XVII. EUROTAS.
HIMERUS, the son of the Nymph Taygete and Lacedaemon, through the anger of offended Venus, at a revelling
that lasted all night, deflowered his sister Cleodice, not
knowing what he did. But the next day being informed
of the truth of the matter, he laid it so to heart, that
through excess of grief he flung himself into the river
Marathon, which from thence was called Himeros; but
after that Eurotas, upon this occasion.
The Lacedaemonians being at war with the Athenians,
and staying for the full moon, Eurotas their captain-general, despising all religion, would needs fight his enemies,.
though at the same time he was warned by thunder and'
lightning. However, having lost his army, the ignominy
of his loss so incessantly perplexed him, that he flung himself into the river Himerus, which from that accident was
afterwards called Eurotas.
[p. 498]
In this river grows a stone which is shaped like a helmet, called thrasydeilos, or
rash and timorous. For if it
hears a trumpet sound, it leaps toward the bank of the
river; but if you do but name the Athenians, it presently
sinks to the bottom of the water. Of these stones there
are not a few which are consecrated and laid up in the
temple of Minerva of the Brazen House;—as Nicanor
the Samian relates in his Second Book of Rivers.
Near to this river lies the mountain Taygetus, deriving
its name from the nymph Taygete; who, after Jupiter had
deflowered her, being overcome by grief, ended her days
by hanging at the summit of the mountain Amyclaeus,
which from thence was called Taygetus.
Upon this mountain grows a plant called Charisia, which
the women at the beginning of the spring tied about their
necks, to make themselves more passionately beloved by
men;—as Cleanthes reports in his First Book of Mountains. But Sosthenes the Cnidian is more accurate in the
relation of these things, from whom Hermogenes borrowed
the subject of his writing.
