Apollodorus · Homeric Hymns · Hesiod · Pindar · Pausanias · Parthenius — Myth & Mythography

Contents — 27 sections

1. Book 1, Part 1
2. Book 1, Part 2
3. Book 1, Part 3
4. Book 1, Part 4
5. Book 1, Part 5
6. Book 1, Part 6
7. Book 1, Part 7
8. Book 1, Part 8
9. Book 1, Part 9
10. Book 2, Part 1
11. Book 2, Part 2
12. Book 2, Part 3
13. Book 2, Part 4
14. Book 2, Part 5
15. Book 2, Part 6
16. Book 2, Part 7
17. Book 2, Part 8
18. Book 2, Part 9
19. Book 3, Part 1
20. Book 3, Part 2
21. Book 3, Part 3
22. Book 3, Part 4
23. Book 3, Part 5
24. Book 3, Part 6
25. Book 3, Part 7
26. Book 3, Part 8
27. Book 3, Part 9

Book 1, Part 1 Cite

Sky was the first who ruled over the whole world. And having wedded Earth, he begat first the Hundred-handed, as they are named: Briareus, Gyes, Cottus, who were unsurpassed in size and might, each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads.

After these, Earth bore him the Cyclopes, to wit, Arges, Steropes, Brontes, of whom each had one eye on his forehead. But them Sky bound and cast into Tartarus, a gloomy place in Hades as far distant from earth as earth is distant from the sky.

And again he begat children by Earth, to wit, the Titans as they are named: Ocean, Coeus, Hyperion, Crius, Iapetus, and, youngest of all, Cronus; also daughters, the Titanides as they are called: Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Dione, Thia.

But Earth, grieved at the destruction of her children, who had been cast into Tartarus, persuaded the Titans to attack their father and gave Cronus an adamantine sickle. And they, all but Ocean, attacked him, and Cronus cut off his father's genitals and threw them into the sea; and from the drops of the flowing blood were born Furies, to wit, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. And, having dethroned their father, they brought up their brethren who had been hurled down to Tartarus, and committed the sovereignty to Cronus.

But he again bound and shut them up in Tartarus, and wedded his sister Rhea; and since both Earth and Sky foretold him that he would be dethroned by his own son, he used to swallow his offspring at birth. His firstborn Hestia he swallowed, then Demeter and Hera, and after them Pluto and Poseidon.

Enraged at this, Rhea repaired to Crete, when she was big with Zeus, and brought him forth in a cave of Dicte. She gave him to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrastia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to nurse.

So these nymphs fed the child on the milk of Amalthea; and the Curetes in arms guarded the babe in the cave, clashing their spears on their shields in order that Cronus might not hear the child's voice. But Rhea wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Cronus to swallow, as if it were the newborn child.

But when Zeus was full-grown, he took Metis, daughter of Ocean, to help him, and she gave Cronus a drug to swallow, which forced him to disgorge first the stone and then the children whom he had swallowed, and with their aid Zeus waged the war against Cronus and the Titans. They fought for ten years, and Earth prophesied victory to Zeus if he should have as allies those who had been hurled down to Tartarus. So he slew their jailoress Campe, and loosed their bonds. And the Cyclopes then gave Zeus thunder and lightning and a thunderbolt, and on Pluto they bestowed a helmet and on Poseidon a trident. Armed with these weapons the gods overcame the Titans, shut them up in Tartarus, and appointed the Hundred-handers their guards; but they themselves cast lots for the sovereignty, and to Zeus was allotted the dominion of the sky, to Poseidon the dominion of the sea, and to Pluto the dominion in Hades.

Now to the Titans were born offspring: to Ocean and Tethys were born Oceanids, to wit, Asia, Styx, Electra, Doris, Eurynome, Amphitrite, and Metis; to Coeus and Phoebe were born Asteria and Latona; to Hyperion and Thia were born Dawn, Sun, and Moon; to Crius and Eurybia, daughter of Sea ( Pontus), were born Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses;

Book 1, Part 2 Cite

to Iapetus and Asia was born Atlas, who has the sky on his shoulders, and Prometheus, and Epimetheus, and Menoetius, he whom Zeus in the battle with the Titans smote with a thunderbolt and hurled down to Tartarus.

And to Cronus and Philyra was born Chiron, a centaur of double form; and to Dawn and Astraeus were born winds and stars; to Perses and Asteria was born Hecate; and to Pallas and Styx were born Victory, Dominion, Emulation, and Violence.

But Zeus caused oaths to be sworn by the water of Styx, which flows from a rock in Hades, bestowing this honor on her because she and her children had fought on his side against the Titans.

And to Sea ( Pontus) and Earth were born Phorcus, Thaumas, Nereus, Eurybia, and Ceto. Now to Thaumas and Electra were born Iris and the Harpies, Aello and Ocypete; and to Phorcus and Ceto were born the Phorcides and Gorgons, of whom we shall speak when we treat of Perseus.

To Nereus and Doris were born the Nereids, whose names are Cymothoe, Spio, Glauconome, Nausithoe, Halie, Erato, Sao, Amphitrite, Eunice, Thetis, Eulimene, Agave, Eudore, Doto, Pherusa, Galatea, Actaea, Pontomedusa, Hippothoe, Lysianassa, Cymo, Eione, Halimede, Plexaure, Eucrante, Proto, Calypso, Panope, Cranto, Neomeris, Hipponoe, Ianira, Polynome, Autonoe, Melite, Dione, Nesaea, Dero, Evagore, Psamathe, Eumolpe, Ione, Dynamene, Ceto, and Limnoria.

Now Zeus wedded Hera and begat Hebe, Ilithyia, and Ares, but he had intercourse with many women, both mortals and immortals. By Themis, daughter of Sky, he had daughters, the Seasons, to wit, Peace, Order, and Justice; also the Fates, to wit, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropus; by Dione he had Aphrodite; by Eurynome, daughter of Ocean, he had the Graces, to wit, Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia; by Styx he had Persephone; and by Memory ( Mnemosyne) he had the Muses, first Calliope, then Clio, Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato, Terpsichore, Urania, Thalia, and Polymnia.

Now Calliope bore to Oeagrus or, nominally, to Apollo, a son Linus, whom Hercules slew; and another son, Orpheus, who practised minstrelsy and by his songs moved stones and trees. And when his wife Eurydice died, bitten by a snake, he went down to Hades, being fain to bring her up, and he persuaded Pluto to send her up. The god promised to do so, if on the way Orpheus would not turn round until he should be come to his own house. But he disobeyed and turning round beheld his wife; so she turned back. Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus, and having been torn in pieces by the Maenads he is buried in Pieria.

Clio fell in love with Pierus, son of Magnes, in consequence of the wrath of Aphrodite, whom she had twitted with her love of Adonis; and having met him she bore him a son Hyacinth, for whom Thamyris, the son of Philammon and a nymph Argiope, conceived a passion, he being the first to become enamored of males. But afterwards Apollo loved Hyacinth and killed him involuntarily by the cast of a quoit. And Thamyris, who excelled in beauty and in minstrelsy, engaged in a musical contest with the Muses, the agreement being that, if he won, he should enjoy them all, but that if he should be vanquished he should be bereft of what they would. So the Muses got the better of him and bereft him both of his eyes and of his minstrelsy.

Euterpe had by the river Strymon a son Rhesus, whom Diomedes slew at Troy; but some say his mother was Calliope. Thalia had by Apollo the Corybantes; and Melpomene had by Achelous the Sirens, of whom we shall speak in treating of Ulysses.

Book 1, Part 3 Cite

Hera gave birth to Hephaestus without intercourse with the other sex, but according to Homer he was one of her children by Zeus. Him Zeus cast out of heaven, because he came to the rescue of Hera in her bonds. For when Hercules had taken Troy and was at sea, Hera sent a storm after him; so Zeus hung her from Olympus. Hephaestus fell on Lemnos and was lamed of his legs, but Thetis saved him.

Zeus had intercourse with Metis, who turned into many shapes in order to avoid his embraces. When she was with child, Zeus, taking time by the forelock, swallowed her, because Earth said that, after giving birth to the maiden who was then in her womb, Metis would bear a son who should be the lord of heaven. From fear of that Zeus swallowed her. And when the time came for the birth to take place, Prometheus or, as others say, Hephaestus, smote the head of Zeus with an axe, and Athena, fully armed, leaped up from the top of his head at the river Triton.

Of the daughters of Coeus, Asteria in the likeness of a quail flung herself into the sea in order to escape the amorous advances of Zeus, and a city was formerly called after her Asteria, but afterwards it was named Delos. But Latona for her intrigue with Zeus was hunted by Hera over the whole earth, till she came to Delos and brought forth first Artemis, by the help of whose midwifery she afterwards gave birth to Apollo. Now Artemis devoted herself to the chase and remained a maid; but Apollo learned the art of prophecy from Pan, the son of Zeus and Hybris, and came to Delphi, where Themis at that time used to deliver oracles; and when the snake Python, which guarded the oracle, would have hindered him from approaching the chasm, he killed it and took over the oracle. Not long afterwards he slew also Tityus, who was a son of Zeus and Elare, daughter of Orchomenus; for her, after he had debauched her, Zeus hid under the earth for fear of Hera, and brought forth to the light the son Tityus, of monstrous size, whom she had borne in her womb. When Latona came to Pytho, Tityus beheld her, and overpowered by lust drew her to him. But she called her children to her aid, and they shot him down with their arrows. And he is punished even after death; for vultures eat his heart in Hades.

Apollo also slew Marsyas, the son of Olympus. For Marsyas, having found the pipes which Athena had thrown away because they disfigured her face, engaged in a musical contest with Apollo. They agreed that the victor should work his will on the vanquished, and when the trial took place Apollo turned his lyre upside down in the competition and bade Marsyas do the same. But Marsyas could not, so Apollo was judged the victor and despatched Marsyas by hanging him on a tall pine tree and stripping off his skin.

And Artemis slew Orion in Delos. They say that he was of gigantic stature and born of the earth; but Pherecydes says that he was a son of Poseidon and Euryale. Poseidon bestowed on him the power of striding across the sea. He first married Side, whom Hera cast into Hades because she rivalled herself in beauty. Afterwards he went to Chios and wooed Merope, daughter of Oenopion. But Oenopion made him drunk, put out his eyes as he slept, and cast him on the beach. But he went to the smithy of Hephaestus, and snatching up a lad set him on his shoulders and bade him lead him to the sunrise. Being come thither he was healed by the sun's rays, and having recovered his sight he hastened with all speed against Oenopion.

But for him Poseidon had made ready a house under the earth constructed by Hephaestus. And Dawn fell in love with Orion and carried him off and brought him to Delos; for Aphrodite caused Dawn to be perpetually in love, because she had bedded with Ares.

But Orion was killed, as some say, for challenging Artemis to a match at quoits, but some say he was shot by Artemis for offering violence to Opis, one of the maidens who had come from the Hyperboreans. Poseidon wedded Amphitrite, daughter of Ocean, and there were born to him Triton and Rhode, who was married to the Sun.

Pluto fell in love with Persephone and with the help of Zeus carried her off secretly. But Demeter went about seeking her all over the earth with torches by night and day, and learning from the people of Hermion that Pluto had carried her off, she was wroth with the gods and quitted heaven, and came in the likeness of a woman to Eleusis. And first she sat down on the rock which has been named Laughless after her, beside what is called the Well of the Fair Dances; thereupon she made her way to Celeus, who at that time reigned over the Eleusinians. Some women were in the house, and when they bade her sit down beside them, a certain old crone, Iambe, joked the goddess and made her smile. For that reason they say that the women break jests at the Thesmophoria. But Metanira, wife of Celeus, had a child and Demeter received it to nurse, and wishing to make it immortal she set the babe of nights on the fire and stripped off its mortal flesh. But as Demophon — for that was the child's name— grew marvelously by day, Praxithea watched, and discovering him buried in the fire she cried out; wherefore the babe was consumed by the fire and the goddess revealed herself.

But for Triptolemus, the elder of Metanira's children, she made a chariot of winged dragons, and gave him wheat, with which, wafted through the sky, he sowed the whole inhabited earth. But Panyasis affirms that Triptolemus was a son of Eleusis, for he says that Demeter came to him. Pherecydes, however, says that he was a son of Ocean and Earth.

Book 1, Part 4 Cite

But when Zeus ordered Pluto to send up the Maid, Pluto gave her a seed of a pomegranate to eat, in order that she might not tarry long with her mother. Not foreseeing the consequence, she swallowed it; and because Ascalaphus, son of Acheron and Gorgyra, bore witness against her, Demeter laid a heavy rock on him in Hades. But Persephone was compelled to remain a third of every year with Pluto and the rest of the time with the gods.

Such is the legend of Demeter. But Earth, vexed on account of the Titans, brought forth the giants, whom she had by Sky. These were matchless in the bulk of their bodies and invincible in their might; terrible of aspect did they appear, with long locks drooping from their head and chin, and with the scales of dragons for feet. They were born, as some say, in Phlegrae, but according to others in Pallene. And they darted rocks and burning oaks at the sky. Surpassing all the rest were Porphyrion and Alcyoneus, who was even immortal so long as he fought in the land of his birth. He also drove away the cows of the Sun from Erythia. Now the gods had an oracle that none of the giants could perish at the hand of gods, but that with the help of a mortal they would be made an end of. Learning of this, Earth sought for a simple to prevent the giants from being destroyed even by a mortal. But Zeus forbade the Dawn and the Moon and the Sun to shine, and then, before anybody else could get it, he culled the simple himself, and by means of Athena summoned Hercules to his help. Hercules first shot Alcyoneus with an arrow, but when the giant fell on the ground he somewhat revived. However, at Athena's advice Hercules dragged him outside Pallene, and so the giant died.

But in the battle Porphyrion attacked Hercules and Hera. Nevertheless Zeus inspired him with lust for Hera, and when he tore her robes and would have forced her, she called for help, and Zeus smote him with a thunderbolt, and Hercules shot him dead with an arrow. As for the other giants, Ephialtes was shot by Apollo with an arrow in his left eye and by Hercules in his right; Eurytus was killed by Dionysus with a thyrsus, and Clytius by Hecate with torches, and Mimas by Hephaestus with missiles of red-hot metal. Enceladus fled, but Athena threw on him in his flight the island of Sicily ; and she flayed Pallas and used his skin to shield her own body in the fight. Polybotes was chased through the sea by Poseidon and came to Cos; and Poseidon, breaking off that piece of the island which is called Nisyrum, threw it on him. And Hermes, wearing the helmet of Hades, slew Hippolytus in the fight, and Artemis slew Gration. And the Fates, fighting with brazer clubs, killed Agrius and Thoas. The other giants Zeus smote and destroyed with thunderbolts and all of them Hercules shot with arrows as they were dying.

When the gods had overcome the giants, Earth, still more enraged, had intercourse with Tartarus and brought forth Typhon in Cilicia, a hybrid between man and beast. In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged:unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes. Such and so great was Typhon when, hurling kindled rocks, he made for the very heaven with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth. But when the gods saw him rushing at heaven, they made for Egypt in flight, and being pursued they changed their forms into those of animals. However Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle, and as he fled pursued him closely as far as Mount Casius, which overhangs Syria. There, seeing the monster sore wounded, he grappled with him. But Typhon twined about him and gripped him in his coils, and wresting the sickle from him severed the sinews of his hands and feet, and lifting him on his shoulders carried him through the sea to Cilicia and deposited him on arrival in the Corycian cave. Likewise he put away the sinews there also, hidden in a bearskin, and he set to guard them the she-dragon Delphyne, who was a half-bestial maiden. But Hermes and Aegipan stole the sinews and fitted them unobserved to Zeus. And having recovered his strength Zeus suddenly from heaven, riding in a chariot of winged horses, pelted Typhon with thunderbolts and pursued him to the mountain called Nysa, where the Fates beguiled the fugitive; for he tasted of the ephemeral fruits in the persuasion that he would be strengthened thereby. So being again pursued he came to Thrace, and in fighting at Mount Haemus he heaved whole mountains. But when these recoiled on him through the force of the thunderbolt, a stream of blood gushed out on the mountain, and they say that from that circumstance the mountain was called Haemus. And when he started to flee through the Sicilian sea, Zeus cast Mount Etna in Sicily upon him. That is a huge mountain, from which down to this day they say that blasts of fire issue from the thunderbolts that were thrown. So much for that subject.

Prometheus moulded men out of water and earth and gave them also fire, which, unknown to Zeus, he had hidden in a stalk of fennel. But when Zeus learned of it, he ordered Hephaestus to nail his body to Mount Caucasus, which is a Scythian mountain. On it Prometheus was nailed and kept bound for many years. Every day an eagle swooped on him and devoured the lobes of his liver, which grew by night. That was the penalty that Prometheus paid for the theft of fire until Hercules afterwards released him, as we shall show in dealing with Hercules.

And Prometheus had a son Deucalion. He reigning in the regions about Phthia, married Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, the first woman fashioned by the gods. And when Zeus would destroy the men of the Bronze Age, Deucalion by the advice of Prometheus constructed a chest, and having stored it with provisions he embarked in it with Pyrrha. But Zeus by pouring heavy rain from heaven flooded the greater part of Greece, so that all men were destroyed, except a few who fled to the high mountains in the neighborhood. It was then that the mountains in Thessaly parted, and that all the world outside the Isthmus and Peloponnese was overwhelmed. But Deucalion, floating in the chest over the sea for nine days and as many nights, drifted to Parnassus, and there, when the rain ceased, he landed and sacrificed to Zeus, the god of Escape. And Zeus sent Hermes to him and allowed him to choose what he would, and he chose to get men. And at the bidding of Zeus he took up stones and threw them over his head, and the stones which Deucalion threw became men, and the stones which Pyrrha threw became women. Hence people were called metaphorically people ( laos) from laas, “ a stone. ” And Deucalion had children by Pyrrha, first Hellen, whose father some say was Zeus, and second Amphictyon, who reigned over Attica after Cranaus; and third a daughter Protogenia, who became the mother of Aethlius by Zeus.

Hellen had Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus by a nymph Orseis. Those who were called Greeks he named Hellenes after himself, and divided the country among his sons. Xuthus received Peloponnese and begat Achaeus and Ion by Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, and from Achaeus and Ion the Achaeans and Ionians derive their names. Dorus received the country over against Peloponnese and called the settlers Dorians after himself. Aeolus reigned over the regions about Thessaly and named the inhabitants Aeolians. He married Enarete, daughter of Deimachus, and begat seven sons, Cretheus, Sisyphus, Athamas, Salmoneus, Deion, Magnes, Perieres, and five daughters, Canace, Alcyone, Pisidice, Calyce, Perimede. Perimede had Hippodamas and Orestes by Achelous; and Pisidice had Antiphus and Actor by Myrmidon.

Alcyone was married by Ceyx, son of Lucifer. These perished by reason of their pride; for he said that his wife was Hera, and she said that her husband was Zeus. But Zeus turned them into birds; her he made a kingfisher ( alcyon) and him a gannet ( ceyx). Canace had by Poseidon Hopleus and Nireus and Epopeus and Aloeus and Triops. Aloeus wedded Iphimedia, daughter of Triops; but she fell in love with Poseidon, and often going to the sea she would draw up the waves with her hands and pour them into her lap. Poseidon met her and begat two sons, Otus and Ephialtes, who are called the Aloads. These grew every year a cubit in breadth and a fathom in height; and when they were nine years old, being nine cubits broad and nine fathoms high, they resolved to fight against the gods, and they set Ossa on Olympus, and having set Pelion on Ossa they threatened by means of these mountains to ascend up to heaven, and they said that by filling up the sea with the mountains they would make it dry land, and the land they would make sea. And Ephialtes wooed Hera, and Otus wooed Artemis; moreover they put Ares in bonds. However, Hermes rescued Ares by stealth, and Artemis killed the Aloads in Naxos by a ruse. For she changed herself into a deer and leaped between them, and in their eagerness to hit the quarry they threw their darts at each other.

Calyce and Aethlius had a son Endymion who led Aeolians from Thessaly and founded Elis. But some say that he was a son of Zeus. As he was of surpassing beauty, the Moon fell in love with him, and Zeus allowed him to choose what he would, and he chose to sleep for ever, remaining deathless and ageless.

Book 1, Part 5 Cite

Endymion had by a Naiad nymph or, as some say, by Iphianassa, a son Aetolus, who slew Apis, son of Phoroneus, and fled to the Curetian country. There he killed his hosts, Dorus and Laodocus and Polypoetes, the sons of Phthia and Apollo, and called the country Aetolia after himself.

Aetolus and Pronoe, daughter of Phorbus, had sons, Pleuron and Calydon, after whom the cities in Aetolia were named. Pleuron wedded Xanthippe, daughter of Dorus, and begat a son Agenor, and daughters, Sterope and Stratonice and Laophonte. Calydon and Aeolia, daughter of Amythaon, had daughters, Epicaste and Protogenia, who had Oxylus by Ares. And Agenor, son of Pleuron, married Epicaste, daughter of Calydon, and begat Porthaon and Demonice, who had Evenus, Molus, Pylus, and Thestius by Ares.

Evenus begat Marpessa, who was wooed by Apollo, but Idas, son of Aphareus, carried her off in a winged chariot which he received from Poseidon. Pursuing him in a chariot, Evenus came to the river Lycormas, but when he could not catch him he slaughtered his horses and threw himself into the river, and the river is called Evenus after him.

But Idas came to Messene, and Apollo, falling in with him, would have robbed him of the damsel. As they fought for the girl's hand, Zeus parted them and allowed the maiden herself to choose which of the two she would marry; and she, because she feared that Apollo might desert her in her old age, chose Idas for her husband.

Thestius had daughters and sons by Eurythemis, daughter of Cleoboea: the daughters were Althaea, Leda, Hypermnestra, and the males were Iphiclus, Evippus, Plexippus, and Eurypylus. Porthaon and Euryte, daughter of Hippodamas, had sons, Oeneus, Agrius, Alcathous, Melas, Leucopeus, and a daughter Sterope, who is said to have been the mother of the Sirens by Achelous.

Reigning over Calydon, Oeneus was the first who received a vine-plant from Dionysus. He married Althaea, daughter of Thestius, and begat Toxeus, whom he slew with his own hand because he leaped over the ditch. And besides Toxeus he had Thyreus and Clymenus, and a daughter Gorge, whom Andraemon married, and another daughter Deianira, who is said to have been begotten on Althaea by Dionysus. This Deianira drove a chariot and practised the art of war, and Hercules wrestled for her hand with Achelous.

