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CHAPTER XXXVI. From Stiris to Ambrosus is about 60 stades : the road lies in the plain with mountains on both sides. Vines grow throughout the plain, and brambles, not quite so plentifully, which the lonians and Greeks call coccus, but the Galati above Phrygia call in their native tongue Hys. The coccus is about the size of the white thorn, and its leaves are darker and softer than the mastich-tree, though, in other respects similar. And its berry is like the berry of the nightshade, and about the size of the bitter vetch. And a small grab breeds in it which, when the fruit is ripe, becomes a gnat and flies off. But they gather the berries, while it is still in the grub state, and its blood is useful in dyeing wool. Ambrosus lies under Mount Parnassus, and opposite Delphi, and got its name they say from the hero Ambrosus. In the war against Philip and the Macedonians the Thebans drew a double wall round Ambrosus, made of the black and very strong stone of the district. The circumference of each wall is little less than a fathom, and the height is 2 1/2- fathoms, where the wall has not fallen : and the interval between the two walls is a fathom. But, as they were intended only for immediate defence, these walls were not decorated with towers or battlements or any other em bellishment. There is also a small market-place at Ambrosus, most of the stone statues in it are broken. As you turn to Anticyra the road is at first rather steep, but after about two stades it becomes level, and there is on the right a temple of Dictynnaean Artemis, who is held in the highest honour by the people of Ambrosus ; her statue is of Aeginetan workmanship in black stone. From this temple to Anticyra is all the way downhill. They say the town was called Cyparissus in ancient times, and Homer in his Catalogue of the Phocians l preferred to give it its old name, for it was then beginning to be called Anticyra, from Anticyreus who was a contemporary of Hercules. The town lies below the ruins of Medeon, one of the towns as I have before mentioned which, impiously plundered the temple at Delphi. The people of Anticyra were expelled first by Philip the son of Amyntas, and secondly by the Roman Otilius, because they had been faithful to Philip, the son of Demetrius, the king of the Macedonians, for Otilius had been sent from Rome to protect the Athenians against Philip. And the hills above Anticyra are very rocky, and the chief thing that grows on them is hellebore. The black hellebore is a purgative, while the white acts as an emetic, the root also of the hellebore is a purgative. There are brazen statues in the market-place at Anticyra, and near the harbour is a small temple of Poseidon, made of unhewn stone, and plastered inside. The statue of the god is in bronze : he is in a standing posture, and one of his feet is on a dolphin: one hand is on his thigh, in the other is a trident. There are also two gymnasiums, one contains baths, the other opposite to it is an ancient one, in which is a, bronze statue of Xenodamus, a native of Anticyra, who, as the inscription states, was victor at Olympia among men in the pancratium. And if the inscription is correct, Xenodamus will have won the wild-olive crown in the 211th Olympiad, the only Olympiad of all passed over by the people of Blis in their records. And above the market-place is a conduit : the water is protected from the sun by a roof supported on pillars. And not much above this conduit is a tomb built of common stone : they say it is the tomb of the sons of Iphitus, of whom one returned safe from Ilium and died in his native place, the other Schedius died in the Troad, but his remains were brought home and deposited here. 1 Iliad, ii. 519
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