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Other places supposed to be connected with this myth had a similar legend attached to them, as also did all places where Pluto was thought to have carried off Persephone. Thus we hear of entrances to Hades at Eleusis, at Colonus, at Enna in Sicily, and finally at the lovely pool of Cyane, up the Anapus River, near Syracuse, one of the few streams in which the papyrus still flourishes.
We rowed across that bay to the mouth of the Anapus, and penetrated up the stream to the paper manufactory, from real papyrus, on its banks. The vestiges of a temple of Diana, converted into a monastery, and the nearly perfect remains of that amphitheatre which Cicero pronounced the largest in the world, are not to be seen in every morning's walk!
When the siege of the city thus began to assume a turn favourable to the Romans, the two armies under Himilco and Hippocrates advanced to its relief, and attempted a simultaneous attack on the Roman positions, combined with an attempt at landing on the part of the Carthaginian fleet and a sally of the Syracusan garrison; but the attack was repulsed on all sides, and the two relieving armies were obliged to content themselves with encamping before the city, in the low marshy grounds along the Anapus, which in the height of summer and autumn engender pestilences fatal to those that tarry in them.
At the western end of the bay there is a long stretch of low, marshy ground, intersected by the little rivers Cyana and Anapus, and infested with fever during the heats of summer. On a rising ground, south of the Anapus, stood the suburb of Polichne, with its great temple, sacred to the Olympian Zeus.
With this intention they issued an order for a full muster of troops in a meadow by the Anapus, and after a general review and inspection of arms they appointed a picked body of six hundred hoplites to guard the heights of Epipolae, and hold themselves ready for any other pressing service. But the precaution was taken too late.
First therefore the Athenians went out and laid waste the lands of the Syracusans about the Anapus and carried all before them as at first by land and by sea, the Syracusans not offering to oppose them upon either element, unless it were with their cavalry and darters from the Olympieum. Next Demosthenes resolved to attempt the counterwall first by means of engines.
Once there, we can defy all attack, and look forward to the time when we shall see our homes again, and raise up the fallen power of Athens." These and similar exhortations were repeated by Nicias again and again, as the army moved slowly forwards up the valley of the Anapus, keeping a westerly direction, towards the interior of the island.
A pestilence carried off most of the African army encamped in the valley of Anapus, with the general Himilco. Bomilcar, the Carthaginian admiral, retreated, rather than fight the Roman fleet. Marcellus obtained, by the treachery of a Sicilian captain, possession of the island of Ortygia, where Dionysius had once intrenched himself, the key to the port and the city, and Syracuse fell.
Nevertheless, Hiketes still showed a bold front, and did not relax his hold on the city, and, as the part which was in his possession was strong and hard of access, Timoleon divided his army, and himself led the assault on the most difficult side of the position, by the river Anapus, ordering another body, under Isias the Corinthian, to attack from Achradina.
They accordingly went out in mass at daybreak into the meadow along the river Anapus, their new generals, Hermocrates and his colleagues, having just come into office, and held a review of their heavy infantry, from whom they first selected a picked body of six hundred, under the command of Diomilus, an exile from Andros, to guard Epipolae, and to be ready to muster at a moment's notice to help wherever help should be required.
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