Description of Greece

​Going from Megalopolis towards Messene, when you have gone about seven stades, there is on the left of the highway a sanctuary of the goddesses. They call both the goddesses themselves and the country around the sanctuary Maniae. In my opinion, this is an epithet of the goddesses called Eumenides, and they say that Orestes went mad there on account of the murder of his mother.

​Not far from the sanctuary is a small mound of earth, which has as a cover a finger made of stone. Indeed, the name of the mound is the Tomb of the Finger. Here, they say, Orestes, when he became out of his mind, bit off one of the fingers of one of his hands. Adjacent to this is another place called Ace, because there the cure of his madness was effected for Orestes. And there too a sanctuary has been built for the Eumenides.

​They say that these goddesses, when they were about to drive Orestes mad, appeared to him as black; but when he had bitten off his finger, they seemed to him to be white again, and he recovered his senses at the sight, and so he offered burnt sacrifices to the one to avert their anger, and sacrificed to the white ones. And they are accustomed to sacrifice to them together with the Graces. And near the place called Aces is another sanctuary called Cureum, because Orestes cut off his hair there when he came to himself.

​Those of the Peloponnesians who remember ancient history say that the events in Arcadia brought upon Orestes by the Furies of Clytemnestra took place before the trial on the Areopagus, and that his accuser was not Tyndareus—for they say he was no longer alive—but that Perilaus, as a cousin of Clytemnestra, stood up to demand justice for the blood of his mother; for they say Perilaus was a son of Icarius, and that daughters were born to Icarius later.

​From Maniae the road to the Alpheius is about fifteen stades; at this point the river Gatheates flows into the Alpheius, and into the Gatheates, even before this, the Carnion flows down. The springs of the Carnion are in the territory of Aegygtis, below the sanctuary of Apollo Cereates, and those of the Gatheates are at Gatheae in the Cromitian territory.

​The Cromitian territory is about forty stades above the Alpheius, and in it the ruins of the city of Cromi were not altogether vanished. From Cromi it is about twenty stades to Nymphas; and Nymphas is well-watered and full of trees. And from there it is twenty stades to the Hermaeum, which is the boundary between the Messenians and the Megalopolitans; and they have also set up there a Hermes on a pillar.