Pausanias, Description of Greece (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Paus.]. | ||
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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.
8.16.3The 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.
8.16.4I know many wonderful graves, and will mention two of them, the one at
The Hebrews have a grave, that of Helen, a native woman, in the city of
ch. 17
8.17.1
After the grave of Aepytus you come to the highest mountain in In days of old, men made wooden images, so far as I have been able to discover, from the following trees ebony, cypress, cedar, oak, yew, lotus. But the image of Cyllenian Hermes is made of none of these, but of juniper wood. Its height, I conjecture, is about eight feet. Cyllene can show also the following marvel. On it the blackbirds are entirely white. The birds so called by the Boeotians are a somewhat different breed, which does not sing. Eagles called swan-eagles, very like to swans for whiteness, I am acquainted with, as I have seen them on Mount Sipylus round the lake called the Lake of Tantalus. White wild boars and Thracian white bears have been known to be acquired by private individuals. White hares are bred in Adjoining Cyllene is another mountain, Chelydorea, note where Hermes is said to have found a tortoise, taken the shell from the beast, and to have made therefrom a harp. Here is the boundary between Pheneus and
As you go from Pheneus to the west, the left road leads to the city Cleitor, while on the right is the road to Nonacris and the water of the Styx. Of old Nonacris was a town of the Arcadians that was named after the wife of Lycaon. When I visited it, it was in ruins, and most of these were hidden. Not far from the ruins is a high cliff; I know of none other that rises to so great a height. A water trickles down the cliff, called by the Greeks the water of the Styx.
ch. 18
8.18.1
Hesiod in the Theogony Epimenides of
note —for there are some who assign this hexameter poem to Hesiod—speaks of Styx as the daughter of Ocean and the wife of Pallas. Men say that Linus too gives a like account in his verses, though when I read these they struck me as altogether spurious.
Witness now to this be Earth, and broad Heaven above,
Hom. Il. 15.36-37These verses suggest that the poet had seen the water of the Styx trickling down. Again in the list of those who came with Guneus note he makes the river Titaresius receive its water from the Styx.
And the water of Styx down-flowing.
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