Pausanias Analysis

The boundary of the land between the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeans is the river Alpheios. Its water arises at Phylake, and not far from its source it receives additional water flowing into it from a number of springs, small in size but greater in number; for this reason, the place has come to be named Symbola ("Meeting-places").

The Alpheios, compared to other rivers, clearly displays a special sort of nature in the following respect: it regularly disappears underground, only to appear again. Indeed, having left Phylake and the place called Symbola, it vanishes into the plain of Tegea. Then, resurfacing at Asea and mingling its stream with the Eurotas, it sinks underground for the second time.

Rising again at the place the Arcadians call Pegae, and flowing onward past the territory of Pisa and Olympia, it discharges itself into the sea beyond Cyllene, the port of the Eleans. But even the Adriatic Sea could not hold back its further advance; having crossed this great and formidable expanse of ocean, it reappears on the island of Ortygia opposite Syracuse, revealing itself there as indeed the river Alpheios and mingling its waters with those of Arethusa.

The straight road toward Thyrea and the villages in the Thyreatis from Tegea led to what is commonly recorded as the tomb of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon; and the Tegeans say that the Spartans removed his bones from there. In my time, however, the tomb was no longer within the city gates. Along the road flows also the river Garates; after crossing the Garates and proceeding forward ten stadia, there is a sanctuary of Pan, and next to it an oak-tree, itself likewise sacred to Pan.

The road from Tegea to Argos is well suited to carriage-travel and is above all a main thoroughfare. Along the road, first you come to a temple and statue of Asclepius. Then, turning off about one stade towards the left, there is a sanctuary of Apollo surnamed Pythius, now destroyed and completely in ruins. Along the straight route itself are many oak trees and a temple of Demeter located in this oak grove, called Demeter in Corytheis. Nearby there is another sanctuary dedicated to Dionysus Mystes.

From here begins Mount Parthenion. On it is shown a sanctuary of Telephus, and there, they say, he was exposed as a child and nurtured by a deer. A little further on stands a sanctuary of Pan, where Pan is said to have appeared to Philippides and spoken those words which the Athenians record concerning him, a story also told in the same way by the Tegeans.

Mount Parthenion also provides tortoises exceptionally suitable for the making of lyres; the inhabitants near the mountain themselves have always feared to catch them, nor do they allow strangers to seize them, believing as they do that the creatures are sacred to Pan. Once over the peak of the mountain, there is, in the cultivated area beyond, a boundary between the land of the Tegeans and that of the Argives, at Hysiai in the Argolid. These then are the districts of the Peloponnese, together with cities within those districts, and in each city those features most worthy to be remembered.