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Be this as it may, after the Messenian Gulf comes the Laconian Gulf, lying between Taenarum1 and Maleae,2 which bends slightly from the south towards the east; and Thyrides,3 a precipitous rock exposed to the currents of the sea, is in the Messenian Gulf at a distance of one hundred and thirty stadia from Taenarum. Above Thyrides lies Taÿgetus; it is a lofty and steep mountain, only a short distance from the sea, and it connects in its northerly parts with the foothills of the Arcadian mountains in such a way that a glen is left in between, where Messenia borders on Laconia. Below Taÿgetus, in the interior, lies Sparta, and also Amyclae, where is the temple of Apollo,4 and Pharis. Now the site of Sparta is in a rather hollow district,5 although it includes mountains within its limits; yet no part of it is marshy, though in olden times the suburban part was marshy, and this part they called Limnae;6 and the temple of Dionysus in Limnae7 stood on wet ground, though now its foundations rest on dry ground. In the bend of the seaboard one comes, first, to a headland that projects into the sea, Taenarum, with its temple of Poseidon situated in a grove; and secondly, near by, to the cavern8 through which, according to the myth writers, Cerberus was brought up from Hades by Heracles. From here the passage towards the south across the sea to Phycus,9 a cape in Cyrenaea, is three thousand stadia; and the passage towards the west to Pachynus,10 the promontory of Sicily, is four thousand six hundred, though some say four thousand; and towards the east to Maleae, following the sinuosities of the gulfs, six hundred and seventy; and to Onugnathus,11 a low-lying peninsula somewhat this side of Maleae, five hundred and twenty; off Onugnathus and opposite it, at a distance of forty stadia, lies Cythera, an island with a good harbor, containing a city of the same name, which Eurycles, the ruler of the Lacedaemonians in our times, seized as his private property; and round it lie several small islands, some near it and others slightly farther away; and to Corycus,12 a cape in Crete, the shortest voyage is seven hundred stadia.13
1 Now Cape Matapan.
2 Now Cape Malea.
3 Literally, "Windows"; now called Kavo Grosso, a peninsular promontory about six miles in circumference, with precipitous cliffs that are riddled with caverns (Frazer, Pausanias 3, p. 399, and Curtius, Peloponnesos 2, p. 281).
4 For a description of this temple, see Paus. 3.18.9ff
5 Hence Homer's "Hollow Lacedaemon" (Hom. Od. 4.1).
6 "Marshes."
7 Bölte (Mitteilungen d. Kaiserl. deutsch. Arch. Intst. Athen. Abt. vol. 34 p. 388 shows that Tozer (Selections, note on p. 212 was right in identifying this "temple of Dionysus in Limnae" with the Lenaeum at Athens, where the Lenaean festival was called the "festival in Limnae."
8 The "Taenarias fauces" of Vergil Georgics 4.467.
9 Now Ras-al-Razat.
10 Now Cape Passero.
11 Literally, "Ass's-jaw"; now Cape Elaphonisi.
12 To be identified with Cimarus (10. 4. 5); see Murray's Small Classical Atlas (1904, Map 11). The cape is now called Garabusa.
13 From Cape Taenarum.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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