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
At the place where the Euripus parts Eubœa from Bœotia, as you go
forward a little on the right of the temple of Mycalessian Demeter
you come to Aulis, so called they say from the daughter of Ogygus.
There is here a temple of Artemis and two stone statues of her, one
holding torches, and the other like an archer. They say that when the
Greeks in accordance with the oracle of Calchas were about to sacrifice
Iphigenia, the goddess caused a doe to be sacrificed instead. And
they keep in the temple the remains of the plane-tree which Homer has
mentioned in the Iliad.[57] It is also said that the wind at Aulis
was not favourable to the Greeks, but when at last a favourable wind
appeared then everyone sacrificed to Artemis what each had, male and
female victims, and since then it has been customary at Aulis to accept
all kinds of victims. There are shown here too the well near which the
plane-tree grows, and on a hill near the tent of Agamemnon a brazen
threshold. And some palm trees grow before the temple, the fruit of
which is not throughout good to eat as in Palestine, but they are
more mellow than the fruit of the palm-trees in Ionia. There are not
many inhabitants at Aulis, and all of them are potters. The people of
Tanagra inhabit this district, and all about Mycalessus and Harma.
[57] Iliad, ii. 307, 310.
CHAPTER XX.
In that part of the district of Tanagra near the sea is a place called
Delium, in which are statues of Artemis and Leto. And the people of
Tanagra say their founder was Pœmander, the son of Chæresilaus the son
of Iasius the son of Eleuther, who was the son of Apollo by Æthusa
the daughter of Poseidon. And Pœmander they say married Tanagra the
daughter of Æolus, though Corinna in her verses about her says that
she was the daughter of Asopus. As her life was prolonged to a very
advanced age they say that the people who lived round about called her
Graia, and in process of time called the city so too. And the name
remained so long that Homer speaks of the city by that name in his
Catalogue, in the line
“Thespea, and Graia, and spacious Mycalessus.”[58]
But in process of time it got its old name Tanagra back again.
At Tanagra is the tomb of Orion, and the mountain Cerycius, where they
say Hermes was reared. There is also the place called Polus, where they
say Atlas sits and meditates on things under the earth and things in
heaven, of whom Homer writes,
“Daughter of astute Atlas, who knows the depths of every sea, and who
by himself supports the lofty pillars, which keep apart earth and
heaven.”[59]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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