Origins of Acharnania Flashcards
Where is the source from?
Thucydides, The History 2.102
There is a story that when Alcmaeon son of Amphiaraus was a wanderer after the murder of his mother, Apollo directed him by oracle to inhabit this land, intimating that he would have no release from his fears until he should find and settle in a country which at the time he killed his mother had not yet been seen by the sun, and was not even land
then, for all the rest of the earth had been polluted by him. And he, in his perplexity, at
last, as the story goes, observed this sand-bar formed by the Achelous, and he surmised
that during the long time he had been wandering since he had slain his mother enough
land would have been silted up to support life in. So he settled there in the region of
Oeniadae, founded a principality, and left to the country its name Acarnania, after that of
his son Acarnan. Such is the tradition which we have received concerning Alcmaeon.
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What myth does the passage relate to?
When Alcmaeon was pursued by the Erinyes (goddesses of vengeance) of his mother’s murder, he left his country and went to Psophis.
