CHAPTER XXXIII

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At Haliartus is Lysander’s tomb, and a hero-chapel to Cecrops the son of Pandion. And the mountain Tilphusium and the fountain Tilphusa are about 50 stades from Haliartus. It is a tradition of the Greeks that the Argives, who in conjunction with the sons of Polynices captured Thebes, were taking Tiresias and the spoil to Apollo at Delphi, when Tiresias who was thirsty drank of the fountain Tilphusa and gave up the ghost, and was buried on the spot. They say also that Manto the daughter of Tiresias was offered to Apollo by the Argives, but that, in consequence of the orders of the god, she sailed to what is now Ionia, and to that part of it called Colophonia. And there she married the Cretan Rhacius. All the other legends about Tiresias, as the number of years which he is recorded to have lived, and how he was changed from a woman into a man, and how Homer in his Odyssey has represented him as the only person of understanding in Hades,[71] all this everyone has heard and knows. Near Haliartus too there is in the open air a temple of the goddesses that they call Praxidicæ. In this temple they swear no hasty oaths. This temple is near the mountain Tilphusium. There are also temples at Haliartus, with no statues in them for there is no roof: to whom they were erected I could not ascertain.

The river Lophis flows through the district of Haliartus. The tradition is that the ground was dry there originally and had no water in it, and that one of the rulers went to Delphi to inquire of the god how they might obtain water in the district: and the Pythian Priestess enjoined him to slay the first person he should meet on his return: and it was his son Lophis who met him on his return, and without delay he ran his sword through him, and Lophis yet alive ran round and round, and wherever his blood flowed the water gushed up, and it was called Lophis after him.

The village Alalcomenæ is not large, and lies at the foot of a mountain not very high. It got its name from Alalcomeneus an Autochthon who they say reared Athene: others say from Alalcomenia one of the daughters of Ogygus. Some distance from the village in the plain is a temple of Athene, and there was an old ivory statue of the goddess, which was taken away by Sulla, who was also very cruel to the Athenians, and whose manners were very unlike those of the Romans, and who acted similarly to the Thebans and Orchomenians. He, after his furious onsets against the Greek cities and the gods of the Greeks, was himself seized by the most unpleasant of all diseases, for he was covered with lice, and this was the end of all his glory. And the temple of Athene at Alalcomenæ was neglected after the statue of the goddess was removed. Another circumstance in my time tended to the breaking up of the temple: some ivy, which had got a firm hold on the building, loosened and detached the stones from their positions. The river that flows here is a small torrent, they call it Triton because they say Athene was brought up near the river Triton, as if it were this Triton, and not the Triton in Libya which has its outlet from the Lake Tritonis into the Libyan sea.

[71] Odyssey, x. 492-495.

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