CHAPTER XXXIII.
And not far from Marathon is Brauron, where they say Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, landed in her flight from the Tauri, bringing with her the statue of Artemis, and, having left it here, went on to Athens and afterwards to Argos. Here is indeed an ancient statue of Artemis. But those who have the Tauric statue of the goddess in my opinion, I shall show in another part of my work. And about sixty stades from Marathon is Rhamnus, as you go along the shore to Oropus. And there are buildings near the sea for men, and a little way from the sea on the cliff is a temple of Nemesis, who is the most implacable of all the gods to haughty men. And it seems that those Persians who landed at Marathon met with vengeance from this goddess: for despising the difficulty of capturing Athens, they brought Parian marble to make a trophy of, as if they had already conquered. This marble Phidias made into a statue of Nemesis, and on the goddess’ head is a crown with some figures of stags, and some small statues of Victory: in one hand she has a branch of an apple tree, in the other a bowl, on which some Ethiopians are carved. As to these Ethiopians I could not myself conjecture what they referred to, nor could I accept the account of those who thought they knew, who say that they were carved on the bowl because of the river Oceanus: for the Ethiopians dwelt by it, and Oceanus was Nemesis’ father. For indeed Oceanus is not a river but a sea, the remotest sea sailed on by men, and on its shore live the Spaniards and Celts, and in it is the island of Britain. But the remotest Ethiopians live beyond Syene by the Red Sea, and are fisheaters, from which circumstance the gulf near which they live is called Fish-eater. But the most upright ones[7] inhabit the city Meroe, and what is called the Ethiopian plain: these shew the Table of the Sun, but have no sea or river except the Nile. And there are other Ethiopians (who live near the Mauri), that extend to the territory of the Nasamones. For the Nasamones, whom Herodotus calls the Atlantes, but geographers call Lixitæ, are the remotest of the Libyans who live near Mount Atlas. They sow nothing, and live on wild vines. And neither these Ethiopians nor the Nasamones have any river. For the water near Mount Atlas, though it flows in three directions, makes no river, for the sand sucks it all in. So the Ethiopians live by no river or ocean. And the water from Mount Atlas is muddy, and at its source there are crocodiles two cubits long, and when men approach they dive down into the water. And many have the idea that this water coming up again out of the sand makes the river Nile in Egypt. Now Mount Atlas is so high that its peaks are said to touch the sky, and it is inaccessible from the water and trees which are everywhere. The neighbourhood of the Nasamones has been explored, but we know of no one who has sailed by the parts near the sea. But let this account suffice. Neither this statue of Nemesis nor any other of the old statues of her are delineated with wings, not even the most holy statues at Smyrna: but in later times people, wishing to shew this goddess as especially following upon Love, gave Nemesis wings as well as Love. I shall describe what is at the base of the statue, only clearing up the following matter. They say Nemesis was the mother of Helen, but Leda suckled her and brought her up: but her father the Greeks generally think was Zeus and not Tyndareus. Phidias having heard this represented on the base of the statue Helen being carried by Leda to Nemesis, and Tyndareus and his sons, and a man called Hippeus with a horse standing by. There too are Agamemnon and Menelaus, and Pyrrhus the son of Achilles, the first husband of Hermione, the daughter of Helen. Orestes was passed over for the murder of his mother, though Hermione remained with him all her life and bore him a son. And next come Epochus, and another young man. I have heard nothing else of them than that they are the brothers of Œnoe, who gave her name to the township.