Description of Greece

As you go from Pheneus to the west, the left road leads to the city Cleitor, while on the right is the road to Nonacris and the water of the Styx. Of old Nonacris was a town of the Arcadians that was named after the wife of Lycaon. When I visited it, it was in ruins, and most of these were hidden. Not far from the ruins is a high cliff; I know of none other that rises to so great a height. A water trickles down the cliff, called by the Greeks the water of the Styx.

Hesiod in the Theogony[*](See Hes. Th. 383. Compare also Hes. Th. 776, 785 foll., Hes. Th. 805, 806.) —for there are some who assign this hexameter poem to Hesiod—speaks of Styx as the daughter of Ocean and the wife of Pallas. Men say that Linus too gives a like account in his verses, though when I read these they struck me as altogether spurious.

Epimenides of Crete, also, represented Styx as the daughter of Ocean, not, however, as the wife of Pallas, but as bearing Echidna to Peiras, whoever Peiras may be. But it is Homer who introduces most frequently the name of Styx into his poetry. In the oath of Hera he says :—

1. Witness now to this be Earth, and broad Heaven above,
2. And the water of Styx down-flowing.

He also represents the Styx as a river in Hades, and Athena says that Zeus does not remember that because of her he kept Heracles safe throughout the labours imposed by Eurystheus.

1. For if I had known this in my shrewd heart
2. When he sent him to Hades the gate-keeper,
3. To fetch out of Erebus the hound of hateful Hades,
4. He would never have escaped the sheer streams of' the river Styx.

The water trickling down the cliff by the side of Nonacris falls first to a high rock, through which it passes and then descends into the river Crathis. Its water brings death to all, man and beast alike. It is said too that it once brought death even upon goats, which drank of the water first; later on all the wonderful properties of the water were learnt.