CHAPTER XXIII

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And next to the river Charadrus are some ruins not very easy to trace of the town of Argyra, and the well Argyra on the right of the high road, and the river Selemnus that flows into the sea. The local account is that Selemnus was a handsome youth who fed his flocks here, and they say the sea-nymph Argyra was enamoured of him, and used to come up from the sea and sleep with him. But in a short time Selemnus lost all his good looks, and the Nymph no longer came to visit him, and Aphrodite turned the poor lad Selemnus, who was deprived of Argyra and dying for love, into a river. I tell the tale as the people of Patræ told it me. And when he became a river he was still enamoured of Argyra, (as the story goes about Alpheus that he still loved Arethusa,) but Aphrodite at last granted him forgetfulness of Argyra. I have also heard another tradition, _viz._ that the water of the Selemnus is a good love-cure both for men and women, for if they bathe in this water they forget their love. If there is any truth in this tradition, the water of Selemnus would be more valuable to mankind than much wealth.

And at a little distance from Argyra is the river called Bolinæus, and a town once stood there called Bolina. Apollo they say was enamoured of a maiden called Bolina, and she fled from him and threw herself into the sea, and became immortal through his favour. And there is a promontory here jutting out into the sea, about which there is a tradition that it was here that Cronos threw the sickle into the sea, with which he had mutilated his father Uranus, so they call the promontory Drepanum (_sickle_). And a little above the high road are the ruins of Rhypæ, which is about 30 stades from Ægium. And the district round Ægium is watered by the river Phœnix and another river Miganitas, both of which flow into the sea. And a portico near the town was built for the athlete Strato, (who conquered at Olympia on the same day in the pancratium and in the wrestling), to practise in. And at Ægium they have an ancient temple of Ilithyia, her statue is veiled from her head to her toes with a finely-woven veil, and is of wood except the face and fingers and toes, which are of Pentelican marble. One of the hands is stretched out straight, and in the other she holds a torch. One may symbolize Ilithyia’s torches thus, that the throes of travail are to women as it were a fire. Or the torches may be supposed to symbolize that Ilithyia brings children to the light. The statue is by the Messenian Damophon.

And at no great distance from the temple of Ilithyia is the sacred enclosure of Æsculapius, and statues in it of Hygiea and Æsculapius. The iambic line on the basement says that they were by the Messenian Damophon. In this temple of Æsculapius I had a controversy with a Sidonian, who said that the Phœnicians had more accurate knowledge generally about divine things than the Greeks, and their tradition was that Apollo was the father of Æsculapius, but that he had no mortal woman for his mother, and that Æsculapius was nothing but the air which is beneficial for the health of mankind and all beasts, and that Apollo was the Sun, and was most properly called the father of Æsculapius, because the Sun in its course regulates the Seasons and gives health to the air. All this I assented to, but was obliged to point out that this view was as much Greek as Phœnician, since at Titane in Sicyonia the statue of Æsculapius was called Health, and that it was plain even to a child that the course of the sun on the earth produces health among mankind.

At Ægium there is also a temple to Athene and another to Hera, and Athene has two statues in white stone, but the statue of Hera may be looked upon by none but women, and those only the priestesses. And near the theatre is a temple and statue of beardless Dionysus. There are also in the market-place sacred precincts of Zeus Soter, and two statues on the left as you enter both of brass, the one without a beard seemed to me the older of the two. And in a building right opposite the road are brazen statues of Poseidon, Hercules, Zeus, and Athene, and they call them the Argive gods, because the Argive tradition says they were made at Argos, but the people of Ægium say it was because the statues were deposited with them by the Argives. And they say further that they were ordered to sacrifice to these statues every day: and they found out a trick by which they could sacrifice as required, but without any expense by feasting on the victims: and eventually these statues were asked back by the Argives, and the people of Ægium asked for the money they had spent on the sacrifices first, so the Argives (as they could not pay this) left the statues with them.

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