
Public-domain ebook
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume II.
by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias
English3,566 downloads on Project GutenbergDownload EPUB
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #68680.

Public-domain ebook
by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias
English3,566 downloads on Project GutenbergDownload EPUB
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #68680.
Pausanias’ Description of Greece, Volume II is a learned account of Greek places, peoples, origins, and monuments, combining geographical observation with mythology, genealogy, local tradition, and historical memory. Its pages move through Achaia and the Ionian world, tracing changing names, royal lines, migrations, colonies, temples, tombs, and the fortunes of cities such as Miletus, Ephesus, Colophon, and Teos. Ancient stories stand beside details of roads, landscapes, sanctuaries, inscriptions, and surviving remains, creating a portrait of Greece in which the visible country is inseparable from the traditions attached to it.
The voice is measured, antiquarian, and often comparative, weighing different explanations and reporting what local communities say about their past. Pausanias writes from the perspective of a second-century Greek observer, preserving a world of oral traditions, epic references, religious sites, and civic histories with careful attention to names and descent. The work will appeal to readers interested in Greek antiquities, historical geography, mythology, early travel writing, and the way later generations remembered the ancient past.
The opening · free to read
“Throughout Ægialus and spacious Helice.”[2]
And at that period of the reign of Ion when the Eleusinians were at war with the Athenians, and the Athenians invited Ion to be Commander in Chief, death seized him in Attica, and he was buried at Potamos, a village in Attica. And his descendants reigned after him till they and their people were dispossessed by the Achæans, who in their turn were driven out by the Dorians from Lacedæmon and Argos. The mutual feuds between the Ionians and Achæans I shall relate when I have first given the reason why, before the return of the Dorians, the inhabitants of Lacedæmon and Argos only of all the Peloponnese were called Achæans. Archander and Architeles, the sons of Achæus, came to Argos from Phthiotis and became the sons in law of Danaus, Architeles marrying Automate, and Archander Scæa. And that they were sojourners in Argos is shewn very clearly by the name Metanastes (stranger) which Archander gave his son. And it was when the sons of Achæus got powerful in Argos and Lacedæmon that the name Achæan got attached to the whole population. Their general name was Achæans, though the Argives were privately called Danai. And now when they were expelled from Argos and Lacedæmon by the Dorians, they and their king Tisamenus the son of Orestes made the Ionians proposals to become their colonists without war. But the Ionian Court was afraid that, if they and the Achæans were one people, Tisamenus would be chosen as king over both nations for his bravery and the lustre of his race. So the Ionians did not accept the proposals of the Achæans but went to blows over it, and Tisamenus fell in the battle, and the Achæans beat the Ionians, and besieged them in Helice to which they had fled, but afterwards let them go upon conditions. And the Achæans buried the body of Tisamenus at Helice, but some time afterwards the Lacedæmonians, in accordance with an oracle from Delphi, removed the remains to Sparta, and the tomb of Tisamenus is now where the Lacedæmonians have their banquetings, at the place called Phiditia. And when the Ionians migrated to Attica the Athenians and their king, Melanthus the son of Andropompus, welcomed them as settlers, in gratitude to Ion and his services to the Athenians as Commander in Chief. But there is a tradition that the Athenians suspected the Dorians, and feared that they would not keep their hands off them, and received the Ionians therefore as settlers rather from their formidable strength than from goodwill to them.
[1] Ægialus (αἰγιαλός) is Greek for sea-shore. In this last view compare the names Pomerania, Glamorganshire.
[2] Iliad, ii. 575.
