CHAPTER XXIII

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And next to Stymphelus comes Alea a town in the Argolic league, founded they say by Aleus the son of Aphidas. There are temples here of Ephesian Artemis and Alean Athene, and a temple and statue of Dionysus. They celebrate annually the festival of Dionysus called Scieria, in which according to an oracle from Delphi the women are flogged, as the Spartan boys are flogged at the temple of Orthia.

I have shewn in my account of Orchomenus that the straight road is by the ravine, and that there is another on the left of the lake. And in the plain of Caphyæ there is a reservoir, by which the water from the territory of Orchomenus is kept in, so as not to harm the fertile district. And within this reservoir some other water, in volume nearly as large as a river, is absorbed in the ground and comes up again at what is called Nasi, near a village called Rheunos, and it forms there the perennial river called Tragus. The town gets its name clearly from Cepheus the son of Aleus, but the name Caphyæ has prevailed through the Arcadian dialect. And the inhabitants trace their origin to Attica, they say they were expelled by Ægeus from Athens and fled to Arcadia, and supplicated Cepheus to allow them to dwell there. The town is at the end of the plain at the foot of some not very high hills, and has temples of Poseidon and of Cnacalesian Artemis, so called from the mountain Cnacalus where the goddess has annual rites. A little above the town is a well and by it a large and beautiful plane-tree, which they call Menelaus’, for they say that when he was mustering his army against Troy he came here and planted it by the well, and in our day they call the well as well as the plane-tree Menelaus’. And if we may credit the traditions of the Greeks about old trees still alive and flourishing, the oldest is the willow in the temple of Hera at Samos, and next it the oak at Dodona, and the olive in the Acropolis and at Delos, and the Syrians would assign the third place for its antiquity to their laurel, and of all others this plane-tree is the most ancient.

About a stade from Caphyæ is the place Condylea, where was a grove and temple in olden times to Artemis of Condylea. But the goddess changed her title they say for the following reason. Some children playing about the temple, how many is not recorded, came across a rope, and bound it round the neck of the statue, and said that they would strangle Artemis. And the people of Caphyæ when they found out what had been done by the children stoned them, and in consequence of this a strange disorder came upon the women, who prematurely gave birth to dead children, till the Pythian Priestess told them to bury the children who had been stoned, and annually to bestow on them funeral rites, for they had not been slain justly. The people of Caphyæ obeyed the oracle and still do, and ever since call the goddess, (this they also refer to the oracle), Apanchomene (_strangled_). When you have ascended from Caphyæ seven stades you descend to Nasi, and fifty stades further is the river Ladon. And when you have crossed it you will come to the oak-coppice Soron, between Argeathæ and Lycuntes and Scotane. Soron is on the road to Psophis, and it and all the Arcadian oak-coppices shelter various wild animals, as boars and bears, and immense tortoises, from which you could make lyres as large as those made from the Indian tortoise. And at the end of Soron are the ruins of a village called Paus, and at no great distance is what is called Siræ, the boundary between the districts of Clitor and Psophis.

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