Description of Greece

From Messene to the mouth of the Pamisus is a journey of eighty stades. The Pamisus is a pure stream flowing through cultivated lands, and is navigable some ten stades from the sea. Sea-fish run up it, especially in spring, as they do up the Rhine and Maeander. The chief run of fish is up the stream of the Achelous, which discharges opposite the Echinades islands.

But the fish that enter the Pamisus are of quite a different kind, as the water is pure and not muddy like the rivers which I have mentioned. The grey mullet, a fish that loves mud, frequents the more turbid streams. The rivers of Greece contain no creatures dangerous to men as do the Indus and the Egyptian Nile, or again the Rhine and Danube, the Euphrates and Phasis. These indeed produce man-eating creatures of the worst, in shape resembling the cat-fish of the Hermus and Maeander, but of darker color and stronger. In these respects the cat-fish is inferior.

The Indus and Nile both contain crocodiles, and the Nile river-horses as well, as dangerous to man as the crocodile. But the rivers of Greece contain no terrors from wild beasts, for the sharks of the Aous, which flows through Thesprotia, are not river beasts but migrants from the sea.

Corone is a city to the right of the Pamisus, on the sea-coast under Mount Mathia. On this road is a place on the coast regarded as sacred to Ino. For they say that she came up from the sea at this point, after her divinity had been accepted and her name changed from Ino to Leucothea. A short distance further the river Bias reaches the sea. The name is said to be derived from Bias the son of Amythaon. Twenty stades off the road is the fountain of Plataniston, the water of which flows out of a broad plane tree, which is hollow inside. The breadth of the tree gives the impression of a small cave; from it the drinking water flows to Corone.

The old name of Corone was Aepeia, but when the Messenians were restored to Peloponnese by the Thebans, it is said that Epimelides, who was sent as founder, named it Coroneia after his native town in Boeotia. The Messenians got the name wrong from the start, and the mistake which they made gradually prevailed in course of time. Another story is told to the effect that, when digging the foundations of the city wall, they came upon a bronze crow, in Greek corone.

The gods who have temples here are Artemis, called the “Nurse of Children,” Dionysus and Asclepius. The statues of Asclepius and Dionysus are of stone, but there is a statue of Zeus the Saviour in the market-place made of bronze. The statue of Athena also on the acropolis is of bronze, and stands in the open air, holding a crow in her hand. I also saw the tomb of Epimelides. I do not know why they call the harbor “the harbor of the Achaeans.”

Some eighty stades beyond Corone is a sanctuary of Apollo on the coast, venerated because it is very ancient according to Messenian tradition, and the god cures illnesses. They call him Apollo Corynthus. His image is of wood, but the statue of Apollo Argeotas, said to have been dedicated by the Argonauts, is of bronze.