On the road from Psophis to Thelpusa the first place you come to is on the left of the river Ladon and called Tropæa, and close to it is the oak-coppice called Aphrodisium, and thirdly you come to some ancient writing on a pillar which forms the boundary between the territory of Psophis and Thelpusa. In the district of Thelpusa is a river called Arsen, after crossing which you will come about 25 stades further to the ruins of a village called Caus, and a temple of Causian Æsculapius built by the wayside. Thelpusa is about 40 stades from this temple, and was called they say after the River-Nymph Thelpusa, the daughter of Ladon. The river Ladon has its source, as I have already stated, in the neighbourhood of Clitor, and flows first by Lucasium and Mesoboa and Nasi to Oryx and what is called Halus, and thence to Thaliades and the temple of Eleusinian Demeter close to Thelpusa, which has statues in it no less than 7 feet high of Demeter, Proserpine, and Dionysus, all in stone. And next to this temple of Eleusinian Demeter the river Ladon flows on leaving Thelpusa on the left, which lies on a lofty ridge, and has now few inhabitants, indeed the market-place which is now at the end of the town was originally they say in the very centre. There is also at Thelpusa a temple of Æsculapius, and a temple of the twelve gods mostly in ruins. And after passing Thelpusa the Ladon flows on to the temple of Demeter at Onceum: and the people of Thelpusa call the goddess Erinys, as Antimachus also in his description of the expedition of the Argives to Thebes, in the line,
“Where they say was the seat of Demeter Erinys.”
Oncius was the son of Apollo according to tradition, and reigned in Thelpusa at the place called Onceum. And the goddess Demeter got the name Erinys in this way: when she was wandering about in quest of her daughter Proserpine, Poseidon they say followed her with amatory intentions, and she changed herself into a mare and grazed with the other horses at Onceum, and Poseidon found out her metamorphosis and changed himself into a horse and so got his ends, and Demeter was furious at this outrage, but afterwards they say ceased from her anger and bathed in the river Ladon. So the goddess got two surnames, Erinys (Fury) from her furious anger, for the Arcadians call being angry being a Fury, and Lusia from her bathing in the Ladon. The statues in the temple are of wood, but the heads and fingers and toes are of Parian marble. The statue of Erinys has in her left hand a cist and in her right a torch, and is one conjectures about nine feet in height, while the statue of Lusia seems six feet high. Let those who think the statue is Themis, and not Demeter Lusia, know that their idea is foolish. And they say that Demeter bare a daughter to Poseidon, (whose name they will not reveal to the uninitiated), and the foal Arion, and that was why Poseidon was called Hippius there first in Arcadia. And they introduce some lines from the Iliad and Thebaid in confirmation of this: in the Iliad the lines about Arion.
“Not if one were to drive from behind the godlike Arion, swift courser of Adrastus, who was of the race of the Immortals.”[32] And in the Thebaid when Adrastus fled from Thebes, “Dressed in sad-coloured clothes with Arion dark-maned courser.”
They want to make the lines indicate in an ambiguous way that Poseidon was the father of Arion. But Antimachus says he was the son of earth:
“Adrastus, the son of Talaus and grandson of Cretheus, was the first of the Danai who drove a pair of much praised horses, the swift Cærus and Thelpusian Arion, whom near the grove of Oncean Apollo the earth itself gave birth to, a wonder for mortals to look upon.”
And though this horse sprung out of the ground it may have been of divine origin, and its mane and colour may have been dark. For there is a tradition that Hercules when he was warring with the people of Elis asked Oncus for a horse, and captured Elis riding into the battle upon Arion, and that afterwards he gave the horse to Adrastus. Antimachus also has written about Arion, “He was broken in thirdly by king Adrastus.”
The river Ladon next leaves in its course on its left the temple of Erinys as also the temple of Oncean Apollo, and on its right the temple of the Boy Æsculapius, which also contains the tomb of Trygon, who they say was the nurse of Æsculapius. For Æsculapius as a boy was exposed at Thelpusa, and found by Autolaus the bastard son of Arcas and brought up by him, and that is I think the reason why a temple was erected to the Boy Æsculapius, as I have set forth in my account of Epidaurus. And there is a river called Tuthoa, which flows into the Ladon near the boundary between the districts of Thelpusa and Heræa called by the Arcadians Plain. And where the Ladon flows into the Alpheus is what is called the Island of Crows. Some think that Enispe and Stratie and Rhipe mentioned by Homer were islands formed by the Ladon and formerly inhabited, but let them know the idea is a foolish one, for the Ladon could never form islands such as a boat could pass. For though in beauty it is second to no Greek or barbarian river, it is not wide enough to make islands as the Ister or Eridanus.
[32] Iliad, xxiii. 346, 7.