Strabo, Geography

After Chelonatas comes the long seashore of the Pisatans; and then Cape Pheia. And there was also a small town called Pheia: “"beside the walls of Pheia, about the streams of Iardanus,"
”¹for there is also a small river nearby. According to some, Pheia is the beginning of Pisatis. Off Pheia lie a little island and a harbor, from which the nearest distance from the sea to Olympia is one hundred and twenty stadia. Then comes another cape, Ichthys, which, like Chelonatas, projects for a considerable distance towards the west; and from it the distance to Cephallenia is again one hundred and twenty stadia. Then comes the mouth of the Alpheius, which is distant two hundred and eighty stadia from Chelonatas, and five hundred and forty five from Araxus. It flows from the same regions as the Eurotas, that is, from a place called Asea, a village in the territory of Megalopolis, where there are two springs near one another from which the rivers in question flow. They sink and flow beneath the earth for many stadia² and then rise again; and then they flow down, one into Laconia and the other into Pisatis. The stream of the Eurotas reappears where the district called Bleminatis begins, and then flows past Sparta itself, traverses a long glen near Helus (a place mentioned by the poet), ³ and empties between Gythium, the naval station of Sparta, and Acraea. But the Alpheius, after receiving the waters of the Ladon, the Erymanthus, and other rivers of less significance, flows through Phrixa, Pisatis, and Triphylia past Olympia itself to the Sicilian Sea, into which it empties between Pheia and Epitalium. Near the outlet of the river is the sacred precinct of Artemis Alpheionia or Alpheiusa (for the epithet is spelled both ways), which is about eighty stadia distant from Olympia. An annual festival is also celebrated at Olympia in honor of this goddess as well as in honor of Artemis Elaphia and Artemis Daphnia. The whole country is full of temples of Artemis, Aphrodite, and the Nymphs, being situated in sacred precincts that are generally full of flowers because of the abundance of water. And there are also numerous shrines of Hermes on the roadsides, and temples of Poseidon on the capes. In the temple of Artemis Alpheionia are very famous paintings by two Corinthians, Cleanthes and Aregon: by Cleanthes the "Capture of Troy" and the "Birth of Athene," and by Aregon the "Artemis Borne Aloft on a Griffin."