On Architecture

21. In Arcadia is the well-known town of Clitor, in whose territory is a cave with running water which makes people who drink of it abstemious. At this spring, there is an epigram in Greek verses inscribed on stone to the effect that the water is unsuitable for bathing, and also injurious to vines, because it was at this spring that Melampus cleansed the daughters of Proetus of their madness by sacrificial rites, and restored those maidens to their former sound state of mind. The inscription runs as written below:

1. Swain, if by noontide thirst thou art opprest
2. When with thy flocks to Cleitor's bounds thou'st hied,
3. Take from this fount a draught, and grant a rest
4. To all thy goats the water nymphs beside.
5. But bathe not in't when full of drunken cheer,
6. Lest the mere vapour may bring thee to bane;
7. Shun my vine-hating spring—Melampus here
8. From madness once washed Proetus' daughters sane,
9. And all th' offscouring here did hide, when they
10. From Argos came to rugged Arcady.

22. In the island of Zea is a spring of which those who thoughtlessly drink lose their understanding, and an epigram is cut there

1. This stone sweet streams of cooling drink doth drip,
2. But stone his wits become who doth it sip.