On the road from Psophis to Thelpusa the first place you come to is on
the left of the river Ladon and called Tropæa, and close to it is the
oak-coppice called Aphrodisium, and thirdly you come to some ancient
writing on a pillar which forms the boundary between the territory of
Psophis and Thelpusa. In the district of Thelpusa is a river called
Arsen, after crossing which you will come about 25 stades further to
the ruins of a village called Caus, and a temple of Causian Æsculapius
built by the wayside. Thelpusa is about 40 stades from this temple, and
was called they say after the River-Nymph Thelpusa, the daughter of
Ladon. The river Ladon has its source, as I have already stated, in the
neighbourhood of Clitor, and flows first by Lucasium and Mesoboa and
Nasi to Oryx and what is called Halus, and thence to Thaliades and the
temple of Eleusinian Demeter close to Thelpusa, which has statues in it
no less than 7 feet high of Demeter, Proserpine, and Dionysus, all in
stone. And next to this temple of Eleusinian Demeter the river Ladon
flows on leaving Thelpusa on the left, which lies on a lofty ridge,
and has now few inhabitants, indeed the market-place which is now at
the end of the town was originally they say in the very centre. There
is also at Thelpusa a temple of Æsculapius, and a temple of the twelve
gods mostly in ruins. And after passing Thelpusa the Ladon flows on to
the temple of Demeter at Onceum: and the people of Thelpusa call the
goddess Erinys, as Antimachus also in his description of the expedition
of the Argives to Thebes, in the line,
“Where they say was the seat of Demeter Erinys.”
Oncius was the son of Apollo according to tradition, and reigned in
Thelpusa at the place called Onceum. And the goddess Demeter got the
name Erinys in this way: when she was wandering about in quest of
her daughter Proserpine, Poseidon they say followed her with amatory
intentions, and she changed herself into a mare and grazed with the
other horses at Onceum, and Poseidon found out her metamorphosis and
changed himself into a horse and so got his ends, and Demeter was
furious at this outrage, but afterwards they say ceased from her anger
and bathed in the river Ladon. So the goddess got two surnames, Erinys
(_Fury_) from her furious anger, for the Arcadians call being angry
being a Fury, and Lusia from her bathing in the Ladon. The statues
in the temple are of wood, but the heads and fingers and toes are of
Parian marble. The statue of Erinys has in her left hand a cist and in
her right a torch, and is one conjectures about nine feet in height,
while the statue of Lusia seems six feet high. Let those who think
the statue is Themis, and not Demeter Lusia, know that their idea is
foolish. And they say that Demeter bare a daughter to Poseidon, (whose
name they will not reveal to the uninitiated), and the foal Arion, and
that was why Poseidon was called Hippius there first in Arcadia. And
they introduce some lines from the Iliad and Thebaid in confirmation of
this: in the Iliad the lines about Arion.
“Not if one were to drive from behind the godlike Arion, swift courser
of Adrastus, who was of the race of the Immortals.”[32] And in the
Thebaid when Adrastus fled from Thebes, “Dressed in sad-coloured
clothes with Arion dark-maned courser.”
They want to make the lines indicate in an ambiguous way that Poseidon
was the father of Arion. But Antimachus says he was the son of earth:
“Adrastus, the son of Talaus and grandson of Cretheus, was the first of
the Danai who drove a pair of much praised horses, the swift Cærus and
Thelpusian Arion, whom near the grove of Oncean Apollo the earth itself
gave birth to, a wonder for mortals to look upon.”
And though this horse sprung out of the ground it may have been of
divine origin, and its mane and colour may have been dark. For there is
a tradition that Hercules when he was warring with the people of Elis
asked Oncus for a horse, and captured Elis riding into the battle upon
Arion, and that afterwards he gave the horse to Adrastus. Antimachus
also has written about Arion, “He was broken in thirdly by king
Adrastus.”
The river Ladon next leaves in its course on its left the temple of
Erinys as also the temple of Oncean Apollo, and on its right the temple
of the Boy Æsculapius, which also contains the tomb of Trygon, who they
say was the nurse of Æsculapius. For Æsculapius as a boy was exposed at
Thelpusa, and found by Autolaus the bastard son of Arcas and brought
up by him, and that is I think the reason why a temple was erected to
the Boy Æsculapius, as I have set forth in my account of Epidaurus.
And there is a river called Tuthoa, which flows into the Ladon near
the boundary between the districts of Thelpusa and Heræa called by the
Arcadians Plain. And where the Ladon flows into the Alpheus is what
is called the Island of Crows. Some think that Enispe and Stratie and
Rhipe mentioned by Homer were islands formed by the Ladon and formerly
inhabited, but let them know the idea is a foolish one, for the Ladon
could never form islands such as a boat could pass. For though in
beauty it is second to no Greek or barbarian river, it is not wide
enough to make islands as the Ister or Eridanus.
[32] Iliad, xxiii. 346, 7.