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
As you cross over Artemisium into the district of Mantinea the plain
Argum (_unfruitful_) will receive you, rightly so called. For the rain
that comes down from the mountains makes the plain unfruitful, and
would have prevented it being anything but a swamp, had not the water
disappeared in a cavity in the ground. It reappears at a place called
Dine. This Dine is at a place in Argolis called Genethlium, and the
water is sweet though it comes up from the sea. At Dine the Argives
used formerly to offer to Poseidon horses ready bridled. Sweet water
comes up from the sea plainly here in Argolis, and also in Thesprotia
at a place called Chimerium. More wonderful still is the hot water of
Mæander, partly flowing from a rock which the river surrounds, partly
coming up from the mud of the river. And near Dicæarchia (_Puteoli_) in
Tyrrhenia the sea water is hot, and an island has been constructed, so
as for the water to afford warm baths.
There is a mountain on the left of the plain Argum, where there are
ruins of the camp of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and of the village
Nestane. For it was at this village they say that Philip encamped, and
the well there they still call Philip’s well. He went into Arcadia to
win over the Arcadians to his side, and at the same time to separate
them from the other Greeks. Philip one can well believe displayed the
greatest valour of all the Macedonian kings before or after him, but
no rightminded person could call him a good man, seeing that he trod
under foot the oaths he had made to the gods, and on all occasions
violated truces, and dishonoured good faith among men. And the
vengeance of the deity came upon him not late, but early. For Philip
had only lived 46 years when the oracle at Delphi was made good by his
death, given to him they say when he inquired about the Persian war,
“The bull is crowned, the end is come, the sacrificer’s near.”
This as the god very soon showed did not refer to the Mede, but to
Philip himself. And after the death of Philip his baby boy by Cleopatra
the niece of Attalus was put by Olympias with his mother into a brazen
vessel over a fire, and so killed. Olympias also subsequently killed
Aridæus. The deity also intended as it seems to mow down all the family
of Cassander by untimely ends. For Cassander married Thessalonica
the daughter of Philip, and Thessalonica and Aridæus had Thessalian
mothers. As to Alexander all know of his early death. But if Philip
had considered the eulogium passed upon Glaucus the Spartan, and had
remembered that line in each of his actions,
“The posterity of a conscientious man shall be fortunate,”[23]
I do not think that there would have been any reason for any of the
gods to have ended at the same time the life of Alexander and the
Macedonian supremacy. But this has been a digression.
[23] See Herod. vi. 86. Hesiod, 285.
CHAPTER VIII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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