Description of Greece

​About a stadium’s distance from the tomb of Epaminondas stands a sanctuary of Zeus, surnamed Charmon. In the oak woods of Arcadia there are different kinds of oak trees; some of them they call broad-leaved, and others phēgos. A third kind has a bark so thin and light that from it they make floats in the sea for anchors and nets; this oak’s bark other Ionians and Hermesianax, the writer of elegiac poetry, call phellos (cork).

​From Mantinea there is a road to Methydrium—no longer a city, but a village belonging to Megalopolis. After advancing thirty stadia along this road to Methydrium, there is a plain called Alcimedon, and above the plain is Mount Ostracina, and in it is a cave where Alcimedon, one of those called heroes, used to dwell.

​The Phigalians say that Heracles had intercourse with Phialo, the daughter of this Alcimedon; and when Alcimedon perceived that she had given birth, he exposed her on the mountain to perish, and with her the child she had borne, whom the Arcadians call Aichmagoras. When the child began to cry out as he lay exposed, a jay, which is a bird, heard him wailing and began to imitate his cries.

​And Heracles, traveling along this road, by some chance heard the jay, and—since he thought the crying was that of a child and not of a bird—he turned directly toward the sound. When he recognized her, he loosed her from her bonds and saved the child. From that circumstance, the nearby spring is named Cissa (Jay) after the bird. Forty stadia away from the spring is a place called Petrosaca, which is the boundary between Megalopolis and Mantinea.

​In addition to the roads already described, there are two others leading to Orchomenus. On one of them is what is called the Stadium of Ladas, where Ladas used to practice running, and beside it is a sanctuary of Artemis, and on the right of the road is a high mound of earth, which they say is the tomb of Penelope, although they do not agree with what is said about her in the poem called the Thesprotis.

​For in this poem it is written that Penelope, upon Odysseus’ return from Troy, bore him a son named Ptoliporthes. But the Mantineans’ story about her says that Penelope, having been accused by Odysseus of bringing suitors into the house, and being sent away by him, went for the time being to Lacedaemon, but later in time migrated from Sparta to Mantinea, and that the end of her life occurred for her there.

​Adjoining this tomb is a small plain, and in the plain is a mountain containing still the ruins of ancient Mantinea; this place is called Ptolis (City) in our time. As you go from it towards the north, a short distance along the road is the spring Alalcomeneia, and thirty stadia after Ptolis are the ruins of a village called Maera, and the tomb of Maera, if indeed she was buried here and not in the territory of the Tegeans. For the probability of the story lies with the Tegeans and not the Mantineans, that Maera, the daughter of Atlas, was buried in their land; or perhaps another Maera, a descendant of the former Maera, came to the Mantinean land.

​There still remains the other road to Orchomenus, along which are Mount Anchisia and the tomb of Anchises at the foot of the mountain. For when Aeneas was on his voyage to Sicily, he put in with his ships to Laconia, and became the founder of the cities of Aphrodicias and Etis, and buried his father Anchises here when he had come to this place for some reason and had ended his life; and from Anchises they call this mountain Anchisia.

​To the truth of this, the Aeolians who occupy Ilium in our day contribute, since they point out a tomb of Anchises nowhere in their own country. Near the tomb of Anchises are the ruins of a sanctuary of Aphrodite, and the boundaries between the Mantineans and the Orchomenians are also in the Anchisian mountains.