CHAPTER XXIV.
And the citadel they call Larissa from the daughter of Pelasgus, and from two cities of that name in Thessaly, one on the coast, and one by the river Peneus. And as you go up to the citadel there is a temple of Hera Dwelling on the Heights, there is also a temple of Apollo, which Pythæus, who first came from Delphi, is said to have erected. The statue is of brass erect, and is called Apollo of the Ridgeway, for the place is called Ridge. Oracular responses, for there is an oracle there even to our day, are given in the following manner. The prophetess is debarred from marriage: and when a lamb is sacrificed every month, she tastes of the blood and becomes possessed by the god. And next to the temple of Apollo of the Ridgeway is the temple of Athene called Sharp-eyed, the votive offering of Diomede, because when he was fighting at Ilium the goddess upon one occasion took a mist from his eyes.[25] And close by is the race-course where they hold the games to Nemean Zeus and to Hera. On the left of the road to the citadel is a monument to the sons of Ægyptus. Their heads are here apart from their bodies, for the bodies are at Lerna where the murder of the young men was perpetrated, and when they were dead their wives cut their heads off, to show their father their desperate deed. And on the summit of Larissa is the temple of Larissæan Zeus, which has no roof to it: and the statue, which is made of wood, stands no longer on its base. And there is a temple of Athene well worth seeing. There are several votive offerings there, and a wooden statue of Zeus, with the usual two eyes, and a third in the forehead. This Zeus they say was the tutelary god of Priam the son of Laomedon, and was placed in his hall in the open air, and when Ilium was taken by the Greeks, it was to his altar that Priam fled for refuge. And when they divided the spoil Sthenelus the son of Capaneus got it, and placed it here. One might conjecture that the god has three eyes for the following reason. That he reigns in heaven is the universal tradition of all mankind. And that he reigns also under the earth the line of Homer proves, speaking of him as
“Zeus the lord of the under world, and dread Proserpine.”[26]
And Æschylus the son of Euphorion calls him also Zeus of the sea. The sculptor therefore whoever he was represented him with three eyes to denote that the god rules in these three departments of the universe.
Among the roads from Argos to various parts of the Peloponnese, is one to Tegea a town in Arcadia. On the right of this road is the mountain Lycone, full of cypress trees. And on the top of the mountain is a temple to Orthian Artemis, and there are statues of Apollo and Leto and Artemis in white stone; said to be by Polycletus. And as you go down from the mountain there is on the left of the road a temple of Artemis. And at a little distance on the right is the mountain called Chaon. And underneath it trees are planted, and manifestly here the Erasinus has its rise: for a while it flows from Stymphalus in Arcadia, as the Rheti flow from Euripus to Eleusis and so to the sea. And where the river Erasinus gushes out on the mountain-side they sacrifice to Dionysus and Pan, and keep the feast of Dionysus called Medley. And as you return to the Tegean road, you come to Cenchreæ on the right of what is called Trochus. Why it was called Cenchreæ they do not tell us, except the name came from Cenchreus the son of Pirene. There is here a general tomb of the Argives who conquered the Lacedæmonians in battle near Hysiæ. I ascertained that this battle was fought when Pisistratus was ruler at Athens, and in the 4th year of the Olympiad in which Eurybotus the Athenian won the prize in the course. And as you descend to the plain are the ruins of the town Hysiæ in Argolis, and here they say the reverse happened to the Lacedæmonians.