CHAPTER XXV.
And next the market-place is an ancient temple, a colonnade with pillars all round. The roof is fallen in with age, and there is no statue remaining. It was dedicated to the Roman Emperors.
And behind the Corcyræan Portico is a temple of Aphrodite, and a grove in the open air sacred to her, not far from the temple. The statue of the goddess in the temple is called Celestial Aphrodite, and is by Phidias in ivory and gold, she has one foot on a tortoise. Her grove is surrounded by a wall, and inside the grove is a basement on which is a brazen statue by Scopas of the Pandemian Aphrodite sitting on a brazen he-goat. The meaning of the tortoise and he-goat I leave my readers to guess.
And the sacred precincts and temple of Pluto (for the people of Elis have both) are opened once every year, but no one may enter them even then but the sacrificing priest. And as far as we know the men of Elis are the only ones that honour Pluto, for the following reason. When Hercules led an army against Pylos in Elis they say Athene cooperated with him. Then it was that Pluto came and helped the people of Pylos out of hostility to Hercules, and was accordingly honoured at Pylos. And they cite as their witness Homer’s lines in the Iliad.[84]
“Mighty Pluto also endured the swift arrow, when this man, the son of Ægis-bearing Zeus, wounded him at Pylos, and gave him pain among the dead.”
Nor if in the expedition of Agamemnon and Menelaus against Ilium Poseidon, according to the tradition of Homer, helped the Greeks, was it against probability that Pluto should have helped the people of Pylos in the opinion of the same poet. Anyway the people of Elis erected this temple to Pluto as being friendly to them and hostile to Hercules. And once every year they are accustomed to open the temple to indicate, I think, that men once descend to Pluto’s gloomy realm. The people of Elis have also a temple to Fortune, and in the portico of this temple is a huge statue of wood, gilt all over except the head the hands and the toes, which are of white marble. Here too Sosipolis is honoured on the left of Fortune, in a rather small shrine: represented, according to the appearance of him seen in a dream, as a boy with a particoloured cloak on covered with stars, and in one of his hands the horn of Amalthea.
And in that part of the town where the people of Elis have most of their population, there is a statue not larger than life of a beardless man, who has his feet crossed, and leans against his spear with both his hands, his dress is of wool and linen and flax. This statue is said to be of Poseidon, and was worshipped of old at Samicum in Triphylia. And it was honoured even still more when removed to Elis, and they give it the name of Satrapes and not Poseidon, having learnt this name from their neighbours at Patræ. And Satrapes is the surname of Corybas.