Description of Greece

At first, they say, Demeter was angry at what had happened, but later on she laid aside her wrath and wished to bathe in the Ladon. So the goddess has obtained two surnames, Fury because of her avenging anger, because the Arcadians call being wrathful “being furious,” and Bather (Lusia) because she bathed in the Ladon. The images in the temple are of wood, but their faces, hands and feet are of Parian marble.

The image of Fury holds what is called the chest, and in her right hand a torch; her height I conjecture to be nine feet. Lusia seemed to be six feet high. Those who think the image to be Themis and not Demeter Lusia are, I would have them know, mistaken in their opinion. Demeter, they say, had by Poseidon a daughter, whose name they are not wont to divulge to the uninitiated, and a horse called Areion. For this reason they say that they were the first Arcadians to call Poseidon Horse.

They quote verses from the Iliad and from the Thebaid in confirmation of their story. In the Iliad there are verses about Areion himself:

1. Not even if he drive divine Areion behind,
2. The swift horse of Adrastus, who was of the race of the gods.

1. Wearing wretched clothes, and with him dark-maned Areion.

1. Adrastus, son of Talaus, son of Cretheus,
2. The very first of the Danai to drive his famous horses,
3. Swift Caerus and Areion of Thelpusa,
4. Whom near the grove of Oncean Apollo
5. Earth herself sent up, a marvel for mortals to see.

But even though sprung from Earth the horse might be of divine lineage and the color of his hair might still be dark. Legend also has it that when Heracles was warring on Elis he asked Oncus for the horse, and was carried to battle on the back of Areion when he took Elis, but afterwards the horse was given to Adrastus by Heracles. Wherefore Antimachus says about Areion:

1. Adrastus was the third lord who tamed him.

The Ladon, leaving on the left the sanctuary of the Fury, passes on the left the temple of Oncaeatian Apollo, and on the right a sanctuary of Boy Asclepius, where is the tomb of Trygon, who is said to have been the nurse of Asclepius. For the story is that Asclepius, when little, was exposed in Thelpusa, but was found by Autolaus, the illegitimate son of Arcas, who reared the baby, and for this reason Boy Asclepius . . . I thought more likely, as also I set forth in my account of Epidaurus.[*](See Paus. 2.26.4 foll.)

There is a river Tuthoa, and it falls into the Ladon at the boundary between Thelpusa and Heraea, called Plain by the Arcadians. Where the Ladon itself falls into the Alpheius is an island called the Island of Crows. Those who have thought that Enispe, Stratia and Rhipe, mentioned by Homer,[*](Hom. Il. 2.606) were once inhabited islands in the Ladon, cherish, I would tell them, a false belief.

For the Ladon could never show islands even as large as a ferry-boat. As far as beauty is concerned, it is second to no river, either in Greece or in foreign lands, but it is not big enough to carry islands on its waters, as do the Danube and the Eridanus.