Pausanias, Phocis

CHAPTER XXXVII.

On the right of the town at the distance of about 2 stades is a lofty rock, which forms part of a mountain, and on it is a temple of Artemis, and a statue of the goddess by Praxiteles, with a torch in her right hand and her quiver over her shoulders, she is taller than the tallest woman, and on her left hand is a dog.

Bordering on Phocis is the town of Bulis, which got its name from Bulon the founder of the colony, it was colonized from the towns in ancient Doris. The people of Bulis are said to have shared in the impiety of Philomelus and the Phocians. From Thisbe in Boeotia to Bulis is 80 stades, I do not know whether there is any road from Anticyra to Bulis on the mainland, so precipitous and difficult to scale are the mountains between. It is about 100 stades from Anticyra to the port : and from the port to Bulis is I con jecture by land about 7 stades. And a mountain torrent, called by the natives Hercules', falls into the sea here.

Bulis lies on high ground, and you sail by it as you cross from Anticyra to Lechaeum near Corinth. And more than half the inhabitants live by catching shell- fish for purple dye. There are no particular buildings to excite admira tion at Bulis except two temples, one of Artemis, the other of Dionysus ; their statues are of wood, but who made them I could not ascertain. The god that they worship most they call Supreme, a title I imagine of Zeus. They have also a well called Saunion.

To Cirrha, the seaport of Delphi, it is about 60 stades from Delphi, and as you descend to the plain is a Hippo drome, where they celebrate the Pythian horse-races. As to Taraxippus in Olympia I have described it in my account of Elis. In this Hippodrome of Apollo there are accidents occasionally, inasmuch as the deity in all human affairs awards both good and bad, but there is nothing specially contrived to frighten horses, either from the malignity of some hero, or any other cause. And the plain of Cirrha is almost entirely bare of trees, for they do not care to plant trees, either in consequence of some curse, or because they do not think the Boil favourable to the growth of trees, It is said that Cirrha got its present name from the Nymph Cirrha, but Homer in the Iliad calls it by its ancient name Crisa, 1 as also in the Hymn to Apollo. And subsequently the people of Cirrha committed various acts of impiety against Apollo, and ravaged the territory sacred to the god. The Amphictyones resolved therefore to war against the people of Cirrha, and chose for their leader Clisthenes the king of Sicyon, and invited Solon the Athenian to assist them by his counsel- They also consulted the oracle, and this was the response of the Pythian Priestess, " You will not capture the tower and demolish the town, till the wave of blue-eyed Amphitrite, dashing over the dark sea, shall break into my grove."

Solon persuaded them therefore to consecrate to the god the land about Cirrha, that the grove of Apollo might extend as far as the sea. He invented also another ingenious contrivance against the people of Cirrha : he turned the course of the river Plistus which flowed through the town. And when the besieged still held out by drinking rain water and the water from the wells, he threw some roots of hellebore into the Plistus, and when he thought the water of the river sufficiently impregnated with this, he turned it back into its ordinary channel, and the people of Cirrha, drinking freely of the water, were attacked with an incessant diarrhoea, and unable to man the walls, so the Amphictyones captured the town, and took vengeance on the inhabitants for their conduct to the god, and Cirrha became the sea-port of Delphi. It contains a handsome temple of Apollo and Artemis and Leto, and large statues of those divinities, of Attic workmanship. There is also a smaller statue of Adrastea.

1 Iliad, ii. 520.