CHAPTER XI

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Next to the temple of Poseidon you will come to a place full of oak trees called Pelagos; there is a road from Mantinea to Tegea through these oak trees. And the boundary between the districts of Mantinea and Tegea is the round altar on the highroad. And if you should turn to the left from the temple of Poseidon, in about five stades you will come to the tombs of the daughters of Pelias. The people of Mantinea say they dwelt here to avoid the vituperations which came upon them for the death of their father. For as soon as Medea came to Iolcos she forthwith plotted against Pelias, really working for Jason’s interest, while ostensibly hostile to him. She told the daughters of Pelias that, if they liked, she could make their father a young man instead of an old man. So she slew a ram and boiled his flesh with herbs in a caldron, and she brought the old ram out of the caldron in the shape of a young man alive. After this she took Pelias to boil and cut him up, but his daughters got hardly enough of him to take to burial. This compelled them to go and live in Arcadia, and when they died their sepulchres were raised here. No poet has given their names so far as I know, but Mico the painter has written under their portraits the names Asteropea and Antinoe.

And the place called Phœzon is about 20 stades from these tombs, where is a tomb with a stone base, rising up somewhat from the ground. The road is very narrow at this place, and they say it is the tomb of Areithous, who was called Corynetes from the club which he used in battle. As you go about 30 stades along the road from Mantinea to Pallantium, the oak plantation called Pelagos extends along the highroad, and here the cavalry of the Mantineans and Athenians fought against the Bœotian cavalry. And the Mantineans say that Epaminondas was killed here by Machærion a Mantinean, but the Lacedæmonians say that the Machærion who killed Epaminondas was a Spartan. But the Athenian account, corroborated by the Thebans, is that Epaminondas was mortally wounded by Gryllus: and this corresponds with the painting of the action at Mantinea. The Mantineans also seem to have given Gryllus a public funeral, and erected to him his statue on a pillar where he fell as the bravest man in the allied army: whereas Machærion, though the Lacedæmonians mention him, had no special honours paid to him as a brave man, either at Sparta or at Mantinea. And when Epaminondas was wounded they removed him yet alive out of the line of battle. And for a time he kept his hand on his wound, and gasped for breath, and looked earnestly at the fight, and the place where he kept so looking they called ever after Scope, (_Watch_), but when the battle was over then he took his hand from the wound and expired, and they buried him on the field of battle. And there is a pillar on his tomb, and a shield above it with a dragon as its device. The dragon is intended to intimate that Epaminondas was one of those who are called the Sparti, the seed of the dragon’s teeth. And there are two pillars on his tomb, one ancient with a Bœotian inscription, and the other erected by the Emperor Adrian with an inscription by him upon it. As to Epaminondas one might praise him as one of the most famous Greek generals for talent in war, indeed second to none. For the Lacedæmonian and Athenian generals were aided by the ancient renown of their states and the spirit of their soldiers: but the Thebans were dejected and used to obey other Greek states when Epaminondas in a short time put them into a foremost position.

Epaminondas had been warned by the oracle at Delphi before this to beware of Pelagos. Taking this word in its usual meaning of the sea he was careful not to set foot on a trireme or transport: but Apollo evidently meant this oak plantation Pelagos and not the sea. Places bearing the same name deceived Hannibal the Carthaginian later on, and the Athenians still earlier. For Hannibal had an oracle from Ammon that he would die and be buried in Libyssa. Accordingly he hoped that he would destroy the power of Rome, and return home to Libya and die there in old age. But when Flaminius the Roman made all diligence to take him alive, he went to the court of Prusias as a suppliant, and being rejected by him mounted his horse, and in drawing his sword wounded his finger. And he had not gone on many stades when a fever from the wound came on him, and he died the third day after, and the place where he died was called Libyssa by the people of Nicomedia. The oracle at Dodona also told the Athenians to colonize Sicily. Now not far from Athens is a small hill called Sicily. And they, not understanding that it was this Sicily that the oracle referred to, were induced to go on expeditions beyond their borders and to engage in the fatal war against Syracuse. And one might find other similar cases to these.

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