And as you go eastwards from Pheneus you come to the promontory of
Geronteum, and by it is a road. And Geronteum is the boundary between
the districts of Pheneus and Stymphelus. And as you leave Geronteum
on the left and go through the district of Pheneus you come to the
mountains called Tricrena, where there are three wells. In these they
say the mountain nymphs washed Hermes when he was born, and so they
consider these wells sacred to Hermes. And not far from Tricrena is
another hill called Sepia, and here they say Æpytus the son of Elatus
died of the bite of a serpent, and here they buried him, for they
could not carry his dead body further. These serpents are still (the
Arcadians say) to be found on the hill but in no great quantity, for
every year much of it is covered with snow, and those serpents that
the snow catches outside of their holes are killed by it, and if
they first get back to their holes, yet the snow kills part of them
even there, as the bitter cold sometimes penetrates to their holes.
I was curious to see the tomb of Æpytus, because Homer mentions it
in his lines about the Arcadians.[26] It is a pile of earth not very
high, surrounded by a coping of stone. It was likely to inspire wonder
in Homer as he had seen no more notable tomb. For when he compared
the dancing-ground wrought by Hephæstus on Achilles’ shield to the
dancing-ground made by Dædalus for Ariadne,[27] it was because he had
seen nothing more clever. And though I know many wonderful tombs I
will only mention two, one in Halicarnassus and one in the land of
the Hebrews. The one in Halicarnassus was built for Mausolus king of
Halicarnassus, and is so large and wonderful in all its adornation,
that the Romans in their admiration of it call all notable tombs
Mausoleums. And the Hebrews have in the city of Jerusalem, which has
been rased to the ground by the Roman Emperor, a tomb of Helen a
woman of that country, which is so contrived that the door, which is
of stone like all the rest of the tomb, cannot be opened except on
one particular day and month of the year. And then it opens by the
machinery alone, and keeps open for some little time and then shuts
again. But at any other time of the year anyone trying to open it could
not do so, you would have to smash it before you could open it.