CHAPTER VII

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As you cross over Artemisium into the district of Mantinea the plain Argum (_unfruitful_) will receive you, rightly so called. For the rain that comes down from the mountains makes the plain unfruitful, and would have prevented it being anything but a swamp, had not the water disappeared in a cavity in the ground. It reappears at a place called Dine. This Dine is at a place in Argolis called Genethlium, and the water is sweet though it comes up from the sea. At Dine the Argives used formerly to offer to Poseidon horses ready bridled. Sweet water comes up from the sea plainly here in Argolis, and also in Thesprotia at a place called Chimerium. More wonderful still is the hot water of Mæander, partly flowing from a rock which the river surrounds, partly coming up from the mud of the river. And near Dicæarchia (_Puteoli_) in Tyrrhenia the sea water is hot, and an island has been constructed, so as for the water to afford warm baths.

There is a mountain on the left of the plain Argum, where there are ruins of the camp of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and of the village Nestane. For it was at this village they say that Philip encamped, and the well there they still call Philip’s well. He went into Arcadia to win over the Arcadians to his side, and at the same time to separate them from the other Greeks. Philip one can well believe displayed the greatest valour of all the Macedonian kings before or after him, but no rightminded person could call him a good man, seeing that he trod under foot the oaths he had made to the gods, and on all occasions violated truces, and dishonoured good faith among men. And the vengeance of the deity came upon him not late, but early. For Philip had only lived 46 years when the oracle at Delphi was made good by his death, given to him they say when he inquired about the Persian war,

“The bull is crowned, the end is come, the sacrificer’s near.”

This as the god very soon showed did not refer to the Mede, but to Philip himself. And after the death of Philip his baby boy by Cleopatra the niece of Attalus was put by Olympias with his mother into a brazen vessel over a fire, and so killed. Olympias also subsequently killed Aridæus. The deity also intended as it seems to mow down all the family of Cassander by untimely ends. For Cassander married Thessalonica the daughter of Philip, and Thessalonica and Aridæus had Thessalian mothers. As to Alexander all know of his early death. But if Philip had considered the eulogium passed upon Glaucus the Spartan, and had remembered that line in each of his actions,

“The posterity of a conscientious man shall be fortunate,”[23]

I do not think that there would have been any reason for any of the gods to have ended at the same time the life of Alexander and the Macedonian supremacy. But this has been a digression.

[23] See Herod. vi. 86. Hesiod, 285.

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