Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume II.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

The straight road, leading to Thyrea and the villages in the Thyreatic district, is memorable for containing the tomb of Orestes the son of Agamemnon, the people of Tegea say that a Spartan removed his remains from thence, but in our day there is no tomb within the walls. The river Garates also flows by the road, when you have crossed it and gone on ten stades you come to a temple of Pan, and near it an oak also sacred to Pan.

The road from Tegea to Argos is very well adapted for carriages and is in fact quite a high road. The first thing you come to on it is a temple and statue of Æsculapius, and after turning to the left for about a stade you come to a temple of Pythian Apollo quite fallen to decay and in ruins. And on the high road are many oaks and a temple of Demeter, called Demeter of Corythes, in a grove of oaks, and near it is a temple to Mystic Dionysus. And next comes Mount Parthenium, on which is shown an enclosure sacred to Telephus, where they say he was exposed as a boy and brought up by a doe. And at a little distance is the temple of Pan, where both the Athenians and people of Tegea say that Pan appeared to Philippides and had an interview with him. Mount Parthenium also has tortoises admirably adapted for making lyres of, which the men who live on the mountain fear to take and will not allow strangers to take, for they consider them sacred to Pan. When you have crossed over the mountain top you come in what is now arable land to the boundary between the districts of Tegea and Argos, viz. Hysiæ in Argolis.

These are the divisions of the Peloponnese, and the towns in the divisions, and the most notable things in each town.

BOOK IX.—BŒOTIA.

CHAPTER I.

Bœotia is contiguous to Attica, and Platæa to Eleutheræ. The Bœotians got that name for all the race from Bœotus, who they say was the son of Itonus the son of Amphictyon and the Nymph Melanippe. Their towns are called sometimes after men but more frequently after women. The Platæans were I think the original inhabitants of the land, and they got their name from Platæa the daughter of the river-god Asopus. That they were originally ruled over by kings is I think clear: for in old times kingdoms were all over Greece, there were no democratic governments. But the Platæans know of no other kings but Asopus and still earlier Cithæron, one of whom gave his name to the mountain and the other to the river. And I cannot but think that Platæa, who gave her name to the town, was the daughter of the king Asopus and not of the river-god.

The Platæans did nothing memorable before the battle which the Athenians fought at Marathon, but they took part in that struggle after the landing of Xerxes, and ventured to embark on ships with the Athenians, and repelled on their own soil Mardonius, the son of Gobryas, the General of Xerxes. And it twice happened to them to be driven from their country and again restored to it. For in the Peloponnesian war the Lacedæmonians besieged and took Platæa: and when, after the peace which Antalcidas the Spartan negotiated between the Greeks and the king of the Persians, it was reinhabited by the Platæans who returned from Athens, a second misfortune was it seems destined to come upon them. For war was not openly declared against the Thebans, but the Platæans said that they were still at peace with them, because when the Lacedæmonians occupied Cadmea, they had no share either in suggesting it or in bringing it about. The Thebans on the other hand said that it was the Lacedæmonians who had brought about the peace, and who afterwards when they had violated it thought that all had broken truce. The Platæans therefore, thinking the conduct of the Thebans rather suspicious, occupied their town with a strong garrison, and the farmers did not even go into the fields which were at some distance from the town at every period of the day, but watched for the times when the Thebans held their general meetings, and at such times tilled their farms in quiet. But Neocles, who was at that time Bœotarch at Thebes, and had noticed this cunning on the part of the Platæans, told all the Thebans to go armed to the assembly, and led them from Thebes not straight across the plain but in the direction of Hysiæ and Eleutheræ and Attica, where no outposts had been placed by the Platæans, and got to the walls about mid-day. For the Platæans, thinking the Thebans were at their meeting, had shut the gates and gone out to the fields. And the Thebans made conditions with those who were in the town that they should leave the place before sunset, the men with one dress and the women with two. At this time the fortune of the Platæans was rather different from the former occasion when the town was taken by the Lacedæmonians and Archidamus. For then the Lacedæmonians blockaded them and shut them in by a double wall so that they could not get out, whereas now the Thebans prevented their getting into the town at all. This second capture of Platæa was the third year after Leuctra, when Asteus was Archon at Athens. And the town was rased to the ground by the Thebans entirely except the temples, but there was no sack, and the Athenians took in the Platæans a second time. But when Philip was victorious at Chæronea, he introduced a garrison into Thebes, and among other things to destroy the Theban power, restored the Platæans.

CHAPTER II.

If you turn off a little to the right from the high road in the Platæan district near Mount Cithæron, you come to the ruins of Hysiæ and Erythræ. They were formerly cities, and among the ruins of Hysiæ there is still a temple of Apollo half-finished, and a Holy Well, of which whoever drank in former days prophesied, if we may believe the tradition of the Bœotians. And on your return to the high road on the right is what is said to be the tomb of Mardonius. It is admitted that the dead body of Mardonius was missing after the battle, but as to who buried him there are different traditions. What is certain is that Artontes the son of Mardonius gave many gifts to the Ephesian Dionysophanes, and also to several Ionians, for not having neglected his father’s burial. And this road leads from Eleutheræ to Platæa.

As you go from Megara there is a spring on the right hand, and a little further a rock called the bed of Actæon, because they say he used to sleep on that rock when tired with hunting, and in that spring they say he saw Artemis bathing. And Stesichorus of Himera has represented the goddess as dressing Actæon in a deerskin, so that his dogs should devour him, that he should not be married to Semele. But I think that madness came upon the dogs of Actæon without the intervention of the goddess, and if they were mad and did not distinguish him they would rend in pieces whoever they met. In what part of Mount Cithæron Pentheus the son of Echion met with his fate, or where they exposed Œdipus after his birth, no one knows, as we do know the cross-roads on the way to Phocis where Œdipus slew his father. Mount Cithæron is sacred to Zeus of Cithæron, but I shall enter into all that more fully when I come to that part of my subject.