Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

CHAPTER XXVII.

And opposite those I have mentioned are other votive offerings in a row, facing the South, and very near the enclosure sacred to Pelops. Among them are the votive offerings of Mænalian Phormis, who crossed over from Mænalus to Sicily to Gelon the son of Dinomenes, and in the army of Gelon, and afterwards in the army of Gelon’s brother Hiero, displayed great valour, and advanced to such a pitch of fortune that he offered these votive offerings at Olympia, and also some others to Apollo at Delphi. His offerings at Olympia are two horses and two charioteers, a charioteer by each horse. The first horse and groom is by Dionysius the Argive, the second by the Æginetan Simo. And the first has the following inscription on the side, the first line not in metre,

“Phormis the Arcadian from Mænalus, now a Syracusan, offered me.”

This is the horse about which the people of Elis have a tradition on the power of lust in horses. It is evident that several remarkable properties of this horse come from the cunning of a magician. In size and beauty it is inferior to many to be seen in Altis: it has also the tail knocked off, which makes it more unsightly still. Nevertheless stallions not only in spring but all the year round are madly in lust after it. For they rush into Altis, breaking their reins or escaping from their drivers, and endeavour to mount this horse, with far greater impetuosity than they exhibit to the handsomest mare alive whom they had been accustomed to mount. And though their hoofs slip on the polished basement they do not cease to neigh fiercely, and try to mount this horse with frantic energy, till by whips or sheer strength they get pulled off. There is no other way of getting them away from this brazen horse.[75] I have seen in Lydia a different kind of marvel to this horse of Phormis, but equally the cunning work of a magician. Among the Lydians called Persici there are temples at Hierocæsarea and Hypæpa, and in each of these temples there is a chamber in which are ashes on an altar, not like other ashes in appearance. And a magician enters into this chamber, and, after placing dry wood upon the altar, first of all places a tiara on his head, and then calls on the gods in a foreign tongue not understood by the Greeks. And this he chants from a book, and the wood gets lighted evidently without fire and a bright blaze shines forth from it. Let this digression suffice.

And among these votive offerings is Phormis himself contending with an enemy, and fighting with a second and even a third. And there is an inscription stating that the soldier fighting is Mænalian Phormis, and that it is a votive offering of the Syracusan Lycortas, who plainly offered it out of affection to Phormis. The Greeks however call these votive offerings of Lycortas the votive offerings of Phormis. And the Hermes with a ram under his arm, and a helmet on his head, and a tunic and cloak on, is not one of the votive offerings of Phormis, but was offered to the god by the Arcadians of Pheneos. And the inscription states that Onatas the Æginetan jointly designed it with Calliteles, who must I think have been the pupil or son of Onatas. And not far from the votive offering of the people of Pheneos is another statue of Hermes with his herald’s wand, and the inscription on it states that it was the votive offering of Glaucias of Rhegium, and the work of Callon of Elis. And there are two brazen bulls, one the votive offering of the people of Corcyra, the other of the Eretrienses, both by Philesius of Eretria. Why the Corcyræans offered one bull at Olympia and another at Delphi, I shall relate in my account of the Phocians. And about the votive offering at Olympia I have heard the following circumstance. A little boy sitting down under this bull had stooped down and was playing, and suddenly lifting up his head dashed it against the brass, and not many days afterwards died from the blow. The people of Elis wanted to remove the bull from Altis as being blood guilty, but the god at Delphi ordered the same expiatory sacrifices for the bull as the Greeks ordain for involuntary homicide.

There is under the plane-trees at Altis in the middle of the grove a brazen trophy, and an inscription on the shield of the trophy, stating that the people of Elis offered it out of spoils of the Lacedæmonians. This was the battle in which the man lost his life who was found in his armour in my day, when the roof of the temple of Hera was being repaired. The votive offering of the Mendæans in Thrace very nearly deceived me to think that it was the effigy of a competitor for the pentathlum. It is near Anauchidas of Elis, and has ancient dumb-bells. And the following elegiac couplet is written on the thigh,

“To Zeus, the king of the Gods, the Mendæans put me here as firstfruits, after taking Sipte by storm.”

It seems that Sipte is a Thracian fort and city, and the Mendæans are a Greek race from Ionia, and live a little inland from the sea, at the town of Ænus.