Greek Texts & Translations

The Boeotians dwelling around Helicon hold the tradition that Hesiod wrote nothing but the Works
, and even of this they reject the prelude to the Muses, saying that the poem begins with the account of the Strifes. ^note They showed me also a tablet of lead where the spring is, mostly defaced by time, on which is engraved the Works
.

There is another tradition, very different from the first, that Hesiod wrote a great number of poems; the one on women, the one called the Great Eoeae
, the Theogony
, the poem on the seer Melampus, the one on the descent to Hades of Theseus and Perithous, the Precepts of Chiron
, professing to be for the instruction of Achilles, and other poems besides the Works and Days
. These same Boeotians say that Hesiod learnt seercraft from the Acarnanians, and there are extant a poem called Mantica
(Seercraft), which I myself have read, and interpretations of portents.

Opposite stories are also told of Hesiod's death. All agree that Ctimenus and Antiphus, the sons of Ganyctor, fled from Naupactus to Molycria because of the murder of Hesiod, that here they sinned against Poseidon, and that in Molycria their punishment was inflicted. The sister of the young men had been ravished; some say the deed was Hesiod's, and others that Hesiod was wrongly thought guilty of another's crime.

So widely different are the traditions of Hesiod himself and his poems.

On the summit of Helicon is a small river called the Lamus. ^note In the territory of the Thespians is a place called Donacon (Reed-bed). Here is the spring of Narcissus. They say that Narcissus looked into this water, and not understanding that he saw his own reflection, unconsciously fell in love with himself, and died of love at the spring. But it is utter stupidity to imagine that a man old enough to fall in love was incapable of distinguishing a man from a man's reflection.

There is another story about Narcissus, less popular indeed than the other, but not without some support. It is said that Narcissus had a twin sister; they were exactly alike in appearance, their hair was the same, they wore similar clothes, and went hunting together. The story goes on that Narcissus fell in love with his sister, and when the girl died, would go to the spring, knowing that it was his reflection that he saw, but in spite of this knowledge finding some relief for his love in imagining that he saw, not his own reflection, but the likeness of his sister.

The flower narcissus grew, in my opinion, before this, if we are to judge by the verses of Pamphos. This poet was born many years before Narcissus the Thespian, and he says that the Maid, the daughter of Demeter, was carried off when she was playing and gathering flowers, and that the flowers by which she was deceived into being carried off were not violets, but the narcissus.

Sailing from Creusis, not out to sea, but along Boeotia, you reach on the right a city called Thisbe. First there is a mountain by the sea; on crossing it you will come to a plain, and after that to another mountain, at the foot of which is the city. Here there is a sanctuary of Heracles with a standing image of stone, and they hold a festival called the Heracleia.

Nothing would prevent the plain between the mountains becoming a lake owing to the volume of the water, had they not made a strong dyke right through it. So every other year they divert the water to the farther side of the dyke, and farm the other side. Thisbe, they say, was a nymph of the country, from whom the city has received its name.

Sailing from here you come to Tipha, a small town by the sea. The townsfolk have a sanctuary of Heracles and hold an annual festival. They claim to have been from of old the best sailors in Boeotia, and remind you that Tiphys, who was chosen to steer the Argo, was a fellow-townsman. They point out also the place before the city where they say Argo anchored on her return from Colchis.

As you go inland from Thespiae you come to Haliartus. The question who became founder of Haliartus and Coroneia I cannot separate from my account of Orchomenus. ^note At the Persian invasion the people of Haliartus sided with the Greeks, and so a division of the army of Xerxes overran and burnt both their territory and their city. In Haliartus is the tomb of Lysander the Lacedaemonian. For having attacked the walls of Haliartus, in which were troops from Thebes and Athens, he fell in the fighting that followed a sortie of the enemy.