XIII. SCAMANDER.
SCAMANDER is a river of Troas, which was formerly called Xanthus, but changed its name upon this occasion. Scamander, the son of Corybas and Demodice, having suddenly beheld the ceremonies while the mysteries of Rhea were solemnizing, immediately ran mad, and being hurried away by his own fury to the River Xanthus, flung himself into the stream, which from thence was called Scamander.
In this river grows an herb like a vetch, that bears a cod with berries rattling in it when they are ripe; whence it derived the name of
sistrum, or the
rattle; whoever has this herb in possession fears no apparition nor the sight of any God;—as Demostratus writes in his. Second Book of Rivers.
Near to this river lies the mountain Ida, formerly Gargarus; on the top of which stand the altars of Jupiter and of the Mother of the Gods. But it was called Ida upon this occasion. Aegesthius, who descended from Jupiter, falling passionately in love with the nymph Ida, obtained her good-will, and begat the Idaean Dactyli, or priests of the Mother of the Gods. After which, Ida running mad in the temple of Rhea, Aegesthius, in remembrance of the love which he bare her, called the mountain by her name.
In this mountain grows a stone called cryphius, as being never to be found but when the mysteries of the Gods are solemnizing;—as Heraclitus the Sicyonian writes in his Second Book of Stones.
De Fluviis. Pseudo-Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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