Greek Texts & Translations

I have heard some who maintained that Lepreus was founded by Leprea, the daughter of Pyrgeus. Others say that the first dwellers in the land were afflicted with the disease leprosy, ^note and that the city received its name from the misfortune of the inhabitants. The Lepreans told me that in their city once was a temple of Zeus Leucaeus (Of the White Poplar), the grave of Lycurgus, son of Aleus, and the grave of Caucon, over which was the figure of a man holding a lyre.

But as far as I could see they had no tomb of distinction, and no sanctuary of any deity save one of Demeter. Even this was built of unburnt brick, and contained no image. Not far from the city of the Lepreans is a spring called Arene, and they say that it derives its name from the wife of Aphareus.

Returning again to Samicum, and passing through the district, we reach the mouth of the Anigrus. The current of this river is often held back by violent gales, which carry the sand from the open sea against it and stop the onward flow of the water. So whenever the sand has become soaked on both sides, by the sea without and by the river within, beasts and still more travellers on foot are in danger of sinking into it.

The Anigrus descends from the mountain Lapithus in Arcadia, and right from its source its water does not smell sweet but actually stinks horribly. Before it receives the tributary Acidas it plainly cannot support fish-life at all. After the rivers unite, the fish that come down into the Anigrus with the water are uneatable, though before, if they are caught in the Acidas, they are eatable.

I heard from an Ephesian that the Acidas was called Iardanus in ancient times. I repeat his statement, though I have nowhere found evidence in support of it. I am convinced that the peculiar odor of the Anigrus is due to the earth through which the water springs up, just as those rivers beyond Ionia, the exhalation from which is deadly to man, owe their peculiarity to the same cause. Some Greeks say that Chiron,

others that Pylenor, another Centaur, when shot by Heracles fled wounded to this river and washed his hurt in it, and that it was the hydra's poison which gave the Anigrus its nasty smell. Others again attribute the quality of the river to Melampus the son of Amythaon, who threw into it the means he used to purify the daughters of Proetus.

There is in Samicum a cave not far from the river, and called the Cave of the Anigrid Nymphs. Whoever enters it suffering from alphos or leuke ^note first has to pray to the nymphs and to promise some sacrifice or other, after which he wipes the unhealthy parts of his body. Then, swimming through the river, he leaves his old uncleanness in its water, coming up sound and of one color.

As to the ruins of Arene, no Messenian and no Elean could point them out to me with certainty. Those who care to do so may make all sorts of different guesses about it, but the most plausible account seemed to me that of those who held that in the heroic age and even earlier Samicum was called Arene. These quoted too the words of the Iliad
:— There is a river Minyeius flowing into the sea
near Arene.
Hom. Il. 11.722-3

These ruins are very near to the Anigrus; and, although it might be questioned whether Samicum was called Arene, yet the Arcadians are agreed that of old the Anigrus was called the Minyeius. One might well hold that the Neda near the sea was made the boundary between Elis and Messenia at the time of the return of the Heracleidae to the Peloponnesus.

After the Anigrus, if you travel for a considerable distance through a district that is generally sandy and grows wild pines, you will see behind you on the left the ruins of Scillus. It was one of the cities of Triphylia but in the war between Pisa and Elis the citizens of Scillus openly helped Pisa against her enemy, and for this reason the Eleans utterly destroyed it.

The Lacedaemonians afterwards separated Scillus from Elis and gave it to Xenophon, the son of Grylus, when he had been exiled from Athens, The reason for his banishment was that he had taken part in an expedition which Cyrus, the greatest enemy of the Athenian people, had organized against their friend, the Persian king. ^note Cyrus, in fact, with his seat at Sardis, had been providing Lysander, the son of Aristocritus, and the Lacedaemonians with money for their fleet. Xenophon, accordingly, was banished and having made Scillus his home he built in honor of Ephesian Artemis a temple with a sanctuary and a sacred enclosure.