CHAPTER XXXVIII

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At Orchomenus there is a temple of Dionysus, and a very ancient one of the Graces. They worship especially some meteoric stones which they say fell from heaven upon Eteocles, and some handsome stone statues were offered in my time. They have also a well well worth seeing, which they go down to to draw water. And the treasury of Minyas, a marvel inferior to nothing in Greece or elsewhere, is constructed as follows. It is a circular building made of stone with a top not very pointed: the highest stone they say holds together the whole building. There are also there the tombs of Minyas and Hesiod: they say Hesiod’s bones were got in the following way. When a pestilence once destroyed men and cattle they sent messengers to Delphi, and the Pythian Priestess bade them bring the bones of Hesiod from Naupactus to Orchomenus, and that would be a remedy. They then inquired again in what part of Naupactus they would find those bones, and the Pythian Priestess told them that a crow would show them. As they proceeded on their journey they saw a stone not far from the road and a crow sitting on it, and they found the bones of Hesiod in the hollow of the stone, and these elegiac verses were inscribed upon it,

“The fertile Ascra was his fatherland, but after his death the land of the horse-taming Minyæ got Hesiod’s remains, whose fame is greatest in Greece among men judged by the test of wisdom.”

As to Actæon there is a tradition at Orchomenus, that a spectre which sat on a stone injured their land. And when they consulted the oracle at Delphi, the god bade them bury in the ground whatever remains they could find of Actæon: he also bade them to make a brazen copy of the spectre and fasten it with iron to the stone. This I have myself seen, and they annually offer funeral rites to Actæon.

About 7 stades from Orchomenus is a temple and small statue of Hercules. Here is the source of the river Melas, which has its outlet into the lake Cephisis. The lake covers a large part of the Orchomenian district, and in winter time, when the South Wind generally prevails, the water spreads over most of the country. The Thebans say that the river Cephisus was diverted by Hercules into the Orchomenian plain, and that it had its outlet to the sea under the mountain till Hercules dammed that passage up. Homer indeed knows of the lake Cephisis, but not as made by Hercules, and speaks of it in the line

“Overhanging the lake Cephisis.”[76]

But it is improbable that the Orchomenians did not discover that passage, and give to the Cephisus its old outlet by undoing the work of Hercules, for they were not without money even as far back as the Trojan War. Homer bears me out in the answer of Achilles to the messengers of Agamemnon,

“Not all the wealth that to Orchomenus comes,”[77]

plainly therefore at that period much wealth came to Orchomenus.

They say Aspledon lost its inhabitants from deficiency of water, and that it got its name from Aspledon, the son of Poseidon by the Nymph Midea. This account is confirmed by the verses which Chersias the Orchomenian wrote,

“Aspledon was the son of Poseidon and illustrious Midea and born in the large city.”

None of the verses of Chersias are now extant, but Callippus has cited these in his speech about the Orchomenians. The Orchomenians also say that the epitaph on Hesiod was composed by this Chersias.

[76] Iliad, v. 709.

[77] Iliad, ix. 381.

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