Greek Questions (38-39)

Question 38. Who amongst the Boeotians were the Ψολόεις, and who the Ὀλεῖαι?

Solution. They say that Minos’s daughters—Leucippe, Arsinoe, and Alcathoe—falling mad, had a greedy appetite for man’s flesh, and accordingly cast lots for their children. Whereupon it fell to Leucippe’s lot to produce her son Hippasus to be cut in pieces. The husbands of these women, that were clothed in coarse apparel by reason of sorrow and grief, were called Psoloeis, the women Ὀλεῖαι that is ὀλοαί (destructive). And to this day the Orchomenians call their posterity so. And it is so ordered that, in the yearly feast called Agrionia, there is a flight and pursuit of them by the priest of Bacchus, with a drawn sword in his hand. It is lawful for him to slay any of them that he takes, and Zoilus a priest of our time slew one. This thing proved unlucky to them; for Zoilus, sickening upon a wound that he got, wasted away for a long time and died; whereupon the Orchomenians, falling under public accusations and condemnations, removed the priesthood from their family, and made choice of the best man in the whole multitude.

Question 39. Why do the Arcadians stone those that go willingly into the Lycaeum, while those that go in ignorantly they carry forth to Eleutherae?

Solution. Is it on the ground that they gained their liberty by being thus absolved, that the story has gained

credit? And is this saying to Eleutherae the same as into the region of security, or thou shalt come to the seat of pleasure? Or is the reason to be rendered according to that fabulous story, that of all the sons of Lycaon Eleuther and Lebadus alone were free from that conspiracy against Jupiter, and fled into Boeotia, where the Lebadenses use the like civil polity to that of the Arcadians, and therefore they send them to Eleutherae that enter unwittingly into the inaccessible temple of Jupiter? Or is it (as Architimus saith in his remarks on Arcadia) that some that went into the Lycaeum unawares were delivered up to the Phliasians by the Arcadians, and by the Phliasians to the Megarians, and by the Megarians to the Thebans which inhabit about Eleutherae, where they are detained under rain, thunder, and other direful judgments from Heaven; and upon this account some say this place was called Eleutherae. But the report is not true that he that enters into the Lycaeum casts no shadow, though it hath had a firm belief. And what if this be the reason of that report, that the air converted into clouds looks darkly on them that go in? Or that he that goes in falls down dead?—for the Pythagoreans say that the souls of the deceased do neither give a shadow nor wink. Or is it that the sun only makes a shadow, and the law bereaveth him that entereth here of the sight of the sun? Though this they speak enigmatically; for verily he that goes in is called Elaphus, a stag. Hence the Lacedaemonians delivered up to the Arcadians Cantharion the Arcadian, who went over to the Eleans whilst they waged war with the Arcadians, passing with his booty through the inaccessible temple, and fled to Sparta when the war was ended; the oracle requiring them to restore the stag.