Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

CHAPTER XVI.

And hard by is the temple of Hilaira and Phœbe, who the writer of the Cyprian poems says were the daughters of Apollo. And their priestesses are maidens, called also Leucippides as well as the goddesses. One of their statues was touched up by a priestess of the goddesses, who with an art not unknown in our days put a new face on the old statue, but a dream prevented her treating the other statue in the same way. Here is hung up an egg, fastened to the roof by fillets; they say it is the egg which Leda is said to have laid. And every year the women weave a coat for Apollo at Amyclæ, and they call the place where they weave it Coat. Near the temple is a house which they say the sons of Tyndareus originally lived in, but afterwards Phormio a Spartan got possession of it. To him Castor and Pollux came as strangers, they said they had come from Cyrene and desired to lodge at his house, and asked for a chamber, (with which they were greatly pleased), as long as they should remain at Sparta. But he bade them go to some other house where they might like to dwell, he could not give them that chamber, for it was the apartment of his daughter a maiden. And the next day maiden and her attendants had all vanished, but statues of Castor and Pollux were found in the chamber, and a table with some assa-fœtida on it. Such at least is the tradition.

And as you go to the gates from the place called Coat there is a hero-chapel of Chilo, who was accounted one of the seven wise men, and of an Athenian hero who accompanied Dorieus, the son of Anaxandrides, on the expedition to colonize Sicily. And they put in at Eryx thinking that district belonged to the descendants of Hercules, and not to barbarians who really held it. For there is a tradition that Eryx and Hercules wrestled on the following conditions, that if Hercules conquered the land of Eryx should be his, but if Eryx conquered the oxen of Geryon, (which Hercules was then driving,) should be his, for these oxen had swum across to Sicily from the promontory at Scylla,[38] and Hercules had crossed over after them to find them, and Eryx should have them if he came off victor. But the good will of the gods did not speed Dorieus the son of Anaxandrides as it had done Hercules, for Hercules killed Eryx, but the people of Segeste nearly annihilated Dorieus and his army. And the Lacedæmonians have built a temple to their legislator Lycurgus as to a god. And behind this temple is the tomb of Eucosmus, the son of Lycurgus, near the altar of Lathria and Anaxandra, who were twins, (and the sons of Aristodemus who married them were also twins), and the daughters of Thersander the son of Agamedidas, the king of the Cleestonæans, and the great grandson of Ctesippus the son of Hercules. And right opposite the temple are the tombs of Theopompus the son of Nicander, and Eurybiades, who fought against the Medes in the Lacedæmonian gallies at Artemisium and Salamis. And hard-by is what is called the hero-chapel of Astrabacus.

And the place called Limnæum is the temple of Orthian Artemis. The wooden statue of the goddess is they say the very one which Orestes and Iphigenia formerly stole from the Tauric Chersonese. And the Lacedæmonians say it was brought to their country when Orestes was king there. And their account seems to me more probable than the account of the Athenians. For why should Iphigenia have left the statue at Brauron? And when the Athenians were preparing to leave the place, would they not have put it on board ship? And so great still is the fame of Tauric Artemis, that the Cappadocians who live near the Euxine claim that the statue was theirs, and the Lydians who have a temple of Anaitian Artemis make the same claim. But it appears it was neglected by the Athenians and became a prey to the Medes: for it was carried from Brauron to Susa, and afterwards the Syrians of Laodicea received it from Seleucus and still have it. And the following facts plainly prove to me that the Orthian Artemis at Lacedæmon is the same wooden statue which was taken from the barbarians: that Astrabacus and Alopecus, (the sons of Irbus, the son of Amphisthenes, the son of Amphicles, the son of Agis), when they found the statue immediately went mad; and also that the Limnatæ among the Spartans, and the people of Cynosura, Mesoa, and Pitane, who were sacrificing to Artemis, had a quarrel and even went so far as to kill one another, and after many were killed at the altar a pestilence destroyed the rest. And after that an oracle bade them sprinkle human blood over the altar. And instead of a person drawn by lot being sacrificed, Lycurgus changed it to flogging the young men there, and so the altar got sprinkled with human blood. And the priestess stands by during the operation, holding the wooden statue, which is generally light from its smallness, but if the scourgers spare any young man at all in his flogging either on account of his beauty or rank, then this wooden statue in the priestess’ hand becomes heavy and no longer easy to hold, and she makes complaint of the scourgers and says it is so heavy owing to them. So innate is it with this statue, in consequence of the sacrifices at the Tauric Chersonese, to delight in human blood. And they not only call the goddess Orthia, but also Bound-with-willow-twigs, because the statue was found in a willow bush, and the willows so tenaciously twined round it that they kept it in an upright posture.