Althaea had also a son Meleager, by Oeneus, though they say that he was begotten by Ares. It is said that, when he was seven days old, the Fates came and declared that Meleager should die when the brand burning on the hearth was burnt out. On hearing that, Althaea snatched up the brand and deposited it in a chest. Meleager grew up to be an invulnerable and gallant man, but came by his end in the following way. In sacrificing the first fruits of the annual crops of the country to all the gods Oeneus forgot Artemis alone. But she in her wrath sent a boar of extraordinary size and strength, which prevented the land from being sown and destroyed the cattle and the people that fell in with it. To attack this boar Oeneus called together all the noblest men of Greece, and promised that to him who should kill the beast he would give the skin as a prize. Now the men who assembled to hunt the boar were these:— Meleager, son of Oeneus; Dryas, son of Ares; these came from Calydon; Idas and Lynceus, sons of Aphareus, from Messene; Castor and Pollux, sons of Zeus and Leda, from Lacedaemon; Theseus, son of Aegeus, from Athens; Admetus, son of Pheres, from Pherae; Ancaeus and Cepheus, sons of Lycurgus, from Arcadia; Jason, son of Aeson, from Iolcus; Iphicles, son of Amphitryon, from Thebes; Pirithous, son of Ixion, from Larissa; Peleus, son of Aeacus, from Phthia; Telamon, son of Aeacus, from Salamis; Eurytion, son of Actor, from Phthia; Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus, from Arcadia; Amphiaraus, son of Oicles, from Argos. With them came also the sons of Thestius. And when they were assembled, Oeneus entertained them for nine days; but on the tenth, when Cepheus and Ancaeus and some others disdained to go hunting with a woman, Meleager compelled them to follow the chase with her, for he desired to have a child also by Atalanta, though he had to wife Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and Marpessa. When they surrounded the boar, Hyleus and Ancaeus were killed by the brute, and Peleus struck down Eurytion undesignedly with a javelin. But Atalanta was the first to shoot the boar in the back with an arrow, and Amphiaraus was the next to shoot it in the eye; but Meleager killed it by a stab in the flank, and on receiving the skin gave it to Atalanta. Nevertheless the sons of Thestius, thinking scorn that a woman should get the prize in the face of men, took the skin from her, alleging that it belonged to them by right of birth if Meleager did not choose to take it.

But Meleager in a rage slew the sons of Thestius and gave the skin to Atalanta. However, from grief at the slaughter of her brothers Althaea kindled the brand, and Meleager immediately expired. But some say that Meleager did not die in that way, but that when the sons of Thestius claimed the skin on the ground that Iphiclus had been the first to hit the boar, war broke out between the Curetes and the Calydonians; and when Meleager had sallied out and slain some of the sons of Thestius, Althaea cursed him, and he in a rage remained at home; however, when the enemy approached the walls, and the citizens supplicated him to come to the rescue, he yielded reluctantly to his wife and sallied forth, and having killed the rest of the sons of Thestius, he himself fell fighting. After the death of Meleager, Althaea and Cleopatra hanged themselves, and the women who mourned the dead man were turned into birds.

After Althaea's death Oeneus married Periboea, daughter of Hipponous. The author of the Thebaid says that when Olenus was sacked, Oeneus received Periboea as a gift of honor; but Hesiod says that she was seduced by Hippostratus, son of Amarynceus, and that her father Hipponous sent her away from Olenus in Achaia to Oeneus, because he dwelt far from Greece, with an injunction to put her to death.

Book 1, Part 6 Cite

However, some say that Hipponous discovered that his daughter had been debauched by Oeneus, and therefore he sent her away to him when she was with child. By her Oeneus begat Tydeus. But Pisander says that the mother of Tydeus was Gorge, for Zeus willed it that Oeneus should fall in love with his own daughter. When Tydeus had grown to be a gallant man he was banished for killing, as some say, Alcathous, brother of Oeneus; but according to the author of the Alcmaeonidhis victims were the sons of Melas who had plotted against Oeneus, their names being Pheneus, Euryalus, Hyperlaus, Antiochus, Eumedes, Sternops, Xanthippus, Sthenelaus; but as Pherecydes will have it, he murdered his own brother Olenias. Being arraigned by Agrius, he fled to Argos and came to Adrastus, whose daughter Deipyle he married and begat Diomedes. Tydeus marched against Thebes with Adrastus, and died of a wound which he received at the hand of Melanippus.

But the sons of Agrius, to wit, Thersites, Onchestus, Prothous, Celeutor, Lycopeus, Melanippus, wrested the kingdom from Oeneus and gave it to their father, and more than that they imprisoned Oeneus in his lifetime and tormented him. Nevertheless Diomedes afterwards came secretly with Alcmaeon from Argos and put to death all the sons of Agrius, except Onchestus and Thersites, who had fled betimes to Peloponnese; and as Oeneus was old, Diomedes gave the kingdom to Andraemon who had married the daughter of Oeneus, but Oeneus himself he took with him to Peloponnese. Howbeit, the sons of Agrius, who had made their escape, lay in wait for the old man at the hearth of Telephus in Arcadia, and killed him. But Diomedes conveyed the corpse to Argos and buried him in the place where now a city is called Oenoe after him. And having married Aegialia, daughter of Adrastus or, as some say, of Aegialeus, he went to the wars against Thebes and Troy.

Of the sons of Aeolus, Athamas ruled over Boeotia and begat a son Phrixus and a daughter Helle by Nephele. And he married a second wife, Ino, by whom he had Learchus and Melicertes. But Ino plotted against the children of Nephele and persuaded the women to parch the wheat; and having got the wheat they did so without the knowledge of the men. But the earth, being sown with parched wheat, did not yield its annual crops; so Athamas sent to Delphi to inquire how he might be delivered from the dearth. Now Ino persuaded the messengers to say it was foretold that the infertility would cease if Phrixus were sacrificed to Zeus. When Athamas heard that, he was forced by the inhabitants of the land to bring Phrixus to the altar. But Nephele caught him and her daughter up and gave them a ram with a golden fleece, which she had received from Hermes, and borne through the sky by the ram they crossed land and sea. But when they were over the sea which lies betwixt Sigeum and the Chersonese, Helle slipped into the deep and was drowned, and the sea was called Hellespont after her. But Phrixus came to the Colchians, whose king was Aeetes, son of the Sun and of Perseis, and brother of Circe and Pasiphae, whom Minos married. He received Phrixus and gave him one of his daughters, Chalciope. And Phrixus sacrificed the ram with the golden fleece to Zeus the god of Escape, and the fleece he gave to Aeetes, who nailed it to an oak in a grove of Ares. And Phrixus had children by Chalciope, to wit, Argus, Melas, Phrontis, and Cytisorus.

But afterwards Athamas was bereft also of the children of Ino through the wrath of Hera; for he went mad and shot Learchus with an arrow, and Ino cast herself and Melicertes into the sea. Being banished from Boeotia, Athamas inquired of the god where he should dwell, and on receiving an oracle that he should dwell in whatever place he should be entertained by wild beasts, he traversed a great extent of country till he fell in with wolves that were devouring pieces of sheep; but when they saw him they abandoned their prey and fled. So Athamas settled in that country and named it Athamantia after himself; and he married Themisto, daughter of Hypseus, and begat Leucon, Erythrius, Schoeneus, and Ptous.

And Sisyphus, son of Aeolus, founded Ephyra, which is now called Corinth, and married Merope, daughter of Atlas. They had a son Glaucus, who had by Eurymede a son Bellerophon, who slew the fire breathing Chimera. But Sisyphus is punished in Hades by rolling a stone with his hands and head in the effort to heave it over the top; but push it as he will, it rebounds backward. This punishment he endures for the sake of Aegina, daughter of Asopus; for when Zeus had secretly carried her off, Sisyphus is said to have betrayed the secret to Asopus, who was looking for her.

Deion reigned over Phocis and married Diomede, daughter of Xuthus; and there were born to him a daughter, Asterodia, and sons, Aenetus, Actor, Phylacus, and Cephalus, who married Procris, daughter of Erechtheus. But afterwards Dawn fell in love with him and carried him off.

Perieres took possession of Messene and married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, by whom he had sons, to wit, Aphareus and Leucippus, and Tyndareus, and also Icarius. But many say that Perieres was not the son of Aeolus but of Cynortas, son of Amyclas; so we shall narrate the history of the descendants of Perieres in dealing with the family of Atlas.

Magnes married a Naiad nymph, and sons were born to him, Polydectes and Dictys; these colonized Seriphus.

Salmoneus at first dwelt in Thessaly, but afterwards he came to Elis and there founded a city. And being arrogant and wishful to put himself on an equality with Zeus, he was punished for his impiety; for he said that he was himself Zeus, and he took away the sacrifices of the god and ordered them to be offered to himself; and by dragging dried hides, with bronze kettles, at his chariot, he said that he thundered, and by flinging lighted torches at the sky he said that he lightened. But Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt, and wiped out the city he had founded with all its inhabitants.

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Now Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus and Alcidice, was brought up by Cretheus, brother of Salmoneus, and conceived a passion for the river Enipeus, and often would she hie to its running waters and utter her plaint to them. But Poseidon in the likeness of Enipeus lay with her, and she secretly gave birth to twin sons, whom she exposed. As the babes lay forlorn, a mare, belonging to some passing horsekeepers, kicked with its hoof one of the two infants and left a livid mark on its face. The horsekeeper took up both the children and reared them; and the one with the livid (pelion) mark he called Pelias, and the other Neleus. When they were grown up, they discovered their mother and killed their stepmother Sidero. For knowing that their mother was ill-used by her, they attacked her, but before they could catch her she had taken refuge in the precinct of Hera. However, Pelias cut her down on the very altars, and ever after he continued to treat Hera with contumely.

But afterwards the brothers fell out, and Neleus, being banished, came to Messene, and founded Pylus, and married Chloris, daughter of Amphion, by whom he had a daughter, Pero, and sons, to wit, Taurus, Asterius, Pylaon, Deimachus, Eurybius, Epilaus, Phrasius, Eurymenes, Evagoras, Alastor, Nestor and Periclymenus, whom Poseidon granted the power of changing his shape. And when Hercules was ravaging Pylus, in the fight Periclymenus turned himself into a lion, a snake, and a bee, but was slain by Hercules with the other sons of Neleus. Nestor alone was saved, because he was brought up among the Gerenians. He married Anaxibia, daughter of Cratieus, and begat daughters, Pisidice and Polycaste, and sons, Perseus, Stratichus, Aretus, Echephron, Pisistratus, Antilochus, and Thrasymedes.

But Pelias dwelt in Thessaly and married Anaxibia, daughter of Bias, but according to some his wife was Phylomache, daughter of Amphion; and he begat a son, Acastus, and daughters, Pisidice, Pelopia, Hippothoe, and Alcestis.

Cretheus founded Iolcus and married Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, by whom he had sons, Aeson, Amythaon, and Pheres. Amythaon dwelt in Pylus and married Idomene, daughter of Pheres, and there were born to him two sons, Bias and Melampus. The latter lived in the country, and before his house there was an oak, in which there was a lair of snakes. His servants killed the snakes, but Melampus gathered wood and burnt the reptiles, and reared the young ones. And when the young were full grown, they stood beside him at each of his shoulders as he slept, and they purged his ears with their tongues. He started up in a great fright, but understood the voices of the birds flying overhead, and from what he learned from them he foretold to men what should come to pass. He acquired besides the art of taking the auspices, and having fallen in with Apollo at the Alpheus he was ever after an excellent soothsayer.

Bias wooed Pero, daughter of Neleus. But as there were many suitors for his daughter's hand, Neleus said that he would give her to him who should bring him the kine of Phylacus. These were in Phylace, and they were guarded by a dog which neither man nor beast could come near. Unable to steal these kine, Bias invited his brother to help him. Melampus promised to do so, and foretold that he should be detected in the act of stealing them, and that he should get the kine after being kept in bondage for a year. After making this promise he repaired to Phylace and, just as he had foretold, he was detected in the theft and kept a prisoner in a cell. When the year was nearly up, he heard the worms in the hidden part of the roof, one of them asking how much of the beam had been already gnawed through, and others answering that very little of it was left. At once he bade them transfer him to another cell, and not long after that had been done the cell fell in. Phylacus marvelled, and perceiving that he was an excellent soothsayer, he released him and invited him to say how his son Iphiclus might get children. Melampus promised to tell him, provided he got the kine. And having sacrificed two bulls and cut them in pieces he summoned the birds; and when a vulture came, he learned from it that once, when Phylacus was gelding rams, he laid down the knife, still bloody, beside Iphiclus, and that when the child was frightened and ran away, he stuck the knife on the sacred oak, and the bark encompassed the knife and hid it. He said, therefore, that if the knife were found, and he scraped off the rust, and gave it to Iphiclus to drink for ten days, he would beget a son. Having learned these things from the vulture, Melampus found the knife, scraped the rust, and gave it to Iphiclus for ten days to drink, and a son Podarces was born to him. But he drove the kine to Pylus, and having received the daughter of Neleus he gave her to his brother. For a time he continued to dwell in Messene, but when Dionysus drove the women of Argos mad, he healed them on condition of receiving part of the kingdom, and settled down there with Bias.

Bias and Pero had a son Talaus, who married Lysimache, daughter of Abas, son of Melampus, and had by her Adrastus, Parthenopaeus, Pronax, Mecisteus, Aristomachus, and Eriphyle, whom Amphiaraus married. Parthenopaeus had a son Promachus, who marched with the Epigoni against Thebes; and Mecisteus had a son Euryalus, who went to Troy. Pronax had a son Lycurgus; and Adrastus had by Amphithea, daughter of Pronax, three daughters, Argia, Deipyle, and Aegialia, and two sons, Aegialeus and Cyanippus.

Pheres, son of Cretheus, founded Pherae in Thessaly and begat Admetus and Lycurgus. Lycurgus took up his abode at Nemea, and having married Eurydice, or, as some say, Amphithea, he begat Opheltes, afterwards called Archemorus.

When Admetus reigned over Pherae, Apollo served him as his thrall, while Admetus wooed Alcestis, daughter of Pelias. Now Pelias had promised to give his daughter to him who should yoke a lion and a boar to a car, and Apollo yoked and gave them to Admetus, who brought them to Pelias and so obtained Alcestis. But in offering a sacrifice at his marriage, he forgot to sacrifice to Artemis; therefore when he opened the marriage chamber he found it full of coiled snakes. Apollo bade him appease the goddess and obtained as a favour of the Fates that, when Admetus should be about to die, he might be released from death if someone should choose voluntarily to die for him. And when the day of his death came neither his father nor his mother would die for him, but Alcestis died in his stead. But the Maiden sent her up again, or, as some say, Hercules fought with Hades and brought her up to him.

Aeson, son of Cretheus, had a son Jason by Polymede, daughter of Autolycus. Now Jason dwelt in Iolcus, of which Pelias was king after Cretheus. But when Pelias consulted the oracle concerning the kingdom, the god warned him to beware of the man with a single sandal. At first the king understood not the oracle, but afterwards he apprehended it. For when he was offering a sacrifice at the sea to Poseidon, he sent for Jason, among many others, to participate in it. Now Jason loved husbandry and therefore abode in the country, but he hastened to the sacrifice, and in crossing the river Anaurus he lost a sandal in the stream and landed with only one. When Pelias saw him, he bethought him of the oracle, and going up to Jason asked him what, supposing he had the power, he would do if he had received an oracle that he should be murdered by one of the citizens. Jason answered, whether at haphazard or instigated by the angry Hera in order that Medea should prove a curse to Pelias, who did not honor Hera, “ I would command him,” said he, “ to bring the Golden Fleece. ” No sooner did Pelias hear that than he bade him go in quest of the fleece. Now it was at Colchis in a grove of Ares, hanging on an oak and guarded by a sleepless dragon. Sent to fetch the fleece, Jason called in the help of Argus, son of Phrixus; and Argus, by Athena's advice, built a ship of fifty oars named Argo after its builder; and at the prow Athena fitted in a speaking timber from the oak of Dodona. When the ship was built, and he inquired of the oracle, the god gave him leave to assemble the nobles of Greece and sail away. And those who assembled were as follows: Tiphys, son of Hagnias, who steered the ship; Orpheus, son of Oeagrus; Zetes and Calais, sons of Boreas; Castor and Pollux, sons of Zeus; Telamon and Peleus, sons of Aeacus; Hercules, son of Zeus; Theseus, son of Aegeus; Idas and Lynceus, sons of Aphareus; Amphiaraus, son of Oicles; Caeneus, son of Coronus; Palaemon, son of Hephaestus or of Aetolus; Cepheus, son of Aleus; Laertes son of Arcisius; Autolycus, son of Hermes; Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus; Menoetius, son of Actor; Actor, son of Hippasus; Admetus, son of Pheres; Acastus, son of Pelias; Eurytus, son of Hermes; Meleager, son of Oeneus; Ancaeus, son of Lycurgus; Euphemus, son of Poseidon; Poeas, son of Thaumacus; Butes, son of Teleon; Phanus and Staphylus, sons of Dionysus; Erginus, son of Poseidon; Periclymenus, son of Neleus; Augeas, son of the Sun; Iphiclus, son of Thestius; Argus, son of Phrixus; Euryalus, son of Mecisteus; Peneleos, son of Hippalmus; Leitus, son of Alector; Iphitus, son of Naubolus; Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, sons of Ares; Asterius, son of Cometes; Polyphemus, son of Elatus.

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These with Jason as admiral put to sea and touched at Lemnos. At that time it chanced that Lemnos was bereft of men and ruled over by a queen, Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, the reason of which was as follows. The Lemnian women did not honor Aphrodite, and she visited them with a noisome smell; therefore their spouses took captive women from the neighboring country of Thrace and bedded with them. Thus dishonored, the Lemnian women murdered their fathers and husbands, but Hypsipyle alone saved her father Thoas by hiding him. So having put in to Lemnos, at that time ruled by women, the Argonauts had intercourse with the women, and Hypsipyle bedded with Jason and bore sons, Euneus and Nebrophonus.

And after Lemnos they landed among the Doliones, of whom Cyzicus was king. He received them kindly. But having put to sea from there by night and met with contrary winds, they lost their bearings and landed again among the Doliones. However, the Doliones, taking them for a Pelasgian army ( for they were constantly harassed by the Pelasgians), joined battle with them by night in mutual ignorance of each other. The Argonauts slew many and among the rest Cyzicus; but by day, when they knew what they had done, they mourned and cut off their hair and gave Cyzicus a costly burial; and after the burial they sailed away and touched at Mysia.

There they left Hercules and Polyphemus. For Hylas, son of Thiodamas, a minion of Hercules, had been sent to draw water and was ravished away by nymphs on account of his beauty. But Polyphemus heard him cry out, and drawing his sword gave chase in the belief that he was being carried off by robbers. Falling in with Hercules, he told him; and while the two were seeking for Hylas, the ship put to sea. So Polyphemus founded a city Cius in Mysia and reigned as king; but Hercules returned to Argos. However Herodorus says that Hercules did not sail at all at that time, but served as a slave at the court of Omphale. But Pherecydes says that he was left behind at Aphetae in Thessaly, the Argo having declared with human voice that she could not bear his weight. Nevertheless Demaratus has recorded that Hercules sailed to Colchis; for Dionysius even affirms that he was the leader of the Argonauts.

From Mysia they departed to the land of the Bebryces, which was ruled by King Amycus, son of Poseidon and a Bithynian nymph. Being a doughty man he compelled the strangers that landed to box and in that way made an end of them. So going to the Argo as usual, he challenged the best man of the crew to a boxing match. Pollux undertook to box against him and killed him with a blow on the elbow. When the Bebryces made a rush at him, the chiefs snatched up their arms and put them to flight with great slaughter.

Thence they put to sea and came to land at Salmydessus in Thrace, where dwelt Phineus, a seer who had lost the sight of both eyes. Some say he was a son of Agenor, but others that he was a son of Poseidon, and he is variously alleged to have been blinded by the gods for foretelling men the future; or by Boreas and the Argonauts because he blinded his own sons at the instigation of their stepmother; or by Poseidon, because he revealed to the children of Phrixus how they could sail from Colchis to Greece. The gods also sent the Harpies to him. These were winged female creatures, and when a table was laid for Phineus, they flew down from the sky and snatched up most of the victuals, and what little they left stank so that nobody could touch it. When the Argonauts would have consulted him about the voyage, he said that he would advise them about it if they would rid him of the Harpies. So the Argonauts laid a table of viands beside him, and the Harpies with a shriek suddenly pounced down and snatched away the food. When Zetes and Calais, the sons of Boreas, saw that, they drew their swords and, being winged, pursued them through the air. Now it was fated that the Harpies should perish by the sons of Boreas, and that the sons of Boreas should die when they could not catch up a fugitive. So the Harpies were pursued and one of them fell into the river Tigres in Peloponnese, the river that is now called Harpys after her; some call her Nicothoe, but others Aellopus. But the other, named Ocypete or, according to others, Ocythoe ( but Hesiod calls her Ocypode) fled by the Propontis till she came to the Echinadian Islands, which are now called Strophades after her; for when she came to them she turned (estraphe) and being at the shore fell for very weariness with her pursuer. But Apollonius in the Argonautica says that the Harpies were pursued to the Strophades Islands and suffered no harm, having sworn an oath that they would wrong Phineus no more.

Being rid of the Harpies, Phineus revealed to the Argonauts the course of their voyage, and advised them about the Clashing Rocks in the sea. These were huge cliffs, which, dashed together by the force of the winds, closed the sea passage. Thick was the mist that swept over them, and loud the crash, and it was impossible for even the birds to pass between them. So he told them to let fly a dove between the rocks, and, if they saw it pass safe through, to thread the narrows with an easy mind, but if they saw it perish, then not to force a passage. When they heard that, they put to sea, and on nearing the rocks let fly a dove from the prow, and as she flew the clash of the rocks nipped off the tip of her tail. So, waiting till the rocks had recoiled, with hard rowing and the help of Hera, they passed through, the extremity of the ship's ornamented poop being shorn away right round. Henceforth the Clashing Rocks stood still; for it was fated that, so soon as a ship had made the passage, they should come to rest completely.

