Book 3
20.6
I know also of the following rite which is performed here. By the sea was a city Helos, which Homer too has mentioned in his list of the Lacedaemonians:These had their home in Amyclae, and in Helos the town by the seaside.Hom. Il. 2.584It was founded by Helius, the youngest of the sons of Perseus, and the Dorians afterwards reduced it by siege. Its inhabitants became the first slaves of the Lacedaemonian state, and were the first to be called Helots, as in fact Helots they were. The slaves afterwards acquired, although they were Dorians of Messenia, also came to be called Helots, just as the whole Greek race were called Hellenes from the region in Thessaly once called Hellas.
20.7
From this Helos, on stated days, they bring up to the sanctuary of the Eleusinian a wooden image of the Maid, daughter of Demeter. Fifteen stades distant from the sanctuary is Lapithaeum, named after Lapithus, a native of the district. So this Lapithaeum is on Taygetus, and not far off is Dereium, where is in the open an image of Artemis Dereatis, and beside it is a spring which they name Anonus. About twenty stades past Dereum is Harpleia, which extends as far as the plain.
20.8
On the road from Sparta to Arcadia there stands in the open an image of Athena surnamed Pareia, and after it is a sanctuary of Achilles. This it is not customary to open, but all the youths who are going to take part in the contest in Plane-tree Grove are wont to sacrifice to Achilles before the fight. The Spartans say that the sanctuary was made for them by Prax, a grandson of Pergamus the son of Neoptolemus.
