Geography

​Arcadia is in the middle of the Peloponnese, and occupies most of the mountainous country. The highest mountain in it is Cyllene; at any rate, some say its perpendicular height is twenty stadia, and others about fifteen. The Arcadian tribes, such as the Azanes and the Parrhasioi and other such peoples, seem to be the oldest nations of the Greeks. But because of the complete ruin of the country, it would not be fitting to speak of them at length; for the cities, though having become famous in former times, have disappeared through continuous wars, and the tillers of the soil have left the land since those times when most of the cities were united into the city called Megalopolis. And now even Megalopolis itself has suffered the fate mentioned by the comic poet: “A great wilderness is Megalopolis.” Yet there are abundant pastures for herds, and especially for horses and for asses that breed with horses; and the Arcadian breed of horses is excellent, just like the Argolic and the Epidaurian. And the desolation of the Aetolians and Acarnanians has become no less well-adapted for horse-breeding than Thessaly.

​Epameinondas made Mantineia famous, conquering the Lacedaemonians in the second battle, in which he himself also died. And this city, as well as Orchomenus, Heraea, Cleitor, Pheneus, Stymphalus, Maenalus, Methydrium, Caphyeis, and Cynaetha, either no longer exist, or else scarcely any traces or signs of them appear. Tegea still moderately endures, as does the temple of Athena Alea; and the temple of Lycaean Zeus on Mount Lycaeum is also honored in a small way. As for the places mentioned by the poet: “Ripe and Stratie and windy Enispe,” it is difficult to find them, and even to those who find them they are of no use because of the desolation.

​The notable mountains, besides Cyllene, are Pholoe, Lycaeum, Maenalus, and that called Parthenium, which extends from the Tegeatis to the Argia.

​Concerning the Alpheius and the Eurotas, the remarkable thing that happens to them has been told; and also concerning the Erasinus, which now empties from the Stymphalian Lake into the Argia, but formerly had no outlet, since the underground channels—which the Arcadians call “zerethra”—were blocked and did not admit any passage, so that the city of the Stymphalians is now fifty stadia distant from the lake, whereas then it lay upon it. The Ladon, on the contrary, suffered the opposite, its stream being once checked because of the blocking of its sources; for the underground channels around Pheneus, through which its flow used to pass, collapsed owing to an earthquake, and caused the stream to stop as far back as the deep veins of its source. And some indeed speak thus; but Eratosthenes says that around Pheneus the river called Anias forms a lake in front of the city, and sinks into certain strainers which are called “zerethra”; and when these are blocked, the water sometimes overflows into the plains, but when they open again, the water rushes all at once out of the plains and empties into the Ladon and the Alpheius, so that even the land around the temple at Olympia was once flooded, while the lake shrunk; and that the Erasinus, flowing past Stymphalus, slips under the mountain and appears again in the Argia; and that for this reason Iphicrates, when besieging Stymphalus and accomplishing nothing, attempted to block up the descent by procuring many sponges, but desisted when a sign from heaven occurred. Near Pheneus there is also what is called the Water of Styx, a small stream of deadly water which is considered sacred. Let so much be said concerning Arcadia.

​Since Polybius has said that the distance from Maleae to the north as far as the Ister is about ten thousand stadia, Artemidorus corrects this not without reason, saying that from Maleae to Aegium is a journey of one thousand four hundred stadia, thence to [Patrae] two hundred, thence through Heracleia [to Ambracia] a journey of five hundred, then to Larissa three hundred and forty, then through the mouth of the [Pe]neius two hundred and forty, then [beyond Thessa]lonica six hundred and sixty, thence [through Edo]mene and Stobi and the Dardanians three thousand [two hundred] stadia. According to him, indeed, the distance from [Maleae to the Ister] happens to be six thousand five hundred. And the cause of this is his not measuring the shortest route, but any chance route which some one of the generals marched. And it is perhaps not out of place to add the founders of those who inhabit the Peloponnese, whom Ephorus mentioned, those after the return of the Heracleidae: Aletes of Corinth, Phalces of Sicyon, Tisamenus of Achaea, Oxylus of Elis, Cresphontes of Messene, Eurysthenes and Procles of Lacedaemon, Temenus of Argos, and Agraeus and Deiphontes around Acte.