The Argonauts now arrived among the Mariandynians, and there King Lycus received them kindly. There died Idmon the seer of a wound inflicted by a boar; and there too died Tiphys, and Ancaeus undertook to steer the ship. And having sailed past the Thermodon and the Caucasus they came to the river Phasis, which is in the Colchian land. When the ship was brought into port, Jason repaired to Aeetes, and setting forth the charge laid on him by Pelias invited him to give him the fleece. The other promised to give it if single-handed he would yoke the brazen-footed bulls. These were two wild bulls that he had, of enormous size, a gift of Hephaestus; they had brazen feet and puffed fire from their mouths. These creatures Aeetes ordered him to yoke and to sow dragon's teeth; for he had got from Athena half of the dragon's teeth which Cadmus sowed in Thebes. While Jason puzzled how he could yoke the bulls, Medea conceived a passion for him; now she was a witch, daughter of Aeetes and Idyia, daughter of Ocean. And fearing lest he might be destroyed by the bulls, she, keeping the thing from her father, promised to help him to yoke the bulls and to deliver to him the fleece, if he would swear to have her to wife and would take her with him on the voyage to Greece. When Jason swore to do so, she gave him a drug with which she bade him anoint his shield, spear, and body when he was about to yoke the bulls; for she said that, anointed with it, he could for a single day be harmed neither by fire nor by iron. And she signified to him that, when the teeth were sown, armed men would spring up from the ground against him; and when he saw a knot of them he was to throw stones into their midst from a distance, and when they fought each other about that, he was taken to kill them. On hearing that, Jason anointed himself with the drug, and being come to the grove of the temple he sought the bulls, and though they charged him with a flame of fire, he yoked them. And when he had sowed the teeth, there rose armed men from the ground; and where he saw several together, he pelted them unseen with stones, and when they fought each other he drew near and slew them. But though the bulls were yoked, Aeetes did not give the fleece; for he wished to burn down the Argo and kill the crew. But before he could do so, Medea brought Jason by night to the fleece, and having lulled to sleep by her drugs the dragon that guarded it, she possessed herself of the fleece and in Jason's company came to the Argo. She was attended, too, by her brother Apsyrtus. And with them the Argonauts put to sea by night.

When Aeetes discovered the daring deeds done by Medea, he started off in pursuit of the ship; but when she saw him near, Medea murdered her brother and cutting him limb from limb threw the pieces into the deep. Gathering the child's limbs, Aeetes fell behind in the pursuit; wherefore he turned back, and, having buried the rescued limbs of his child, he called the place Tomi. But he sent out many of the Colchians to search for the Argo, threatening that, if they did not bring Medea to him, they should suffer the punishment due to her; so they separated and pursued the search in divers places. When the Argonauts were already sailing past the Eridanus river, Zeus sent a furious storm upon them, and drove them out of their course, because he was angry at the murder of Apsyrtus. And as they were sailing past the Apsyrtides Islands, the ship spoke, saying that the wrath of Zeus would not cease unless they journeyed to Ausonia and were purified by Circe for the murder of Apsyrtus. So when they had sailed past the Ligurian and Celtic nations and had voyaged through the Sardinian Sea, they skirted Tyrrhenia and came to Aeaea, where they supplicated Circe and were purified.

And as they sailed past the Sirens, Orpheus restrained the Argonauts by chanting a counter-melody. Butes alone swam off to the Sirens, but Aphrodite carried him away and settled him in Lilybaeum. After the Sirens, the ship encountered Charybdis and Scylla and the Wandering Rocks, above which a great flame and smoke were seen rising. But Thetis with the Nereids steered the ship through them at the summons of Hera. Having passed by the Island of Thrinacia, where are the kine of the Sun, they came to Corcyra, the island of the Phaeacians, of which Alcinous was king. But when the Colchians could not find the ship, some of them settled at the Ceraunian mountains, and some journeyed to Illyria and colonized the Apsyrtides Islands. But some came to the Phaeacians, and finding the Argo there, they demanded of Alcinous that he should give up Medea. He answered, that if she already knew Jason, he would give her to him, but that if she were still a maid he would send her away to her father. However, Arete, wife of Alcinous, anticipated matters by marrying Medea to Jason; hence the Colchians settled down among the Phaeacians and the Argonauts put to sea with Medea.

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Sailing by night they encountered a violent storm, and Apollo, taking his stand on the Melantian ridges, flashed lightning down, shooting a shaft into the sea. Then they perceived an island close at hand, and anchoring there they named it Anaphe, because it had loomed up (anaphanenai) unexpectedly. So they founded an altar of Radiant Apollo, and having offered sacrifice they betook them to feasting; and twelve handmaids, whom Arete had given to Medea, jested merrily with the chiefs; whence it is still customary for the women to jest at the sacrifice. Putting to sea from there, they were hindered from touching at Crete by Talos. Some say that he was a man of the Brazen Race, others that he was given to Minos by Hephaestus; he was a brazen man, but some say that he was a bull. He had a single vein extending from his neck to his ankles, and a bronze nail was rammed home at the end of the vein. This Talos kept guard, running round the island thrice every day; wherefore, when he saw the Argo standing inshore, he pelted it as usual with stones. His death was brought about by the wiles of Medea, whether, as some say, she drove him mad by drugs, or, as others say, she promised to make him immortal and then drew out the nail, so that all the ichor gushed out and he died. But some say that Poeas shot him dead in the ankle. After tarrying a single night there they put in to Aegina to draw water, and a contest arose among them concerning the drawing of the water. Thence they sailed betwixt Euboea and Locris and came to Iolcus, having completed the whole voyage in four months.

Now Pelias, despairing of the return of the Argonauts, would have killed Aeson; but he requested to be allowed to take his own life, and in offering a sacrifice drank freely of the bull's blood and died. And Jason's mother cursed Pelias and hanged herself, leaving behind an infant son Promachus; but Pelias slew even the son whom she had left behind. On his return Jason surrendered the fleece, but though he longed to avenge his wrongs he bided his time. At that time he sailed with the chiefs to the Isthmus and dedicated the ship to Poseidon, but afterwards he exhorted Medea to devise how he could punish Pelias. So she repaired to the palace of Pelias and persuaded his daughters to make mince meat of their father and boil him, promising to make him young again by her drugs; and to win their confidence she cut up a ram and made it into a lamb by boiling it. So they believed her, made mince meat of their father and boiled him. But Acastus buried his father with the help of the inhabitants of Iolcus, and he expelled Jason and Medea from Iolcus.

They went to Corinth, and lived there happily for ten years, till Creon, king of Corinth, betrothed his daughter Glauce to Jason, who married her and divorced Medea. But she invoked the gods by whom Jason had sworn, and after often upbraiding him with his ingratitude she sent the bride a robe steeped in poison, which when Glauce had put on, she was consumed with fierce fire along with her father, who went to her rescue. But Mermerus and Pheres, the children whom Medea had by Jason, she killed, and having got from the Sun a car drawn by winged dragons she fled on it to Athens. Another tradition is that on her flight she left behind her children, who were still infants, setting them as suppliants on the altar of Hera of the Height; but the Corinthians removed them and wounded them to death. Medea came to Athens, and being there married to Aegeus bore him a son Medus. Afterwards, however, plotting against Theseus, she was driven a fugitive from Athens with her son. But he conquered many barbarians and called the whole country under him Media, and marching against the Indians he met his death. And Medea came unknown to Colchis, and finding that Aeetes had been deposed by his brother Perses, she killed Perses and restored the kingdom to her father.

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Having now gone through the family of Deucalion, we have next to speak of that of Inachus. Ocean and Tethys had a son Inachus, after whom a river in Argos is called Inachus. He and Melia, daughter of Ocean, had sons, Phoroneus, and Aegialeus. Aegialeus having died childless, the whole country was called Aegialia; and Phoroneus, reigning over the whole land afterwards named Peloponnese, begat Apis and Niobe by a nymph Teledice. Apis converted his power into a tyranny and named the Peloponnese after himself Apia; but being a stern tyrant he was conspired against and slain by Thelxion and Telchis. He left no child, and being deemed a god was called Sarapis. But Niobe had by Zeus ( and she was the first mortal woman with whom Zeus cohabited) a son Argus, and also, so says Acusilaus, a son Pelasgus, after whom the inhabitants of the Peloponnese were called Pelasgians. However, Hesiod says that Pelasgus was a son of the soil.

About him I shall speak again. But Argus received the kingdom and called the Peloponnese after himself Argos; and having married Evadne, daughter of Strymon and Neaera, he begat Ecbasus, Piras, Epidaurus, and Criasus, who also succeeded to the kingdom. Ecbasus had a son Agenor, and Agenor had a son Argus, the one who is called the All-seeing. He had eyes in the whole of his body, and being exceedingly strong he killed the bull that ravaged Arcadia and clad himself in its hide; and when a satyr wronged the Arcadians and robbed them of their cattle, Argus withstood and killed him. It is said, too, that Echidna, daughter of Tartarus and Earth, who used to carry off passers-by, was caught asleep and slain by Argus. He also avenged the murder of Apis by putting the guilty to death.

Argus and Ismene, daughter of Asopus, had a son Iasus, who is said to have been the father of Io. But the annalist Castor and many of the tragedians allege that Io was a daughter of Inachus; and Hesiod and Acusilaus say that she was a daughter of Piren. Zeus seduced her while she held the priesthood of Hera, but being detected by Hera he by a touch turned Io into a white cow and swore that he had not known her; wherefore Hesiod remarks that lover's oaths do not draw down the anger of the gods. But Hera requested the cow from Zeus for herself and set Argus the All-seeing to guard it. Pherecydes says that this Argus was a son of Arestor; but Asclepiades says that he was a son of Inachus, and Cercops says that he was a son of Argus and Ismene, daughter of Asopus; but Acusilaus says that he was earth-born. He tethered her to the olive tree which was in the grove of the Mycenaeans. But Zeus ordered Hermes to steal the cow, and as Hermes could not do it secretly because Hierax had blabbed, he killed Argus by the cast of a stone; whence he was called Argiphontes. Hera next sent a gadfly to infest the cow, and the animal came first to what is called after her the Ionian gulf. Then she journeyed through Illyria and having traversed Mount Haemus she crossed what was then called the Thracian Straits but is now called after her the Bosphorus. And having gone away to Scythia and the Cimmerian land she wandered over great tracts of land and swam wide stretches of sea both in Europe and Asia until at last she came to Egypt, where she recovered her original form and gave birth to a son Epaphus beside the river Nile. Him Hera besought the Curetes to make away with, and make away with him they did. When Zeus learned of it, he slew the Curetes; but Io set out in search of the child. She roamed all over Syria, because there it was revealed to her that the wife of the king of Byblus was nursing her son; and having found Epaphus she came to Egypt and was married to Telegonus, who then reigned over the Egyptians. And she set up an image of Demeter, whom the Egyptians called Isis, and Io likewise they called by the name of Isis.

Reigning over the Egyptians Epaphus married Memphis, daughter of Nile, founded and named the city of Memphis after her, and begat a daughter Libya, after whom the region of Libya was called. Libya had by Poseidon twin sons, Agenor and Belus. Agenor departed to Phoenicia and reigned there, and there he became the ancestor of the great stock; hence we shall defer our account of him. But Belus remained in Egypt, reigned over the country, and married Anchinoe, daughter of Nile, by whom he had twin sons, Egyptus and Danaus, but according to Euripides, he had also Cepheus and Phineus. Danaus was settled by Belus in Libya, and Egyptus in Arabia; but Egyptus subjugated the country of the Melampods and named it Egypt < after himself>. Both had children by many wives; Egyptus had fifty sons, and Danaus fifty daughters. As they afterwards quarrelled concerning the kingdom, Danaus feared the sons of Egyptus, and by the advice of Athena he built a ship, being the first to do so, and having put his daughters on board he fled. And touching at Rhodes he set up the image of Lindian Athena. Thence he came to Argos and the reigning king Gelanor surrendered the kingdom to him; < and having made himself master of the country he named the inhabitants Danai after himself>. But the country being waterless, because Poseidon had dried up even the springs out of anger at Inachus for testifying that the land belonged to Hera, Danaus sent his daughters to draw water. One of them, Amymone, in her search for water threw a dart at a deer and hit a sleeping satyr, and he, starting up, desired to force her; but Poseidon appearing on the scene, the satyr fled, and Amymone lay with Poseidon, and he revealed to her the springs at Lerna.

But the sons of Egyptus came to Argos, and exhorted Danaus to lay aside his enmity, and begged to marry his daughters. Now Danaus distrusted their professions and bore them a grudge on account of his exile; nevertheless he consented to the marriage and allotted the damsels among them. First, they picked out Hypermnestra as the eldest to be the wife of Lynceus, and Gorgophone to be the wife of Proteus; for Lynceus and Proteus had been borne to Egyptus by a woman of royal blood, Argyphia; but of the rest Busiris, Enceladus, Lycus, and Daiphron obtained by lot the daughters that had been borne to Danaus by Europe, to wit, Automate, Amymone, Agave, and Scaea. These daughters were borne to Danaus by a queen; but Gorgophone and Hypermnestra were borne to him by Elephantis. And Istrus got Hippodamia; Chalcodon got Rhodia; Agenor got Cleopatra; Chaetus got Asteria; Diocorystes got Hippodamia; Alces got Glauce; Alcmenor got Hippomedusa; Hippothous got Gorge; Euchenor got Iphimedusa; Hippolytus got Rhode. These ten sons were begotten on an Arabian woman; but the maidens were begotten on Hamadryad nymphs, some being daughters of Atlantia, and others of Phoebe. Agaptolemus got Pirene; Cercetes got Dorium; Eurydamas got Phartis; Aegius got Mnestra; Argius got Evippe; Archelaus got Anaxibia; Menemachus got Nelo. These seven sons were begotten on a Phoenician woman, and the maidens on an Ethiopian woman. The sons of Egyptus by Tyria got as their wives, without drawing lots, the daughters of Danaus by Memphis in virtue of the similarity of their names; thus Clitus got Clite; Sthenelus got Sthenele; Chrysippus got Chrysippe. The twelve sons of Egyptus by the Naiad nymph Caliadne cast lots for the daughters of Danaus by the Naiad nymph Polyxo: the sons were Eurylochus, Phantes, Peristhenes, Hermus, Dryas, Potamon, Cisseus, Lixus, Imbrus, Bromius, Polyctor, Chthonius; and the damsels were Autonoe, Theano, Electra, Cleopatra, Eurydice, Glaucippe, Anthelia, Cleodore, Evippe, Erato, Stygne, Bryce. The sons of Egyptus by Gorgo, cast lots for the daughters of Danaus by Pieria, and Periphas got Actaea, Oeneus got Podarce, Egyptus got Dioxippe, Menalces got Adite, Lampus got Ocypete, Idmon got Pylarge. The youngest sons of Egyptus were these: Idas got Hippodice; Daiphron got Adiante ( the mother who bore these damsels was Herse); Pandion got Callidice; Arbelus got Oeme; Hyperbius got Celaeno; Hippocorystes got Hyperippe; the mother of these men was Hephaestine, and the mother of these damsels was Crino. When they had got their brides by lot, Danaus made a feast and gave his daughters daggers; and they slew their bridegrooms as they slept, all but Hypermnestra; for she saved Lynceus because he had respected her virginity: wherefore Danaus shut her up and kept her under ward. But the rest of the daugters of Danaus buried the heads of their bridegrooms in Lerna and paid funeral honors to their bodies in front of the city; and Athena and Hermes purified them at the command of Zeus. Danaus afterwards united Hypermnestra to Lynceus; and bestowed his other daughters on the victors in an athletic contest. Amymone had a son Nauplius by Poseidon. This Nauplius lived to a great age, and sailing the sea he used by beacon lights to lure to death such as he fell in with. It came to pass, therefore, that he himself died by that very death. But before his death he married a wife; according to the tragic poets, she was Clymene, daughter of Catreus; but according to the author of The Returns, she was Philyra; and according to Cercops she was Hesione. By her he had Palamedes, Oeax, and Nausimedon.

Lynceus reigned over Argos after Danaus and begat a son Abas by Hypermnestra; and Abas had twin sons Acrisius and Proetus by Aglaia, daughter of Mantineus. These two quarrelled with each other while they were still in the womb, and when they were grown up they waged war for the kingdom, and in the course of the war they were the first to invent shields. And Acrisius gained the mastery and drove Proetus from Argos; and Proetus went to Lycia to the court of Iobates or, as some say, of Amphianax, and married his daughter, whom Homer calls Antia, but the tragic poets call her Stheneboea. His in-law restored him to his own land with an army of Lycians, and he occupied Tiryns, which the Cyclopes had fortified for him. They divided the whole of the Argive territory between them and settled in it, Acrisius reigning over Argos and Proetus over Tiryns.

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And Acrisius had a daughter Danae by Eurydice, daughter of Lacedaemon, and Proetus had daughters, Lysippe, Iphinoe, and Iphianassa, by Stheneboea. When these damsels were grown up, they went mad, according to Hesiod, because they would not accept the rites of Dionysus, but according to Acusilaus, because they disparaged the wooden image of Hera. In their madness they roamed over the whole Argive land, and afterwards, passing through Arcadia and the Peloponnese, they ran through the desert in the most disorderly fashion. But Melampus, son of Amythaon by Idomene, daughter of Abas, being a seer and the first to devise the cure by means of drugs and purifications, promised to cure the maidens if he should receive the third part of the sovereignty. When Proetus refused to pay so high a fee for the cure, the maidens raved more than ever, and besides that, the other women raved with them; for they also abandoned their houses, destroyed their own children, and flocked to the desert. Not until the evil had reached a very high pitch did Proetus consent to pay the stipulated fee, and Melampus promised to effect a cure whenever his brother Bias should receive just so much land as himself. Fearing that, if the cure were delayed, yet more would be demanded of him, Proetus agreed to let the physician proceed on these terms. So Melampus, taking with him the most stalwart of the young men, chased the women in a bevy from the mountains to Sicyon with shouts and a sort of frenzied dance. In the pursuit Iphinoe, the eldest of the daughters, expired; but the others were lucky enough to be purified and so to recover their wits. Proetus gave them in marriage to Melampus and Bias, and afterwards begat a son, Megapenthes.

Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, son of Sisyphus, having accidentally killed his brother Deliades or, as some say, Piren, or, as others will have it, Alcimenes, came to Proetus and was purified. And Stheneboea fell in love with him, and sent him proposals for a meeting; and when he rejected them, she told Proetus that Bellerophon had sent her a vicious proposal. Proetus believed her, and gave him a letter to take to Iobates, in which it was written that he was to kill Bellerophon. Having read the letter, Iobates ordered him to kill the Chimera, believing that he would be destroyed by the beast, for it was more than a match for many, let alone one; it had the fore part of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and its third head, the middle one, was that of a goat, through which it belched fire. And it devastated the country and harried the cattle; for it was a single creature with the power of three beasts. It is said, too, that this Chimera was bred by Amisodarus, as Homer also affirms, and that it was begotten by Typhon on Echidna, as Hesiod relates.

So Bellerophon mounted his winged steed Pegasus, offspring of Medusa and Poseidon, and soaring on high shot down the Chimera from the height. After that contest Iobates ordered him to fight the Solymi, and when he had finished that task also, he commanded him to combat the Amazons. And when he had killed them also, he picked out the reputed bravest of the Lycians and bade them lay an ambush and slay him. But when Bellerophon had killed them also to a man, Iobates, in admiration of his prowess, showed him the letter and begged him to stay with him; moreover he gave him his daughter Philonoe, and dying bequeathed to him the kingdom.

When Acrisius inquired of the oracle how he should get male children, the god said that his daughter would give birth to a son who would kill him. Fearing that, Acrisius built a brazen chamber under ground and there guarded Danae. However, she was seduced, as some say, by Proetus, whence arose the quarrel between them; but some say that Zeus had intercourse with her in the shape of a stream of gold which poured through the roof into Danae's lap. When Acrisius afterwards learned that she had got a child Perseus, he would not believe that she had been seduced by Zeus, and putting his daughter with the child in a chest, he cast it into the sea. The chest was washed ashore on Seriphus, and Dictys took up the boy and reared him.

Polydectes, brother of Dictys, was then king of Seriphus and fell in love with Danae, but could not get access to her, because Perseus was grown to man's estate. So he called together his friends, including Perseus, under the pretext of collecting contributions towards a wedding gift for Hippodamia, daughter of Oenomaus. Now Perseus having declared that he would not stick even at the Gorgon's head, Polydectes required the others to furnish horses, and not getting horses from Perseus ordered him to bring the Gorgon's head. So under the guidance of Hermes and Athena he made his way to the daughters of Phorcus, to wit, Enyo, Pephredo, and Dino; for Phorcus had them by Ceto, and they were sisters of the Gorgons, and old women from their birth. The three had but one eye and one tooth, and these they passed to each other in turn. Perseus got possession of the eye and the tooth, and when they asked them back, he said he would give them up if they would show him the way to the nymphs. Now these nymphs had winged sandals and the kibisis, which they say was a wallet. [ But Pindar and Hesiod in The Shield say of Perseus:— “ But all his back had on the head of a dread monster, < The Gorgon,> and round him ran the kibisis. ” The kibisis is so called because dress and food are deposited in it. ] They had also the cap of Hades. When the Phorcides had shown him the way, he gave them back the tooth and the eye, and coming to the nymphs got what he wanted. So he slung the wallet (kibisis) about him, fitted the sandals to his ankles, and put the cap on his head. Wearing it, he saw whom he pleased, but was not seen by others. And having received also from Hermes an adamantine sickle he flew to the ocean and caught the Gorgons asleep. They were Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. Now Medusa alone was mortal; for that reason Perseus was sent to fetch her head. But the Gorgons had heads twined about with the scales of dragons, and great tusks like swine's, and brazen hands, and golden wings, by which they flew; and they turned to stone such as beheld them. So Perseus stood over them as they slept, and while Athena guided his hand and he looked with averted gaze on a brazen shield, in which he beheld the image of the Gorgon, he beheaded her. When her head was cut off, there sprang from the Gorgon the winged horse Pegasus and Chrysaor, the father of Geryon; these she had by Poseidon.

