And Cardamyle, which Homer[50] has mentioned in the promises of gifts made by Agamemnon, is subject to Sparta, as the Emperor Augustus detached it from Messenia. It is eight stades from the sea, and sixty from Leuctra. And not far from the seashore is a grove sacred to the daughters of Nereus, for the story goes that they climbed up to this place from the sea to see Pyrrhus the son of Achilles, when he went off to Sparta to marry Hermione. In this small town there is a temple of Athene and Carnean Apollo, whom they worship according to the Dorian fashion.
And the city called, by Homer[51] Enope, the inhabitants of which are Messenians though they join the Council of the Eleutherolacones, is called in our time Gerenia. Some say Nestor was brought up in this city, others that he fled here when Pylos was taken by Hercules. Gerenia contains the tomb and temple of Machaon the son of Æsculapius: from whom men may have possibly learnt the healing of diseases. The sacred place they call Rhodon, and the statue of Machaon is erect in brass. And on its head is a garland, which the Messenians call ciphos[52] in their country’s tongue. The writer of the epic poem called the Little Iliad says that Machaon was killed by Eurypylus the son of Telephus. That is why (as I myself know) in the rites in the temple of Æsculapius at Pergamum, they begin with the Hymns of Telephus, but make no reference in their singing to Eurypylus, nor will they name him at all in the temple, because they know he was the murderer of Machaon. And the tradition is that Nestor recovered the bones of Machaon. And Podalirius, when the Greeks were returning after the sack of Ilium, was carried they say out of his way to Syrnum a place in the Continent of Caria, and getting there safe built a town there.
In the Gerenian district is the mountain Calathium, and on it is a temple of Clæa and a grotto near the temple, with a narrow entrance: within there are several objects worth seeing. And from Gerenia to Alagonia in the interior is about 30 stades, but that town I have already mentioned amongst the Eleutherolacones. And the sights best worth seeing there are the temples of Dionysus and Artemis.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Odyssey, xix. 178, 179.
[31] Iliad, xix. 117.
[32] Mentioned ii, 38; iii, i. Pausanias now returns to topography.
[33] Gymnopædia, as its name denotes, was a yearly festival at which boys danced naked and went through gymnastic exercises.
[34] The cornel tree is in Greek κράνεια. Transposition of the ρ will give κάρνειος as the title of the god. This will explain text.
[35] It means boxers, or football players.