Description of Greece

This road leads to Messene, and there is another leading from Megalopolis to Carnasium in Messenia. The first thing you come to on the latter road is the Alpheius at the place where it is joined by the Malus and the Scyrus, whose waters have already united. From this point keeping the Malus on the right after about thirty stades you will cross it and ascend along a rather steep road to a place called Phaedrias.

About fifteen stades distant from Phaedrias is an Hermaeum called “by the Mistress"; it too forms a boundary between Messenia and Megalopolis. There are small images of the Mistress and Demeter; likewise of Hermes and Heracles. I am of opinion that the wooden image also, made for Heracles by Daedalus, stood here on the borders of Messenia and Arcadia.

The road from Megalopolis to Lacedaemon is thirty stades long at the Alpheius. After this you will travel beside a river Theius, which is a tributary of the Alpheius, and some forty stades from the Alpheius leaving the Theius on the left you will come to Phalaesiae. This place is twenty stades away from the Hermaeum at Belemina.

The Arcadians say that Belemina belonged of old to Arcadia but was severed from it by the Lacedaemonians. This account struck me as improbable on various grounds, chiefly because the Thebans, I think, would never have allowed the Arcadians to suffer even this loss, if they could have brought about restitution with justice.

There are also roads from Megalopolis leading to the interior of Arcadia; to Methydrium it is one hundred and seventy stades, and thirteen stades from Megalopolis is a place called Scias, where are ruins of a sanctuary of Artemis Sciatis, said to have been built by Aristodemus the tyrant. About ten stades from here are a few memorials of the city Charisiae, and the journey from Charisiae to Tricoloni is another ten stades.