The Colophonians also regard the temple and oracle of Apollo at Claros as most ancient, for, while the Carians were still in possession of the country, they say that the first Greeks who came there were Cretans, a large force powerful both by land and sea under Rhacius, and the Carians remained still in possession of most of the country. But when the Argives and Thersander the son of Polynices took Thebes, several captives, and among others Manto were taken to Apollo at Delphi, but Tiresias died on the road not far from Haliartus.[3] And when the god sent them to form a colony they crossed over into Asia Minor, and when they got to Claros the Cretans attacked them and took them before Rhacius. And he, understanding from Manto who they were and their errand, married Manto and made her companions fellow-settlers with him. And Mopsus, the son of Rhacius and Manto, drove out all the Carians altogether. And the Ionians on mutual conditions became fellow-citizens upon equal terms with the Colophonian Greeks. And the kingdom over the Ionians was usurped by their leaders Damasichthon and Promethus the sons of Codrus. And Promethus afterwards slew his brother Damasichthon and fled to Naxos, and died there, and his body was taken home and buried by the sons of Damasichthon: his tomb is at a place called Polytichides. And how Colophon came to be dispeopled I have previously described in my account about Lysimachus: its inhabitants were the only colonists at Ephesus that fought against Lysimachus and the Macedonians. And the tombs of those from Colophon and Smyrna that fell in the battle are on the left of the road to Claros.
Lebedus also was dispeopled by Lysimachus simply to add to the population of Ephesus. It was a place in many respects favoured, and especially for its very numerous and agreeable warm baths near the sea. Originally it was inhabited by the Carians, till Andræmon, the son of Codrus, and the Ionians drove them out. Andræmon’s tomb is on the left of the road from Colophon, after you have crossed the river Calaon.
And Teos was colonized by the Minyæ from Orchomenus, who came with Athamas; he is said to have been a descendant of Athamas the son of Æolus. Here too the Carians were mixed up with the Greeks. And the Ionians were conducted to Teos by Apœcus, the great-great-grandson of Melanthus, who did no harm to either the Orchomenians or Teians. And not many years afterwards came men from Attica and Bœotia, the former under Damasus and Naoclus the sons of Codrus, the latter under the Bœotian Geres, and both these new-comers were hospitably received by Apœcus and the people of Teos.
The Erythræi also say that they came originally from Crete with Erythrus (the son of Rhadamanthys) who was the founder of their city, and when the Lycians Carians and Pamphylians occupied the city as well as the Cretans, (the Lycians being kinsfolk of the Cretans, having originally come from Crete when they fled from Sarpedon, and the Carians having an ancient friendship with Minos, and the Pamphylians also having Greek blood in their veins, for after the capture of Ilium they wandered about with Calchas), when all those that I have mentioned occupied Erythræ, Cleopus the son of Codrus gathered together from all the towns in Ionia various people, whom he formed into a colony at Erythræ.
And the people of Clazomenæ and Phocæa had no cities before the Ionians came to Asia Minor: but when the Ionians arrived a detachment of them, not knowing their way about the country, sent for one Parphorus a Colophonian as their guide, and having built a city under Mount Ida left it not long after, and returned to Ionia and built Scyppius in Colophonia. And migrating of their own accord from Colophonia, they occupied the territory which they now hold, and built on the mainland the town of Clazomenæ. But afterwards from fear of the Persians they crossed over into the island opposite. But in process of time Alexander the son of Philip was destined to convert Clazomenæ into a peninsula, by connecting the island with the mainland by an embankment. Most of the inhabitants of Clazomenæ were not Ionians, but were from Cleonæ and Phlius, and had left those cities when the Dorians returned to the Peloponnese. And the people of Phocæa were originally from the country under Mount Parnassus which is still to our day called Phocis, and crossed over into Asia Minor with the Athenians Philogenes and Damon. And they took territory not by war but on an understanding with the people of Cyme. And as the Ionians would not receive them into the Pan-Ionic confederacy unless they received kings from the descendants of Codrus, they accepted from Erythræ and Teos Deœtes and Periclus and Abartus.
[3] See Book ix. ch. 33.
