Greek Texts & Translations

If I am to base my calculations on the accounts of the Greeks in fixing the relative ages of such trees as are still preserved and flourish, the oldest of them is the withy growing in the Samian sanctuary of Hera, after which come the oak in Dodona, the olive on the Acropolis and the olive in Delos. The third place in respect of age the Syrians would assign to the bay-tree they have in their country. Of the others this plane-tree is the oldest.

About a stade distant from Caphyae is a place called Condylea, where there are a grove and a temple of Artemis called of old Condyleatis. They say that the name of the goddess was changed for the following reason. Some children, the number of whom is not recorded, while playing about the sanctuary found a rope, and tying it round the neck of the image said that Artemis was being strangled.

The Caphyans, detecting what the children had done, stoned them to death. When they had done this, a malady befell their women, whose babies were stillborn, until the Pythian priestess bade them bury the children, and sacrifice to them every year as sacrifice is made to heroes, because they had been wrongly put to death. The Caphyans still obey this oracle, and call the goddess at Condyleae, as they say the oracle also bade them, the Strangled Lady from that day to this.

Going up about seven stades from Caphyae you will go down to what is called Nasi. Fifty stades farther on is the Ladon. You will then cross the river and reach a grove called Soron, passing through Argeathae, Lycuntes, as it is called, and Scotane. Now the road to Psophis passes by way of Soron,

which, like other Arcadian groves, breeds the following beasts wild boars, bears, and tortoises of vast size. One could of the last make harps not inferior to those made from the Indian tortoise. At the end of Soron are the ruins of the village Paus, and a little farther what is called Seirae; this Seirae forms a boundary between Cleitor and Psophis.

but the most accurate version is that Eryx, the despot of Sicania, had a daughter named Psophis, whom Heracles, though he had intercourse with her, refused to take to his home, but left with child in the care of his friend Lycortas, who lived at Phegia, a city called Erymanthus before the reign of Phegeus. Having been brought up here, Echephron and Promachus, the sons of Heracles and the Sicanian woman, changed the name of Phegia to Psophis, the name of their mother.

Psophis is also the name of the Zacynthian acropolis, because the first man to sail across to the island was Zacynthus, the son of Dardanus, a Psophidian who became its founder. From Seirae it is thirty stades to Psophis, by the side of which runs the river Aroanius, and a little farther away the river Erymanthus.

The Erymanthus has its source in Mount Lampeia, which is said to be sacred to Pan. One might regard Lampeia as a part of Mount Erymanthus. Homer says ^note that in Taygetus and Erymanthus . . . hunter . . . so . . . of Lampeia, Erymanthus, and passing through Arcadia, with Mount Pholoe on the right and the district of Thelpusa on the left, flows into the Alpheius.

There is also a legend that Heracles at the command of Eurystheus hunted by the side of the Erymanthus a boar that surpassed all others in size and in strength. The people of Cumae among the Opici say that the boar's tusks dedicated in their sanctuary of Apollo are those of the Erymanthian boar, but the saying is altogether improbable.

In Psophis there is a sanctuary of Aphrodite surnamed Erycine; I found only ruins of it remaining, but the people said that it was established by the sons of Psophis. Their account is probable, for in Sicily too, in the territory of Eryx, is a sanctuary of Erycine, which from the remotest times has been very holy, and quite as rich as the sanctuary in Paphos.