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.