4.33.5
I may not reveal the rites of the Great Goddesses, for it is their mysteries which they celebrate in the Carnasian grove, and I regard them as second only to the Eleusinian in sanctity. But my dream did not prevent me from making known to all that the brazen urn, discovered by the Argive general, and the bones of Eurytus the son of Melaneus were kept here. A river Charadrus flows past the grove;
4.33.6
about eight stades along the road to the left are the ruins of Andania. The guides agree that the city got its name from a woman Andania, but I can say nothing as to her parents or her husband. On the road from Andania towards Cyparissiae is Polichne, as it is called, and the streams of Electra and Coeus. The names perhaps are to be connected with Electra the daughter of Atlas and Coeus the father of Leto, or Electra and Coeus may be two local heroes.
4.33.7
When the Electra is crossed, there is a spring called Achaia, and the ruins of a city Dorium. Homer states note that the misfortune of Thamyris took place here in Dorium, because he said that he would overcome the Muses themselves in song. But Prodicus of Phocaea, if the epic called the Minyad
note is indeed his, says that Thamyris paid the penalty in Hades for his boast against the Muses. My view is that Thamyris lost his eyesight through disease, as happened later to Homer. Homer, however, continued making poetry all his life without giving way to his misfortune, while Thamyris forsook his art through stress of the trouble that afflicted him.
ch. 34
4.34.1
From Messene to the mouth of the Pamisus is a journey of eighty stades. The Pamisus is a pure stream flowing through cultivated lands, and is navigable some ten stades from the sea. Sea-fish run up it, especially in spring, as they do up the Rhine and Maeander. The chief run of fish is up the stream of the Achelous, which discharges opposite the Echinades islands.
4.34.2
But the fish that enter the Pamisus are of quite a different kind, as the water is pure and not muddy like the rivers which I have mentioned. The grey mullet, a fish that loves mud, frequents the more turbid streams. The rivers of Greece contain no creatures dangerous to men as do the Indus and the Egyptian Nile, or again the Rhine and Danube, the Euphrates and Phasis. These indeed produce man-eating creatures of the worst, in shape resembling the cat-fish of the Hermus and Maeander, but of darker color and stronger. In these respects the cat-fish is inferior.
4.34.3
The Indus and Nile both contain crocodiles, and the Nile river-horses as well, as dangerous to man as the crocodile. But the rivers of Greece contain no terrors from wild beasts, for the sharks of the Aous, which flows through Thesprotia, are not river beasts but migrants from the sea.
4.34.4
Corone is a city to the right of the Pamisus, on the sea-coast under Mount Mathia. On this road is a place on the coast regarded as sacred to Ino. For they say that she came up from the sea at this point, after her divinity had been accepted and her name changed from Ino to Leucothea. A short distance further the river Bias reaches the sea. The name is said to be derived from Bias the son of Amythaon. Twenty stades off the road is the fountain of Plataniston, the water of which flows out of a broad plane tree, which is hollow inside. The breadth of the tree gives the impression of a small cave; from it the drinking water flows to Corone.
4.34.5
The old name of Corone was Aepeia, but when the Messenians were restored to Peloponnese by the Thebans, it is said that Epimelides, who was sent as founder, named it Coroneia after his native town in Boeotia. The Messenians got the name wrong from the start, and the mistake which they made gradually prevailed in course of time. Another story is told to the effect that, when digging the foundations of the city wall, they came upon a bronze crow, in Greek corone.
