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 as you go to the lower part of the city you come to the temple of
the Dindymene Mother, where Attes is honoured. They do not show his
statue, but there is one of the Mother wrought in stone. And in the
market-place there is a temple of Olympian Zeus, he is on his throne
and Athene is standing by it. And next Olympian Zeus is a statue of
Hera, and a temple of Apollo, and a naked Apollo in brass, and sandals
are on his feet, and one foot is on the skull of an ox. Alcæus has
shown that Apollo rejoices especially in oxen in the Hymn that he
wrote about Hermes, how Hermes filched the oxen of Apollo, and Homer
still earlier than Alcæus has described how Apollo tended the oxen of
Laomedon for hire. He has put the following lines in the Iliad into
Poseidon’s mouth.
“I was drawing a spacious and handsome wall round the city of the
Trojans, that it might be impregnable, while you, Phœbus, were tending
the slow-paced cows with the crumpled horns.”[10]
That is therefore one would infer the reason why the god is represented
with his foot on the skull of an ox. And in the market-place in the
open air is a statue of Athene, and in front of it is the tomb of
Patreus.
And next to the market-place is the Odeum, and there is a statue of
Apollo there well worth seeing, it was made from the spoil that the
people of Patræ got, when they alone of the Achæans helped the Ætolians
against the Galati. And this Odeum is beautified in other respects more
than any in Greece except the one at Athens: that excels this both in
size and in all its fittings, it was built by the Athenian Herodes
in memory of his dead wife. In my account of Attica I passed that
Odeum over, because that part of my work was written before Herodes
began building it. And at Patræ, as you go from the market-place
where the temple of Apollo is, there is a gate, and the device on
the gate consists of golden effigies of Patreus and Preugenes and
Atherion, all three companions and contemporaries. And right opposite
the market-place at this outlet is the grove and temple of Artemis
Limnatis. While the Dorians were already in possession of Lacedæmon and
Argos, they say that Preugenes in obedience to a dream took the statue
of Artemis Limnatis from Sparta, and that the trustiest of his slaves
shared with him in the enterprize. And that statue from Lacedæmon they
keep generally at Mesoa, because originally it was taken by Preugenes
there, but when they celebrate the festival of Artemis Limnatis, one
of the servants of the goddess takes the old statue from Mesoa to the
sacred precincts at Patræ: in which are several temples, not built in
the open air, but approached by porticoes. The statue of Æsculapius
except the dress is entirely of stone, that of Athene is in ivory and
gold. And in front of the temple of Athene is the tomb of Preugenes, to
whom they offer funereal rites as to Patreus annually, at the time of
the celebration of the feast to Artemis Limnatis. And not far from the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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