Pausanias, Phocis

CHAPTER XVIII.


The horse, which is next the statue of Sardus, was they say the votive offering of the Athenian Callias (the son of Lysimachides), out of his own personal gains in the Persian war. And the Achaeans offered a statue of Athene after they had reduced the town of Phana in Aetolia by siege. The siege lasted a long time, and, when the be siegers found they could not take the town, they sent messengers to Delphi, and this was the response they received.

" inhabitants of the land of Pelops and of Achaia, who come to Pytho to enquire how you are to capture the town, observe what portion of water daily given to the in habitants keeps them alive, and how much the town has already drunk. In this way may you take the fenced village of Phana."

Not understanding the meaning of the oracle, they resolved to raise the siege and depart homewards, as the inhabitants of the besieged place took very little heed of them, when a woman came out of the town to fetch water from a well near the walls. They hurried up from, the camp and took this woman prisoner, and the Achaeans learned from her that the little water from this well (when they got it each night) was measured out, and the people in the town had no other water whatever to drink. So the Achaeans fouled the water so as to make it undrinkable and captured the town.

And next to this statue of Athene the Rhodians of Lindus erected a statue of Apollo. And the Ambraciotes offered a brazen ass, after their victory by night over the Molossi. The Molossi had made ready for a night attack on them, when an ass, who chanced to be driven from, the field, pursuing a she-ass with lust and braying, and the driver also crying out in a loud and disorderly manner, the Molossi were so dismayed where they were in ambush that they left the place, and the Ambraciotes detected their plan, and attacked and defeated them that very night.

And the people of Orneae in Argolis, as the Sicyonians pressed them hard in war, vowed to Apollo, if they should succeed in repelling the Sicyonians, to have a procession to him at Delphi daily and to sacrifice to him any quantity of victims. They obtained the wished-for victory, but as to discharge their vow daily was a great expense, and the trouble even greater than the expense, they hit upon the expedient of offering to the god representations in brass of the procession and sacrifice.

Here too is a representation in iron of the contest between Hercules and the Hydra, the votive offering and design of Tisagoras. Making statues in iron is most difficult and laborious. This Tisagoras, whoever he was, is famed for the heads of a lion and wild boar at Pergamus. These are also in iron, and were a votive offering of his to Dionysus.

And the Phocians of Elatea, who held out against the siege of Cassander till Olympiodorus came from Athens to their relief, sent a brazen lion to Apollo at Delphi. And the Apollo next that lion is the offering of the Massaliotes for their victory over the Carthaginians in a sea-fight.

The Aetolians also erected a trophy and statue of an armed woman, (Aetolia to wit), out of the fine they imposed on the Galati for their cruelty to the people of Callion. 1 There is also a gilt statue of Gorgias of Leontini, his own votive offering.

1 See ch. 22.