Description of Greece

Such is the truth about these things. The first to sacrifice on Helicon to the Muses and to call the mountain sacred to the Muses were, they say, Ephialtes and Otus, who also founded Ascra. To this also Hegesinus alludes in his poem Atthis:—

1. And again with Ascra lay Poseidon Earth-shaker,
2. Who when the year revolved bore him a son
3. Oeoclus, who first with the children of Aloeus founded
4. Ascra, which lies at the foot of Helicon, rich in springs.

This poem of Hegesinus I have not read, for it was no longer extant when I was born. But Callippus of Corinth in his history of Orchomenus uses the verses of Hegesinus as evidence in support of his own views, and I too have done likewise, using the quotation of Callippus himself. Of Ascra in my day nothing memorable was left except one tower. The sons of Aloeus held that the Muses were three in number, and gave them the names of Melete (Practice), Mneme (Memory) and Aoede (Song).

But they say that afterwards Pierus, a Macedonian, after whom the mountain in Macedonia was named, came to Thespiae and established nine Muses, changing their names to the present ones. Pierus was of this opinion either because it seemed to him wiser, or because an oracle so ordered, or having so learned from one of the Thracians. For the Thracians had the reputation of old of being more clever than the Macedonians, and in particular of being not so careless in religious matters.

There are some who say that Pierus himself had nine daughters, that their names were the same as those of the goddesses, and that those whom the Greeks called the children of the Muses were sons of the daughters of Pierus. Mimnermus, who composed elegiac verses about the battle between the Smyrnaeans and the Lydians under Gyges, says in the preface that the elder Muses are daughters of Uranus, and that there are other and younger Muses, children of Zeus.

On Helicon, on the left as you go to the grove of the Muses, is the spring Aganippe; they say that Aganippe was a daughter of the Termessus, which flows round Helicon. As you go along the straight road to the grove is a portrait of Eupheme carved in relief on a stone. She was, they say, the nurse of the Muses.

So her portrait is here, and after it is Linus on a small rock worked into the shape of a cave. To Linus every year they sacrifice as to a hero before they sacrifice to the Muses. It is said that this Linus was a son of Urania and Amphimarus, a son of Poseidon, that he won a reputation for music greater than that of any contemporary or predecessor, and that Apollo killed him for being his rival in singing.

On the death of Linus, mourning for him spread, it seems, to all the foreign world, so that even among the Egyptians there came to be a Linus song, in the Egyptian language called Maneros. Of the Greek poets, Homer shows that he knew that the sufferings of Linus were the theme of a Greek song when he says that Hephaestus, among the other scenes he worked upon the shield of Achilles, represented a boy harpist singing the Linus song:—

1. In the midst of them a boy on a clear-toned lyre
2. Played with great charm, and to his playing sang of beautiful Linus.[*](Pausanias misquotes.)

Pamphos, who composed the oldest Athenian hymns, called him Oetolinus (Linus doomed) at the time when the mourning for Linus was at its height. Sappho of Lesbos, who learnt the name of Oetolinus from the epic poetry of Pamphos, sang of both Adonis and Oetolinus together. The Thebans assert that Linus was buried among them, and that after the Greek defeat at Chaeroneia, Philip the son of Amyntas, in obedience to a vision in a dream, took up the bones of Linus and conveyed them to Macedonia;

other visions induced him to send the bones of Linus back to Thebes. But all that was over the grave, and whatever marks were on it, vanished, they say, with the lapse of time. Other tales are told by the Thebans, how that later than this Linus there was born another, called the son of Ismenius, a teacher of music, and how Heracles, while still a child, killed him. But hexameter poetry was written neither by Linus the son of Amphimarus nor by the later Linus; or if it was, it has not survived for posterity.