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[1] After crossing into Mantineian country over Mount Artemisios you will come to a plain called the Untilled Plain, whose name well describes it, for the rainwater coming down into it from the mountains prevents the plain from being tilled; nothing indeed could prevent it from being a lake, were it not that the water disappears into a chasm in the earth.
[2] After disappearing here it rises again at Dine (Whirlpool). Dine is a stream of fresh water rising out of the sea by what is called Genethlium in Argolis. In olden times the Argives cast horses adorned with bridles down into Dine as an offering to Poseidon. Not only here in Argolis, but also by Kheimerion in Thesprotis, is there unmistakably fresh water rising up in the sea.
[3] A greater marvel still is the water that boils in the Maeander, which comes partly from a rock surrounded by the stream, and partly rises from the mud of the river. In front of Dicaearchia also, in the land of the Etruscans, there is water boiling in the sea, and an artificial island has been made through it, so that this water is not “untilled,”
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but serves for hot baths.
[4] In the territory of the Mantineians on the left of the plain called Untilled is a mountain, on which are the ruins of a camp of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and of a village called Nestane. For it is said that by this Nestane Philip made an encampment, and the spring here they still call Philippium after the king. Philip came to Arcadia to bring over the Arcadians to his side, and to separate them from the rest of the Greek people.
[5] Philip may be supposed to have accomplished exploits greater than those of any Macedonian king who reigned either before or after. But nobody of sound mind would call him a good general, for no man has so sinned by continually trampling on oaths made to the gods [
theoi], and by breaking treaties and dishonoring his word on every occasion.
[6] The anger [
mēnima] that comes from the god [
theos] was not late in visiting him; never in fact have we known it more speedy. When he was but forty-six years old, Philip fulfilled the oracle that it is said was given him when he inquired of Delphi about the Persian [
Persēs]:
The bull is garlanded; the consummation is at hand; the sacrificer is ready.
Very soon afterwards events showed that this oracle pointed, not to the Persians, but to Philip himself.
[7] On the death of Philip, his infant son by Kleopatra, the niece of Attalus, was along with his mother dragged by Olympias on to a bronze vessel and burned to death. Afterwards Olympias killed Aridaios also. It turned out that the god intended to mow down to destruction the lineage of Kassandros as well. The sons of Kassandros were born to Thessalonikē, the daughter of Philip, and both Thessalonikē and Aridaios had Thessalian women for their mothers. The fate of Alexander is familiar to everybody alike.
[8] But if Philip had taken to heart the fate of the Spartan Glaukos,
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and at each of his acts had bethought himself of the verse:
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“If a man keeps his oath his family prospers hereafter,” then, I believe, some god would not have extinguished so relentlessly the life of Alexander and, at the same time, the Macedonian supremacy.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .