Book 8
16.5
The Hebrews have a grave, that of Helen, a native woman, in the city of Jerusalem, which the Roman Emperor razed to the ground. There is a contrivance in the grave whereby the door, which like all the grave is of stone, does not open until the year brings back the same day and the same hour. Then the mechanism, unaided, opens the door, which, after a short interval, shuts itself. This happens at that time, but should you at any other try to open the door you cannot do so; force will not open it, but only break it down.
17.1
After the grave of Aepytus you come to the highest mountain in Arcadia, Cyllene, on the top of which is a dilapidated temple of Cyllenian Hermes. It is clear that Cyllen, the son of Elatus, gave the mountain its name and the god his surname.
17.2
In days of old, men made wooden images, so far as I have been able to discover, from the following trees ebony, cypress, cedar, oak, yew, lotus. But the image of Cyllenian Hermes is made of none of these, but of juniper wood. Its height, I conjecture, is about eight feet.
17.3
Cyllene can show also the following marvel. On it the blackbirds are entirely white. The birds so called by the Boeotians are a somewhat different breed, which does not sing. Eagles called swan-eagles, very like to swans for whiteness, I am acquainted with, as I have seen them on Mount Sipylus round the lake called the Lake of Tantalus. White wild boars and Thracian white bears have been known to be acquired by private individuals.
17.4
White hares are bred in Libya, and white deer I have seen in Rome to my great astonishment, though it never occurred to me to ask from what continent or island they had been brought. I have made these few remarks concerning the blackbirds in Cyllene that nobody may disbelieve what has been said about their color.
