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12It is a vulgar error, that those who happen to drink thereat are affected with love-sickness. As, however, this error is general, it will not be amiss to correct the impression. It is not only impossible that the water should have the effect of rendering men effeminate and unchaste; but, on the contrary, that alluded to is clear as crystal, and of the finest flavour. The origin of the story, by which it gained the reputation of the above quality, is as follows. When Melas and Arevanias brought to the place a colony from Argos and Trœzene, they drove out the barbarous Carians and Lelegæ. These, betaking themselves to the mountains in bodies, committed great depredations, and laid waste the neighbourhood. Some time afterwards, one of the colonists, for the sake of the profit likely to arise from it, established close to the fountain, on account of the excellence of its water, a store where he kept all sorts of merchandize; and thus it became a place of great resort of the barbarians who were drawn thither. Coming, at first, in small, and at last in large, numbers, the barbarians by degrees shook off their savage and uncivilized habits, and changed them, without coercion for those of the Greeks. The fame, therefore, of this fountain, was acquired, not by the effeminacy which it is reputed to impart, but by its being the means through which the minds of the barbarians were civilized.
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