Description of Greece

​And between the temple of Laphria and the altar is built the tomb of Eurypylus. They are said to have ceased in this way sacrificing humans to Artemis. An oracle had already been given to them previously from Delphi, that when a foreign king should arrive at their land, bringing with him a foreign divinity, he would put an end to the sacrifice to Triclaria. When Troy was taken and the Greeks were dividing the spoils, Eurypylus the son of Evaemon received a chest; in the chest was an image of Dionysus, a work, as they say, of Hephaestus, and it had been given as a gift by Zeus to Dardanus.

​And two other stories are told about it: one, that when Aeneas fled, he left this chest behind; others say that it was thrown away by Cassandra to be a misfortune to whichever of the Greeks should find it. However, Eurypylus opened the chest and saw the image, and immediately after the sight he was out of his mind; indeed, for the greater part of the time he was mad, and only rarely did he come to himself. Since he was in this state, he did not make his voyage to Thessaly, but to Cirrha and the gulf there; and going up to Delphi he consulted the oracle about his madness.

​And they say that an oracle was given to him: that wherever he should hit upon people offering a strange sacrifice, there he should establish the chest and himself dwell. Now the wind brought the ships of Eurypylus down to the sea by Aroe; and having gone ashore, he found a boy and a maiden being led to the altar of Triclaria. And he was likely to understand without difficulty the matter of the sacrifice; and the locals also remembered the oracle, seeing a king whom they had never seen before, and they suspected concerning the chest that there was some god in it.

​And in this way Eurypylus was cured of his madness and for the people here the matter of the sacrifice ceased, and the river received its present name, Meilichos. But some have already written that the things related did not happen to the Thessalian Eurypylus, but they will have it that Eurypylus, the son of Dexamenus who reigned in Olenus, having campaigned with Heracles against Ilium, received the chest from Heracles; and in other respects these too have told the same story.

​For my part, I am not persuaded either that Heracles was ignorant of the contents of the chest, if indeed they were such as described, nor, if he did know about them, does it seem to me that he would ever have given it as a gift to a man who had fought alongside him; nor indeed do the people of Patrae preserve the memory of any other Eurypylus than the son of Evaemon, to whom they also offer sacrifices as to a hero every year, when they celebrate the festival to Dionysus.