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.
CHAPTER XXV.
The road to Mantinea from Argos is not the same as the road to Tegea, but you start from the gates near the ridge. And on this road there is a temple with a double entrance, one facing west, another east. At the east end is a wooden statue of Aphrodite, at the west one of Ares. These statues are they say votive offerings of Polynices and the Argives who were associated with him in his expedition. And as you go on from thence after crossing the winter torrent called Ravine you come to Œnoe, which gets its name (so the Argives say) from Œneus, who was king in Ætolia, and expelled they say from his kingdom by the sons of Agrius, and went to Argos to Diomede. And he helped him somewhat by leading an army into Calydonia, but he couldn’t he said stay there: but recommended him if he liked to accompany him to Argos. And when he went there, he treated him in all respects well, as one would expect a person to treat his grandfather, and when he died he buried him here. The place got called Œnoe by the Argives after him. And above Œnoe is the Mountain Artemisium, and a temple of Artemis on the top of the mountain. And on this mountain are the sources of the Inachus: for it has its rise here, though it flows underground for some way. There is nothing else to see here.
And another road from the gates near the Ridge goes to Lyrceia. This is the place to which Lynceus alone of all the 50 brothers is said to have escaped, and when he got there safe, he held up a lighted torch there. For it was no doubt agreed between Hypermnestra and him that he should do so as a signal, if he should escape from Danaus and get to a place of safety. And she also they say kindled another at Larissa, manifestly to show that she too was in no danger. And in memory of this the Argives every year have a torch procession. And in those days the place was called Lynceia, but afterwards, because Lyrcus an illegitimate son of Abas lived there, it got the name Lyrceia from him. There is nothing very notable among the ruins but the effigy of Lyrcus on a pillar. From Lyrceia to Argos is about 60 stades, and it is about the same distance from Lyrceia to Orneæ. Homer has made no mention of Lyrceia in his catalogue, as the city was already depopulated at the time of the expedition to Ilium: but Orneæ, which was still inhabited, Homer[27] has recorded before Phlius and Sicyon, according to its geographical situation in Argolis. And it got its name from Orneus the son of Erechtheus: and this Orneus had a son Peteos, and he had a son Menestheus, who aided Agamemnon with a force from Athens to put down the dominion of Priam. From Orneus then the city got its name, and the Argives afterwards dispossessed the people of Orneæ; and when they were dispossessed they were naturalized among the Argives. And there is at Orneæ a temple of Artemis, and a wooden statue of the goddess in an erect posture, and another temple to all the gods in common. And beyond Orneæ are Sicyonia and Phliasia.
And as you go from Argos to the district of Epidaurus there is a building on the right hand like a pyramid, with some Argolic shields worked on it as a design. Here Prœtus fought with Acrisius for the supremacy, and their contest was they say drawn, and they had a peace afterwards, as neither of them could conquer the other. And they say that they engaged first with shields, and then they and the army on both sides in full armour. And those who fell on both sides, as they were fellow citizens and kinsmen, had one tomb and monument in common. And as you go on from thence and turn to the right you come to the ruins of Tiryns. And the Argives dispossessed the inhabitants of Tiryns, wishing to take them in as settlers to aggrandize Argos. And they say the hero Tiryns, from whom the city got its name, was the son of Argus the son of Zeus. And the walls of the city, which are the only ruins left, are the work of the Cyclopes made of rude stones, each stone of so gigantic a size that the smallest of them could hardly be moved by a pair of mules. And in ancient times small stones were inserted so as to dovetail in with the large stones. And as you go down to the sea, are the chambers of the daughters of Prœtus. And when you return to the high road you will come to Midea on the left. They say that Electryon the father of Alcmena was king of Midea. But now nothing is left of Midea but the site. And on the direct road to Epidaurus is the village Lessa, and there is a temple of Athene in it, and a wooden statue very similar to that in the citadel at Larissa. And above Lessa is the Mountain Arachnæum, which in old times in the days of Inachus had the name of Sapyselaton. And there are altars on it to Zeus and Hera. They sacrifice to these gods here when there is a deficiency of rain.
