What is called by the Delphians the navel, made of white stone, is according to their tradition the centre of the world, and Pindar in one of his Odes gives a similar account.[105] Here is a votive offering of the Lacedæmonians, a statue by Calamis of Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and wife of Orestes (the son of Agamemnon), and still earlier the wife of Neoptolemus the son of Achilles. The Ætolians have also erected a statue to Eurydamus their general, who commanded their army against the Galati. There is still among the mountains of Crete a town called Elyrus, its inhabitants sent a brazen goat as their offering to Delphi. This goat is represented suckling Phylacides and Philander, who according to the people of Elyrus were the sons of Apollo by the Nymph Acacallis, with whom he had an intrigue in the city Tarrha in the house of Carmanor. The Carystians also from Eubœa offered a brazen ox to Apollo after the Median war. I think both they and the Platæans made their votive offerings because, after repulsing the barbarian, they enjoyed prosperity in other respects and a free land to cultivate. The Ætolians also sent effigies of their generals and Apollo and Artemis, when they had subdued their neighbours the Acarnanians. The strangest thing I heard of was what happened in the seafight between the Liparæans and Tyrrhenians. The Pythian Priestess bade the Liparæans fight a naval engagement with the Tyrrhenians with as small a fleet as possible. They put to sea therefore with only five triremes, and the Tyrrhenians, thinking themselves quite a match for the Liparæans, put out to sea against them with only the same number of ships. And the Liparæans took them, and also another five that put out against them, and a third and even fourth set of five ships. They then placed at Delphi as votive offerings as many statues of Apollo as they had captured ships. Echecratides of Larissa offered the small Apollo, and the Delphians say this was the first of all the votive offerings. [105] Pindar _Pyth._ viii. 85. So also Æschylus, _Eumen._ 40. CHAPTER XVII.