So Perseus put the head of Medusa in the wallet (kibisis) and went back again; but the Gorgons started up from their slumber and pursued Perseus: but they could not see him on account of the cap, for he was hidden by it. Being come to Ethiopia, of which Cepheus was king, he found the king's daughter Andromeda set out to be the prey of a sea monster. For Cassiepea, the wife of Cepheus, vied with the Nereids in beauty and boasted to be better than them all; hence the Nereids were angry, and Poseidon, sharing their wrath, sent a flood and a monster to invade the land. But Ammon having predicted deliverance from the calamity if Cassiepea's daughter Andromeda were exposed as a prey to the monster, Cepheus was compelled by the Ethiopians to do it, and he bound his daughter to a rock. When Perseus beheld her, he loved her and promised Cepheus that he would kill the monster, if he would give him the rescued damsel to wife. These terms having been sworn to, Perseus withstood and slew the monster and released Andromeda. However, Phineus, who was a brother of Cepheus, and to whom Andromeda had been first betrothed, plotted against him; but Perseus discovered the plot, and by showing the Gorgon turned him and his fellow conspirators at once into stone. And having come to Seriphus he found that his mother and Dictys had taken refuge at the altars on account of the violence of Polydectes; so he entered the palace, where Polydectes had gathered his friends, and with averted face he showed the Gorgon's head; and all who beheld it were turned to stone, each in the attitude which he happened to have struck. Having appointed Dictys king of Seriphus, he gave back the sandals and the wallet (kibisis) and the cap to Hermes, but the Gorgon's head he gave to Athena. Hermes restored the aforesaid things to the nymphs and Athena inserted the Gorgon's head in the middle of her shield. But it is alleged by some that Medusa was beheaded for Athena's sake; and they say that the Gorgon was fain to match herself with the goddess even in beauty.

Book 2, Part 3 Cite

Perseus hastened with Danae and Andromeda to Argos in order that he might behold Acrisius. But he, learning of this and dreading the oracle, forsook Argos and departed to the Pelasgian land. Now Teutamides, king of Larissa, was holding athletic games in honor of his dead father, and Perseus came to compete. He engaged in the pentathlum, but in throwing the quoit he struck Acrisius on the foot and killed him instantly. Perceiving that the oracle was fulfilled, he buried Acrisius outside the city, and being ashamed to return to Argos to claim the inheritance of him who had died by his hand, he went to Megapenthes, son of Proetus, at Tiryns and effected an exchange with him, surrendering Argos into his hands. So Megapenthes reigned over the Argives, and Perseus reigned over Tiryns, after fortifying also Midea and Mycenae.

And he had sons by Andromeda: before he came to Greece he had Perses, whom he left behind with Cepheus ( and from him it is said that the kings of Persia are descended); and in Mycenae he had Alcaeus and Sthenelus and Heleus and Mestor and Electryon, and a daughter Gorgophone, whom Perieres married. Alcaeus had a son Amphitryon and a daughter Anaxo by Astydamia, daughter of Pelops; but some say he had them by Laonome, daughter of Guneus, others that he had them by Hipponome, daughter of Menoeceus; and Mestor had Hippothoe by Lysidice, daughter of Pelops. This Hippothoe was carried off by Poseidon, who brought her to the Echinadian Islands, and there had intercourse with her, and begat Taphius, who colonized Taphos and called the people Teleboans, because he had gone far from his native land. And Taphius had a son Pterelaus, whom Poseidon made immortal by implanting a golden hair in his head. And to Pterelaus were born sons, to wit, Chromius, Tyrannus, Antiochus, Chersidamas, Mestor, and Eueres. Electryon married Anaxo, daughter of Alcaeus, and begat a daughter Alcmena, and sons, to wit, Stratobates, Gorgophonus, Phylonomus, Celaeneus, Amphimachus, Lysinomus, Chirimachus, Anactor, and Archelaus; and after these he had also a bastard son, Licymnius, by a Phrygian woman Midea. Sthenelus had daughters, Alcyone and Medusa, by Nicippe, daughter of Pelops; and he had afterwards a son Eurystheus, who reigned also over Mycenae. For when Hercules was about to be born, Zeus declared among the gods that the descendant of Perseus then about to be born would reign over Mycenae, and Hera out of jealousy persuaded the Ilithyias to retard Alcmena's delivery, and contrived that Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, should be born a seven-month child.

When Electryon reigned over Mycenae, the sons of Pterelaus came with some Taphians and claimed the kingdom of Mestor, their maternal grandfather, and as Electryon paid no heed to the claim, they drove away his kine; and when the sons of Electryon stood on their defence, they challenged and slew each other. But of the sons of Electryon there survived Licymnius, who was still young; and of the sons of Pterelaus there survived Everes, who guarded the ships. Those of the Taphians who escaped sailed away, taking with them the cattle they had lifted, and entrusted them to Polyxenus, king of the Eleans; but Amphitryon ransomed them from Polyxenus and brought them to Mycenae. Wishing to avenge his sons' death, Electryon purposed to make war on the Teleboans, but first he committed the kingdom to Amphitryon along with his daughter Alcmena, binding him by oath to keep her a virgin until his return. However, as he was receiving the cows back, one of them charged, and Amphitryon threw at her the club which he had in his hands. But the club rebounded from the cow's horns and striking Electryon's head killed him. Hence Sthenelus laid hold of this pretext to banish Amphitryon from the whole of Argos, while he himself seized the throne of Mycenae and Tiryns; and he entrusted Midea to Atreus and Thyestes, the sons of Pelops, whom he had sent for. 0 Amphitryon went with Alcmena and Licymnius to Thebes and was purified by Creon and gave his sister Perimede to Licymnius. And as Alcmena said she would marry him when he had avenged her brothers' death, Amphitryon engaged to do so, and undertook an expedition against the Teleboans, and invited Creon to assist him. Creon said he would join in the expedition if Amphitryon would first rid the Cadmea of the vixen; for a brute of a vixen was ravaging the Cadmea. But though Amphitryon undertook the task, it was fated that nobody should catch her.

As the country suffered thereby, the Thebans every month exposed a son of one of the citizens to the brute, which would have carried off many if that were not done. So Amphitryon betook him to Cephalus, son of Deioneus, at Athens, and persuaded him, in return for a share of the Teleboan spoils, to bring to the chase the dog which Procris had brought from Crete as a gift from Minos; for that dog was destined to catch whatever it pursued. So then, when the vixen was chased by the dog, Zeus turned both of them into stone. Supported by his allies, to wit, Cephalus from Thoricus in Attica, Panopeus from Phocis, Heleus, son of Perseus, from Helos in Argolis, and Creon from Thebes, Amphitryon ravaged the islands of the Taphians. Now, so long as Pterelaus lived, he could not take Taphos; but when Comaetho, daughter of Pterelaus, falling in love with Amphitryon, pulled out the golden hair from her father's head, Pterelaus died, and Amphitryon subjugated all the islands. He slew Comaetho, and sailed with the booty to Thebes, and gave the islands to Heleus and Cephalus; and they founded cities named after themselves and dwelt in them.

But before Amphitryon reached Thebes, Zeus came by night and prolonging the one night threefold he assumed the likeness of Amphitryon and bedded with Alcmena and related what had happened concerning the Teleboans. But when Amphitryon arrived and saw that he was not welcomed by his wife, he inquired the cause; and when she told him that he had come the night before and slept with her, he learned from Tiresias how Zeus had enjoyed her. And Alcmena bore two sons, to wit, Hercules, whom she had by Zeus and who was the elder by one night, and Iphicles, whom she had by Amphitryon. When the child was eight months old, Hera desired the destruction of the babe and sent two huge serpents to the bed. Alcmena called Amphitryon to her help, but Hercules arose and killed the serpents by strangling them with both his hands. However, Pherecydes says that it was Amphitryon who put the serpents in the bed, because he would know which of the two children was his, and that when Iphicles fled, and Hercules stood his ground, he knew that Iphicles was begotten of his body.

Hercules was taught to drive a chariot by Amphitryon, to wrestle by Autolycus, to shoot with the bow by Eurytus, to fence by Castor, and to play the lyre by Linus. This Linus was a brother of Orpheus; he came to Thebes and became a Theban, but was killed by Hercules with a blow of the lyre; for being struck by him, Hercules flew into a rage and slew him. When he was tried for murder, Hercules quoted a law of Rhadamanthys, who laid it down that whoever defends himself against a wrongful aggressor shall go free, and so he was acquitted. But fearing he might do the like again, Amphitryon sent him to the cattle farm; and there he was nurtured and outdid all in stature and strength. Even by the look of him it was plain that he was a son of Zeus; for his body measured four cubits, and he flashed a gleam of fire from his eyes; and he did not miss, neither with the bow nor with the javelin. While he was with the herds and had reached his eighteenth year he slew the lion of Cithaeron, for that animal, sallying from Cithaeron, harried the kine of Amphitryon and of Thespius.

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Now this Thespius was king of Thespiae, and Hercules went to him when he wished to catch the lion. The king entertained him for fifty days, and each night, as Hercules went forth to the hunt, Thespius bedded one of his daughters with him( fifty daughters having been borne to him by Megamede, daughter of Arneus); for he was anxious that all of them should have children by Hercules. Thus Hercules, though he thought that his bed-fellow was always the same, had intercourse with them all. And having vanquished the lion, he dressed himself in the skin and wore the scalp as a helmet.

As he was returning from the hunt, there met him heralds sent by Erginus to receive the tribute from the Thebans. Now the Thebans paid tribute to Erginus for the following reason. Clymenus, king of the Minyans, was wounded with a cast of a stone by a charioteer of Menoeceus, named Perieres, in a precinct of Poseidon at Onchestus; and being carried dying to Orchomenus, he with his last breath charged his son Erginus to avenge his death. So Erginus marched against Thebes, and after slaughtering not a few of the Thebans he concluded a treaty with them, confirmed by oaths, that they should send him tribute for twenty years, a hundred kine every year. Falling in with the heralds on their way to Thebes to demand this tribute, Hercules outraged them; for he cut off their ears and noses and hands, and having fastened them by ropes from their necks, he told them to carry that tribute to Erginus and the Minyans. Indignant at this outrage, Erginus marched against Thebes. But Hercules, having received weapons from Athena and taken the command, killed Erginus, put the Minyans to flight, and compelled them to pay double the tribute to the Thebans. And it chanced that in the fight Amphitryon fell fighting bravely. And Hercules received from Creon his eldest daughter Megara as a prize of valor, and by her he had three sons, Therimachus, Creontiades, and Deicoon. But Creon gave his younger daughter to Iphicles, who already had a son Iolaus by Automedusa, daughter of Alcathus. And Rhadamanthys, son of Zeus, married Alcmena after the death of Amphitryon, and dwelt as an exile at Ocaleae in Boeotia. Having first learned from Eurytus the art of archery, Hercules received a sword from Hermes, a bow and arrows from Apollo, a golden breastplate from Hephaestus, and a robe from Athena; for he had himself cut a club at Nemea.

Now it came to pass that after the battle with the Minyans Hercules was driven mad through the jealousy of Hera and flung his own children, whom he had by Megara, and two children of Iphicles into the fire; wherefore he condemned himself to exile, and was purified by Thespius, and repairing to Delphi he inquired of the god where he should dwell. The Pythian priestess then first called him Hercules, for hitherto he was called Alcides. And she told him to dwell in Tiryns, serving Eurystheus for twelve years and to perform the ten labours imposed on him, and so, she said, when the tasks were accomplished, he would be immortal.

When Hercules heard that, he went to Tiryns and did as he was bid by Eurystheus. First, Eurystheus ordered him to bring the skin of the Nemean lion; now that was an invulnerable beast begotten by Typhon. On his way to attack the lion he came to Cleonae and lodged at the house of a day-laborer, Molorchus; and when his host would have offered a victim in sacrifice, Hercules told him to wait for thirty days, and then, if he had returned safe from the hunt, to sacrifice to Saviour Zeus, but if he were dead, to sacrifice to him as to a hero. And having come to Nemea and tracked the lion, he first shot an arrow at him, but when he perceived that the beast was invulnerable, he heaved up his club and made after him. And when the lion took refuge in a cave with two mouths, Hercules built up the one entrance and came in upon the beast through the other, and putting his arm round its neck held it tight till he had choked it; so laying it on his shoulders he carried it to Cleonae. And finding Molorchus on the last of the thirty days about to sacrifice the victim to him as to a dead man, he sacrificed to Saviour Zeus and brought the lion to Mycenae. Amazed at his manhood, Eurystheus forbade him thenceforth to enter the city, but ordered him to exhibit the fruits of his labours before the gates. They say, too, that in his fear he had a bronze jar made for himself to hide in under the earth, and that he sent his commands for the labours through a herald, Copreus, son of Pelops the Elean. This Copreus had killed Iphitus and fled to Mycenae, where he was purified by Eurystheus and took up his abode.

As a second labour he ordered him to kill the Lernaean hydra. That creature, bred in the swamp of Lerna, used to go forth into the plain and ravage both the cattle and the country. Now the hydra had a huge body, with nine heads, eight mortal, but the middle one immortal. So mounting a chariot driven by Iolaus, he came to Lerna, and having halted his horses, he discovered the hydra on a hill beside the springs of the Amymone, where was its den. By pelting it with fiery shafts he forced it to come out, and in the act of doing so he seized and held it fast. But the hydra wound itself about one of his feet and clung to him. Nor could he effect anything by smashing its heads with his club, for as fast as one head was smashed there grew up two. A huge crab also came to the help of the hydra by biting his foot. So he killed it, and in his turn called for help on Iolaus who, by setting fire to a piece of the neighboring wood and burning the roots of the heads with the brands, prevented them from sprouting. Having thus got the better of the sprouting heads, he chopped off the immortal head, and buried it, and put a heavy rock on it, beside the road that leads through Lerna to Elaeus. But the body of the hydra he slit up and dipped his arrows in the gall. However, Eurystheus said that this labour should not be reckoned among the ten because he had not got the better of the hydra by himself, but with the help of Iolaus.

As a third labour he ordered him to bring the Cerynitian hind alive to Mycenae. Now the hind was at Oenoe; it had golden horns and was sacred to Artemis; so wishing neither to kill nor wound it, Hercules hunted it a whole year. But when, weary with the chase, the beast took refuge on the mountain called Artemisius, and thence passed to the river Ladon, Hercules shot it just as it was about to cross the stream, and catching it put it on his shoulders and hastened through Arcadia. But Artemis with Apollo met him, and would have wrested the hind from him, and rebuked him for attempting to kill her sacred animal. Howbeit, by pleading necessity and laying the blame on Eurystheus, he appeased the anger of the goddess and carried the beast alive to Mycenae.

Book 2, Part 5 Cite

As a fourth labour he ordered him to bring the Erymanthian boar alive; now that animal ravaged Psophis, sallying from a mountain which they call Erymanthus. So passing through Pholoe he was entertained by the centaur Pholus, a son of Silenus by a Melian nymph. He set roast meat before Hercules, while he himself ate his meat raw. When Hercules called for wine, he said he feared to open the jar which belonged to the centaurs in common. But Hercules, bidding him be of good courage, opened it, and not long afterwards, scenting the smell, the centaurs arrived at the cave of Pholus, armed with rocks and firs. The first who dared to enter, Anchius and Agrius, were repelled by Hercules with a shower of brands, and the rest of them he shot and pursued as far as Malea. Thence they took refuge with Chiron, who, driven by the Lapiths from Mount Pelion, took up his abode at Malea. As the centaurs cowered about Chiron, Hercules shot an arrow at them, which, passing through the arm of Elatus, stuck in the knee of Chiron. Distressed at this, Hercules ran up to him, drew out the shaft, and applied a medicine which Chiron gave him. But the hurt proving incurable, Chiron retired to the cave and there he wished to die, but he could not, for he was immortal. However, Prometheus offered himself to Zeus to be immortal in his stead, and so Chiron died. The rest of the centaurs fled in different directions, and some came to Mount Malea, and Eurytion to Pholoe, and Nessus to the river Evenus. The rest of them Poseidon received at Eleusis and hid them in a mountain. But Pholus, drawing the arrow from a corpse, wondered that so little a thing could kill such big fellows; howbeit, it slipped from his hand and lighting on his foot killed him on the spot. So when Hercules returned to Pholoe, he beheld Pholus dead; and he buried him and proceeded to the boar hunt. And when he had chased the boar with shouts from a certain thicket, he drove the exhausted animal into deep snow, trapped it, and brought it to Mycenae.

The fifth labour he laid on him was to carry out the dung of the cattle of Augeas in a single day. Now Augeas was king of Elis; some say that he was a son of the Sun, others that he was a son of Poseidon, and others that he was a son of Phorbas; and he had many herds of cattle. Hercules accosted him, and without revealing the command of Eurystheus, said that he would carry out the dung in one day, if Augeas would give him the tithe of the cattle. Augeas was incredulous, but promised. Having taken Augeas's son Phyleus to witness, Hercules made a breach in the foundations of the cattle-yard, and then, diverting the courses of the Alpheus and Peneus, which flowed near each other, he turned them into the yard, having first made an outlet for the water through another opening. When Augeas learned that this had been accomplished at the command of Eurystheus, he would not pay the reward; nay more, he denied that he had promised to pay it, and on that point he professed himself ready to submit to arbitration. The arbitrators having taken their seats, Phyleus was called by Hercules and bore witness against his father, affirming that he had agreed to give him a reward. In a rage Augeas, before the voting took place, ordered both Phyleus and Hercules to pack out of Elis. So Phyleus went to Dulichium and dwelt there, and Hercules repaired to Dexamenus at Olenus. He found Dexamenus on the point of betrothing perforce his daughter Mnesimache to the centaur Eurytion, and being called upon by him for help, he slew Eurytion when that centaur came to fetch his bride. But Eurystheus would not admit this labour either among the ten, alleging that it had been performed for hire.

The sixth labour he enjoined on him was to chase away the Stymphalian birds. Now at the city of Stymphalus in Arcadia was the lake called Stymphalian, embosomed in a deep wood. To it countless birds had flocked for refuge, fearing to be preyed upon by the wolves. So when Hercules was at a loss how to drive the birds from the wood, Athena gave him brazen castanets, which she had received from Hephaestus. By clashing these on a certain mountain that overhung the lake, he scared the birds. They could not abide the sound, but fluttered up in a fright, and in that way Hercules shot them.

The seventh labour he enjoined on him was to bring the Cretan bull. Acusilaus says that this was the bull that ferried across Europa for Zeus; but some say it was the bull that Poseidon sent up from the sea when Minos promised to sacrifice to Poseidon what should appear out of the sea. And they say that when he saw the beauty of the bull he sent it away to the herds and sacrificed another to Poseidon; at which the god was angry and made the bull savage. To attack this bull Hercules came to Crete, and when, in reply to his request for aid, Minos told him to fight and catch the bull for himself, he caught it and brought it to Eurystheus, and having shown it to him he let it afterwards go free. But the bull roamed to Sparta and all Arcadia, and traversing the Isthmus arrived at Marathon in Attica and harried the inhabitants.

The eighth labour he enjoined on him was to bring the mares of Diomedes the Thracian to Mycenae. Now this Diomedes was a son of Ares and Cyrene, and he was king of the Bistones, a very warlike Thracian people, and he owned man-eating mares. So Hercules sailed with a band of volunteers, and having overpowered the grooms who were in charge of the mangers, he drove the mares to the sea. When the Bistones in arms came to the rescue, he committed the mares to the guardianship of Abderus, who was a son of Hermes, a native of Opus in Locris, and a minion of Hercules; but the mares killed him by dragging him after them. But Hercules fought against the Bistones, slew Diomedes and compelled the rest to flee. And he founded a city Abdera beside the grave of Abderus who had been done to death, and bringing the mares he gave them to Eurystheus. But Eurystheus let them go, and they came to Mount Olympus, as it is called, and there they were destroyed by the wild beasts.

The ninth labour he enjoined on Hercules was to bring the belt of Hippolyte. She was queen of the Amazons, who dwelt about the river Thermodon, a people great in war; for they cultivated the manly virtues, and if ever they gave birth to children through intercourse with the other sex, they reared the females; and they pinched off the right breasts that they might not be trammelled by them in throwing the javelin, but they kept the left breasts, that they might suckle. Now Hippolyte had the belt of Ares in token of her superiority to all the rest. Hercules was sent to fetch this belt because Admete, daughter of Eurystheus, desired to get it. So taking with him a band of volunteer comrades in a single ship he set sail and put in to the island of Paros, which was inhabited by the sons of Minos, to wit, Eurymedon, Chryses, Nephalion, and Philolaus. But it chanced that two of those in the ship landed and were killed by the sons of Minos. Indignant at this, Hercules killed the sons of Minos on the spot and besieged the rest closely, till they sent envoys to request that in the room of the murdered men he would take two, whom he pleased. So he raised the siege, and taking on board the sons of Androgeus, son of Minos, to wit, Alcaeus and Sthenelus, he came to Mysia, to the court of Lycus, son of Dascylus, and was entertained by him; and in a battle between him and the king of the Bebryces Hercules sided with Lycus and slew many, amongst others King Mygdon, brother of Amycus. And he took much land from the Bebryces and gave it to Lycus, who called it all Heraclea. Having put in at the harbor of Themiscyra, he received a visit from Hippolyte, who inquired why he was come, and promised to give him the belt. But Hera in the likeness of an Amazon went up and down the multitude saying that the strangers who had arrived were carrying off the queen. So the Amazons in arms charged on horseback down on the ship. But when Hercules saw them in arms, he suspected treachery, and killing Hippolyte stripped her of her belt. And after fighting the rest he sailed away and touched at Troy. But it chanced that the city was then in distress consequently on the wrath of Apollo and Poseidon. For desiring to put the wantonness of Laomedon to the proof, Apollo and Poseidon assumed the likeness of men and undertook to fortify Pergamum for wages. But when they had fortified it, he would not pay them their wages. Therefore Apollo sent a pestilence, and Poseidon a sea monster, which, carried up by a flood, snatched away the people of the plain. But as oracles foretold deliverance from these calamities if Laomedon would expose his daughter Hesione to be devoured by the sea monster, he exposed her by fastening her to the rocks near the sea. Seeing her exposed, Hercules promised to save her on condition of receiving from Laomedon the mares which Zeus had given in compensation for the rape of Ganymede. On Laomedon's saying that he would give them, Hercules killed the monster and saved Hesione. But when Laomedon would not give the stipulated reward, Hercules put to sea after threatening to make war on Troy. And he touched at Aenus, where he was entertained by Poltys. And as he was sailing away he shot and killed on the Aenian beach a lewd fellow, Sarpedon, son of Poseidon and brother of Poltys. And having come to Thasos and subjugated the Thracians who dwelt in the island, he gave it to the sons of Androgeus to dwell in. From Thasos he proceeded to Torone, and there, being challenged to wrestle by Polygonus and Telegonus, sons of Proteus, son of Poseidon, he killed them in the wrestling match. And having brought the belt to Mycenae he gave it to Eurystheus.

