Reader

LYCORMAS is a river of Aetolia, formerly called Evenus for this reason. Idas the son of Aphareus, after he had ravished away by violence Marpessa, with whom he was passionately in love, carried her away to Pleuron, a city of Aetolia. This rape of his daughter Evenus could by no means endure, and therefore pursued after the treacherous ravisher, till he came to the river Lycormas. But then despairing to overtake the fugitive, he threw himself for madness into the river, which from his own name was called Evenus.

In this river grows an herb which is called sarissa, because it resembles a spear, of excellent use for those that are troubled with dim sight;—as Archelaus relates in his First Book of Rivers.

Near to this river lies Myenus, from Myenus the son of Telestor and Alphesiboea; who, being beloved by his mother-in-law and unwilling to defile his father’s bed, retired himself to the mountain Alphius. But Telestor, being made jealous of his wife, pursued his son into the wilderness; and followed him so close, that Myenus, not being able to escape, flung himself headlong from the top of the mountain, which for that reason was afterwards called Myenus.

Upon this mountain grows a flower called the white violet, which, if you do but name the word step-dame, presently dies away;—as Dercyllus reports in his Third Book of Mountains.