CHAPTER XXXIV

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As you go from Megalopolis to Messene, you will come in about 7 stades to a temple of some goddesses on the left of the high road. They call both goddesses and place Maniæ, which is I fancy a title of the Eumenides, for they say Orestes was driven mad here after the murder of his mother. And not far from the temple is a small mound, with a stone finger upon it, the mound is called Finger’s tomb, because here they say Orestes in his madness gnawed off one of his fingers. And there is another place contiguous called Ace, because there Orestes was healed of his madness: there too is a temple to the Eumenides. These goddesses, they say, when they wanted to drive Orestes mad, appeared black to him, and when he had gnawed off his finger then they appeared white, and this sight made him sane, and he turned away their wrath by offering to them expiations, and he sacrificed to these white goddesses; they usually sacrifice to them and the Graces together. And near the place Ace is a temple called Shearing-place, because Orestes cut off his hair inside it. And the Antiquarians of the Peloponnese say that this pursuit of Orestes by the Furies of his mother Clytæmnestra happened prior to the trial before the Areopagus, when his accuser was not Tyndareus, for he was no longer alive, but Perilaus the cousin of Clytæmnestra, who asked for vengeance for the murder of his kinswoman. Perilaus was the son of Icarius, who afterwards had daughters born to him.

From Maniæ to the Alpheus is about 15 stades, to the place where the river Gatheatas flows into the Alpheus, as earlier still the river Carnion falls into the Gatheatas. The sources of the Carnion are at Ægytis below the temple of Apollo Cereates; and the Gatheatas has its rise at Gatheæ in the Cromitic district, which is about 40 stades from the Alpheus, and in it the ruins can still be traced of the town of Cromi. From Cromi it is about 20 stades to Nymphas, which is well watered and full of trees. And from Nymphas it is about 20 stades to Hermæum, the boundary between the districts of Messenia and Megalopolis, where there is a Hermes on a pillar.

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