CHAPTER XXX

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The earliest statues of the Muses here were all by Cephisodotus, and if you advance a little you will find three of his Muses, and three by Strongylion who was especially famous as a statuary of cows and horses, and three by Olympiosthenes. At Helicon are also a brazen Apollo and Hermes contending about a lyre, and a Dionysus by Lysippus, and an upright statue of Dionysus, the votive offering of Sulla, by Myro, the next best work to his Erechtheus at Athens. But Sulla did not offer it of his own possessions, but took it from the Orchomenian Minyæ. This is what is called by the Greeks worshipping the deity with other people’s incense.[67]

Here too they have erected statues of poets and others notable for music, as blind Thamyris handling a broken lyre, and Arion of Methymna on the dolphin’s back. But he who made the statue of Sacadas the Argive, not understanding Pindar’s prelude about him, has made the piper no bigger in his body than his pipes. There too is Hesiod sitting with a harp on his knees, not his usual appearance, for it is plain from his poems that he used to sing with a laurel wand. As to the period of Hesiod and Homer, though I made most diligent research, it is not agreeable to me to venture an opinion, as I know the disputatiousness of people, and not least of those who in my day have discussed poetical subjects. There is also a statue of Thracian Orpheus with Telete beside him, and there are round him representations in stone and brass of the animals listening to his singing. The Greeks believe many things which are not true, and among others that Orpheus was the son of the Muse Calliope and not of the daughter of Pierus, and that animals were led by his melody, and that he went down alive to Hades to get back his wife Eurydice from the gods of the lower world. But Orpheus, as it seems to me, really did excel all his predecessors in the arrangement of his poems, and attained to great influence as being thought to have invented the mysteries of the gods, and purifications from unholy deeds, and cures for diseases, and means of turning away the wrath of the gods. And they say the Thracian women laid plots against his life, because he persuaded their husbands to accompany him in his wanderings, but from fear of their husbands did not carry them out at first: but afterwards when they had primed themselves with wine carried out the atrocious deed, and since that time it has been customary for the men to go drunk into battle. But some say that Orpheus died from being struck with lightning by the god because he taught men in the mysteries things they had not before heard of. Others have recorded that, his wife Eurydice having died before him, he went to Aornus in Thesprotia, to consult an oracle of the dead about her, and he thought that her soul would follow him, but losing her because he turned back to look at her he slew himself from grief. And the Thracians say that the nightingales that build their nests on the tomb of Orpheus sing pleasanter and louder than other nightingales. But the Macedonians who inhabit the district of Pieria, under the mountain and the city Dium, say that Orpheus was slain there by the women. And as you go from Dium to the mountain and about 20 stades further is a pillar on the right hand and on the pillar a stone urn: this urn has the remains of Orpheus as the people of the district say. The river Helicon flows through this district, after a course of 75 stades it loses itself in the ground, and 22 stades further it reappears, when it is called Baphyra instead of Helicon, becomes a navigable stream, and finally discharges itself into the sea. The people of Dium say that the river flowed above ground originally throughout its course, but when the women who slew Orpheus desired to wash off his blood in it, it went underground that it might not give them cleansing from their blood-guiltiness. I have also heard another account at Larissa, that a city on Olympus was once inhabited called Libethra, where the mountain looks to Macedonia, and that the tomb of Orpheus is not far from this city, and that there came an oracle to the people of Libethra from Dionysus in Thrace, that when the Sun should see the bones of Orpheus their city would be destroyed by _Sus_. But they paid no great attention to the oracle, thinking no wild animal would be large or strong enough to destroy their city, while as to the boar (_Sus_) it had more boldness than power. However when the god thought fit, then the following happened. A shepherd about mid-day laid himself down by the tomb of Orpheus and fell asleep, and in his sleep sang some verses of Orpheus aloud in a sweet voice. Then the shepherds and husbandmen who were near left their respective work, and crowded together to hear this shepherd sing in his sleep, and pushing one another about in striving to get near the shepherd overturned the pillar, and the urn fell off it and was broken, and the Sun did see the remains of Orpheus. And on the following night it rained very heavily, and the river _Sus_, which is one of the mountain streams on Olympus, swept away the walls of Libethra, and the temples of the gods and the houses of the inhabitants, and drowned all the human beings in the place and all the animals. As the Libethrians therefore all perished, the Macedonians in Dium, according to the account I received from my host at Larissa, removed the remains of Orpheus to their city. Whoever has investigated the subject knows that the Hymns of Orpheus are very short, and do not altogether amount to a great number. The Lycomidæ are acquainted with them and chant them at the Mysteries. In composition they are second only to the Hymns of Homer, and are more valued for their religious spirit.

[67] Compare the Homeric ἀλλοτρίων χαρίσασθαι. Od. xvii. 452. Our _Robbing Peter to pay Paul_.

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