Description of Greece

​Indeed, the grove, beginning from this mountain, consists for the most part of plane trees and goes down to the sea. Its boundaries are, on one side, the river Pontinus, and on the other, another river; and the name of this river is Amymone, after the daughter of Danaus. Within the grove there are statues of Prosymnean Demeter, of Dionysus, and a seated statue of Demeter of no great size.

​These are made of stone, while elsewhere, in a temple, there is a seated wooden image of Dionysus the Savior, and a stone statue of Aphrodite by the sea. They say that the daughters of Danaus dedicated it, and that Danaus himself built the sanctuary of Athena on Pontinus. And they say that Philammon established the Lernaean mystery-rite. Now, the stories told about the rituals performed are clearly not ancient.

​As for the things which I heard were written on the heart made of orichalcum, Arriphon discovered that not even these were by Philammon. Arriphon was by descent indeed a Triconian of those in Aetolia, but in our time he is held in honor equally with the very first of the Lycians, and is clever at discovering what no one before had seen; indeed, he detected these things on the following ground. The verses, and whatever without meter was mixed with the verses, were all composed in the Doric dialect; but before the Heracleidae returned to the Peloponnese, the Argives uttered the same speech as the Athenians; and in the time of Philammon, in my opinion, not even the name of the Dorians was heard among all the Greeks.

​These things, indeed, he showed to be thus. By the spring of the Amymone grows a plane tree; under this plane tree they say the hydra was reared. For my part, I believe that this beast excelled in size other water-snakes, and that its venom was so incurable that Heracles poisoned the tips of his arrows from its bile; but it had, in my opinion, one head and no more, whereas Peisander of Camirus, in order that the beast might seem more fearsome and his poetry more worthy of credit, represented the hydra with many heads instead of one.

​I saw also a spring called the spring of Amphiaraus, and the Alcyonian lake, through which the Argives say Dionysus went to Hades to bring up Semele, and that Polymnus showed him the descent here. But the Alcyonian lake has no limit to its depth, nor do I know of any man who has been able to reach its bottom by any device, seeing that even Nero, having made ropes of many stades and joined them together, and having suspended lead from them and whatever else was useful for the trial, not even he was able to find any limit to its depth.

​And I heard another thing: the water of the lake, to judge by appearances, is calm and quiet; but though presenting such an appearance, it is of such a nature as to drag down anyone who dares to swim across, catching them and carrying them off to the bottom. The circumference of the lake is not great, but about a third of a stade; on its banks grow grass and rushes. But the rituals performed in honor of Dionysus there at night every year, it was not permitted for me to write for all to read.