Book 2, Part 6 Cite

As a tenth labour he was ordered to fetch the kine of Geryon from Erythia. Now Erythia was an island near the ocean; it is now called Gadira. This island was inhabited by Geryon, son of Chrysaor by Callirrhoe, daughter of Ocean. He had the body of three men grown together and joined in one at the waist, but parted in three from the flanks and thighs. He owned red kine, of which Eurytion was the herdsman and Orthus, the two-headed hound, begotten by Typhon on Echidna, was the watchdog. So journeying through Europe to fetch the kine of Geryon he destroyed many wild beasts and set foot in Libya, and proceeding to Tartessus he erected as tokens of his journey two pillars over against each other at the boundaries of Europe and Libya. But being heated by the Sun on his journey, he bent his bow at the god, who in admiration of his hardihood, gave him a golden goblet in which he crossed the ocean. And having reached Erythia he lodged on Mount Abas. However the dog, perceiving him, rushed at him; but he smote it with his club, and when the herdsman Eurytion came to the help of the dog, Hercules killed him also. But Menoetes, who was there pasturing the kine of Hades, reported to Geryon what had occurred, and he, coming up with Hercules beside the river Anthemus, as he was driving away the kine, joined battle with him and was shot dead. And Hercules, embarking the kine in the goblet and sailing across to Tartessus, gave back the goblet to the Sun. And passing through Abderia he came to Liguria, where Ialebion and Dercynus, sons of Poseidon, attempted to rob him of the kine, but he killed them and went on his way through Tyrrhenia. But at Rhegium a bull broke away and hastily plunging into the sea swam across to Sicily, and having passed through the neighboring country since called Italy after it, for the Tyrrhenians called the bull italus, came to the plain of Eryx, who reigned over the Elymi. Now Eryx was a son of Poseidon, and he mingled the bull with his own herds. So Hercules entrusted the kine to Hephaestus and hurried away in search of the bull. He found it in the herds of Eryx, and when the king refused to surrender it unless Hercules should beat him in a wrestling bout, Hercules beat him thrice, killed him in the wrestling, and taking the bull drove it with the rest of the herd to the Ionian Sea. But when he came to the creeks of the sea, Hera afflicted the cows with a gadfly, and they dispersed among the skirts of the mountains of Thrace. Hercules went in pursuit, and having caught some, drove them to the Hellespont; but the remainder were thenceforth wild. Having with difficulty collected the cows, Hercules blamed the river Strymon, and whereas it had been navigable before, he made it unnavigable by filling it with rocks; and he conveyed the kine and gave them to Eurystheus, who sacrificed them to Hera.

When the labours had been performed in eight years and a month, Eurystheus ordered Hercules, as an eleventh labour, to fetch golden apples from the Hesperides, for he did not acknowledge the labour of the cattle of Augeas nor that of the hydra. These apples were not, as some have said, in Libya, but on Atlas among the Hyperboreans. They were presented < by Earth> to Zeus after his marriage with Hera, and guarded by an immortal dragon with a hundred heads, offspring of Typhon and Echidna, which spoke with many and divers sorts of voices. With it the Hesperides also were on guard, to wit, Aegle, Erythia, Hesperia, and Arethusa. So journeying he came to the river Echedorus. And Cycnus, son of Ares and Pyrene, challenged him to single combat. Ares championed the cause of Cycnus and marshalled the combat, but a thunderbolt was hurled between the two and parted the combatants. And going on foot through Illyria and hastening to the river Eridanus he came to the nymphs, the daughters of Zeus and Themis. They revealed Nereus to him, and Hercules seized him while he slept, and though the god turned himself into all kinds of shapes, the hero bound him and did not release him till he had learned from him where were the apples and the Hesperides. Being informed, he traversed Libya. That country was then ruled by Antaeus, son of Poseidon, who used to kill strangers by forcing them to wrestle. Being forced to wrestle with him, Hercules hugged him, lifted him aloft, broke and killed him; for when he touched earth so it was that he waxed stronger, wherefore some said that he was a son of Earth. After Libya he traversed Egypt. That country was then ruled by Busiris, a son of Poseidon by Lysianassa, daughter of Epaphus. This Busiris used to sacrifice strangers on an altar of Zeus in accordance with a certain oracle. For Egypt was visited with dearth for nine years, and Phrasius, a learned seer who had come from Cyprus, said that the dearth would cease if they slaughtered a stranger man in honor of Zeus every year. Busiris began by slaughtering the seer himself and continued to slaughter the strangers who landed. So Hercules also was seized and haled to the altars, but he burst his bonds and slew both Busiris and his son Amphidamas. And traversing Asia he put in to Thermydrae, the harbor of the Lindians. And having loosed one of the bullocks from the cart of a cowherd, he sacrificed it and feasted. But the cowherd, unable to protect himself, stood on a certain mountain and cursed. Wherefore to this day, when they sacrifice to Hercules, they do it with curses. And passing by Arabia he slew Emathion, son of Tithonus, and journeying through Libya to the outer sea he received the goblet from the Sun. And having crossed to the opposite mainland he shot on the Caucasus the eagle, offspring of Echidna and Typhon, that was devouring the liver of Prometheus, and he released Prometheus, after choosing for himself the bond of olive, and to Zeus he presented Chiron, who, though immortal, consented to die in his stead. Now Prometheus had told Hercules not to go himself after the apples but to send Atlas, first relieving him of the burden of the sphere; so when he was come to Atlas in the land of the Hyperboreans, he took the advice and relieved Atlas. But when Atlas had received three apples from the Hesperides, he came to Hercules, and not wishing to support the sphere< he said that he would himself carry the apples to Eurystheus, and bade Hercules hold up the sky in his stead. Hercules promised to do so, but succeeded by craft in putting it on Atlas instead. For at the advice of Prometheus he begged Atlas to hold up the sky till he should> put a pad on his head. When Atlas heard that, he laid the apples down on the ground and took the sphere from Hercules. And so Hercules picked up the apples and departed. But some say that he did not get them from Atlas, but that he plucked the apples himself after killing the guardian snake. And having brought the apples he gave them to Eurystheus. But he, on receiving them, bestowed them on Hercules, from whom Athena got them and conveyed them back again; for it was not lawful that they should be laid down anywhere.

A twelfth labour imposed on Hercules was to bring Cerberus from Hades. Now this Cerberus had three heads of dogs, the tail of a dragon, and on his back the heads of all sorts of snakes. When Hercules was about to depart to fetch him, he went to Eumolpus at Eleusis, wishing to be initiated. However it was not then lawful for foreigners to be initiated: since he proposed to be initiated as the adoptive son of Pylius. But not being able to see the mysteries because he had not been cleansed of the slaughter of the centaurs, he was cleansed by Eumolpus and then initiated. And having come to Taenarum in Laconia, where is the mouth of the descent to Hades, he descended through it. But when the souls saw him, they fled, save Meleager and the Gorgon Medusa. And Hercules drew his sword against the Gorgon, as if she were alive, but he learned from Hermes that she was an empty phantom. And being come near to the gates of Hades he found Theseus and Pirithous, him who wooed Persephone in wedlock and was therefore bound fast. And when they beheld Hercules, they stretched out their hands as if they should be raised from the dead by his might. And Theseus, indeed, he took by the hand and raised up, but when he would have brought up Pirithous, the earth quaked and he let go. And he rolled away also the stone of Ascalaphus. And wishing to provide the souls with blood, he slaughtered one of the kine of Hades. But Menoetes, son of Ceuthonymus, who tended the king, challenged Hercules to wrestle, and, being seized round the middle, had his ribs broken; howbeit, he was let off at the request of Persephone. When Hercules asked Pluto for Cerberus, Pluto ordered him to take the animal provided he mastered him without the use of the weapons which he carried. Hercules found him at the gates of Acheron, and, cased in his cuirass and covered by the lion's skin, he flung his arms round the head of the brute, and though the dragon in its tail bit him, he never relaxed his grip and pressure till it yielded. So he carried it off and ascended through Troezen. But Demeter turned Ascalaphus into a short-eared owl, and Hercules, after showing Cerberus to Eurystheus, carried him back to Hades.

After his labours Hercules went to Thebes and gave Megara to Iolaus, and, wishing himself to wed, he ascertained that Eurytus, prince of Oechalia, had proposed the hand of his daughter Iole as a prize to him who should vanquish himself and his sons in archery. So he came to Oechalia, and though he proved himself better than them at archery, yet he did not get the bride; for while Iphitus, the elder of Eurytus's sons, said that Iole should be given to Hercules, Eurytus and the others refused, and said they feared that, if he got children, he would again kill his offspring.

Not long after, some cattle were stolen from Euboea by Autolycus, and Eurytus supposed that it was done by Hercules; but Iphitus did not believe it and went to Hercules. And meeting him, as he came from Pherae after saving the dead Alcestis for Admetus, he invited him to seek the kine with him. Hercules promised to do so and entertained him; but going mad again he threw him from the walls of Tiryns. Wishing to be purified of the murder he repaired to Neleus, who was prince of the Pylians. And when Neleus rejected his request on the score of his friendship with Eurytus, he went to Amyclae and was purified by Deiphobus, son of Hippolytus. But being afflicted with a dire disease on account of the murder of Iphitus he went to Delphi and inquired how he might be rid of the disease. As the Pythian priestess answered him not by oracles, he was fain to plunder the temple, and, carrying off the tripod, to institute an oracle of his own. But Apollo fought him, and Zeus threw a thunderbolt between them. When they had thus been parted, Hercules received an oracle, which declared that the remedy for his disease was for him to be sold, and to serve for three years, and to pay compensation for the murder to Eurytus.

After the delivery of the oracle, Hermes sold Hercules, and he was bought by Omphale, daughter of Iardanes, queen of Lydia, to whom at his death her husband Tmolus had bequeathed the government. Eurytus did not accept the compensation when it was presented to him, but Hercules served Omphale as a slave, and in the course of his servitude he seized and bound the Cercopes at Ephesus; and as for Syleus in Aulis, who compelled passing strangers to dig, Hercules killed him with his daughter Xenodoce, after burning the vines with the roots. And having put in to the island of Doliche, he saw the body of Icarus washed ashore and buried it, and he called the island Icaria instead of Doliche. In return Daedalus made a portrait statue of Hercules at Pisa, which Hercules mistook at night for living and threw a stone and hit it. And during the time of his servitude with Omphale it is said that the voyage to Colchis and the hunt of the Calydonian boar took place, and that Theseus on his way from Troezen cleared the Isthmus of malefactors.

Book 2, Part 7 Cite

After his servitude, being rid of his disease he mustered an army of noble volunteers and sailed for Ilium with eighteen ships of fifty oars each. And having come to port at Ilium, he left the guard of the ships to Oicles and himself with the rest of the champions set out to attack the city. Howbeit Laomedon marched against the ships with the multitude and slew Oicles in battle, but being repulsed by the troops of Hercules, he was besieged. The siege once laid, Telamon was the first to breach the wall and enter the city, and after him Hercules. But when he saw that Telamon had entered it first, he drew his sword and rushed at him, loath that anybody should be reputed a better man than himself. Perceiving that, Telamon collected stones that lay to hand, and when Hercules asked him what he did, he said he was building an altar to Hercules the Glorious Victor. Hercules thanked him, and when he had taken the city and shot down Laomedon and his sons, except Podarces, he assigned Laomedon's daughter Hesione as a prize to Telamon and allowed her to take with her whomsoever of the captives she would. When she chose her brother Podarces, Hercules said that he must first be a slave and then be ransomed by her. So when he was being sold she took the veil from her head and gave it as a ransom; hence Podarces was called Priam.

When Hercules was sailing from Troy, Hera sent grievous storms, which so vexed Zeus that he hung her from Olympus. Hercules sailed to Cos, and the Coans, thinking he was leading a piratical squadron, endeavored to prevent his approach by a shower of stones. But he forced his way in and took the city by night, and slew the king, Eurypylus, son of Poseidon by Astypalaea. And Hercules was wounded in the battle by Chalcedon; but Zeus snatched him away, so that he took no harm. And having laid waste Cos, he came through Athena's agency to Phlegra, and sided with the gods in their victorious war on the giants.

Not long afterwards he collected an Arcadian army, and being joined by volunteers from the first men in Greece he marched against Augeas. But Augeas, hearing of the war that Hercules was levying, appointed Eurytus and Cteatus generals of the Eleans. They were two men joined in one, who surpassed all of that generation in strength and were sons of Actor by Molione, though their father was said to be Poseidon; now Actor was a brother of Augeas. But it came to pass that on the expedition Hercules fell sick; hence he concluded a truce with the Molionides. But afterwards, being apprized of his illness, they attacked the army and slew many. On that occasion, therefore, Hercules beat a retreat; but afterwards at the celebration of the third Isthmian festival, when the Eleans sent the Molionides to take part in the sacrifices, Hercules waylaid and killed them at Cleonae, and marching on Elis took the city. And having killed Augeas and his sons, he restored Phyleus and bestowed on him the kingdom. He also celebrated the Olympian games and founded an altar of Pelops, and built six altars of the twelve gods.

After the capture of Elis he marched against Pylus, and having taken the city he slew Periclymenus, the most valiant of the sons of Neleus, who used to change his shape in battle. And he slew Neleus and his sons, except Nestor; for he was a youth and was being brought up among the Gerenians. In the fight he also wounded Hades, who was siding with the Pylians. Having taken Pylus he marched against Lacedaemon, wishing to punish the sons of Hippocoon, for he was angry with them, both because they fought for Neleus, and still angrier because they had killed the son of Licymnius. For when he was looking at the palace of Hippocoon, a hound of the Molossian breed ran out and rushed at him, and he threw a stone and hit the dog, whereupon the Hippocoontids darted out and despatched him with blows of their cudgels. It was to avenge his death that Hercules mustered an army against the Lacedaemonians. And having come to Arcadia he begged Cepheus to join him with his sons, of whom he had twenty. But fearing lest, if he quitted Tegea, the Argives would march against it, Cepheus refused to join the expedition. But Hercules had received from Athena a lock of the Gorgon's hair in a bronze jar and gave it to Sterope, daughter of Cepheus, saying that if an army advanced against the city, she was to hold up the lock of hair thrice from the walls, and that, provided she did not look before her, the enemy would be turned to flight. That being so, Cepheus and his sons took the field, and in the battle he and his sons perished, and besides them Iphicles, the brother of Hercules. Having killed Hippocoon and his sons and subjugated the city, Hercules restored Tyndareus and entrusted the kingdom to him.

Passing by Tegea, Hercules debauched Auge, not knowing her to be a daughter of Aleus. And she brought forth her babe secretly and deposited it in the precinct of Athena. But the country being wasted by a pestilence, Aleus entered the precinct and on investigation discovered his daughter's motherhood. So he exposed the babe on Mount Parthenius, and by the providence of the gods it was preserved: for a doe that had just cast her fawn gave it suck, and shepherds took up the babe and called it Telephus. And her father gave Auge to Nauplius, son of Poseidon, to sell far away in a foreign land; and Nauplius gave her to Teuthras, the prince of Teuthrania, who made her his wife.

And having come to Calydon, Hercules wooed Deianira, daughter of Oeneus. He wrestled for her hand with Achelous, who assumed the likeness of a bull; but Hercules broke off one of his horns. So Hercules married Deianira, but Achelous recovered the horn by giving the horn of Amalthea in its stead. Now Amalthea was a daughter of Haemonius, and she had a bull's horn, which, according to Pherecydes, had the power of supplying meat or drink in abundance, whatever one might wish.

Book 2, Part 8 Cite

And Hercules marched with the Calydonians against the Thesprotians, and having taken the city of Ephyra, of which Phylas was king, he had intercourse with the king's daughter Astyoche, and became the father of Tlepolemus. While he stayed among them, he sent word to Thespius to keep seven of his sons, to send three to Thebes and to despatch the remaining forty to the island of Sardinia to plant a colony. After these events, as he was feasting with Oeneus, he killed with a blow of his knuckles endeavored, son of Architeles, when the lad was pouring water on his hands; now the lad was a kinsman of Oeneus. Seeing that it was an accident, the lad's father pardoned Hercules; but Hercules wished, in accordance with the law, to suffer the penalty of exile, and resolved to depart to Ceyx at Trachis. And taking Deianira with him, he came to the river Evenus, at which the centaur Nessus sat and ferried passengers across for hire, alleging that he had received the ferry from the gods for his righteousness. So Hercules crossed the river by himself, but on being asked to pay the fare he entrusted Deianira to Nessus to carry over. But he, in ferrying her across, attempted to violate her. She cried out, Hercules heard her, and shot Nessus to the heart when he emerged from the river. Being at the point of death, Nessus called Deianira to him and said that if she would have a love charm to operate on Hercules she should mix the seed he had dropped on the ground with the blood that flowed from the wound inflicted by the barb. She did so and kept it by her.

Going through the country of the Dryopes and being in lack of food, Hercules met Thiodamas driving a pair of bullocks; so he unloosed and slaughtered one of the bullocks and feasted. And when he came to Ceyx at Trachis he was received by him and conquered the Dryopes. And afterwards setting out from there, he fought as an ally of Aegimius, king of the Dorians. For the Lapiths, commanded by Coronus, made war on him in a dispute about the boundaries of the country; and being besieged he called in the help of Hercules, offering him a share of the country. So Hercules came to his help and slew Coronus and others, and handed the whole country over to Aegimius free. He slew also Laogoras, king of the Dryopes, with his children, as he was banqueting in a precinct of Apollo; for the king was a wanton fellow and an ally of the Lapiths. And as he passed by Itonus he was challenged to single combat by Cycnus a son of Ares and Pelopia; and closing with him Hercules slew him also. But when he was come to Ormenium, king Amyntor took arms and forbade him to march through; but when he would have hindered his passage, Hercules slew him also. On his arrival at Trachis he mustered an army to attack Oechalia, wishing to punish Eurytus. Being joined by Arcadians, Melians from Trachis, and Epicnemidian Locrians, he slew Eurytus and his sons and took the city. After burying those of his own side who had fallen, to wit, Hippasus, son of Ceyx, and Argius and Melas, the sons of Licymnius, he pillaged the city and led Iole captive. And having put in at Cenaeum, a headland of Euboea, he built an altar of Cenaean Zeus. Intending to offer sacrifice, he sent the herald Lichas to Trachis to fetch fine raiment. From him Deianira learned about Iole, and fearing that Hercules might love that damsel more than herself, she supposed that the spilt blood of Nessus was in truth a love-charm, and with it she smeared the tunic. So Hercules put it on and proceeded to offer sacrifice. But no sooner was the tunic warmed than the poison of the hydra began to corrode his skin; and on that he lifted Lichas by the feet, hurled him down from the headland, and tore off the tunic, which clung to his body, so that his flesh was torn away with it. In such a sad plight he was carried on shipboard to Trachis: and Deianira, on learning what had happened, hanged herself. But Hercules, after charging Hyllus his elder son by Deianira, to marry Iole when he came of age, proceeded to Mount Oeta, in the Trachinian territory, and there constructed a pyre, mounted it, and gave orders to kindle it. When no one would do so, Poeas, passing by to look for his flocks, set a light to it. On him Hercules bestowed his bow. While the pyre was burning, it is said that a cloud passed under Hercules and with a peal of thunder wafted him up to heaven. Thereafter he obtained immortality, and being reconciled to Hera he married her daughter Hebe, by whom he had sons, Alexiares and Anicetus.

And he had sons by the daughters of Thespius, to wit: by Procris he had Antileon and Hippeus( for the eldest daughter bore twins); by Panope he had Threpsippas; by Lyse he had Eumedes; [...] he had Creon; by Epilais he had Astyanax; by Certhe he had Iobes; by Eurybia he had Polylaus; by Patro he had Archemachus; by Meline he had Laomedon; by Clytippe he had Eurycapys; by Eubote he had Eurypylus; by Aglaia he had Antiades; by Chryseis he had Onesippus; by Oriahe had Laomenes; by Lysidice he had Teles; by Menippis he had Entelides; by Anthippe he had Hippodromus; by Eury [...] he had Teleutagoras; by Hippo he had Capylus; by Euboea he had Olympus; by Nice he had Nicodromus; by Argele he had Cleolaus; by Exole he had Erythras; by Xanthis he had Homolippus; by Stratonice he had Atromus; by Iphis he had Celeustanor; by Laothoe he had Antiphus; by Antiope he had Alopius; by Calametis he had Astybies; by Phyleis he had Tigasis, by Aeschreis he had Leucones; by Anthea [...] ; by Eurypyle he had Archedicus; by Erato he had Dynastes; by Asopis he had Mentor; by Eone he had Amestrius; by Tiphyse he had Lyncaeus; by Olympusa he had Halocrates; by Heliconis he had Phalias; by Hesychia he had Oestrobles; by Terpsicrate he had Euryopes; by Elachia he had Buleus; by Nicippe he had Antimachus; by Pyrippehe had Patroclus; by Praxithea he had Nephus; by Lysippe he had Erasippus; by Toxicrate he had Lycurgus; by Marse he had Bucolus; by Eurytele he had Leucippus; by Hippocrate he had Hippozygus. These he had by the daughters of Thespius. And he had sons by other women: by Deianira, daughter of Oeneus, he had Hyllus, Ctesippus, Glenus and Onites; by Megara, daughter of Creon, he had Therimachus, Deicoon, and Creontiades; by Omphale he had Agelaus, from whom the family of Croesus was descended, by Chalciope, daughter of Eurypylus, he had Thettalus; by Epicaste, daughter of Augeas, he had Thestalus; by Parthenope, daughter of Stymphalus, he had Everes; by Auge, daughter of Aleus, he had Telephus; by Astyoche, daughter of Phylas, he had Tlepolemus; by Astydamia, daughter of Amyntor, he had Ctesippus; by Autonoe, daughter of Pireus, he had Palaemon.

