CHAPTER XX

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And after having advanced from Lycuria about 50 stades you will come to the springs of the river Ladon. I have heard that the water of the marsh at Pheneus, after falling into the pits under the mountains, reappears here, and forms the springs of Ladon. I am not prepared to say whether this is so or not. But the river Ladon excels all the rivers in Greece for the beauty of its stream, and is also famous in connection with what poets have sung about Daphne. The tradition current about Daphne among those who live on the banks of the Orontes I pass over, but the following is the tradition both in Arcadia and Elis. Œnomaus the ruler at Pisa had a son Leucippus who was enamoured of Daphne, and hotly wooed her for his wife, but discovered that she had a dislike to all males. So he contrived the following stratagem. He let his hair grow to the Alpheus,[30] and put on woman’s dress and went to Daphne with his hair arranged like a girl’s, and said he was the daughter of Œnomaus, and would like to go a hunting with Daphne. And being reckoned a girl, and excelling all the other girls in the lustre of his family and skill in hunting, and paying the greatest possible attention to Daphne, he soon won her strong friendship. But they who sing of Apollo’s love for Daphne add that Apollo was jealous of Leucippus’ happiness in love. So when Daphne and the other maidens desired to bathe in the Ladon and swim about, they stripped Leucippus against his will, and discovering his sex they stabbed him and killed him with javelins and daggers. So the story goes.

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