Description of Greece

It is a journey of about a hundred stades from Mothone to the promontory of Coryphasium, on which Pylos lies. This was founded by Pylos the son of Cleson, bringing from the Megarid the Leleges who then occupied the country. But he did not enjoy it, as he was driven out by Neleus and the Pelasgians of Iolcos, on which he departed to the adjoining country and there occupied the Pylos in Elis. When Neleus became king, he raised Pylos to such renown that Homer in his epics calls it the city of Neleus.[*](Hom. Il. 11.632; Hom. Od. 3.4)

It contains a sanctuary of Athena with the title Coryphasia, and a house called the house of Nestor, in which there is a painting of him. His tomb is inside the city; the tomb at a little distance from Pylos is said to be the tomb of Thrasymedes. There is a cave inside the town, in which it is said that the cattle belonging to Nestor and to Neleus before him were kept.

These cattle must have been of Thessalian stock, having once belonged to Iphiclus the father of Protesilaus. Neleus demanded these cattle as bride gifts for his daughter from her suitors, and it was on their account that Melampus went to Thessaly to gratify his brother Bias. He was put in bonds by the herdsmen of Iphiclus, but received them as his reward for the prophecies which he gave to Iphiclus at his request. So it seems the men of those days made it their business to amass wealth of this kind, herds of horses and cattle, if it is the case that Nestor desired to get possession of the cattle of Iphiclus and that Eurystheus, in view of the reputation of the Iberian cattle, ordered Heracles to drive off the herd of Geryones.

Eryx too, who was reigning then in Sicily, plainly had so violent a desire for the cattle from Erytheia that he wrestled with Heracles, staking his kingdom on the match against these cattle. As Homer says in the Iliad,[*](Hom. Il. 11.244) a hundred kine were the first of the bride gifts paid by Iphidamas the son of Antenor to his bride's father. This confirms my argument that the men of those days took the greatest pleasure in cattle.

But the cattle of Neleus were pastured for the most part across the border, I think. For the country of the Pylians in general is sandy and unable to provide so much grazing. Homer testifies to this, when he mentions Nestor, always adding that he was king of sandy Pylos.

The island of Sphacteria lies in front of the harbor just as Rheneia off the anchorage at Delos. It seems that places hitherto unknown have been raised to fame by the fortunes of men. For Caphereus in Euboea is famous since the storm that here befell the Greeks with Agamemnon on their voyage from Troy. Psyttaleia by Salamis we know from the destruction of the Persians there. In like manner the Lacedaemonian reverse made Sphacteria known to all mankind. The Athenians dedicated a bronze statue of Victory also on the acropolis as a memorial of the events at Sphacteria.

When Cyparissiae is reached from Pylos, there is a spring below the city near the sea, the water of which they say gushed forth for Dionysus when he struck he ground with a thyrsus. For this reason they call the spring Dionysias. There is a shrine of Apollo in Cyparissiae and of Athena with the title Cyparissia. In the depression called Aulon there is a temple and statue of Asclepius Aulonius. Here flows the river Neda, forming the boundary between Messenia and Elis.

The Greeks who say that the Peloponnesus has five, and only five, divisions must agree that Arcadia contains both Arcadians and Eleans, that the second division belongs to the Achaeans, and the remaining three to the Dorians. Of the races dwelling in Peloponnesus the Arcadians and Achaeans are aborigines. When the Achaeans were driven from their land by the Dorians, they did not retire from Peloponnesus, but they cast out the Ionians and occupied the land called of old Aegialus, but now called Achaea from these Achaeans. The Arcadians, on the other hand, have from the beginning to to the present time continued in possession of their own country.

The rest of Peloponnesus belongs to immigrants. The modern Corinthians are the latest inhabitants of Peloponnesus, and from my time[*](174 A.D.) to the time when they received their land from the Roman Emperor[*](44 B.C.) is two hundred and seventeen years. The Dryopians reached the Peloponnesus from Parnassus, the Dorians from Oeta.

The Eleans we know crossed over from Calydon and Aetolia generally. Their earlier history I found to be as follows. The first to rule in this land, they say, was Aethlius, who was the son of Zeus and of Protogeneia, the daughter of Deucalion, and the father of Endymion.

The Moon, they say, fell in love with this Endymion and bore him fifty daughters. Others with greater probability say that Endymion took a wife Asterodia—others say she was Cromia, the daughter of Itonus, the son of Amphictyon; others again, Hyperippe, the daughter of Arcas—but all agree that Endymion begat Paeon, Epeius, Aetolus, and also a daughter Eurycyda. Endymion set his sons to run a race at Olympia for the throne; Epeius won, and obtained the kingdom, and his subjects were then named Epeans for the first time.