Description of Greece

Crossing the Anigrus and going to Olympia by the straight road, not far away on the right of the road you reach a high district with a city called Samia on it. This they say Polysperchon the Aetolian used as a fortified post against the Arcadians.

As to the ruins of Arene, no Messenian and no Elean could point them out to me with certainty. Those who care to do so may make all sorts of different guesses about it, but the most plausible account seemed to me that of those who held that in the heroic age and even earlier Samicum was called Arene. These quoted too the words of the Iliad:—

1. There is a river Minyeius flowing into the sea
2. near Arene.

These ruins are very near to the Anigrus; and, although it might be questioned whether Samicum was called Arene, yet the Arcadians are agreed that of old the Anigrus was called the Minyeius. One might well hold that the Neda near the sea was made the boundary between Elis and Messenia at the time of the return of the Heracleidae to the Peloponnesus.

After the Anigrus, if you travel for a considerable distance through a district that is generally sandy and grows wild pines, you will see behind you on the left the ruins of Scillus. It was one of the cities of Triphylia but in the war between Pisa and Elis the citizens of Scillus openly helped Pisa against her enemy, and for this reason the Eleans utterly destroyed it.

The Lacedaemonians afterwards separated Scillus from Elis and gave it to Xenophon, the son of Grylus, when he had been exiled from Athens, The reason for his banishment was that he had taken part in an expedition which Cyrus, the greatest enemy of the Athenian people, had organized against their friend, the Persian king.[*](401 B.C.) Cyrus, in fact, with his seat at Sardis, had been providing Lysander, the son of Aristocritus, and the Lacedaemonians with money for their fleet. Xenophon, accordingly, was banished and having made Scillus his home he built in honor of Ephesian Artemis a temple with a sanctuary and a sacred enclosure.

Scillus is also a hunting-ground for wild boars and deer, and the land is crossed by a river called the Selinus. The guides of Elis said that the Eleans recovered Scillus again, and that Xenophon was tried by the Olympic Council for accepting the land from the Lacedaemonians, and, obtaining pardon from the Eleans, dwelt securely in Scillus. Moreover, at a little distance from the sanctuary was shown a tomb, and upon the grave is a statue of marble from the Pentelic quarry. The neighbors say that it is the tomb of Xenophon.

As you go from Scillus along the road to Olympia, before you cross the Alpheius,there is a mountain with high, precipitous cliffs. It is called Mount Typaeum. It is a law of Elis to cast down it any women who are caught present at the Olympic games, or even on the other side of the Alpheius, on the days prohibited to women. However, they say that no woman has been caught, except Callipateira only; some, however, give the lady the name of Pherenice and not Callipateira.

She, being a widow, disguised herself exactly like a gymnastic trainer, and brought her son to compete at Olympia. Peisirodus, for so her son was called, was victorious, and Callipateira, as she was jumping over the enclosure in which they keep the trainers shut up, bared her person. So her sex was discovered, but they let her go unpunished out of respect for her father, her brothers and her son, all of whom had been victorious at Olympia. But a law was passed that for the future trainers should strip before entering the arena.

By the time you reach Olympia the Alpheius is a large and very pleasant river to see, being fed by several tributaries, including seven very important ones. The Helisson joins the Alpheius passing through Megalopolis; the Brentheates comes out of the territory of that city; past Gortyna, where is a sanctuary of Asclepius, flows the Gortynius; from Melaeneae, between the territories of Megalopolis and Heraea, comes the Buphagus; from the land of the Clitorians the Ladon; from Mount Erymanthus a stream with the same name as the mountain. These come down into the Alpheius from Arcadia; the Cladeus comes from Elis to join it. The source of the Alpheius itself is in Arcadia, and not in Elis.

There is another legend about the Alpheius. They say that there was a hunter called Alpheius, who fell in love with Arethusa, who was herself a huntress. Arethusa, unwilling to marry, crossed, they say, to the island opposite Syracuse called Ortygia, and there turned from a woman to a spring. Alpheius too was changed by his love into the river.

This account of Alpheius---to Ortygia.[*](This sentence, obviously corrupt, seems to show a lacuna afterἈλφειόν.The meaning probably would be to the effect that the story was an invention, to account for the disappearance of the Alpheius in the sea and its reappearance at Ortygia (ἐς τὴν Ὀρτυγίαν).) But that the Alpheius passes through the sea and mingles his waters with the spring at this place I cannot disbelieve, as I know that the god at Delphi confirms the story. For when he despatched Archias the Corinthian to found Syracuse he uttered this oracle:

1. An isle, Ortygia, lies on the misty ocean
2. Over against Trinacria, where the mouth of Alpheius bubbles
3. Mingling with the springs of broad Arethusa.