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
Hyperochus, a native of Cumæ, has recorded that a woman called Demo,
of Cumæ in the Opican district, delivered oracles after Herophile and
in a similar manner. The people of Cumæ do not produce any oracle
of Demo’s, but they shew a small stone urn in the temple of Apollo,
wherein they say are her remains. After Demo the Hebrews beyond
Palestine had a prophetess called Sabbe, whose father they say was
Berosus and mother Erymanthe, but some say she was a Babylonian Sibyl,
others an Egyptian.
Phaennis, (the daughter of the king of the Chaones), and the Peleæ at
Dodona, also prophesied by divine inspiration, but were not called
Sibyls. As to the age and oracles of Phaennis, one will find upon
inquiry that she was a contemporary of Antiochus, who seized the
kingdom after taking Demetrius prisoner. As to the Peleades, they were
they say earlier than Phemonoe, and were the first women that sang the
following lines:
“Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus shall be. O great Zeus!
Earth yields us fruits, let us then call her Mother.”
Prophetical men, as Euclus the Cyprian, and the Athenian Musæus the
son of Antiophemus, and Lycus the son of Pandion, as well as Bacis
the Bœotian, were they say inspired by Nymphs. All their oracular
utterances except those of Lycus I have read.
Such are the women and men who up to my time have been said to have
been prophetically inspired: and as time goes on there will perhaps be
other similar cases.[98]
[97] The text is somewhat uncertain here. I have tried to extract the
best sense.
[98] “Qui hoc et similia putant dicuntque _Pausaniam
opposuisse Christianis_, hos velim explicare causam, cur Pausanias
tecte tantum in illos invadere, neque usquam quidquam aperte contra eos
dicere ausus sit.” _Siebelis._
CHAPTER XIII.
The brazen head of the Pæonian bison was sent to Delphi by Dropion,
the son of Deon, king of the Pæonians. These bisons are most difficult
of all beasts to capture alive, for no nets are strong enough to hold
them. They are hunted in the following manner. When the hunters have
found a slope terminating in a hollow, they first of all fence it all
round with a palisade, they then cover the slope and level ground near
the bottom with newly stripped hides, and if they chance to be short
of hides, then they make old dry skins slippery with oil. The most
skilful horsemen then drive these bisons to this place that I have
described, and slipping on the first hides they roll down the slope
till they get to the level ground at the bottom. There they leave them
at first, but on the 4th or 5th day, when hunger and weakness has
subdued their spirit somewhat, those who are skilled in taming them
offer them, while they are still lying there, pinenuts after first
removing the husks, for they will at first touch no other kind of food,
and at last they bind them and lead them off. This is how they capture
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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