CHAPTER XVI

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And as you go eastwards from Pheneus you come to the promontory of Geronteum, and by it is a road. And Geronteum is the boundary between the districts of Pheneus and Stymphelus. And as you leave Geronteum on the left and go through the district of Pheneus you come to the mountains called Tricrena, where there are three wells. In these they say the mountain nymphs washed Hermes when he was born, and so they consider these wells sacred to Hermes. And not far from Tricrena is another hill called Sepia, and here they say Æpytus the son of Elatus died of the bite of a serpent, and here they buried him, for they could not carry his dead body further. These serpents are still (the Arcadians say) to be found on the hill but in no great quantity, for every year much of it is covered with snow, and those serpents that the snow catches outside of their holes are killed by it, and if they first get back to their holes, yet the snow kills part of them even there, as the bitter cold sometimes penetrates to their holes. I was curious to see the tomb of Æpytus, because Homer mentions it in his lines about the Arcadians.[26] It is a pile of earth not very high, surrounded by a coping of stone. It was likely to inspire wonder in Homer as he had seen no more notable tomb. For when he compared the dancing-ground wrought by Hephæstus on Achilles’ shield to the dancing-ground made by Dædalus for Ariadne,[27] it was because he had seen nothing more clever. And though I know many wonderful tombs I will only mention two, one in Halicarnassus and one in the land of the Hebrews. The one in Halicarnassus was built for Mausolus king of Halicarnassus, and is so large and wonderful in all its adornation, that the Romans in their admiration of it call all notable tombs Mausoleums. And the Hebrews have in the city of Jerusalem, which has been rased to the ground by the Roman Emperor, a tomb of Helen a woman of that country, which is so contrived that the door, which is of stone like all the rest of the tomb, cannot be opened except on one particular day and month of the year. And then it opens by the machinery alone, and keeps open for some little time and then shuts again. But at any other time of the year anyone trying to open it could not do so, you would have to smash it before you could open it.

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