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.