The temple of Hera in Samos was according to the tradition of some built by the Argonauts, who brought the statue of the goddess from Argos. But the Samians themselves think that the goddess was born in their island on the banks of the river Imbrasus, and under the willow-tree that still grows in the temple of Hera. That this temple could not have been very ancient one naturally infers from the statue, which is by the Æginetan Smilis, the son of Euclides, who was a contemporary of Dædalus, but has not acquired equal renown. For Dædalus, an Athenian of the royal stock called Metionidæ, was most remarkable of all men for his art and misfortunes. For having killed his sister’s son, and knowing the vengeance that awaited him in his country, he became a voluntary exile and fled to Minos and Crete, and made works of art for Minos and his daughters, as Homer has described in the Iliad. But being condemned for treason against Minos, and thrown into prison with his son, he escaped from Crete and went to Inycus, a city of Sicily, to the court of Cocalus, and caused a war between the Sicilians and Cretans, because Cocalus would not give him up at the request of Minos. And so much beloved was he by the daughters of Cocalus for his art, that these ladies entered into a plot against the life of Minos out of favour to Dædalus. And it is plain that his fame extended over all Sicily, and most of Italy. While Smilis, except among the Samians and at Elea, had no fame whatever out of his own country; but he went to Samos, and there he made the statue of Hera.
About Chios Ion the Tragedian has recorded that Poseidon went to that island when it was unoccupied, and had an intrigue there with a Nymph, and when she was in labour some snow fell, and so Poseidon called the boy Chios.[4] By another Nymph he had Agelus and Melas. And in process of time Œnopion sailed to Chios from Crete with his sons Talus and Euanthes and Melas and Salagus and Athamas. And during the reign of Œnopion some Carians came to the island, and the Abantes from Eubœa. And Œnopion and his sons were succeeded by Amphiclus, who came to Chios from Histiæa in Eubœa in accordance with the oracle at Delphi. And Hector the fourth in descent from Amphiclus, (for he too was king of Chios), fought against the Abantes and Carians that were still in the island, and slew some in various battles, and compelled others to leave the island upon conditions of war. And after the Chians had finished the war, then Hector bethought him that he and the Ionians ought to jointly sacrifice to the welfare of the Pan-Ionic league. And Ion says he received the present of a tripod from the community of the Ionians for his prowess. But Ion has not told us how it was the Chians got ranked as Ionians.
[4] The Greek for snow is chion. Hence the paronomasia.
So they willingly removed, and they worship two Nemeses instead of one, and they say their mother was Night, but the Athenians who worship Nemesis at Rhamnus say that she was the daughter of Oceanus.
The Ionians have a most magnificent country for the fruits of the earth, and temples such as there are nowhere else, the finest that of Ephesian Artemis for size and opulence, and next two to Apollo not quite finished, one at Branchidæ in Milesia, the other at Claros in Colophonia. Two temples in Ionia were burnt down by the Persians, one of Hera in Samos, and one of Athene in Phocæa. They are still wonderful though the fire has passed upon them. And you would be delighted with the temple of Hercules at Erythræ, and with the temple of Athene at Priene, the latter for the statue of the goddess, the former for its great antiquity. And at Erythræ is a work of art unlike the most ancient of Æginetan or Attic workmanship: its design is perfect Egyptian. It is the wooden raft on which the god sailed from Tyre in Phœnicia, why the people of Erythræ do not say. But to prove that it came into the Ionian sea they say it was moored at the promontory called Mid, which is on the mainland about half-way from the harbour of Erythræ to the island of Chios. And when this raft was at the promontory, the people of Erythræ and the Chians too had no small trouble in trying to get it on shore. At last a native of Erythræ, who got his living from the sea by catching fish, but had lost his eyesight through some disease, Phormio by name, dreamed that the women of Erythræ were to cut off their hair, and that the men making a rope out of this hair were to drag the raft ashore. The women who were citizens wouldn’t hear of it: but all the women who were slaves of Thracian race, or who being free had yet to earn their own living, allowed their hair to be cut off, and so at last the people of Erythræ got the raft to shore. So Thracian women alone are allowed to enter the temple of Hercules, and the rope made of hair is still kept by the people of Erythræ. They also say that the fisherman recovered his sight, and saw for the rest of his life. At Erythræ there is also a temple of Athene Polias, and a huge wooden statue of the goddess seated on a throne, in one hand a distaff in the other a globe. We conjecture it to be by Endœus from several circumstances, especially looking at the workmanship of the statue inside, and the Graces and Seasons in white marble, which used to stand in the open air. The people of Smyrna also had in my time a temple of Æsculapius between the mountain Coryphe and the sea which is unmixed with any other water.
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