warlike
expedition, and moreover it chanced to him to become blind by reason of
the following accident:--when the river had come down in flood rising to
a height of eighteen cubits, higher than ever before that time, and had
gone over the fields, a wind fell upon it and the river became agitated
by waves: and this king (they say) moved by presumptuous folly took
a spear and cast it into the midst of the eddies of the stream; and
immediately upon this he had a disease of the eyes and was by it made
blind. For ten years then he was blind, and in the eleventh year there
came to him an oracle from the city of Buto saying that the time of his
punishment had expired, and that he should see again if he washed his
eyes with the water of a woman who had accompanied with her own husband
only and had not knowledge of other men: and first he made trial of his
own wife, and then, as he continued blind, he went on to try all the
women in turn; and when he had at last regained his sight he gathered
together all the women of whom he had made trial, excepting her by
whose means he had regained his sight, to one city which now is named
Erythrabolos, 93 and having gathered them to this he consumed them all
by fire, as well as the city itself; but as for her by whose means he
had regained his sight, he had her himself to wife. Then after he had
escaped the malady of his eyes he dedicated offerings at each one of the
temples which were of renown, and especially (to mention only that which
is most worthy of mention) he dedicated at the temple of the Sun works
which are worth seeing, namely two obelisks of stone, each of a single
block, measuring in length a hundred cubits each one and in breadth
eight cubits.

112. After him, they said, there succeeded to the throne a man of
Memphis, whose name in the tongue of the Hellenes was Proteus; for whom
there is now a sacred enclosure at Memphis, very fair and well ordered,
lying on that side of the temple of Hephaistos which faces the North
Wind. Round about this enclosure dwell Phenicians of Tyre, and this
whole region is called the Camp of the Tyrians. 94 Within the enclosure
of Proteus there is a temple called the temple of the "foreign
Aphrodite," which temple I conjecture to be one of Helen the daughter of
Tyndareus, not only because I have heard the tale how Helen dwelt with
Proteus, but also especially because it is called by the name of the
"foreign Aphrodite," for the other temples of Aph