Kitap 4
33.1
On the ascent to the summit of Ithome, which is the Messenian acropolis, is a spring Clepsydra. It is a hopeless task, however zealously undertaken, to enumerate all the peoples who claim that Zeus was born and brought up among them. The Messenians have their share in the story for they too say that the god was brought up among them and that his nurses were Ithome and Neda, the river having received its name from the latter, while the former, Ithome, gave her name to the mountain. These nymphs are said to have bathed Zeus here, after he was stolen by the Curetes owing to the danger that threatened from his father, and it is said that it has its name from the Curetes' theft. Water is carried every day from the spring to the sanctuary of Zeus of Ithome.
33.2
The statue of Zeus is the work of AgeladasSee also Paus. 6.8.6; Paus. 6.10.6; Paus. 6.14.11, where the athletes commemorated were victorious between the years 520 and 508 B.C. An inscription from Olympia (c. 500 B.C.; Inschr. v. Olymp., 631) mentions the slave or son of Hagelaidas the Argive. The Scholiast on Aristoph. Frogs 504, who calls Ageladas the master of Pheidias, states, however, that he was the artist who made the Heracles set up in Melite to commemorate the deliverance from the “great plague” (430-427 B.C. Cf. Pliny NH 34.49). and was made originally for the Messenian settlers in Naupactus. The priest is chosen annually and keeps the image in his house.Cf. Paus. 7.24.4 They keep an annual festival, the Ithomaea, and originally a musical contest was held. This can be gathered from the epic lines of Eumelus and other sources. Eumelus, in his processional hymn to Delos, says:For dear to the God of Ithome was the Muse, whose [lute] is pure and free her sandals.Eumelus, unknown location.I think that he wrote the lines because he knew that they held a musical contest.
