite, the other the Pandemian, and the third
the Heart-Turner. Harmonia meant by these titles of Aphrodite the
following. The Celestial is a pure love and has no connection with
bodily appetite, the Pandemian is the common vulgar sensual love,
and thirdly the goddess is called Heart-Turner because she turns the
heart of men away by lawless passion and unholy deeds. For Harmonia
knew that many bold deeds had been done in lawless passion both among
the Greeks and barbarians, such as were afterwards sung by poets, as
the legends about the mother of Adonis, and Phædra the daughter of
Minos, and the Thracian Tereus. And the temple of Law-giving Demeter
was they say formerly the house of Cadmus and his descendants. And the
statue of Demeter is only visible down to the chest. And there are some
brazen shields hung up here, which they say belonged to some of the
Lacedæmonian notables that fell at Leuctra.
At the gate called Prœtis is a theatre, and near it the temple of
Lysian Dionysus. The god was so called because, when some Thebans were
taken captive by the Thracians, and conducted to Haliartia, the god
freed them, and gave them an opportunity to kill the Thracians in their
sleep. One of the statues in the temple the Thebans say is Semele. Once
every year the temple is open on stated days. There are also the ruins
of the house of Lycus, and the sepulchre of Semele, it cannot be the
sepulchre of Alcmene, for when she died she became a stone. But the
Theban account about her differs from the Megarian: in fact the Greek
traditions mostly vary. The Thebans have here also monuments of the
sons and daughters of Amphion, the two sexes apart.
CHAPTER XVII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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