Pausanias, Description of Greece (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Paus.]. | ||
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until Pan, they say, visited
The image, they say, was made after this fashion. It was seated on a rock, like to a woman in all respects save the head. She had the head and hair of a horse, and there grew out of her head images of serpents and other beasts. Her tunic reached right to her feet; on one of her hands was a dolphin, on the other a dove. Now why they had the image made after this fashion is plain to any intelligent man who is learned in traditions.
They say that they named her Black because the goddess had black apparel.
8.42.5They cannot relate either who made this wooden image or how it caught fire. But the old image was destroyed, and the Phigalians gave the goddess no fresh image, while they neglected for the most part her festivals and sacrifices, until the barrenness fell on the land. Then they went as suppliants to the Pythian priestess and received this response:—
8.42.6
Azanian Arcadians, acorn-eaters, who dwell
In
You have come to learn a cure for grievous famine,
Who alone have twice been nomads, alone have twice lived on wild fruits.
It was Deo who made you cease from pasturing, Deo who made you pasture again
After being binders of corn and eaters note of cakes,
Because she was deprived of privileges and ancient honors given by men of former times.
And soon will she make you eat each other and feed on your children,
Unless you appease her anger with libations offered by all your people,
And adorn with divine honors the nook of the cave.
When the Phigalians heard the oracle that was brought back, they held Demeter in greater honor than before, and particularly they persuaded Onatas of
At the time when Xerxes crossed over into
These too are works of Onatas, and there are two inscriptions at
Having won victories in thy grand games, Olympian Zeus,
Once with the four-horse chariot, twice with the race-horse,
Hieron bestowed on thee these gifts: his son dedicated them,
Deinomenes, as a memorial to his Syracusan father.
The other inscription is:—
Onatas, son of Micon, fashioned me,
Onatas was contemporary with Hegias of
Who had his home in the island of
It was mainly to see this Demeter that I came to
They have a priestess who performs the rites, and with her is the youngest of their “sacrificers,” as they are called, who are citizens, three in number. There is a grove of oaks around the cave, and a cold spring rises from the earth. The image made by Onatas no longer existed in my time, and most of the Phigalians were ignorant that it had ever existed at all.
8.42.13The oldest, however, of the inhabitants I met said that three generations before his time some stones had fallen on the image out of the roof; these crushed the image, destroying it utterly. Indeed, in the roof I could still discern plainly where the stones had broken away.
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