When Hercules had been translated to the gods, his sons fled from Eurystheus and came to Ceyx. But when Eurystheus demanded their surrender and threatened war, they were afraid, and, quitting Trachis, fled through Greece. Being pursued, they came to Athens, and sitting down on the altar of Mercy, claimed protection. Refusing to surrender them, the Athenians bore the brunt of war with Eurystheus, and slew his sons, Alexander, Iphimedon, Eurybius, Mentor and Perimedes. Eurystheus himself fled in a chariot, but was pursued and slain by Hyllus just as he was driving past the Scironian cliffs; and Hyllus cut off his head and gave it to Alcmena; and she gouged out his eyes with weaving-pins.

After Eurystheus had perished, the Heraclids came to attack Peloponnese and they captured all the cities. When a year had elapsed from their return, a plague visited the whole of Peloponnese; and an oracle declared that this happened on account of the Heraclids, because they had returned before the proper time. Hence they quitted Peloponnese and retired to Marathon and dwelt there. Now before they came out of Peloponnese, Tlepolemus had killed Licymnius inadvertently; for while he was beating a servant with his stick Licymnius ran in between; so he fled with not a few, and came to Rhodes, and dwelt there. But Hyllus married Iole according to his father's commands, and sought to effect the return of the Heraclids. So he went to Delphi and inquired how they should return; and the god said that they should await the third crop before returning. But Hyllus supposed that the third crop signified three years; and having waited that time he returned with his army [...] of Hercules to Peloponnese, when Tisamenus, son of Orestes, was reigning over the Peloponnesians. And in another battle the Peloponnesians were victorious, and Aristomachus was slain. But when the sons of Cleodaeus were grown to man's estate, they inquired of the oracle concerning their return. And the god having given the same answer as before, Temenus blamed him, saying that when they had obeyed the oracle they had been unfortunate. But the god retorted that they were themselves to blame for their misfortunes, for they did not understand the oracles, seeing that by “ the third crop” he meant, not a crop of the earth, but a crop of a generation, and that by the narrows he meant the broad-bellied sea on the right of the Isthmus. On hearing that, Temenus made ready the army and built ships in Locris where the place is now named Naupactus from that. While the army was there, Aristodemus was killed by a thunderbolt, leaving twin sons, Eurysthenes and Procles, by Argia, daughter of Autesion.

And it chanced that a calamity also befell the army at Naupactus. For there appeared to them a soothsayer reciting oracles in a fine frenzy, whom they took for a magician sent by the Peloponnesians to be the ruin of the army. So Hippotes, son of Phylas, son of Antiochus, son of Hercules, threw a javelin at him, and hit and killed him. In consequence of that, the naval force perished with the destruction of the fleet, and the land force suffered from famine, and the army disbanded. When Temenus inquired of the oracle concerning this calamity, the god said that these things were done by the soothsayer and he ordered him to banish the slayer for ten years and to take for his guide the Three-Eyed One. So they banished Hippotes, and sought for the Three-Eyed One. And they chanced to light on Oxylus, son of Andraemon, a man sitting on a one-eyed horse ( its other eye having been knocked out with an arrow); for he had fled to Elis on account of a murder, and was now returning from there to Aetolia after the lapse of a year. So guessing the purport of the oracle, they made him their guide. And having engaged the enemy they got the better of him both by land and sea, and slew Tisamenus, son of Orestes. Their allies, Pamphylus and Dymas, the sons of Aegimius, also fell in the fight.

Book 2, Part 9 Cite

When they had made themselves masters of Peloponnese, they set up three altars of Paternal Zeus, and sacrificed upon them, and cast lots for the cities. So the first drawing was for Argos, the second for Lacedaemon, and the third for Messene. And they brought a pitcher of water, and resolved that each should cast in a lot. Now Temenus and the two sons of Aristodemus, Procles and Eurysthenes, threw stones; but Cresphontes, wishing to have Messene allotted to him, threw in a clod of earth. As the clod was dissolved in the water, it could not be but that the other two lots should turn up. The lot of Temenus having been drawn first, and that of the sons of Aristodemus second, Cresphontes got Messene.

And on the altars on which they sacrificed they found signs lying: for they who got Argos by the lot found a toad; those who got Lacedaemon found a serpent; and those who got Messene found a fox. As to these signs the seers said that those who found the toad had better stay in the city ( seeing that the animal has no strength when it walks); that those who found the serpent would be terrible in attack, and that those who found the fox would be wily. Now Temenus, passing over his sons Agelaus, Eurypylus, and Callias, favoured his daughter Hyrnetho and her husband Deiphontes; hence his sons hired some fellows to murder their father. On the perpetration of the murder the army decided that the kingdom belonged to Hyrnetho and Deiphontes. Cresphontes had not long reigned over Messene when he was murdered with two of his sons; and Polyphontes, one of the true Heraclids, came to the throne and took to wife, against her will, Merope, the wife of the murdered man. But he too was slain. For Merope had a third son, called Aepytus, whom she gave to her own father to bring up. When he was come to manhood he secretly returned, killed Polyphontes, and recovered the kingdom of his fathers.

Book 3, Part 1 Cite

Having now run over the family of Inachus and described them from Belus down to the Heraclids, we have next to speak of the house of Agenor. For as I have said, Libya had by Poseidon two sons, Belus and Agenor. Now Belus reigned over the Egyptians and begat the aforesaid sons; but Agenor went to Phoenicia, married Telephassa, and begat a daughter Europa and three sons, Cadmus, Phoenix, and Cilix. But some say that Europa was a daughter not of Agenor but of Phoenix. Zeus loved her, and turning himself into a tame bull, he mounted her on his back and conveyed her through the sea to Crete. There Zeus bedded with her, and she bore Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthys; but according to Homer, Sarpedon was a son of Zeus by Laodamia, daughter of Bellerophon. On the disappearance of Europa her father Agenor sent out his sons in search of her, telling them not to return until they had found Europa. With them her mother, Telephassa, and Thasus, son of Poseidon, or according to Pherecydes, of Cilix, went forth in search of her. But when, after diligent search, they could not find Europa, they gave up the thought of returning home, and took up their abode in divers places; Phoenix settled in Phoenicia; Cilix settled near Phoenicia, and all the country subject to himself near the river Pyramus he called Cilicia; and Cadmus and Telephassa took up their abode in Thrace and in like manner Thasus founded a city Thasus in an island off Thrace and dwelt there.

Now Asterius, prince of the Cretans, married Europa and brought up her children. But when they were grown up, they quarrelled with each other; for they loved a boy called Miletus, son of Apollo by Aria, daughter of Cleochus. As the boy was more friendly to Sarpedon, Minos went to war and had the better of it, and the others fled. Miletus landed in Caria and there founded a city which he called Miletus after himself; and Sarpedon allied himself with Cilix, who was at war with the Lycians, and having stipulated for a share of the country, he became king of Lycia. And Zeus granted him to live for three generations. But some say that they loved Atymnius, the son of Zeus and Cassiepea, and that it was about him that they quarrelled. Rhadamanthys legislated for the islanders but afterwards he fled to Boeotia and married Alcmena; and since his departure from the world he acts as judge in Hades along with Minos. Minos, residing in Crete, passed laws, and married Pasiphae, daughter of the Sun and Perseis; but Asclepiades says that his wife was Crete, daughter of Asterius. He begat sons, to wit, Catreus, Deucalion, Glaucus, and Androgeus: and daughters, to wit, Acalle, Xenodice, Ariadne, Phaedra; and by a nymph Paria he had Eurymedon, Nephalion, Chryses, and Philolaus; and by Dexithea he had Euxanthius.

Asterius dying childless, Minos wished to reign over Crete, but his claim was opposed. So he alleged that he had received the kingdom from the gods, and in proof of it he said that whatever he prayed for would be done. And in sacrificing to Poseidon he prayed that a bull might appear from the depths, promising to sacrifice it when it appeared. Poseidon did send him up a fine bull, and Minos obtained the kingdom, but he sent the bull to the herds and sacrificed another. [ Being the first to obtain the dominion of the sea, he extended his rule over almost all the islands. ]

But angry at him for not sacrificing the bull, Poseidon made the animal savage, and contrived that Pasiphae should conceive a passion for it. In her love for the bull she found an accomplice in Daedalus, an architect, who had been banished from Athens for murder. He constructed a wooden cow on wheels, took it, hollowed it out in the inside, sewed it up in the hide of a cow which he had skinned, and set it in the meadow in which the bull used to graze. Then he introduced Pasiphae into it; and the bull came and coupled with it, as if it were a real cow. And she gave birth to Asterius, who was called the Minotaur. He had the face of a bull, but the rest of him was human; and Minos, in compliance with certain oracles, shut him up and guarded him in the Labyrinth. Now the Labyrinth which Daedalus constructed was a chamber “ that with its tangled windings perplexed the outward way. ” The story of the Minotaur, and Androgeus, and Phaedra, and Ariadne, I will tell hereafter in my account of Theseus.

But Catreus, son of Minos, had three daughters, Aerope, Clymene, and Apemosyne, and a son, Althaemenes. When Catreus inquired of the oracle how his life should end, the god said that he would die by the hand of one of his children. Now Catreus hid the oracles, but Althaemenes heard of them, and fearing to be his father's murderer, he set out from Crete with his sister Apemosyne, and put in at a place in Rhodes, and having taken possession of it he called it Cretinia. And having ascended the mountain called Atabyrium, he beheld the islands round about; and descrying Crete also and calling to mind the gods of his fathers he founded an altar of Atabyrian Zeus. But not long afterwards he became the murderer of his sister. For Hermes loved her, and as she fled from him and he could not catch her, because she excelled him in speed of foot, he spread fresh hides on the path, on which, returning from the spring, she slipped and so was deflowered. She revealed to her brother what had happened, but he, deeming the god a mere pretext, kicked her to death.

And Catreus gave Aerope and Clymene to Nauplius to sell into foreign lands; and of these two Aerope became the wife of Plisthenes, who begat Agamemnon and Menelaus; and Clymene became the wife of Nauplius, who became the father of Oeax and Palamedes. But afterwards in the grip of old age Catreus yearned to transmit the kingdom to his son Althaemenes, and went for that purpose to Rhodes. And having landed from the ship with the heroes at a desert place of the island, he was chased by the cowherds, who imagined that they were pirates on a raid. He told them the truth, but they could not hear him for the barking of the dogs, and while they pelted him Althaemenes arrived and killed him with the cast of a javelin, not knowing him to be Catreus. Afterwards when he learned the truth, he prayed and disappeared in a chasm.

To Deucalion were born Idomeneus and Crete and a bastard son Molus. But Glaucus, while he was yet a child, in chasing a mouse fell into a jar of honey and was drowned. On his disappearance Minos made a great search and consulted diviners as to how he should find him. The Curetes told him that in his herds he had a cow of three different colors, and that the man who could best describe that cow's color would also restore his son to him alive. So when the diviners were assembled, Polyidus, son of Coeranus, compared the color of the cow to the fruit of the bramble, and being compelled to seek for the child he found him by means of a sort of divination. But Minos declaring that he must recover him alive, he was shut up with the dead body. And while he was in great perplexity, he saw a serpent going towards the corpse. He threw a stone and killed it, fearing to be killed himself if any harm befell the body. But another serpent came, and, seeing the former one dead, departed, and then returned, bringing a herb, and placed it on the whole body of the other; and no sooner was the herb so placed upon it than the dead serpent came to life. Surprised at this sight, Polyidus applied the same herb to the body of Glaucus and raised him from the dead.

Minos had now got back his son, but even so he did not suffer Polyidus to depart to Argos until he had taught Glaucus the art of divination. Polyidus taught him on compulsion, and when he was sailing away he bade Glaucus spit into his mouth. Glaucus did so and forgot the art of divination. Thus much must suffice for my account of the descendants of Europa.

When Telephassa died, Cadmus buried her, and after being hospitably received by the Thracians he came to Delphi to inquire about Europa. The god told him not to trouble about Europa, but to be guided by a cow, and to found a city wherever she should fall down for weariness. After receiving such an oracle he journeyed through Phocis; then falling in with a cow among the herds of Pelagon, he followed it behind. And after traversing Boeotia, it sank down where is now the city of Thebes. Wishing to sacrifice the cow to Athena, he sent some of his companions to draw water from the spring of Ares. But a dragon, which some said was the offspring of Ares, guarded the spring and destroyed most of those that were sent. In his indignation Cadmus killed the dragon, and by the advice of Athena sowed its teeth. When they were sown there rose from the ground armed men whom they called Sparti. These slew each other, some in a chance brawl, and some in ignorance. But Pherecydes says that when Cadmus saw armed men growing up out of the ground, he flung stones at them, and they, supposing that they were being pelted by each other, came to blows. However, five of them survived, Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelorus.

But Cadmus, to atone for the slaughter, served Ares for an eternal year; and the year was then equivalent to eight years of our reckoning. After his servitude Athena procured for him the kingdom, and Zeus gave him to wife Harmonia, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. And all the gods quitted the sky, and feasting in the Cadmea celebrated the marriage with hymns. Cadmus gave her a robe and the necklace wrought by Hephaestus, which some say was given to Cadmus by Hephaestus, but Pherecydes says that it was given by Europa, who had received it from Zeus. And to Cadmus were born daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Semele, Agave, and a son Polydorus. Ino was married to Athamas, Autonoe to Aristaeus, and Agave to Echion.

Book 3, Part 2 Cite

But Zeus loved Semele and bedded with her unknown to Hera. Now Zeus had agreed to do for her whatever she asked, and deceived by Hera she asked that he would come to her as he came when he was wooing Hera. Unable to refuse, Zeus came to her bridal chamber in a chariot, with lightnings and thunderings, and launched a thunderbolt. But Semele expired of fright, and Zeus, snatching the sixth-month abortive child from the fire, sewed it in his thigh. On the death of Semele the other daughters of Cadmus spread a report that Semele had bedded with a mortal man, and had falsely accused Zeus, and that therefore she had been blasted by thunder. But at the proper time Zeus undid the stitches and gave birth to Dionysus, and entrusted him to Hermes. And he conveyed him to Ino and Athamas, and persuaded them to rear him as a girl. But Hera indignantly drove them mad, and Athamas hunted his elder son Learchus as a deer and killed him, and Ino threw Melicertes into a boiling cauldron, then carrying it with the dead child she sprang into the deep. And she herself is called Leucothea, and the boy is called Palaemon, such being the names they get from sailors; for they succour storm-tossed mariners. And the Isthmian games were instituted by Sisyphus in honor of Melicertes. But Zeus eluded the wrath of Hera by turning Dionysus into a kid, and Hermes took him and brought him to the nymphs who dwelt at Nysa in Asia, whom Zeus afterwards changed into stars and named them the Hyades.

Autonoe and Aristaeus had a son Actaeon, who was bred by Chiron to be a hunter and then afterwards was devoured on Cithaeron by his own dogs. He perished in that way, according to Acusilaus, because Zeus was angry at him for wooing Semele; but according to the more general opinion, it was because he saw Artemis bathing. And they say that the goddess at once transformed him into a deer, and drove mad the fifty dogs in his pack, which devoured him unwittingly. Actaeon being gone, the dogs sought their master howling lamentably, and in the search they came to the cave of Chiron, who fashioned an image of Actaeon, which soothed their grief. [ The names of Actaeon's dogs from the . . . . So Now surrounding his fair body, as it were that of a beast, The strong dogs rent it. Near Arcena first. . . . . after her a mighty brood, Lynceus and Balius goodly-footed, and Amarynthus. — And these he enumerated continuously by name. And then Actaeon perished at the instigation of Zeus. For the first that drank their master's black blood Were Spartus and Omargus and Bores, the swift on the track. These first ate of Actaeon and lapped his blood. And after them others rushed on him eagerly . . . . To be a remedy for grievous pains to men. ]

Dionysus discovered the vine, and being driven mad by Hera he roamed about Egypt and Syria. At first he was received by Proteus, king of Egypt, but afterwards he arrived at Cybela in Phrygia. And there, after he had been purified by Rhea and learned the rites of initiation, he received from her the costume and hastened through Thrace against the Indians. But Lycurgus, son of Dryas, was king of the Edonians, who dwell beside the river Strymon, and he was the first who insulted and expelled him. Dionysus took refuge in the sea with Thetis, daughter of Nereus, and the Bacchanals were taken prisoners together with the multitude of Satyrs that attended him. But afterwards the Bacchanals were suddenly released, and Dionysus drove Lycurgus mad. And in his madness he struck his son Dryas dead with an axe, imagining that he was lopping a branch of a vine, and when he had cut off his son's extremities, he recovered his senses. But the land remaining barren, the god declared oracularly that it would bear fruit if Lycurgus were put to death. On hearing that, the Edonians led him to Mount Pangaeum and bound him, and there by the will of Dionysus he died, destroyed by horses.

Having traversed Thrace and the whole of India and set up pillars there, he came to Thebes, and forced the women to abandon their houses and rave in Bacchic frenzy on Cithaeron. But Pentheus, whom Agave bore to Echion, had succeeded Cadmus in the kingdom, and he attempted to put a stop to these proceedings. And coming to Cithaeron to spy on the Bacchanals, he was torn limb from limb by his mother Agave in a fit of madness; for she thought he was a wild beast. And having shown the Thebans that he was a god, Dionysus came to Argos, and there again, because they did not honor him, he drove the women mad, and they on the mountains devoured the flesh of the infants whom they carried at their breasts.

And wishing to be ferried across from Icaria to Naxos he hired a pirate ship of Tyrrhenians. But when they had put him on board, they sailed past Naxos and made for Asia, intending to sell him. Howbeit, he turned the mast and oars into snakes, and filled the vessel with ivy and the sound of flutes. And the pirates went mad, and leaped into the sea, and were turned into dolphins. Thus men perceived that he was a god and honored him; and having brought up his mother from Hades and named her Thyone, he ascended up with her to heaven.

But Cadmus and Harmonia quitted Thebes and went to the Encheleans. As the Encheleans were being attacked by the Illyrians, the god declared by an oracle that they would get the better of the Illyrians if they had Cadmus and Harmonia as their leaders. They believed him, and made them their leaders against the Illyrians, and got the better of them. And Cadmus reigned over the Illyrians, and a son Illyrius was born to him. But afterwards he was, along with Harmonia, turned into a serpent and sent away by Zeus to the Elysian Fields.

Polydorus, having become king of Thebes, married Nycteis, daughter of Nycteus, son of Chthonius, and begat Labdacus, who perished after Pentheus because he was like-minded with him. But Labdacus having left a year -old son, Laius, the government was usurped by Lycus, brother of Nycteus, so long as Laius was a child. Both of them had fled [ from Euboea] because they had killed Phlegyas, son of Ares and Dotis the Boeotian, and they took up their abode at Hyria, and thence having come to Thebes, they were enrolled as citizens through their friendship with Pentheus. So after being chosen commander-in-chief by the Thebans, Lycus compassed the supreme power and reigned for twenty years, but was murdered by Zethus and Amphion for the following reason. Antiope was a daughter of Nycteus, and Zeus had intercourse with her. When she was with child, and her father threatened her, she ran away to Epopeus at Sicyon and was married to him. In a fit of despondency Nycteus killed himself, after charging Lycus to punish Epopeus and Antiope. Lycus marched against Sicyon, subdued it, slew Epopeus, and led Antiope away captive. On the way she gave birth to two sons at Eleurethae in Boeotia. The infants were exposed, but a neatherd found and reared them, and he called the one Zethus and the other Amphion. Now Zethus paid attention to cattle-breeding, but Amphion practised minstrelsy, for Hermes had given him a lyre. But Lycus and his wife Dirce imprisoned Antiope and treated her despitefully. Howbeit, one day her bonds were loosed of themselves, and unknown to her keepers she came to her sons cottage, begging that they would take her in. They recognized their mother and slew Lycus, but Dirce they tied to a bull, and flung her dead body into the spring that is called Dirce after her. And having succeeded to the sovereignty they fortified the city, the stones following Amphion's lyre; and they expelled Laius. He resided in Peloponnese, being hospitably received by Pelops; and while he taught Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, to drive a chariot, he conceived a passion for the lad and carried him off.

Zethus married Thebe, after whom the city of Thebes is named; and Amphion married Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, who bore seven sons, Sipylus, Eupinytus, Ismenus, Damasichthon, Agenor, Phaedimus, Tantalus, and the same number of daughters, Ethodaia ( or, as some say, Neaera), Cleodoxa, Astyoche, Phthia, Pelopia, Astycratia, and Ogygia, But Hesiod says that they had ten sons and ten daughters; Herodorus that they had two male children and three female; and Homer that they had six sons and six daughters. Being blessed with children, Niobe said that she was more blessed with children than Latona. Stung by the taunt, Latona incited Artemis and Apollo against them, and Artemis shot down the females in the house, and Apollo killed all the males together as they were hunting on Cithaeron. Of the males Amphion alone was saved, and of the females Chloris the elder, whom Neleus married. But according to Telesilla there were saved Amyclas and Meliboea, and Amphion also was shot by them. But Niobe herself quitted Thebes and went to her father Tantalus at Sipylus, and there, on praying to Zeus, she was transformed into a stone, and tears flow night and day from the stone.

After Amphion's death Laius succeeded to the kingdom. And he married a daughter of Menoeceus; some say that she was Jocasta, and some that she was Epicasta. The oracle had warned him not to beget a son, for the son that should be begotten would kill his father; nevertheless, flushed with wine, he had intercourse with his wife. And when the babe was born he pierced the child's ankles with brooches and gave it to a herdsman to expose. But the herdsman exposed it on Cithaeron; and the neatherds of Polybus, king of Corinth, found the infant and brought it to his wife Periboea. She adopted him and passed him off as her own, and after she had healed his ankles she called him Oedipus, giving him that name on account of his swollen feet. When the boy grew up and excelled his fellows in strength, they spitefully twitted him with being supposititious. He inquired of Periboea, but could learn nothing; so he went to Delphi and inquired about his true parents. The god told him not to go to his native land, because he would murder his father and lie with his mother. On hearing that, and believing himself to be the son of his nominal parents, he left Corinth, and riding in a chariot through Phocis he fell in with Laius driving in a chariot in a certain narrow road. And when Polyphontes, the herald of Laius, ordered him to make way and killed one of his horses because he disobeyed and delayed, Oedipus in a rage killed both Polyphontes and Laius, and arrived in Thebes.

