Pausanias Analysis

The Orchomenians have also a shrine dedicated to Dionysus, but their most ancient sanctuary is that of the Charites (Graces). They hold the stones in great reverence, affirming that they fell from heaven during the reign of Eteocles. The statues, however, adorned with their ornaments, were set up in my own time, and these too are made of stone.

They also have a spring worthy of note, to which they descend in order to draw water. The treasury of Minyas, a marvel among the sights of Greece itself and not inferior to any elsewhere, is constructed in the following manner. It is built of stone, and its shape is round, its roof rising to a height not excessively pointed. They say that the topmost stone serves as a keystone binding the entire structure together.

There are tombs of Minyas and Hesiod. About the bones of Hesiod, they recount this story: when a plague afflicted both the people and their cattle, they sent envoys to the god [at Delphi]. These envoys received an answer from the Pythian oracle instructing them that their only remedy was to bring Hesiod's bones from the region of Naupactus to Orchomenus. Then the envoys asked again in a second inquiry where precisely in the region of Naupactus they would find these bones, and the Pythia further responded that a crow would show them the location.

Thus, when the emissaries of the oracle landed in this region, it is said that they saw a rock not far from the road, and a bird perched upon this rock. There too, within a hollow of the rock, they discovered the bones of Hesiod. Upon the tomb was inscribed the following elegiac verses: "Though fertile Ascra was his native land, Now the Minyan soil, famed for swift steeds, Holds Hesiod's bones; whose glory greatest shines In all of Greece, when men in contests strive Through rigorous test to measure wisdom's worth."

Concerning Actaeon, the Orchomenians said that their land was troubled by a phantom appearing as a rock. When they consulted the oracle at Delphi, the god instructed them that if anything of Actaeon still remained, they should bury it in the earth, and further advised them to fashion a bronze image of the phantom and fasten it firmly to a rock with iron bonds. I myself saw this statue thus bound, and every year they perform offerings to Actaeon as to a hero.

Seven stades distant from Orchomenus is a temple of Heracles containing a statue that is not large. Here are the sources of the river Melas, which itself also flows into Lake Cephisida. The lake ordinarily covers much of the territory of Orchomenus, but in the winter season when the south wind blows more strongly, the water spreads out even further over the country.

The Thebans say that the river Cephisus was diverted by Heracles into the plain of Orchomenus. Previously the river passed under the mountain and flowed into the sea, until Heracles blocked the cleft through the mountain. Homer, however, knows that Lake Cephisus existed naturally, not as a creation of Heracles, and for this reason he says, "dwelling by Lake Cephisus." (Homer, Iliad 5.709)

Nor does it make sense that the Orchomenians would not have discovered the chasm and, completing the unfinished work of Heracles, restored the ancient channel for the Cephisus, given that even up to the Trojan War they were not lacking financial means. Homer himself testifies to this point in Achilles' reply to the envoys sent by Agamemnon: "nor all the wealth that flows into Orchomenus"—clearly indicating that even at that time the Orchomenians were in possession of great wealth.

They say that Aspledon was abandoned by its inhabitants due to scarcity of water; its name, it is said, came from Aspledon, who was the son of the nymph Mideia and of Poseidon. Supporting their claim are also the verses composed for them by Chersias, a man from Orchomenus: "And from Poseidon and glorious Mideia Aspledon the son was born in the city of broad dancing-grounds."

In my time no memory remained of these verses of Chersias, but Callippus added also the following lines within the same work concerning the Orchomenians. Moreover, the Orchomenians preserve an epigram by this same Chersias upon the tomb of Hesiod.