Pausanias Analysis

The other part of the painting, on the left side, depicts Odysseus descending to the place known as Hades, to inquire of the soul of Teiresias about his safe return home. The painting appears as follows: there is water resembling a river, clearly the Acheron, in which reeds grow and fish can be seen. But the forms of these fish are very indistinct, so much so that you would think them more like shadows than actual fish. A boat is on the river, and the ferryman is at the oars.

In my opinion, Polygnotus followed the account given in the Minyad; for indeed, there is a scene depicted in the Minyad showing Theseus and Peirithous, where the ship prepared for the transportation of the dead, guided by the aged ferryman Charon, was newly built and not yet received into its anchorage. Therefore, Polygnotus also portrayed Charon as a man already advanced in years.

The figures standing upon the ship are not at all known even to those connected to them. Tellis appears as a youth about the age of adolescence, and Cleoboea is still a maiden, having upon her knees a casket of the sort customarily made for Demeter. Concerning Tellis, this much I have heard: that the poet Archilochus was a third-generation descendant of Tellis. As for Cleoboea, they say that she was the first who brought the rites of Demeter from Paros to Thasos.

On the banks of the Acheron there is a sight particularly worthy of notice, where a man who had been unjust toward his father is depicted being strangled by his father close beside Charon's ferry-boat. For indeed the ancients held parents in highest esteem, as can be proved by numerous examples, and especially by the men of Catana called the Pious. When fire once flowed down upon Catana from Mount Etna, they thought nothing at all of gold or silver, but fled, one carrying his mother, another his father. The flames, pursuing swiftly, overtook these youths while they were fleeing without ease. Yet—for not even then would they abandon their parents—the stream of lava is said to have split apart in two around them, passing by both the youths themselves and their parents alike, leaving them untouched and doing them no harm.

These men indeed continue to receive honors even to my own time from the people of Catana. In Polygnotus' painting, next to the man who had maltreated his own father and who, on account of this, endures grievous punishments in Hades, there is portrayed another man who, having plundered sacred places, is undergoing punishment. The woman who punishes him knows various drugs useful for tormenting humans among other things.

People at that time still exhibited remarkable reverence toward the gods, as the Athenians made clear when they captured the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus at Syracuse; they took none of the offerings from the temple and even left in place the Syracusan priest who guarded these sacred items. Further testimony was given by the Mede, Datis, both through the words he addressed to the Delians and through his actions, when, upon finding a statue of Apollo on a Phoenician ship, he restored it to the Tanagraeans in Delium. To such an extent did everyone at that time hold the divine in honor, and indeed, it was due to just this sort of reverence that Polygnotus illustrated scenes showing the fate of those who had plundered sanctuaries.

Above the figures already described stands Eurynomos. The guides at Delphi say Eurynomos is one of the daimones in Hades, asserting that he devours the flesh of the dead, leaving only their bones behind. Yet neither Homer's poetry about Odysseus, nor the epic poem called the Minyas, nor the Nostoi—although each of these texts includes mention of Hades and the terrors within—know of any daimon named Eurynomos. I will, however, now indicate what sort of figure Eurynomos is, and in what form he is depicted: his color is a mixture of blue and black, like that of flies that settle upon meat; he bares his teeth, and he sits upon a vulture's skin spread beneath him.

Next in order after Eurynomos are Auge of Arcadia and Iphimedeia. Auge came to Mysia, to the court of Teuthras; and of all the women who are said to have been with Heracles, she it was who bore him a son most resembling his father. As for Iphimedeia, she received great honors from the Carians who dwell at Mylasa.