Greek Texts & Translations

Pharae is seventy stades distant from Abia. On the road is a salt spring. The Emperor Augustus caused the Messenians of Pharae to be incorporated in Laconia. The founder Pharis is said to have been the son of Hermes and Phylodameia the daughter of Danaus. He had no male children, but a daughter Telegone. Homer, tracing her descendants in the Iliad
, ^note says that twins, Crethon and Ortilochus, were born to Diocles, Diocles himself being the son of Ortilochus son of Alpheius. He makes no reference to Telegone, who in the Messenian account bore Ortilochus to Alpheius.

I heard also at Pharae that besides the twins a daughter Anticleia was born to Diocles, and that her children were Nicomachus and Gorgasus, by Machaon the son of Asclepius. They remained at Pharae and succeeded to the kingdom on the death of Diocles. The power of healing diseases and curing the maimed has remained with them to this day, and in return for this, sacrifices and votive offerings are brought to their sanctuary. The people of Pharae possess also a temple of Fortune (Tyche) and an ancient image.

Homer is the first whom I know to have mentioned Fortune in his poems. He did so in the Hymn to Demeter
, where he enumerates the daughters of Ocean, telling how they played with Kore the daughter of Demeter, and making Fortune one of them. The lines are: We all in a lovely meadow, Leucippe, Phaeno, Electre and Ianthe, Melobosis and Tyche and Ocyrhoe with face like a flower.
HH Dem. 5.420

He said nothing further about this goddess being the mightiest of gods in human affairs and displaying greatest strength, as in the Iliad
he represented Athena and Enyo as supreme in war, and Artemis feared in childbirth, and Aphrodite heeding the affairs of marriage. ^note But he makes no other mention of Fortune.

Bupalos ^note a skilful temple-architect and carver of images, who made the statue of Fortune at Smyrna, was the first whom we know to have represented her with the heavenly sphere upon her head and carrying in one hand the horn of Amaltheia, as the Greeks call it, representing her functions to this extent. The poems of Pindar later contained references to Fortune, and it is he who called her Supporter of the City.

For this reason Augustus punished the Messenians and the rest of his adversaries, some more, some less. The people of Thuria left their town, which lay originally on high ground, and came down to live in the plain. Nevertheless the upper town is not entirely deserted, but there are remains of the wall and a temple there, called the temple of the Syrian Goddess. A river called Aris flows past the town in the plain.

In the interior is a village Calamae and a place Limnae, where is a sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis (Of the lake). They say that Teleclus king of Sparta met his end here.

On the road from Thuria towards Arcadia are the springs of the Pamisus, at which little children find cures.

A road turns to the left from the springs, and after some forty stades is the city of the Messenians under Ithome. It is enclosed not only by Mount Ithome, but on the side towards the Pamisos by Mount Eva. The mountain is said to have obtained its name from the fact that the Bacchic cry of “Evoe” was first uttered here by Dionysus and his attendant women.

Round Messene is a wall, the whole circuit of which is built of stone, with towers and battlements upon it. I have not seen the walls at Babylon or the walls of Memnon at Susa in Persia, nor have I heard the account of any eye-witness; but the walls at Ambrossos in Phocis, at Byzantium and at Rhodes, all of them the most strongly fortified places, are not so strong as the Messenian wall.