Book 3
3
But Phylarchus says, "that though Egyptian beans had never been sown before in any place, and had never produced fruit if any one had by chance sown a few, except in Egypt, still, in the time of Alexander the king, the son of Pyrrhus, it happened that some sprung up near the river Thyamis in Thesprotia in Epirus, in a certain marsh in that district; and for two years continuously they bore fruit and grew; and that on this Alexander put a guard over them, and not only forbade any one to pick them, but would not allow any one to approach the place: and on this the marsh dried up; and for the future it not only never produced the abovementioned fruit, but it does not appear even to have furnished any water. And something very like this happened at Aedepsus. For at a distance from all other waters there was a spring sending forth cold water at no great distance from the sea; and invalids who drank this water were greatly benefited: on which account many repaired thither from great distances, to avail themselves of the water. Accordingly the generals of king Antigonus, wishing to be economical with respect to it, imposed a tax to be paid by those who drank it: and on this the spring dried up. And in the Troas in former times all who wished it were at liberty to draw water from the Tragasæan lake; but when Lysimachus became ruler there, and put a tax on it, that lake, too, disappeared: and as he marvelled at this, as soon as he remitted the tribute and left the place free, the water came again.
