Book 7
19.4
When they appealed to the oracle at Delphi the Pythian priestess accused Melanippus and Comaetho. The oracle ordered that they themselves should be sacrificed to Artemis, and that every year a sacrifice should be made to the goddess of the fairest youth and the fairest maiden. Because of this sacrifice the river flowing by the sanctuary of Triclaria was called Ameilichus ( relentless). Previously the river had no name.
19.5
The innocent youths and maidens who perished because of Melanippus and Comaetho suffered a piteous fate, as did also their relatives; but the pair, I hold, were exempt from suffering, for the one thingWith the reading of the MSS.: “for to man only is it worth one's life to be successful in love.” that is worth a man's life is to be successful in love.
19.6
The sacrifice to Artemis of human beings is said to have ceased in this way. An oracle had been given from Delphi to the Patraeans even before this, to the effect that a strange king would come to the land, bringing with him a strange divinity, and this king would put an end to the sacrifice to Triclaria. When Troy was captured, and the Greeks divided the spoils, Eurypylus the son of Euaemon got a chest. In it was an image of Dionysus, the work, so they say, of Hephaestus, and given as a gift by Zeus to Dardanus.
19.7
But there are two other accounts of it. One is that this chest was left by Aeneas when he fled; the other that it was thrown away by Cassandra to be a curse to the Greek who found it. Be this as it may, Eurypylus opened the chest, saw the image, and forthwith on seeing it went mad. He continued to be insane for the greater part of the time, with rare lucid intervals. Being in this condition he did not proceed on his voyage to Thessaly, but made for the town and gulf of Cirrha. Going up to Delphi he inquired of the oracle about his illness.
