Greek Texts & Translations

As you go from Pheneus to Pellene and Aegeira, an Achaean city, after about fifteen stades you come to a temple of Pythian Apollo. I found there only its ruins, which include a large altar of white marble. Here even now the Pheneatians still sacrifice to Apollo and Artemis, and they say that the sanctuary was made by Heracles after capturing Elis. Here also are tombs of heroes, those who joined the campaign of Heracles against Elis and lost their lives in the fighting.

They are Telamon, buried quite near the river Aroanius, a little farther away than is the sanctuary of Apollo, and Chalcodon, not far from the spring called Oenoe. Nobody could admit that there fell in this battle the Chalcodon who was the father of the Elephenor who led the Euboeans to Troy, and the Telamon who was the father of Ajax and Teucer. For how could Heracles have been helped in his task by a Chalcodon who, according to trustworthy tradition, had before this been killed in Thebes by Amphitryon?

And how would Teucer have founded the city of Salamis in Cyprus if nobody had expelled him from his native city after his return from Troy? And who else would have driven him out except Telamon? So it is plain that those who helped Heracles in his campaign against Elis were not the Chalcodon of Euboea and the Telamon of Aegina. It is, and always has been, not unknown that undistinguished persons have had the same names as distinguished heroes.

The borders of Pheneus and Achaia meet in more places than one; for towards Pellene the boundary is the river called Porinas, and towards Aegeira the “road to Artemis.” ^note Within the territory of the Pheneatians themselves, shortly after passing the sanctuary of the Pythian Apollo you will be on the road that leads to Mount Crathis.

On this mountain is the source of the river Crathis, which flows into the sea by the side of Aegae, now a deserted spot, though in earlier days it was a city of the Achaeans. After this Crathis is named the river in Bruttium in Italy. On Mount Crathis is a sanctuary of Artemis Pyronia (Fire-goddess), and in more ancient days the Argives used to bring from this goddess fire for their Lernaean ceremonies.

Not far from Tricrena is another mountain called Sepia, where they say that Aepytus, the son of Elatus, was killed by the snake, and they also made his grave on the spot, for they could not carry the body away. These snakes are still to be found, the Arcadians say, on the mountain, even at the present day; not many, however, for they are very scarce. The reason is that, as for the greater part of the year snow falls on the mountain, the snakes die that are cut off by the snow from their holes, while should any make good their escape to the holes, nevertheless some of them are killed by the snow, as the frost penetrates even into the very holes themselves.

The grave of Aepytus I was especially anxious to see, because Homer ^note in his verses about the Arcadians makes mention of the tomb of Aepytus. It is a mound of earth of no great size, surrounded by a circular base of stone. Homer naturally was bound to admire it, as he had never seen a more noteworthy tomb, just as he compares the dance worked by Hephaestus on the shield of Achilles to a dance made by Daedalus, because he had never seen more clever workmanship.

I know many wonderful graves, and will mention two of them, the one at Halicarnassus and one in the land of the Hebrews. The one at Halicarnassus was made for Mausolus, king of the city, and it is of such vast size, and so notable for all its ornament, that the Romans in their great admiration of it call remarkable tombs in their country “Mausolea.”

The Hebrews have a grave, that of Helen, a native woman, in the city of Jerusalem, which the Roman Emperor razed to the ground. There is a contrivance in the grave whereby the door, which like all the grave is of stone, does not open until the year brings back the same day and the same hour. Then the mechanism, unaided, opens the door, which, after a short interval, shuts itself. This happens at that time, but should you at any other try to open the door you cannot do so; force will not open it, but only break it down.