And as you go eastwards from Pheneus you come to the promontory of Geronteum, and by it is a road. And Geronteum is the boundary between the districts of Pheneus and Stymphelus. And as you leave Geronteum on the left and go through the district of Pheneus you come to the mountains called Tricrena, where there are three wells. In these they say the mountain nymphs washed Hermes when he was born, and so they consider these wells sacred to Hermes. And not far from Tricrena is another hill called Sepia, and here they say Æpytus the son of Elatus died of the bite of a serpent, and here they buried him, for they could not carry his dead body further. These serpents are still (the Arcadians say) to be found on the hill but in no great quantity, for every year much of it is covered with snow, and those serpents that the snow catches outside of their holes are killed by it, and if they first get back to their holes, yet the snow kills part of them even there, as the bitter cold sometimes penetrates to their holes. I was curious to see the tomb of Æpytus, because Homer mentions it in his lines about the Arcadians.[26] It is a pile of earth not very high, surrounded by a coping of stone. It was likely to inspire wonder in Homer as he had seen no more notable tomb. For when he compared the dancing-ground wrought by Hephæstus on Achilles’ shield to the dancing-ground made by Dædalus for Ariadne,[27] it was because he had seen nothing more clever. And though I know many wonderful tombs I will only mention two, one in Halicarnassus and one in the land of the Hebrews. The one in Halicarnassus was built for Mausolus king of Halicarnassus, and is so large and wonderful in all its adornation, that the Romans in their admiration of it call all notable tombs Mausoleums. And the Hebrews have in the city of Jerusalem, which has been rased to the ground by the Roman Emperor, a tomb of Helen a woman of that country, which is so contrived that the door, which is of stone like all the rest of the tomb, cannot be opened except on one particular day and month of the year. And then it opens by the machinery alone, and keeps open for some little time and then shuts again. But at any other time of the year anyone trying to open it could not do so, you would have to smash it before you could open it.
CHAPTER XVII.
Not far from the tomb of Æpytus is Cyllene the highest of the mountains in Arcadia, and the ruins of a temple of Cyllenian Hermes on the top of the mountain. It is clear that both the mountain and god got their title from Cyllen the son of Elatus. And men of old, as far as we can ascertain, had various kinds of wood out of which they made statues, as ebony, cypress, cedar, oak, yew, lotus. But the statue of Cyllenian Hermes is made of none of these but of the wood of the juniper tree. It is about 8 feet high I should say. Cyllene has the following phenomenon. Blackbirds all-white lodge in it. Those that are called by the Bœotians by the same name are a different kind of bird, and are not vocal. The white eagles that resemble swans very much and are called swan-eagles I have seen on Sipylus near the marsh of Tantalus, and individuals have got from Thrace before now white boars and white bears. And white hares are bred in Libya, and white deer I have myself seen and admired in Rome, but where they came from, whether from the mainland or islands, it did not occur to me to inquire. Let this much suffice relative to the blackbirds of Mount Cyllene, that no one may discredit what I have said about their colour.
And next to Cyllene is another mountain called Chelydorea, where Hermes found the tortoise, which he is said to have skinned and made a lyre of. Chelydorea is the boundary between the districts of Pheneus and Pellene, and the Achæans graze their flocks on most of it.
And as you go westwards from Pheneus the road to the left leads to the city Clitor, that to the right to Nonacris and the water of the Styx. In old times Nonacris, which took its name from the wife of Lycaon, was a small town in Arcadia, but in our day it is in ruins, nor are many portions even of the ruins easy to trace. And not far from the ruins is a cliff, I do not remember to have seen another so high. And water drops from it which the Greeks call the Styx.
[26] Iliad, ii. 604.
[27] Iliad, xviii. 590-592.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Hesiod has represented Styx in his Theogony, (for there are some who assign the Theogony to Hesiod), as the daughter of Oceanus and the wife of Pallas. Linus too they say has represented the same. But the verses of Linus (all of which I have read) seem to me spurious. Epimenides the Cretan also has represented Styx as the daughter of Oceanus, but not as the wife of Pallas, but of Piras, whoever he was, to whom she bare Echidna. And Homer has frequently introduced the Styx into his poetry. For example in the oath of Hera,
“Witness me now Earth and high Heaven above