From Stiris to Ambrosus is about 60 stades: the road lies in the plain with mountains on both sides. Vines grow throughout the plain, and brambles, not quite so plentifully, which the Ionians and Greeks call coccus, but the Galati above Phrygia call in their native tongue Hys. The coccus is about the size of the white thorn, and its leaves are darker and softer than the mastich-tree, though in other respects similar. And its berry is like the berry of the nightshade, and about the size of the bitter vetch. And a small grub breeds in it which, when the fruit is ripe, becomes a gnat and flies off. But they gather the berries, while it is still in the grub state, and its blood is useful in dyeing wool.
Ambrosus lies under Mount Parnassus, and opposite Delphi, and got its name they say from the hero Ambrosus. In the war against Philip and the Macedonians the Thebans drew a double wall round Ambrosus, made of the black and very strong stone of the district. The circumference of each wall is little less than a fathom, and the height is 2½ fathoms, where the wall has not fallen: and the interval between the two walls is a fathom. But, as they were intended only for immediate defence, these walls were not decorated with towers or battlements or any other embellishment. There is also a small market-place at Ambrosus, most of the stone statues in it are broken.
As you turn to Anticyra the road is at first rather steep, but after about two stades it becomes level, and there is on the right a temple of Dictynnæan Artemis, who is held in the highest honour by the people of Ambrosus; her statue is of Æginetan workmanship in black stone. From this temple to Anticyra is all the way downhill. They say the town was called Cyparissus in ancient times, and Homer in his Catalogue of the Phocians[150] preferred to give it its old name, for it was then beginning to be called Anticyra, from Anticyreus who was a contemporary of Hercules. The town lies below the ruins of Medeon, one of the towns as I have before mentioned which impiously plundered the temple at Delphi. The people of Anticyra were expelled first by Philip the son of Amyntas, and secondly by the Roman Otilius, because they had been faithful to Philip, the son of Demetrius, the king of the Macedonians, for Otilius had been sent from Rome to protect the Athenians against Philip. And the hills above Anticyra are very rocky, and the chief thing that grows on them is hellebore. The black hellebore is a purgative, while the white acts as an emetic, the root also of the hellebore is a purgative. There are brazen statues in the market-place at Anticyra, and near the harbour is a small temple of Poseidon, made of unhewn stone, and plastered inside. The statue of the god is in bronze: he is in a standing posture, and one of his feet is on a dolphin: one hand is on his thigh, in the other is a trident. There are also two gymnasiums, one contains baths, the other opposite to it is an ancient one, in which is a bronze statue of Xenodamus, a native of Anticyra, who, as the inscription states, was victor at Olympia among men in the pancratium. And if the inscription is correct, Xenodamus will have won the wild-olive crown in the 211th Olympiad, the only Olympiad of all passed over by the people of Elis in their records. And above the market-place is a conduit: the water is protected from the sun by a roof supported on pillars. And not much above this conduit is a tomb built of common stone: they say it is the tomb of the sons of Iphitus, of whom one returned safe from Ilium and died in his native place, the other Schedius died in the Troad, but his remains were brought home and deposited here.
[150] Iliad, ii. 519.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
On the right of the town at the distance of about 2 stades is a lofty rock, which forms part of a mountain, and on it is a temple of Artemis, and a statue of the goddess by Praxiteles, with a torch in her right hand and her quiver over her shoulders, she is taller than the tallest woman, and on her left hand is a dog.
Bordering on Phocis is the town of Bulis, which got its name from Bulon the founder of the colony, it was colonized from the towns in ancient Doris. The people of Bulis are said to have shared in the impiety of Philomelus and the Phocians. From Thisbe in Bœotia to Bulis is 80 stades, I do not know whether there is any road from Anticyra to Bulis on the mainland, so precipitous and difficult to scale are the mountains between. It is about 100 stades from Anticyra to the port: and from the port to Bulis is I conjecture by land about 7 stades. And a mountain torrent, called by the natives Hercules’, falls into the sea here. Bulis lies on high ground, and you sail by it as you cross from Anticyra to Lechæum near Corinth. And more than half the inhabitants live by catching shell-fish for purple dye. There are no particular buildings to excite admiration at Bulis except two temples, one of Artemis, the other of Dionysus; their statues are of wood, but who made them I could not ascertain. The god that they worship most they call Supreme, a title I imagine of Zeus. They have also a well called Saunion.
To Cirrha, the seaport of Delphi, it is about 60 stades from Delphi, and as you descend to the plain is a Hippodrome, where they celebrate the Pythian horse-races. As to Taraxippus in Olympia I have described it in my account of Elis. In this Hippodrome of Apollo there are accidents occasionally, inasmuch as the deity in all human affairs awards both good and bad, but there is nothing specially contrived to frighten horses, either from the malignity of some hero, or any other cause. And the plain of Cirrha is almost entirely bare of trees, for they do not care to plant trees, either in consequence of some curse, or because they do not think the soil favourable to the growth of trees. It is said that Cirrha got its present name from the Nymph Cirrha, but Homer in the Iliad calls it by its ancient name Crisa,[151] as also in the Hymn to Apollo. And subsequently the people of Cirrha committed various acts of impiety against Apollo, and ravaged the territory sacred to the god. The Amphictyones resolved therefore to war against the people of Cirrha, and chose for their leader Clisthenes the king of Sicyon, and invited Solon the Athenian to assist them by his counsel. They also consulted the oracle, and this was the response of the Pythian Priestess, “You will not capture the tower and demolish the town, till the wave of blue-eyed Amphitrite, dashing over the dark sea, shall break into my grove.”
Solon persuaded them therefore to consecrate to the god the land about Cirrha, that the grove of Apollo might extend as far as the sea. He invented also another ingenious contrivance against the people of Cirrha: he turned the course of the river Plistus which flowed through the town. And when the besieged still held out by drinking rain water and the water from the wells, he threw some roots of hellebore into the Plistus, and when he thought the water of the river sufficiently impregnated with this, he turned it back into its ordinary channel, and the people of Cirrha, drinking freely of the water, were attacked with an incessant diarrhœa, and unable to man the walls, so the Amphictyones captured the town, and took vengeance on the inhabitants for their conduct to the god, and Cirrha became the seaport of Delphi. It contains a handsome temple of Apollo and Artemis and Leto, and large statues of those divinities, of Attic workmanship. There is also a smaller statue of Adrastea.
[151] Iliad, ii. 520.