Book 13
55
And Nymphodorus the Syracusan, in his treatise o the People who have been admired and eminent in Sicily, says that Lais was a native of Hyccara, which he describe as a strong fortress in Sicily. But Strattis, in his play entitled The Macedonians or Pausanias, says that she was a Corinthian, in the following lines— A. Where do these damsels come from, and who are they B. At present they are come from Megara, But they by birth are all Corinthians: This one is Lais, Who is so well known. And Timæus, in the thirteenth book of his History, says she came from Hyccara, (using the word in the plural number;) as Polemo has stated, where he says that she was murdered by some women in Thessaly, because she was beloved by a Thessalian of the name of Pausanias; and that she was beaten to death, out of envy and jealousy, by wooden footstools in the temple of Venus; and that from this circumstance that temple is called the temple of the impious Venus; and that her tomb is shown on the banks of the Peneus, having on it an emblem of a stone water-ewer, and this inscription— This is the tomb of Lais, to whose beauty, Equal to that of heavenly goddesses, The glorious and unconquer'd Greece did bow; Love was her father, Corinth was her home, Now in the rich Thessalian plain she lies;— so that those men talk nonsense who say that she was buried in Corinth, near the Craneum.