CHAPTER XXVI.
And near Lessa is Epidaurus in Argolis, and before you get to the town itself, you will come to the temple of Æsculapius. I do not know who dwelt in this place before Epidaurus came to it: nor could I learn from any of the people of the neighbourhood anything about his descendants. But the last king they say before the Dorians came to the Peloponnese was Pityreus, the descendant of Ion the son of Xuthus. He they say gave up the land without fighting for it to Deiphontes and the Argives: and retired to Athens with his subjects and dwelt there, and Deiphontes and the Argives who espoused his cause occupied Epidauria. For there was a split among the Argives at the death of Temenus, Deiphontes and Hyrnetho being hostile to the sons of Temenus, and the army with them favouring Deiphontes and Hyrnetho more than Cisus and his brothers. Epidaurus, from whom the country got its name, was, as the people of Elis say, the son of Pelops: but according to the opinion of the Argives, and the poem of Hesiod called The Great Eœæ, the father of Epidaurus was Argus the son of Zeus. But the Epidaurians make Epidaurus the son of Apollo. And the district was generally held sacred to Æsculapius for the following reason. The Epidaurians say that Phlegyas came to the Peloponnese on the pretext of seeing the country, but really to spy out the population, and see if the number of fighting men was large. For Phlegyas was the greatest warrior of that day, and, whoever he attacked, used to carry off their corn and fruit and booty of all kinds. But when he came to the Peloponnese his daughter followed him, who though her father knew it not was with child by Apollo. And when she bore her child on Epidaurian soil, she exposed it on the mountain called in our day Titthion, but which was then called Myrgion. And as he was exposed there one of the she-goats feeding on the mountain gave him milk, and the watch-dog of the flock guarded him. And Aresthanas, for that was the name of the goat-herd, when he found the number of the goats not tallying and that the dog was also absent from the flock, went in search everywhere, and when he saw the child desired to take him away, but when he got near saw lightning shining from the child, and thinking there was something divine in all this, as indeed there was, he turned away. And it was forthwith noised abroad about the lad both by land and sea that he could heal sicknesses, and raise the dead. There is also another tradition told of him, that Coronis, when pregnant with Æsculapius, lay with Ischys the son of Elatus, and that she was put to death by Artemis who thus punished her unfaithfulness to Apollo, and when the funeral pyre was already lighted Hermes is said to have plucked the child from the flame. And a third tradition is as it seems to me the least likely of all, which makes Æsculapius the son of Arsinoe, the daughter of Leucippus. For when Apollophanes the Arcadian went to Delphi and enquired of the god, whether Æsculapius was the son of Arsinoe and a citizen at Messene, Apollo answered from his oracle, “O Æsculapius, that art born a great joy to all mortals, whom lovely Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas, bare to me the child of love, at rocky Epidaurus.” This oracular response shows plainly that Æsculapius was not the son of Arsinoe, but that Hesiod, or somebody that interpolated Hesiod, inserted that legend to please the people of Messene. And this too bears me out that Æsculapius was born at Epidaurus, that his worship is derived from thence. For the Athenians call the day on which they worship Æsculapius Epidauria, and they say the god is worshipped by them from Epidaurus; and also Archias the son of Aristæchmus, being healed in Epidauria of a convulsion that seized him when he was hunting near Pindasus, introduced the worship of the god at Pergamum. And from the people of Pergamum it passed in our time to the people of Smyrna. And at Balagræ amongst the Cyrenæans the Epidaurian Æsculapius is called Doctor. And from the Cyrenæans Æsculapius got worshipped in Labene among the Cretans. And there is this difference between the Cyrenæan and Epidaurian customs of worshipping Æsculapius, that the former sacrifice goats, which is not customary with the latter. And I find that Æsculapius was considered as a god from the beginning, and not merely as he got fame as time went on, from other proofs, and the testimony of Homer in what Agamemnon says about Machaon,