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Description of Greece

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer. He is mainly known for Description of Greece. It is made up of ten books within four volumes and is a guide to the land, monuments and legends of ancient Greece.


In Volume I, Book 1: Attica, Nyx was a recipient of a cult.

"After the precinct of Zeus, when you have ascended the citadel [of Megara], which even at the present day is called Caria [Karia] from Car [Kar], son of Phoroneus, you see a temple of Dionysus Nyctelius [Dionysos Nyktelios] (Nocturnal), a sanctuary built to Aphrodite Epistrophia (She who turns men to love), an oracle called that of Night [Nyx] and a temple of Zeus Conius [Zeus Konios] (Dusty) without a roof. The image of Asclepius [Asklepius] and also that of Health [Hygeia] were made by Bryaxis. Here too is what is called the Chamber of Demeter, built, they say, by Car [Kar] when he was king."


In the Volume III, Book 5: Elis 1, there is the section on The Chest of Cypselus.

"There is also a chest made of cedar, with figures on it, some of ivory, some of gold, others carved out of the cedar-wood itself. It was in this chest that Cypselus, the tyrant of Corinth, was hidden by his mother when the Bacchidae were anxious to discover him after his birth. In gratitude for the saving of Cypselus, his descendants, Cypselids as they are called, dedicated the chest at Olympia. The Corinthians of that age called chests kypselai, and from this word, they say, the child received his name of Cypselus.

On most of the figures on the chest there are inscriptions, written in the ancient characters. In some cases the letters read straight on, but in others the form of the writing is what the Greeks call bustrophedon.3 It is like this: at the end of the line the second line turns back, as runners do when running the double race. Moreover the inscriptions on the chest are written in winding characters difficult to decipher. Beginning our survey at the bottom we see in the first space of the chest the following scenes."

Nyx and her sons Thanatos and Hypnos appear on this chest.

"Now I come to the second space on the chest, and in going round it I had better begin from the left. There is a figure of a woman holding on her right arm a white child asleep, and on her left she has a black child like one who is asleep. Each has his feet turned different ways. The inscriptions declare, as one could infer without inscriptions, that the figures are Death and Sleep, with Night the nurse of both."


In the Volume III, Book 7: Achaia, Nyx is noted as well as that the Nemeses [Usually just one, Nemesis] are her children.

"So they [People of Smyrna in Aiolia, Anatolia] migrated of their own free will, and believe now in two Nemeses instead of one, saying that their mother is Night [Nyx], while the Athenians say that the father of the goddess in Rhamnus is Ocean [Okeanos]."





Book sources:
Pausanias. Pausanias Description of Greece. English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.



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