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A greater marvel still is the water that boils in the
In the territory of the Mantineans on the left of the plain called Untilled is a mountain, on which are the ruins of a camp of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and of a village called Nestane. For it is said that by this Nestane Philip made an encampment, and the spring here they still call Philippium after the king. Philip came to
Philip may be supposed to have accomplished exploits greater than those of any Macedonian king who reigned either before or after. But nobody of sound mind would call him a good general, for no man has so sinned by continually trampling on oaths to heaven, and by breaking treaties and dishonoring his word on every occasion.
8.7.6The wrath of heaven was not late in visiting him; never in fact have we known it more speedy. When he was but forty-six years old, Philip fulfilled the oracle that it is said was given him when he inquired of
The bull is crowned; the consummation is at hand; the sacrificer is ready.
Very soon afterwards events showed that this oracle pointed, not to the Persians, but to Philip himself.
On the death of Philip, his infant son by Cleopatra, the niece of Attalus, was along with his mother dragged by Olympias on to a bronze vessel and burned to death. Afterwards Olympias killed Aridaeus also. It turned out that the god intended to mow down to destruction the family of Cassander as well. Cassander's sons were by Thessalonice, the daughter of Philip, and both Thessalonice and Aridaeus had Thessalian women for their mothers. The fate of Alexander is familiar to everybody alike.
8.7.8But if Philip had taken to heart the fate of the Spartan Glaucus, note and at each of his acts had bethought himself of the verse:— note
If a man keeps his oath his family prospers hereafter;
then, I believe, some god would not have extinguished so relentlessly the life of Alexander and, at the same time, the Macedonian supremacy.
ch. 8
8.8.1
So much by way of a digression. After the ruins of Nestane is a holy sanctuary of Demeter, and every year the Mantineans hold a festival in her honor. By Nestane there lies, on lower ground, about . . . itself too forming part of the Untilled Plain, and it is called the Dancing Floor of Maera. The road across the Untilled Plain is about ten stades. After crossing it you will descend, a little farther on, into another plain. On it, alongside the highway, is a well called Lamb. The following story is told by the Arcadians. When Rhea had given birth to Poseidon, she laid him in a flock for him to live there with the lambs, and the spring too received its name just because the lambs pastured around it. Rhea, it is said, declared to Cronus that she had given birth to a horse, and gave him a foal to swallow instead of the child, just as later she gave him in place of Zeus a stone wrapped up in swaddling clothes. When I began to write my history I was inclined to count these legends as foolishness, but on getting as far as The city of the Mantineans is about twelve stades farther away from this spring. Now there are plain indications that it was in another place that Mantineus the son of Lycaon founded his city, which even to-day is called Ptolis (City) by the Arcadians. From here, in obedience to an oracle, If we may base a conjecture on the verses of Homer, we are led to believe that this snake was a dragon. When in the list of ships he tells how the Greeks abandoned Philoctetes in
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