Laius was buried by Damasistratus, king of Plataea, and Creon, son of Menoeceus, succeeded to the kingdom. In his reign a heavy calamity befell Thebes. For Hera sent the Sphinx, whose mother was Echidna and her father Typhon; and she had the face of a woman, the breast and feet and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird. And having learned a riddle from the Muses, she sat on Mount Phicium, and propounded it to the Thebans. And the riddle was this:— What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed? Now the Thebans were in possession of an oracle which declared that they should be rid of the Sphinx whenever they had read her riddle; so they often met and discussed the answer, and when they could not find it the Sphinx used to snatch away one of them and gobble him up. When many had perished, and last of all Creon's son Haemon, Creon made proclamation that to him who should read the riddle he would give both the kingdom and the wife of Laius. On hearing that, Oedipus found the solution, declaring that the riddle of the Sphinx referred to man; for as a babe he is four-footed, going on four limbs, as an adult he is two-footed, and as an old man he gets besides a third support in a staff. So the Sphinx threw herself from the citadel, and Oedipus both succeeded to the kingdom and unwittingly married his mother, and begat sons by her, Polynices and Eteocles, and daughters, Ismene and Antigone. But some say the children were borne to him by Eurygania, daughter of Hyperphas.

Book 3, Part 3 Cite

When the secret afterwards came to light, Jocasta hanged herself in a noose, and Oedipus was driven from Thebes, after he had put out his eyes and cursed his sons, who saw him cast out of the city without lifting a hand to help him. And having come with Antigone to Colonus in Attica, where is the precinct of the Eumenides, he sat down there as a suppliant, was kindly received by Theseus, and died not long afterwards.

Now Eteocles and Polynices made a compact with each other concerning the kingdom and resolved that each should rule alternately for a year at a time. Some say that Polynices was the first to rule, and that after a year he handed over the kingdom to Eteocles; but some say that Eteocles was the first to rule, and would not hand over the kingdom. So, being banished from Thebes, Polynices came to Argos, taking with him the necklace and the robe. The king of Argos was Adrastus, son of Talaus; and Polynices went up to his palace by night and engaged in a fight with Tydeus, son of Oeneus, who had fled from Calydon. At the sudden outcry Adrastus appeared and parted them, and remembering the words of a certain seer who told him to yoke his daughters in marriage to a boar and a lion, he accepted them both as bridegrooms, because they had on their shields, the one the forepart of a boar, and the other the forepart of a lion. And Tydeus married Deipyle, and Polynices married Argia; and Adrastus promised that he would restore them both to their native lands. And first he was eager to march against Thebes, and he mustered the chiefs.

But Amphiaraus, son of Oicles, being a seer and foreseeing that all who joined in the expedition except Adrastus were destined to perish, shrank from it himself and discouraged the rest. However, Polynices went to Iphis, son of Alector, and begged to know how Amphiaraus could be compelled to go to the war. He answered that it could be done if Eriphyle got the necklace. Now Amphiaraus had forbidden Eriphyle to accept gifts from Polynices; but Polynices gave her the necklace and begged her to persuade Amphiaraus to go to the war; for the decision lay with her, because once, when a difference arose between him and Adrastus, he had made it up with him and sworn to let Eriphyle decide any future dispute he might have with Adrastus. Accordingly, when war was to be made on Thebes, and the measure was advocated by Adrastus and opposed by Amphiaraus, Eriphyle accepted the necklace and persuaded him to march with Adrastus. Thus forced to go to the war, Amphiaraus laid his commands on his sons, that, when they were grown up, they should slay their mother and march against Thebes.

Having mustered an army with seven leaders, Adrastus hastened to wage war on Thebes. The leaders were these: Adrastus, son of Talaus; Amphiaraus, son of Oicles; Capaneus, son of Hipponous; Hippomedon, son of Aristomachus, but some say of Talaus. These came from Argos; but Polynices, son of Oedipus, came from Thebes; Tydeus, son of Oeneus, was an Aetolian; Parthenopaeus, son of Melanion, was an Arcadian. Some, however, do not reckon Tydeus and Polynices among them, but include Eteoclus, son of Iphis, and Mecisteus in the list of the seven.

Having come to Nemea, of which Lycurgus was king, they sought for water; and Hypsipyle showed them the way to a spring, leaving behind an infant boy Opheltes, whom she nursed, a child of Eurydice and Lycurgus. For the Lemnian women, afterwards learning that Thoas had been saved alive, put him to death and sold Hypsipyle into slavery; wherefore she served in the house of Lycurgus as a purchased bondwoman. But while she showed the spring, the abandoned boy was killed by a serpent. When Adrastus and his party appeared on the scene, they slew the serpent and buried the boy; but Amphiaraus told them that the sign foreboded the future, and they called the boy Archemorus. They celebrated the Nemean games in his honor; and Adrastus won the horse race, Eteoclus the footrace, Tydeus the boxing match, Amphiaraus the leaping and quoit-throwing match, Laodocus the javelin-throwing match, Polynices the wrestling match, and Parthenopaeus the archery match.

When they came to Cithaeron, they sent Tydeus to tell Eteocles in advance that he must cede the kingdom to Polynices, as they had agreed among themselves. As Eteocles paid no heed to the message, Tydeus, by way of putting the Thebans to the proof, challenged them to single combat and was victorious in every encounter; and though the Thebans set fifty armed men to lie in wait for him as he went away, he slew them all but Maeon, and then came to the camp.

Having armed themselves, the Argives approached the walls; and as there were seven gates, Adrastus was stationed at the Homoloidian gate, Capaneus at the Ogygian, Amphiaraus at the Proetidian, Hippomedon at the Oncaidian, Polynices at the Hypsistan, Parthenopaeus at the Electran, and Tydeus at the Crenidian. Eteocles on his side armed the Thebans, and having appointed leaders to match those of the enemy in number, he put the battle in array, and resorted to divination to learn how they might overcome the foe.

Now there was among the Thebans a soothsayer, Tiresias, son of Everes and a nymph Chariclo, of the family of Udaeus, the Spartan, and he had lost the sight of his eyes. Different stories are told about his blindness and his power of soothsaying. For some say that he was blinded by the gods because he revealed their secrets to men. But Pherecydes says that he was blinded by Athena; for Chariclo was dear to Athena [...] and Tiresias saw the goddess stark naked, and she covered his eyes with her hands, and so rendered him sightless. And when Chariclo asked her to restore his sight, she could not do so, but by cleansing his ears she caused him to understand every note of birds; and she gave him a staff of cornel-wood, wherewith he walked like those who see. But Hesiod says that he beheld snakes copulating on Cyllene, and that having wounded them he was turned from a man into a woman, but that on observing the same snakes copulating again, he became a man. Hence, when Hera and Zeus disputed whether the pleasures of love are felt more by women or by men, they referred to him for a decision. He said that if the pleasures of love be reckoned at ten, men enjoy one and women nine. Wherefore Hera blinded him, but Zeus bestowed on him the art of soothsaying. The saying of Tiresias to Zeus and Hera. Of ten parts a man enjoys one only; But a woman enjoys the full ten parts in her heart. He also lived to a great age. So when the Thebans sought counsel of him, he said that they should be victorious if Menoeceus, son of Creon, would offer himself freely as a sacrifice to Ares. On hearing that, Menoeceus, son of Creon, slew himself before the gates. But a battle having taken place, the Cadmeans were chased in a crowd as far as the walls, and Capaneus, seizing a ladder, was climbing up it to the walls, when Zeus smote him with a thunderbolt.

When that befell, the Argives turned to flee. And as many fell, Eteocles and Polynices, by the resolution of both armies, fought a single combat for the kingdom, and slew each other. In another fierce battle the sons of Astacus did doughty deeds; for Ismarus slew Hippomedon, Leades slew Eteoclus, and Amphidicus slew Parthenopaeus. But Euripides says that Parthenopaeus was slain by Periclymenus, son of Poseidon. And Melanippus, the remaining one of the sons of Astacus, wounded Tydeus in the belly. As he lay half dead, Athena brought a medicine which she had begged of Zeus, and by which she intended to make him immortal. But Amphiaraus hated Tydeus for thwarting him by persuading the Argives to march to Thebes; so when he perceived the intention of the goddess he cut off the head of Melanippus and gave it to Tydeus, who, wounded though he was, had killed him. And Tydeus split open the head and gulped up the brains. But when Athena saw that, in disgust she grudged and withheld the intended benefit. Amphiaraus fled beside the river Ismenus, and before Periclymenus could wound him in the back, Zeus cleft the earth by throwing a thunderbolt, and Amphiaraus vanished with his chariot and his charioteer Baton, or, as some say, Elato; and Zeus made him immortal. Adrastus alone was saved by his horse Arion. That horse Poseidon begot on Demeter, when in the likeness of a Fury she consorted with him.

Having succeeded to the kingdom of Thebes, Creon cast out the Argive dead unburied, issued a proclamation that none should bury them, and set watchmen. But Antigone, one of the daughters of Oedipus, stole the body of Polynices, and secretly buried it, and having been detected by Creon himself, she was interred alive in the grave. Adrastus fled to Athens and took refuge at the altar of Mercy, and laying on it the suppliant's bough he prayed that they would bury the dead. And the Athenians marched with Theseus, captured Thebes, and gave the dead to their kinsfolk to bury. And when the pyre of Capaneus was burning, his wife Evadne, the daughter of Iphis, thew herself on the pyre, and was burned with him.

Book 3, Part 4 Cite

Ten years afterwards the sons of the fallen, called the Epigoni, purposed to march against Thebes to avenge the death of their fathers; and when they consulted the oracle, the god predicted victory under the leadership of Alcmaeon. So Alcmaeon joined the expedition, though he was loath to lead the army till he had punished his mother; for Eriphyle had received the robe from Thersander, son of Polynices, and had persuaded her sons also to go to the war. Having chosen Alcmaeon as their leader, they made war on Thebes. The men who took part in the expedition were these: Alcmaeon and Amphilochus, sons of Amphiaraus; Aegialeus, son of Adrastus; Diomedes, son of Tydeus; Promachus, son of Parthenopaeus; Sthenelus, son of Capaneus; Thersander, son of Polynices; and Euryalus, son of Mecisteus.

They first laid waste the surrounding villages; then, when the Thebans advanced against them, led by Laodamas, son of Eteocles, they fought bravely, and though Laodamas killed Aegialeus, he was himself killed by Alcmaeon, and after his death the Thebans fled in a body within the walls. But as Tiresias told them to send a herald to treat with the Argives, and themselves to take to flight, they did send a herald to the enemy, and, mounting their children and women on the wagons, themselves fled from the city. When they had come by night to the spring called Tilphussa, Tiresias drank of it and expired. After travelling far the Thebans built the city of Hestiaea and took up their abode there.

But the Argives, on learning afterwards the flight of the Thebans, entered the city and collected the booty, and pulled down the walls. But they sent a portion of the booty to Apollo at Delphi and with it Manto, daughter of Tiresias; for they had vowed that, if they took Thebes, they would dedicate to him the fairest of the spoils.

After the capture of Thebes, when Alcmaeon learned that his mother Eriphyle had been bribed to his undoing also, he was more incensed than ever, and in accordance with an oracle given to him by Apollo he killed his mother. Some say that he killed her in conjunction with his brother Amphilochus, others that he did it alone. But Alcmaeon was visited by the Fury of his mother's murder, and going mad he first repaired to Oicles in Arcadia, and thence to Phegeus at Psophis. And having been purified by him he married Arsinoe, daughter of Phegeus, and gave her the necklace and the robe. But afterwards the ground became barren on his account, and the god bade him in an oracle to depart to Achelous and to stand another trial on the river bank. At first he repaired to Oeneus at Calydon and was entertained by him; then he went to the Thesprotians, but was driven away from the country; and finally he went to the springs of Achelous, and was purified by him, and received Callirrhoe, his daughter, to wife. Moreover he colonized the land which the Achelous had formed by its silt, and he took up his abode there. But afterwards Callirrhoe coveted the necklace and robe, and said she would not live with him if she did not get them. So away Alcmaeon hied to Psophis and told Phegeus how it had been predicted that he should be rid of his madness when he had brought the necklace and the robe to Delphi and dedicated them. Phegeus believed him and gave them to him. But a servant having let out that he was taking the things to Callirrhoe, Phegeus commanded his sons, and they lay in wait and killed him. When Arsinoe upbraided them, the sons of Phegeus clapped her into a chest and carried her to Tegea and gave her as a slave to Agapenor, falsely accusing her of Alcmaeon's murder.

Being apprized of Alcmaeon's untimely end and courted by Zeus, Callirrhoe requested that the sons she had by Alcmaeon might be full grown in order to avenge their father's murder. And being suddenly full-grown, the sons went forth to right their father's wrong. Now Pronous and Agenor, the sons of Phegeus, carrying the necklace and robe to Delphi to dedicate them, turned in at the house of Agapenor at the same time as Amphoterus and Acarnan, the sons of Alcmaeon; and the sons of Alcmaeon killed their father's murderers, and going to Psophis and entering the palace they slew both Phegeus and his wife. They were pursued as far as Tegea, but saved by the intervention of the Tegeans and some Argives, and the Psophidians took to flight.

Having acquainted their mother with these things, they went to Delphi and dedicated the necklace and robe according to the injunction of Achelous. Then they journeyed to Epirus, collected settlers, and colonized Acarnania. But Euripides says that in the time of his madness Alcmaeon begat two children, Amphilochus and a daughter Tisiphone, by Manto, daughter of Tiresias, and that he brought the babes to Corinth and gave them to Creon, king of Corinth, to bring up; and that on account of her extraordinary comeliness Tisiphone was sold as a slave by Creon's spouse, who feared that Creon might make her his wedded wife. But Alcmaeon bought her and kept her as a handmaid, not knowing that she was his daughter, and coming to Corinth to get back his children he recovered his son also. And Amphilochus colonized Amphilochian Argos in obedience to oracles of Apollo.

Let us now return to Pelasgus, who, Acusilaus says, was a son of Zeus and Niobe, as we have supposed, but Hesiod declares him to have been a son of the soil. He had a son Lycaon by Meliboea, daughter of Ocean or, as others say, by a nymph Cyllene; and Lycaon, reigning over the Arcadians, begat by many wives fifty sons, to wit: Melaeneus, Thesprotus, Helix, Nyctimus, Peucetius, Caucon, Mecisteus, Hopleus, Macareus, Macednus, Horus, Polichus, Acontes, Evaemon, Ancyor, Archebates, Carteron, Aegaeon, Pallas, Eumon, Canethus, Prothous, Linus, Coretho, Maenalus, Teleboas, Physius, Phassus, Phthius, Lycius, Halipherus, Genetor, Bucolion, Socleus, Phineus, Eumetes, Harpaleus, Portheus, Plato, Haemo, Cynaethus, Leo, Harpalycus, Heraeeus, Titanas, Mantineus, Clitor, Stymphalus, Orchomenus, [...] These exceeded all men in pride and impiety; and Zeus, desirous of putting their impiety to the proof, came to them in the likeness of a day-laborer. They offered him hospitality and having slaughtered a male child of the natives, they mixed his bowels with the sacrifices, and set them before him, at the instigation of the elder brother Maenalus. But Zeus in disgust upset the table at the place which is still called Trapezus, and blasted Lycaon and his sons by thunderbolts, all but Nyctimus, the youngest; for Earth was quick enough to lay hold of the right hand of Zeus and so appease his wrath.

But when Nyctimus succeeded to the kingdom, there occurred the flood in the age of Deucalion; some said that it was occasioned by the impiety of Lycaon's sons. But Eumelus and some others say that Lycaon had also a daughter Callisto; though Hesiod says she was one of the nymphs, Asius that she was a daughter of Nycteus, and Pherecydes that she was a daughter of Ceteus. She was a companion of Artemis in the chase, wore the same garb, and swore to her to remain a maid. Now Zeus loved her and, having assumed the likeness, as some say, of Artemis, or, as others say, of Apollo, he shared her bed against her will, and wishing to escape the notice of Hera, he turned her into a bear. But Hera persuaded Artemis to shoot her down as a wild beast. Some say, however, that Artemis shot her down because she did not keep her maidenhood. When Callisto perished, Zeus snatched the babe, named it Arcas, and gave it to Maia to bring up in Arcadia; and Callisto he turned into a star and called it the Bear.

Arcas had two sons, Elatus and Aphidas, by Leanira, daughter of Amyclas, or by Meganira, daughter of Croco, or, according to Eumelus, by a nymph Chrysopelia. These divided the land between them, but Elatus had all the power, and he begat Stymphalus and Pereus by Laodice, daughter of Cinyras, and Aphidas had a son Aleus and a daughter Stheneboea, who was married to Proetus. And Aleus had a daughter Auge and two sons, Cepheus and Lycurgus, by Neaera, daughter of Pereus. Auge was seduced by Hercules and hid her babe in the precinct of Athena, whose priesthood she held. But the land remaining barren, and the oracles declaring that there was impiety in the precinct of Athena, she was detected and delivered by her father to Nauplius to be put to death, and from him Teuthras, prince of Mysia, received and married her. But the babe, being exposed on Mount Parthenius, was suckled by a doe and hence called Telephus. Bred by the neatheards of Corythus, he went to Delphi in quest of his parents, and on information received from the god he repaired to Mysia and became an adopted son of Teuthras, on whose death he succeeded to the princedom.

Lycurgus had sons, Ancaeus, Epochus, Amphidamas, and Iasus, by Cleophyle or Eurynome. And Amphidamas had a son Melanion and a daughter Antimache, whom Eurystheus married. And Iasus had a daughter Atalanta by Clymene, daughter of Minyas. This Atalanta was exposed by her father, because he desired male children; and a she bear came often and gave her suck, till hunters found her and brought her up among themselves. Grown to womanhood, Atalanta kept herself a virgin, and hunting in the wilderness she remained always under arms. The centaurs Rhoecus and Hylaeus tried to force her, but were shot down and killed by her. She went moreover with the chiefs to hunt the Calydonian boar, and at the games held in honor of Pelias she wrestled with Peleus and won. Afterwards she discovered her parents, but when her father would have persuaded her to wed, she went away to a place that might serve as a racecourse, and, having planted a stake three cubits high in the middle of it, she caused her wooers to race before her from there, and ran herself in arms; and if the wooer was caught up, his due was death on the spot, and if he was not caught up, his due was marriage. When many had already perished, Melanion came to run for love of her, bringing golden apples from Aphrodite, and being pursued he threw them down, and she, picking up the dropped fruit, was beaten in the race. So Melanion married her. And once on a time it is said that out hunting they entered into the precinct of Zeus, and there taking their fill of love were changed into lions. But Hesiod and some others have said that Atalanta was not a daughter of Iasus, but of Schoeneus; and Euripides says that she was a daughter of Maenalus, and that her husband was not Melanion but Hippomenes. And by Melanion, or Ares, Atalanta had a son Parthenopaeus, who went to the war against Thebes.

Book 3, Part 5 Cite

Atlas and Pleione, daughter of Ocean, had seven daughters called the Pleiades, born to them at Cyllene in Arcadia, to wit: Alcyone, Merope, Celaeno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete, and Maia. Of these, Sterope was married to Oenomaus, and Merope to Sisyphus. And Poseidon had intercourse with two of them, first with Celaeno, by whom he had Lycus, whom Poseidon made to dwell in the Islands of the Blest, and second with Alcyone, who bore a daughter, Aethusa, the mother of Eleuther by Apollo, and two sons Hyrieus and Hyperenor. Hyrieus had Nycteus and Lycus by a nymph Clonia; and Nycteus had Antiope by Polyxo; and Antiope had Zethus and Amphion by Zeus. And Zeus consorted with the other daughters of Atlas.

Maia, the eldest, as the fruit of her intercourse with Zeus, gave birth to Hermes in a cave of Cyllene. He was laid in swaddling-bands on the winnowing fan, but he slipped out and made his way to Pieria and stole the kine which Apollo was herding. And lest he should be detected by the tracks, he put shoes on their feet and brought them to Pylus, and hid the rest in a cave; but two he sacrificed and nailed the skins to rocks, while of the flesh he boiled and ate some, and some he burned. And quickly he departed to Cyllene. And before the cave he found a tortoise browsing. He cleaned it out, strung the shell with chords made from the kine he had sacrificed, and having thus produced a lyre he invented also a plectrum. But Apollo came to Pylus in search of the kine, and he questioned the inhabitants. They said that they had seen a boy driving cattle, but could not say whither they had been driven, because they could find no track. Having discovered the thief by divination, Apollo came to Maia at Cyllene and accused Hermes. But she showed him the child in his swaddling-bands. So Apollo brought him to Zeus, and claimed the kine; and when Zeus bade him restore them, Hermes denied that he had them, but not being believed he led Apollo to Pylus and restored the kine. Howbeit, when Apollo heard the lyre, he gave the kine in exchange for it. And while Hermes pastured them, he again made himself a shepherd's pipe and piped on it. And wishing to get the pipe also, Apollo offered to give him the golden wand which he owned while he herded cattle. But Hermes wished both to get the wand for the pipe and to acquire the art of divination. So he gave the pipe and learned the art of divining by pebbles. And Zeus appointed him herald to himself and to the infernal gods.

Taygete had by Zeus a son Lacedaemon, after whom the country of Lacedaemon is called. Lacedaemon and Sparta, daughter of Eurotas ( who was a son of Lelex, a son of the soil, by a Naiad nymph Cleocharia), had a son Amyclas and a daughter Eurydice, whom Acrisius married. Amyclas and Diomede, daughter of Lapithus, had sons, Cynortes and Hyacinth. They say that this Hyacinth was beloved of Apollo and killed by him involuntarily with the cast of a quoit. Cynortes had a son Perieres, who married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, as Stesichorus says, and she bore Tyndareus, Icarius, Aphareus, and Leucippus. Aphareus and Arene, daughter of Oebalus, had sons Lynceus and Idas and Pisus; but according to many, Idas is said to have been gotten by Poseidon. Lynceus excelled in sharpness of sight, so that he could even see things underground. Leucippus had daughters, Hilaira and Phoebe: these the Dioscuri carried off and married. Besides them Leucippus begat Arsinoe: with her Apollo had intercourse, and she bore Aesculapius. But some affirm that Aesculapius was not a son of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, but that he was a son of Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas in Thessaly. And they say that Apollo loved her and at once consorted with her, but that she, against her father's judgment, preferred and cohabited with Ischys, brother of Caeneus. Apollo cursed the raven that brought the tidings and made him black instead of white, as he had been before; but he killed Coronis. As she was burning, he snatched the babe from the pyre and brought it to Chiron, the centaur, by whom he was brought up and taught the arts of healing and hunting. And having become a surgeon, and carried the art to a great pitch, he not only prevented some from dying, but even raised up the dead; for he had received from Athena the blood that flowed from the veins of the Gorgon, and while he used the blood that flowed from the veins on the left side for the bane of mankind, he used the blood that flowed from the right side for salvation, and by that means he raised the dead. I found some who are reported to have been raised by him, to wit, Capaneus and Lycurgus, as Stesichorus says in the Eriphyle; Hippolytus, as the author of the Naupactica reports; Tyndareus, as Panyasis says; Hymenaeus, as the Orphics report; and Glaucus, son of Minos, as Melesagoras relates.

