And near the votive offering of the Tarentines is the treasury of the Sicyonians, but you will see no money either here or in any of the treasuries. The Cnidians also brought statues to Delphi, as Triopas (their founder) standing by a horse, and Leto and Apollo and Artemis shooting at Tityus, who is represented wounded. These statues stand by the treasury of the Sicyonians.
The Siphnii too made a treasury for the following reason. The island of Siphnos had gold mines, and the god bade them send a tenth of the revenue thus accruing to Delphi, and they built a treasury and sent the tenth to the god. But when in their cupidity they left off this tribute, then the sea encroached and swept away their mines. Statues after a naval victory over the Tyrrhenians were also erected by the people of Lipara, who were a colony of Cnidians, and the leader of the colony was they say a Cnidian whose name was Pentathlus, as Antiochus the Syracusan (the son of Xenophanes) testifies in his History of Sicily. He says also that when they had built a town at Pachynus, a promontory in Sicily, they were expelled from it by force by the Elymi and Phœnicians, and either occupied deserted islands, or drove out the islanders from those islands which they call to this day by the name Homer employs, the islands of Æolus. Of these they lived in Lipara and built a city there, and used to sail to Hiera and Strongyle and Didymæ for purposes of cultivation. In Strongyle fire clearly ascends from the ground, and in Hiera fire spontaneously blazes up on a height in the island, and near the sea are convenient baths, if the water is not too hot, for often it is difficult to bathe by reason of the great heat.
The Theban treasuries were the result of the victory at Leuctra, and the Athenian treasuries from the victory at Marathon and the spoil of Datis on that occasion: but whether the Cnidians built theirs to commemorate some victory or to display their wealth I do not know. But the people of Cleonæ suffered greatly like the Athenians from a plague, till in obedience to the oracle at Delphi they sacrificed a goat to the rising sun, and, as they thus obtained deliverance from their plague, they sent a brazen goat to Apollo. And the treasury of the Syracusans was the result of the great reverses of Athens, and the Potidæan treasury was erected out of piety to the god.
The Athenians also built a portico with the money which they got in war from the Peloponnesians and their Greek allies. There are also votive offerings of the figure-heads of captured ships and brazen shields. The inscription on these mentions the cities from which the Athenians sent the firstfruits of their spoil, Elis, and Lacedæmon, and Sicyon, and Megara, and Pellene in Achaia, and Ambracia, and Leucas, and Corinth itself. In consequence of these naval victories they sacrifice to Theseus, and to Poseidon at the promontory of Rhium. I think also the inscription refers to Phormio the son of Asopichus, and to his famous deeds.
CHAPTER XII.
There is a projecting stone above, on which the Delphians say the first Herophile, also called the Sibyl, chanted her oracles.[97] I found her to be most ancient, and the Greeks say she was the daughter of Zeus by Lamia the daughter of Poseidon, and that she was the first woman who chanted oracles, and that she was called Sibyl by the Libyans. The second Herophile was younger than her, but was herself clearly earlier than the Trojan War, for she foretold in her oracles that Helen would be reared in Sparta to the ruin of Asia Minor and Europe, and that Ilium would be taken by the Greeks owing to her. The Delians make mention of her Hymn to Apollo. And she calls herself in her verses not only Herophile but also Artemis, and says she was Apollo’s wedded wife and sister and daughter. This she must have written when possessed by the god. And elsewhere in her oracles she says her father was a mortal but her mother one of the Nymphs of Mount Ida. Here are her lines,
“I was the child of a mortal sire and goddess mother, she was a Nymph and Immortal while he eat bread. By my mother I am connected with Mount Ida, and my native place is red Marpessus (sacred to my mother), and the river Aidoneus.”
There are still in Trojan Ida ruins of Marpessus, and a population of about 60 inhabitants. The soil all about Marpessus is red and terribly dry. Why in fact the river Aidoneus soaks into the earth, and on its emerging sinks into the ground again, and is eventually altogether lost in it, is I think the thin and porous soil of Mount Ida. Marpessus is 240 stades distant from Alexandria in the Troad. The inhabitants of Alexandria say that Herophile was the Sacristan of Sminthian Apollo, and that she foretold by dream to Hecuba what we know really came about. This Sibyl lived most of her life at Samos, but visited Clarus in Colophonia, Delos, and Delphi, and wherever she went chanted standing on the stone we have already mentioned. Death came upon her in the Troad, her tomb is in the grove of Sminthian Apollo, and the inscription on the pillar is as follows.
“Here hidden by stone sepulchre I lie, Apollo’s fate-pronouncing Sibyl I, a vocal maiden once but now for ever dumb, here placed by all-powerful fate, and I lie near the Nymphs and Hermes, in this part of Apollo’s realm.”
Near her tomb is a square Hermes in stone, and on the left is water running into a conduit, and some statues of the Nymphs. The people of Erythræ, who are most zealous of all the Greeks in claiming Herophile as theirs, show the mountain called Corycus and the cavern in it in which they say Herophile was born, and they say that she was the daughter of Theodorus (a local shepherd) and a Nymph, and that she was called Idæa for no other reason than that well-wooded places were called by people at that time Idas. And the line about Marpessus and the river Aidoneus they do not include in the oracles.