CHAPTER XLI

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The Phigalians have also in their market-place a mortuary chapel to the 100 picked men from Oresthasium, and annually offer funeral sacrifices to them as to heroes. And the river called Lymax which falls into the Neda flows by Phigalia. It got its name Lymax they say from the purifications of Rhea. For when after giving birth to Zeus the Nymphs purified her after travail, they threw into this river the afterbirth, which the ancients called Lymata. Homer bears me out when he says that the Greeks purifying themselves to get rid of the pestilence threw the purifications into the sea.[43] The Neda rises on the mountain Cerausius, which is a part of Mount Lycæus. And where the Neda is nearest to Phigalia, there the lads of the town shear off their hair to the river. And near the sea it is navigable for small craft. Of all the rivers that we know of the Mæander is most winding having most curves and sinuosities. And next for winding would come the Neda. About 12 stades from Phigalia are hot baths, and the Lymax flows into the Neda not far from that place. And where they join their streams is a temple of Eurynome, holy from remote antiquity, and difficult of access from the roughness of the ground. Round it grow many cypresses close to one another. Eurynome the Phigalian people believe to be a title of Artemis, but their Antiquarians say that Eurynome was the daughter of Oceanus, and is mentioned by Homer in the Iliad as having joined Thetis in receiving Hephæstus.[44] And on the same day annually they open the temple of Eurynome: for at all other times they keep it shut. And on that day they have both public and private sacrifices to her. I was not in time for the festival, nor did I see the statue of Eurynome. But I heard from the Phigalians that the statue has gold chains round it, and that it is a woman down to the waist and a fish below. To the daughter of Oceanus who dwelt with Thetis in the depths of the sea these fish extremities would be suitable: but I do not see any logical connection between Artemis and a figure of this kind.

Phigalia is surrounded by mountains, on the left by Cotilius, on the right by the projecting mountain Elaion. Cotilius is about 40 stades from Phigalia, and on it is a place called Bassæ, and a temple of Apollo the Helper, the roof of which is of stone. This temple would stand first of all the temples in the Peloponnese, except that at Tegea, for the beauty of the stone and neatness of the structure. And Apollo got his title of Helper in reference to a pestilence, as among the Athenians he got the title of Averter of Ill because he turned away from them some pestilence. He helped the Phigalians about the time of the Peloponnesian war, as both titles of Apollo shew plainly, and Ictinus the builder of the temple at Phigalia was a contemporary of Pericles, and the architect of what is called the Parthenon at Athens. I have already mentioned the statue of Apollo in the market-place at Megalopolis.

And there is a spring of water on Mount Cotilius, from which somebody has written that the river Lymax takes its rise, but he can neither have seen the spring himself, nor had his account from any one who had seen it. I have done both: and the water of the spring on Mount Cotilius does not travel very far, but in a short time gets lost in the ground altogether. Not that it occurred to me to inquire in what part of Arcadia the river Lymax rises. Above the temple of Apollo the Helper is a place called Cotilum, where there is a temple of Aphrodite lacking a roof, as also a statue of the goddess.

[43] Iliad, i. 314.

[44] Iliad, xviii. 398, 399, 405.

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