Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
_Solution._ Eunostus was the son of Elieus who came of Cephisus
and Scias, but they say received his name from Eunosta, the nymph that
brought him up. This man was honest and just, and no less temperate and
austere. They say that Ochna his niece fell in love with him, who was
one of the daughters of Colonus; and when he perceived that she tempted
him to lie with her, manifesting his indignation he went and accused
her to her brethren. But she had cried Whore first and provoked her
brethren, Echimus, Leon, and Bucolus, to kill Eunostus, by her false
suggestion that he would have forced her; wherefore these laid wait for
the young man and slew him, upon which Elieus secured them. Now Ochna
growing penitent and full of terror, as well to discharge the grief
she had for her beloved as out of commiseration towards her brethren,
confesses the whole truth to Elieus, and he declares it to Colonus,
who condemned them. Whereupon Ochna’s brethren fled, but she broke her
neck from some high place, as Myrtis the Anthedonian poetess hath told
us. Therefore he kept the tomb and grove of Eunostus from the access
and approach of women, insomuch that upon earthquakes, droughts, and
other portents that often there happened, the Tanagrians made diligent
search whether any woman had not by stealth got nigh to that place.
And there are some (of whom Clidamus, a man of great fame, is one)
who report that Eunostus met them as he was going to the sea to wash
himself because a woman had entered into his grove. Diocles also, in
his Treatise concerning Shrines, relates the edict of the Tanagrians
upon the things that Clidamus declared.
_Question 41._ Whence is it that in Boeotia there is a river at
Eleon called Scamander?
_Solution._ Deimachus, the son of Eleon and intimate friend of
Hercules, bore his part in the siege of Troy. But the war proving
long (as it seems), he took to him Glaucia the daughter of Scamander
who had fallen in love with him, and got her with child: soon after,
fighting against the Trojans, he was slain. Glaucia, fearing that she
might be apprehended, fled to Hercules, and acquainted him with her
late affection towards Deimachus, and the familiarity she had with
him. Hercules, both out of commiseration to the woman, as also for joy
that there was an offspring left of so good a man and his intimate
acquaintance, took Glaucia on shipboard; and when she was delivered of
a son, brought her into Boeotia, and committed her and her child to the
care of Eleon. The son was named Scamander, and came to reign over that
country. He called the river Inachus by his own name Scamander, and
the next rivulet he named from his mother Glaucia; but the fountain he
called Acidusa by his own wife’s name, by whom he had three daughters,
which they have a veneration for to this day, styling them virgins.
_Question 42._ Whence was that proverbial speech, “Let this
prevail”?
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