”5one should take "washed on all sides" as meaning in the depths of the mountain, since wells and subterranean pools extend through it, or else should assume that in early times Peirene was wont to rise over the surface and flow down the sides of the mountain.6 And here, they say, Pegasus, a winged horse which sprang from the neck of the Gorgon Medusa when her head was cut off, was caught while drinking by Bellerophon. And the same horse, it is said, caused Hippu-crene7 to spring up on Helicon when he struck with his hoof the rock that lay below that mountain. And at the foot of Peirene is the Sisypheium, which preserves no inconsiderable ruins of a certain temple, or royal palace, made of white marble. And from the summit, looking towards the north, one can view Parnassus and Helicon—lofty, snow-clad mountains—and the Crisaean Gulf, which lies at the foot of the two mountains and is surrounded by Phocis, Boeotia, and Megaris, and by the parts of Corinthia and Sicyonia which lie across the gulf opposite to Phocis, that is, towards the west.8 And above all these countries9 lie the Oneian Mountains,10 as they are called, which extend as far as Boeotia and Cithaeron from the Sceironian Rocks,11 that is, from the road that leads along these rocks towards Attica.
1 Apparently Hieronymus of Rhodes (see 14. 2. 13), who lived about 290-230 B.C.
2 Eudoxus of Cnidus, the famous mathematician and astronomer, who flourished about 365 B.C.
3 Cp. 8. 4. 8.
4 "This level is 200 feet above the plain, which lies between it and the Corinthian Gulf" (Tozer, Selections, p. 217).
5 Eur. Fr. 1084 (Nauck)
6 The Greek word περίκλυστον is translated above in its usual sense and as Strabo interpreted it, but Euripides obviously used it in the sense of "washed on both sides," that is, by the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs (cf. Horace's "bimaris Corinthi," Horace C. 1.7.2).
7 Also spelled "Hippocrene," i.e., "Horses Spring."
8 From Acrocorinthus.
9 i.e., towards the east.
10 "Ass Mountains," but as Tozer (Selections, p. 219 remarks, Strabo confuses these (they are southeast of Corinth) with Gerania, which lay on the confines of the territories of Corinth and Megara.
11 On the Sceironian road between Megara and Corinth, see Paus. 1.44.10
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