Greek Questions (40-43)

Question 40. Who is Eunostus, the hero of Tanagra; and what is the reason that women may not enter into his grove?

Solution. Eunostus was the son of Elieus who came of Cephisus and Scias, but they say received his name from Eunosta, the nymph that brought him up. This man was honest and just, and no less temperate and austere. They say that Ochna his niece fell in love with him, who was one of the daughters of Colonus; and when he perceived that she tempted him to lie with her, manifesting his indignation he went and accused her to her brethren. But she had cried Whore first and provoked her brethren, Echimus, Leon, and Bucolus, to kill Eunostus, by her false suggestion that he would have forced her; wherefore these laid wait for the young man and slew him, upon which Elieus secured them. Now Ochna growing penitent and full of terror, as well to discharge the grief she had for her beloved as out of commiseration towards her brethren, confesses the whole truth to Elicus, and he declares it to Colonus, who condemned them. Whereupon Ochna’s brethren fled, but she broke her neck from some high place, as Myrtis the Anthedonian poetess hath told us. Therefore he kept the tomb and grove of Eunostus from the access and approach of women, insomuch that upon earthquakes, droughts, and other portents that often there happened, the Tanagrians made diligent search whether any woman had not by stealth got nigh to that place. And there are some (of whom Clidamus, a man of great fame, is one) who report that Eunostus met them as he was going to the sea to wash himself because a woman had entered into his grove. Diocles also, in his Treatise concerning Shrines, relates the edict of the Tana grins upon the things that Clidamus declared.

Question 41. Whence is it that in Boeotia there is a river at Eleon called Scamander?

Solution. Deimachus, the son of Elcon and intimate friend of Hercules, bore his part in the siege of Troy. But the war proving long (as it seems), he took to him

Glaucia the daughter of Scamander who had fallen in love with him, and got her with child: soon after, fighting against the Trojans, he was slain. Glaucia, fearing that she might be apprehended, fled to Hercules, and acquainted him with her late affection towards Deimachus, and the familiarity she had with him. Hercules, both out of commiseration to the woman, as also for joy that there was an offspring left of so good a man and his intimate acquaintance, took Glaucia on shipboard; and when she was delivered of a son, brought her into Boeotia, and committed her and her child to the care of Eleon. The son was named Scamander, and came to reign over that country. He called the river Inachus by his own name Scamander, and the next rivulet he named from his mother Glaucia; but the fountain he called Acidusa by his own wife’s name, by whom he had three daughters, which they have a veneration for to this day, styling them virgins.

Question 42. Whence was that proverbial speech, Let this prevail?

Solution. Dinon the Tarentine general, being a man well skilled in military affairs, when the citizens manifested their dislike of a certain opinion of his by lifting up of hands, as the crier was declaring the majority of votes, stretched forth his right hand and said, This is better. Thus Theophrastus hath told the story; and Apollodorus in his Rhytinus adds this: When the crier had said, ’These are the most suffrages;’ ’Aye, but,’ saith Dinon, ’these are the best,’ and ratifies the suffrages of the minority.

Question 43. Why is the city of the Ithacans called Alalcomenae?

Solution. It is affirmed by most, that it was because Anticlea in the time of her virginity was forcibly seized upon by Sisyphus, and brought forth Ulysses. But Ister the Alexandrian hath acquainted us in his memoirs, that

Anticlea was married to Laertes, and being brought to a place about the Alalcomeneum in Boeotia, was delivered of Ulysses; and therefore Ulysses called the city of Ithaca by the same name, to renew the memory of the place in which he had been born.