Book 5
5.11
There is in Samicum a cave not far from the river, and called the Cave of the Anigrid Nymphs. Whoever enters it suffering from alphos or leukeFor these skin.diseases see Galen 14.758. Alphos was probably our vitiligo, and leuce our leucodermia. first has to pray to the nymphs and to promise some sacrifice or other, after which he wipes the unhealthy parts of his body. Then, swimming through the river, he leaves his old uncleanness in its water, coming up sound and of one color.
6.1
Crossing the Anigrus and going to Olympia by the straight road, not far away on the right of the road you reach a high district with a city called Samia on it. This they say Polysperchon the Aetolian used as a fortified post against the Arcadians.
6.2
As to the ruins of Arene, no Messenian and no Elean could point them out to me with certainty. Those who care to do so may make all sorts of different guesses about it, but the most plausible account seemed to me that of those who held that in the heroic age and even earlier Samicum was called Arene. These quoted too the words of the Iliad:—There is a river Minyeius flowing into the seanear Arene.Hom. Il. 11.722-3
6.3
These ruins are very near to the Anigrus; and, although it might be questioned whether Samicum was called Arene, yet the Arcadians are agreed that of old the Anigrus was called the Minyeius. One might well hold that the Neda near the sea was made the boundary between Elis and Messenia at the time of the return of the Heracleidae to the Peloponnesus.
