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2.17 Pausanias
2.17: Pausanias 1.30.1
Pausanias was a geographer of the second century CE, who wrote a detailed description of the monuments of Greece. In this section he discusses the Academy, a park and gymnasium on the Northwest edge of Athens.
Before the entrance to the Academy is an altar to Eros which has an inscription that reads, "Charmus,41 first of the Athenians, dedicated this to Eros." They say that another altar in the city is called "Anteros" and that it was a dedication from the metics,42 because the Athenian Meles, in dishonoring the metic Timagoras who was in love with him, ordered him to throw himself down from a rock after he had climbed to the highest part of it. Timagoras was then unsparing of his own life and wished to please the youth in every way, and so indeed he went and cast himself down. But after Meles saw that Timagoras had died, he came into such a pitch of repentance that he fell from the same rock, and thus, throwing himself down, he died. And from here it has been established among the metics to honor Anteros as the avenging spirit of Timagoras.43 |
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