Pausanias Analysis

Methone, before the Greek expedition was gathered at Troy and the war against Ilium, used to be called Pedasus. It later changed its name, according to the account of the people of Methone themselves, from the daughter of Oeneus. For they say that after the fall of Troy, when Oeneus, the son of Porthaon, withdrew into the Peloponnesus with Diomedes, he had a daughter named Mothone by a concubine. My own opinion, however, is that the place took its name from the Mothon stone. This stone serves for the formation of their harbor, as an underwater reef projecting outward makes the entrance narrower for ships, and at the same time, rising from the deep, it stands as a barrier preventing waves from disturbing the waters within.

And I have mentioned in my earlier account how the Nauplians, having been expelled for their sympathy with Sparta during the reign of Damocratidas in Argos, were granted Mothone by the Lacedaemonians, and how even after the arrival of the Messenians nothing further of significance befell them. The Nauplians appear to me of old Egyptian origin, having originally come to the Argolid with Danaus aboard his ships, and three generations later were settled in Nauplia by Nauplius, son of Amymone.

The emperor Trajan granted to the people of Mothone, who were already free, the right to live under their own autonomy; but sometime further in the past, this particular misfortune befell them alone among the Messenians dwelling upon the seacoast. The affairs of Thesprotian Epirus had fallen into disorder due to the absence of governance; for Deidameia, daughter of Pyrrhus, had borne no children, and when she was near death, entrusted the government to the people. She was the daughter of Pyrrhus, son of Ptolemy, who was the son of Alexander, and he in turn was son of Pyrrhus.

As for matters concerning Pyrrhus, son of Aeacides, I have already earlier related them in my account of the Athenians. Procles of Carthage, out of admiration for his good fortune and the brilliance of his deeds, assigned to Alexander the son of Philip higher esteem, yet declared that Pyrrhus was superior in deploying infantry and cavalry and in devising military stratagems against an enemy.

When the people of Epirus ceased to be ruled by kings, the common folk began to act insolently in many respects and openly disregarded the commands of their magistrates. Thus the Illyrians, who inhabit the region of Epirus bordering on the Ionian Sea, conquered them through invasion. Indeed, as yet we know of no democracy besides that of Athens that flourished: and the Athenians attained greatness precisely through democracy. For they surpassed the rest of the Greeks by reason of their own good sense, and they least disobeyed the established laws.

The Illyrians, having once tasted power and constantly desiring more, built themselves ships and plundered whomever they might encounter. Coming to anchor at Mothone, as though they were arriving in friendship, they sent a messenger into the city, requesting that wine be brought to their ships. When a small number of men arrived bringing wine, the Illyrians bought it at the price which the people of Mothone set, and themselves sold goods that they had brought with them.

On the following day, when a greater number arrived from the city, they also offered them opportunities to trade. Finally, women and men alike went down to the ships to sell wine and to procure goods from the barbarians in exchange. At this juncture the Illyrians, emboldened, seized many men and even more women, and, loading them into their vessels, sailed away towards the Ionian sea after having desolated the city of the Methonaeans.

In Mothone there is a sanctuary of Athena Anemotis ("of the winds"), and it is said that Diomedes dedicated the statue and gave the goddess this name. For the winds, blowing violently and at inappropriate times, were devastating the land. But after Diomedes prayed to Athena, no misfortune arising from the winds befell their country thereafter. Here also is a sanctuary of Artemis and water in a well mixed with pitch, quite similar in appearance to Cyzicene ointment. In fact, the water might produce altogether every kind of coloring and fragrance.

The bluest water I have seen is at Thermopylae—not all of it, of course, but only that which flows into the bathing pool known to the locals as the "Women's Pots." Near the city of Joppa, the land of the Hebrews yields water of a tawny color, not at all lacking the hue of blood. This water is very close to the sea, and the local inhabitants tell a story about the spring, that Perseus, after slaying the sea-monster to which Cepheus' daughter had been exposed, washed away the blood here.

I myself have seen water rising from springs that was dark in color, at Astyra. Astyra lies directly opposite Lesbos and contains hot springs located at the place called Atarneus. This region Atarneus was the reward the people of Chios received from the Mede, given after they had betrayed and handed over the suppliant, Pactyes the Lydian. While this water is dark, higher up than the city of the Romans, after crossing the river known as Anio, there is water that is white. When a man first enters this water it strikes him immediately as cold and causes shivering. However, if he remains in it for a little while, it becomes heated, acting like a medicinal remedy due to its intense warmth.

As many springs as seemed to me wonderful even at sight—at least as many as I have seen—I have chosen to relate, for those of lesser wonder I knowingly pass by. Now, to come across water that is salty or harsh to the taste is no great marvel. But two springs I find extraordinary: one, in Caria, situated in the plain called Leucon, near a village named Dascylus, is a spring of hot water sweeter to drink even than milk. The other was reported by Herodotus, who stated that a spring of bitter water discharges into the river Hypanis. How should we not admit his account as truthful, when even in our own days at Dicaearchia, in Etruria, we have discovered a spring so exceedingly hot and acid that its stream, flowing through pipes of lead, in a few years completely melted the metal away?