But Zeus, fearing that men might acquire the healing art from him and so come to the rescue of each other, smote him with a thunderbolt. Angry on that account, Apollo slew the Cyclopes who had fashioned the thunderbolt for Zeus. But Zeus would have hurled him to Tartarus; however, at the intercession of Latona he ordered him to serve as a thrall to a man for a year. So he went to Admetus, son of Pheres, at Pherae, and served him as a herdsman, and caused all the cows to drop twins. But some say that Aphareus and Leucippus were sons of Perieres, the son of Aeolus, and that Cynortes begat Perieres, and that Perieres begat Oebalus, and that Oebalus begat Tyndareus, Hippocoon, and Icarius by a Naiad nymph Batia.

Now Hippocoon had sons, to wit: Dorycleus, Scaeus, Enarophorus, Eutiches, Bucolus, Lycaethus, Tebrus, Hippothous, Eurytus, Hippocorystes, Alcinus, and Alcon. With the help of these sons Hippocoon expelled Icarius and Tyndareus from Lacedaemon. They fled to Thestius and allied themselves with him in the war which he waged with his neighbors; and Tyndareus married Leda, daughter of Thestius. But afterwards, when Hercules slew Hippocoon and his sons, they returned, and Tyndareus succeeded to the kingdom.

Icarius and Periboea, a Naiad nymph, had five sons, Thoas, Damasippus, Imeusimus, Aletes, Perileos, and a daughter Penelope, whom Ulysses married. Tyndareus and Leda had daughters, to wit, Timandra, whom Echemus married, and Clytaemnestra, whom Agamemnon married; also another daughter Phylonoe, whom Artemis made immortal.

But Zeus in the form of a swan consorted with Leda, and on the same night Tyndareus cohabited with her; and she bore Pollux and Helen to Zeus, and Castor and Clytaemnestra to Tyndareus. But some say that Helen was a daughter of Nemesis and Zeus; for that she, flying from the arms of Zeus, changed herself into a goose, but Zeus in his turn took the likeness of a swan and so enjoyed her; and as the fruit of their loves she laid an egg, and a certain shepherd found it in the groves and brought and gave it to Leda; and she put it in a chest and kept it; and when Helen was hatched in due time, Leda brought her up as her own daughter. And when she grew into a lovely woman, Theseus carried her off and brought her to Aphidnae. But when Theseus was in Hades, Pollux and Castor marched against Aphidnae, took the city, got possession of Helen, and led Aethra, the mother of Theseus, away captive.

Now the kings of Greece repaired to Sparta to win the hand of Helen. The wooers were these:— Ulysses, son of Laertes; Diomedes, son of Tydeus; Antilochus, son of Nestor; Agapenor, son of Ancaeus; Sthenelus, son of Capaneus; Amphimachus, son of Cteatus; Thalpius, son of Eurytus; Meges, son of Phyleus; Amphilochus, son of Amphiaraus; Menestheus, son of Peteos; Schedius and Epistrophus, sons of Iphitus; Polyxenus, son of Agasthenes; Peneleos, son of Hippalcimus; Leitus, son of Alector; Ajax, son of Oileus; Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, sons of Ares; Elephenor, son of Chalcodon; Eumelus, son of Admetus; Polypoetes, son of Perithous; Leonteus, son of Coronus; Podalirius and Machaon, sons of Aesculapius; Philoctetes, son of Poeas; Eurypylus, son of Evaemon; Protesilaus, son of Iphiclus; Menelaus, son of Atreus; Ajax and Teucer, sons of Telamon; Patroclus, son of Menoetius.

Seeing the multitude of them, Tyndareus feared that the preference of one might set the others quarrelling; but Ulysses promised that, if he would help him to win the hand of Penelope, he would suggest a way by which there would be no quarrel. And when Tyndareus promised to help him, Ulysses told him to exact an oath from all the suitors that they would defend the favoured bridegroom against any wrong that might be done him in respect of his marriage. On hearing that, Tyndareus put the suitors on their oath, and while he chose Menelaus to be the bridegroom of Helen, he solicited Icarius to bestow Penelope on Ulysses.

Now Menelaus had by Helen a daughter Hermione and, according to some, a son Nicostratus; and by a female slave Pieris, an Aetolian, or, according to Acusilaus, by Tereis, he had a son Megapenthes; and by a nymph Cnossia, according to Eumelus, he had a son Xenodamus.

Book 3, Part 6 Cite

Of the sons born to Leda Castor practised the art of war, and Pollux the art of boxing; and on account of their manliness they were both called Dioscuri. And wishing to marry the daughters of Leucippus, they carried them off from Messene and wedded them; and Pollux had Mnesileus by Phoebe, and Castor had Anogon by Hilaira. And having driven booty of cattle from Arcadia, in company with Idas and Lynceus, sons of Aphareus, they allowed Idas to divide the spoil. He cut a cow in four and said that one half of the booty should be his who ate his share first, and that the rest should be his who ate his share second. And before they knew where they were, Idas had swallowed his own share first and likewise his brother's, and with him had driven off the captured cattle to Messene. But the Dioscuri marched against Messene, and drove away that cattle and much else besides. And they lay in wait for Idas and Lynceus. But Lynceus spied Castor and discovered him to Idas, who killed him. Pollux chased them and slew Lynceus by throwing his spear, but in pursuing Lynceus he was wounded in the head with a stone thrown by him, and fell down in a swoon. And Zeus smote Idas with a thunderbolt, but Pollux he carried up to heaven. Nevertheless, as Pollux refused to accept immortality while his brother Castor was dead, Zeus permitted them both to be every other day among the gods and among mortals. And when the Dioscuri were translated to the gods, Tyndareus sent for Menelaus to Sparta and handed over the kingdom to him.

Electra, daughter of Atlas, had two sons, Iasion and Dardanus, by Zeus. Now Iasion loved Demeter, and in an attempt to defile the goddess he was killed by a thunderbolt. Grieved at his brother's death, Dardanus left Samothrace and came to the opposite mainland. That country was ruled by a king, Teucer, son of the river Scamander and of a nymph Idaea, and the inhabitants of the country were called Teucrians after Teucer. Being welcomed by the king, and having received a share of the land and the king's daughter Batia, he built a city Dardanus, and when Teucer died he called the whole country Dardania.

And he had sons born to him, Ilus and Erichthonius, of whom Ilus died childless, and Erichthonius succeeded to the kingdom and marrying Astyoche, daughter of Simoeis, begat Tros. On succeeding to the kingdom, Tros called the country Troy after himself, and marrying Callirrhoe, daughter of Scamander, he begat a daughter Cleopatra, and sons, Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymede. This Ganymede, for the sake of his beauty, Zeus caught up on an eagle and appointed him cupbearer of the gods in heaven; and Assaracus had by his wife Hieromneme, daughter of Simoeis, a son Capys; and Capys had by his wife Themiste, daughter of Ilus, a son Anchises, whom Aphrodite met in love's dalliance, and to whom she bore Aeneas and Lyrus, who died childless.

But Ilus went to Phrygia, and finding games held there by the king, he was victorious in wrestling. As a prize he received fifty youths and as many maidens, and the king, in obedience to an oracle, gave him also a dappled cow and bade him found a city wherever the animal should lie down; so he followed the cow. And when she was come to what was called the hill of the Phrygian Ate, she lay down; there Ilus built a city and called it Ilium. And having prayed to Zeus that a sign might be shown to him, he beheld by day the Palladium, fallen from heaven, lying before his tent. It was three cubits in height, its feet joined together; in its right hand it held a spear aloft, and in the other hand a distaff and spindle. The story told about the Palladium is as follows: They say that when Athena was born she was brought up by Triton, who had a daughter Pallas; and that both girls practised the arts of war, but that once on a time they fell out; and when Pallas was about to strike a blow, Zeus in fear interposed the aegis, and Pallas, being startled, looked up, and so fell wounded by Athena. And being exceedingly grieved for her, Athena made a wooden image in her likeness, and wrapped the aegis, which she had feared, about the breast of it, and set it up beside Zeus and honored it. But afterwards Electra, at the time of her violation, took refuge at the image, and Zeus threw the Palladium along with Ate into the Ilian country; and Ilus built a temple for it, and honored it. Such is the legend of the Palladium. And Ilus married Eurydice, daughter of Adrastus, and begat Laomedon, who married Strymo, daughter of Scamander; but according to some his wife was Placia, daughter of Otreus, and according to others she was Leucippe; and he begat five sons, Tithonus, Lampus, Clytius, Hicetaon, Podarces, and three daughters, Hesione, Cilla, and Astyoche; and by a nymph Calybe he had a son Bucolion.

Now the Dawn snatched away Tithonus for love and brought him to Ethiopia, and there consorting with him she bore two sons, Emathion and Memnon.

But after that Ilium was captured by Hercules, as we have related a little before, Podarces, who was called Priam, came to the throne, and he married first Arisbe, daughter of Merops, by whom he had a son Aesacus, who married Asterope, daughter of Cebren, and when she died he mourned for her and was turned into a bird. But Priam handed over Arisbe to Hyrtacus and married a second wife Hecuba, daughter of Dymas, or, as some say, of Cisseus, or, as others say, of the river Sangarius and Metope. The first son born to her was Hector; and when a second babe was about to be born Hecuba dreamed she had brought forth a firebrand, and that the fire spread over the whole city and burned it. When Priam learned of the dream from Hecuba, he sent for his son Aesacus, for he was an interpreter of dreams, having been taught by his mother's father Merops. He declared that the child was begotten to be the ruin of his country and advised that the babe should be exposed. When the babe was born Priam gave it to a servant to take and expose on Ida; now the servant was named Agelaus. Exposed by him, the infant was nursed for five days by a bear; and, when he found it safe, he took it up, carried it away, brought it up as his own son on his farm, and named him Paris. When he grew to be a young man, Paris excelled many in beauty and strength, and was afterwards surnamed Alexander, because he repelled robbers and defended the flocks. And not long afterwards he discovered his parents. After him Hecuba gave birth to daughters, Creusa, Laodice, Polyxena, and Cassandra. Wishing to gain Cassandra's favours, Apollo promised to teach her the art of prophecy; she learned the art but refused her favours; hence Apollo deprived her prophecy of power to persuade. Afterwards Hecuba bore sons, Deiphobus, Helenus, Pammon, Polites, Antiphus, Hipponous, Polydorus, and Troilus: this last she is said to have had by Apollo. By other women Priam had sons, to wit, Melanippus, Gorgythion, Philaemon, Hippothous, Glaucus, Agathon, Chersidamas, Evagoras, Hippodamas, Mestor, Atas, Doryclus, Lycaon, Dryops, Bias, Chromius, Astygonus, Telestas, Evander, Cebriones, Mylius, Archemachus, Laodocus, Echephron, Idomeneus, Hyperion, Ascanius, Democoon, Aretus, Deiopites, Clonius, Echemmon, Hypirochus, Aegeoneus, Lysithous, Polymedon; and daughters, to wit, Medusa, Medesicaste, Lysimache, and Aristodeme.

Now Hector married Andromache, daughter of Eetion, and Alexander married Oenone, daughter of the river Cebren. She had learned from Rhea the art of prophecy, and warned Alexander not to sail to fetch Helen; but failing to persuade him, she told him to come to her if he were wounded, for she alone could heal him. When he had carried off Helen from Sparta and Troy was besieged, he was shot by Philoctetes with the bow of Hercules, and went back to Oenone on Ida. But she, nursing her grievance, refused to heal him. So Alexander was carried to Troy and died. But Oenone repented her, and brought the healing drugs; and finding him dead she hanged herself. The Asopus river was a son of Ocean and Tethys, or, as Acusilaus says, of Pero and Poseidon, or, according to some, of Zeus and Eurynome. Him Metope, herself a daughter of the river Ladon, married and bore two sons, Ismenus and Pelagon, and twenty daughters, of whom one, Aegina, was carried off by Zeus. In search of her Asopus came to Corinth, and learned from Sisyphus that the ravisher was Zeus. Asopus pursued him, but Zeus, by hurling thunderbolts, sent him away back to his own streams; hence coals are fetched to this day from the streams of that river. And having conveyed Aegina to the island then named Oenone, but now called Aegina after her, Zeus cohabited with her and begot a son Aeacus on her. As Aeacus was alone in the island, Zeus made the ants into men for him. And Aeacus married Endeis, daughter of Sciron, by whom he had two sons, Peleus and Telamon. But Pherecydes says that Telamon was a friend, not a brother of Peleus, he being a son of Actaeus and Glauce, daughter of Cychreus. Afterwards Aeacus cohabited with Psamathe, daughter of Nereus, who turned herself into a seal to avoid his embraces, and he begot a son Phocus. Now Aeacus was the most pious of men. Therefore, when Greece suffered from infertility on account of Pelops, because in a war with Stymphalus, king of the Arcadians, being unable to conquer Arcadia, he slew the king under a pretence of friendship, and scattered his mangled limbs, oracles of the gods declared that Greece would be rid of its present calamities if Aeacus would offer prayers on its behalf. So Aeacus did offer prayers, and Greece was delivered from the dearth. Even after his death Aeacus is honored in the abode of Pluto, and keeps the keys of Hades. As Phocus excelled in athletic sports, his brothers Peleus and Telamon plotted against him, and the lot falling on Telamon, he killed his brother in a match by throwing a quoit at his head, and with the help of Peleus carried the body and hid it in a wood. But the murder being detected, the two were driven fugitives from Aegina by Aeacus.

And Telamon betook himself to Salamis, to the court of Cychreus, son of Poseidon and Salamis, daughter of Asopus. This Cychreus became king of Salamis through killing a snake which ravaged the island, and dying childless he bequeathed the kingdom to Telamon. And Telamon married Periboea, daughter of Alcathus, son of Pelops, and called his son Ajax, because when Hercules had prayed that he might have a male child, an eagle appeared after the prayer. And having gone with Hercules on his expedition against Troy, he received as a prize Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, by whom he had a son Teucer.

Peleus fled to Phthia to the court of Eurytion, son of Actor, and was purified by him, and he received from him his daughter Antigone and the third part of the country. And a daughter Polydora was born to him, who was wedded by Borus, son of Perieres.

Thence he went with Eurytion to hunt the Calydonian boar, but in throwing a dart at the hog he involuntarily struck and killed Eurytion. Therefore flying again from Phthia he betook him to Acastus at Iolcus and was purified by him.

Book 3, Part 7 Cite

And at the games celebrated in honor of Pelias he contended in wrestling with Atalanta. And Astydamia, wife of Acastus, fell in love with Peleus, and sent him a proposal for a meeting; and when she could not prevail on him she sent word to his wife that Peleus was about to marry Sterope, daughter of Acastus; on hearing which the wife of Peleus strung herself up. And the wife of Acastus falsely accused Peleus to her husband, alleging that he had attempted her virtue. On hearing that, Acastus would not kill the man whom he had purified, but took him to hunt on Pelion. There a contest taking place in regard to the hunt, Peleus cut out and put in his pouch the tongues of the animals that fell to him, while the party of Acastus bagged his game and derided him as if he had taken nothing. But he produced them the tongues, and said that he had taken just as many animals as he had tongues. When he had fallen asleep on Pelion, Acastus deserted him, and hiding his sword in the cows' dung, returned. On arising and looking for his sword, Peleus was caught by the centaurs and would have perished, if he had not been saved by Chiron, who also restored him his sword, which he had sought and found.

Peleus married Polydora, daughter of Perieres, by whom he had a putative son Menesthius, though in fact Menesthius was the son of the river Sperchius.

Afterwards he married Thetis, daughter of Nereus, for whose hand Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals; but when Themis prophesied that the son born of Thetis would be mightier than his father, they withdrew. But some say that when Zeus was bent on gratifying his passion for her, Prometheus declared that the son borne to him by her would be lord of heaven; and others affirm that Thetis would not consort with Zeus because she had been brought up by Hera, and that Zeus in anger would marry her to a mortal. Chiron, therefore, having advised Peleus to seize her and hold her fast in spite of her shape-shifting, he watched his chance and carried her off, and though she turned, now into fire, now into water, and now into a beast, he did not let her go till he saw that she had resumed her former shape. And he married her on Pelion, and there the gods celebrated the marriage with feast and song. And Chiron gave Peleus an ashen spear, and Poseidon gave him horses, Balius and Xanthus, and these were immortal.

When Thetis had got a babe by Peleus, she wished to make it immortal, and unknown to Peleus she used to hide it in the fire by night in order to destroy the mortal element which the child inherited from its father, but by day she anointed him with ambrosia. But Peleus watched her, and, seeing the child writhing on the fire, he cried out; and Thetis, thus prevented from accomplishing her purpose, forsook her infant son and departed to the Nereids. Peleus brought the child to Chiron, who received him and fed him on the inwards of lions and wild swine and the marrows of bears, and named him Achilles, because he had not put his lips to the breast; but before that time his name was Ligyron.

After that Peleus, with Jason and the Dioscuri, laid waste Iolcus; and he slaughtered Astydamia, wife of Acastus, and, having divided her limb from limb, he led the army through her into the city.

When Achilles was nine years old, Calchas declared that Troy could not be taken without him; so Thetis, foreseeing that it was fated he should perish if he went to the war, disguised him in female garb and entrusted him as a maiden to Lycomedes. Bred at his court, Achilles had an intrigue with Deidamia, daughter of Lycomedes, and a son Pyrrhus was born to him, who was afterwards called Neoptolemus. But the secret of Achilles was betrayed, and Ulysses, seeking him at the court of Lycomedes, discovered him by the blast of a trumpet. And in that way Achilles went to Troy. He was accompanied by Phoenix, son of Amyntor. This Phoenix had been blinded by his father on the strength of a false accusation of seduction preferred against him by his father's concubine Phthia. But Peleus brought him to Chiron, who restored his sight, and thereupon Peleus made him king of the Dolopians. Achilles was also accompanied by Patroclus, son of Menoetius and Sthenele, daughter of Acastus; or the mother of Patroclus was Periopis, daughter of Pheres, or, as Philocrates says, she was Polymele, daughter of Peleus. At Opus, in a quarrel over a game of dice, Patroclus killed the boy Clitonymus, son of Amphidamas, and flying with his father he dwelt at the house of Peleus and became a minion of Achilles. [...]

Cecrops, a son of the soil, with a body compounded of man and serpent, was the first king of Attica, and the country which was formerly called Acte he named Cecropia after himself. In his time, they say, the gods resolved to take possession of cities in which each of them should receive his own peculiar worship. So Poseidon was the first that came to Attica, and with a blow of his trident on the middle of the acropolis, he produced a sea which they now call Erechtheis. After him came Athena, and, having called on Cecrops to witness her act of taking possession, she planted an olive tree, which is still shown in the Pandrosium. But when the two strove for possession of the country, Zeus parted them and appointed arbiters, not, as some have affirmed, Cecrops and Cranaus, nor yet Erysichthon, but the twelve gods. And in accordance with their verdict the country was adjudged to Athena, because Cecrops bore witness that she had been the first to plant the olive. Athena, therefore, called the city Athens after herself, and Poseidon in hot anger flooded the Thriasian plain and laid Attica under the sea.

Cecrops married Agraulus, daughter of Actaeus, and had a son Erysichthon, who departed this life childless; and Cecrops had daughters, Agraulus, Herse, and Pandrosus. Agraulus had a daughter Alcippe by Ares. In attempting to violate Alcippe, Halirrhothius, son of Poseidon and a nymph Euryte, was detected and killed by Ares. Impeached by Poseidon, Ares was tried in the Areopagus before the twelve gods, and was acquitted.

Herse had by Hermes a son Cephalus, whom Dawn loved and carried off, and consorting with him in Syria bore a son Tithonus, who had a son Phaethon, who had a son Astynous, who had a son Sandocus, who passed from Syria to Cilicia and founded a city Celenderis, and having married Pharnace, daughter of Megassares, king of Hyria, begat Cinyras. This Cinyras in Cyprus, whither he had come with some people, founded Paphos; and having there married Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, he begat Oxyporus and Adonis, and besides them daughters, Orsedice, Laogore, and Braesia. These by reason of the wrath of Aphrodite cohabited with foreigners, and ended their life in Egypt.

And Adonis, while still a boy, was wounded and killed in hunting by a boar through the anger of Artemis. Hesiod, however, affirms that he was a son of Phoenix and Alphesiboea; and Panyasis says that he was a son of Thias, king of Assyria, who had a daughter Smyrna. In consequence of the wrath of Aphrodite, for she did not honor the goddess, this Smyrna conceived a passion for her father, and with the complicity of her nurse she shared her father's bed without his knowledge for twelve nights. But when he was aware of it, he drew his sword and pursued her, and being overtaken she prayed to the gods that she might be invisible; so the gods in compassion turned her into the tree which they call smyrna ( myrrh). Ten months afterwards the tree burst and Adonis, as he is called, was born, whom for the sake of his beauty, while he was still an infant, Aphrodite hid in a chest unknown to the gods and entrusted to Persephone. But when Persephone beheld him, she would not give him back. The case being tried before Zeus, the year was divided into three parts, and the god ordained that Adonis should stay by himself for one part of the year, with Persephone for one part, and with Aphrodite for the remainder. However Adonis made over to Aphrodite his own share in addition; but afterwards in hunting he was gored and killed by a boar.

Book 3, Part 8 Cite

When Cecrops died, Cranaus came to the throne; he was a son of the soil, and it was in his time that the flood in the age of Deucalion is said to have taken place. He married a Lacedaemonian wife, Pedias, daughter of Mynes, and begat Cranae, Menaechme, and Atthis; and when Atthis died a maid, Cranaus called the country Atthis.

Cranaus was expelled by Amphictyon, who reigned in his stead; some say that Amphictyon was a son of Deucalion, others that he was a son of the soil; and when he had reigned twelve years he was expelled by Erichthonius. Some say that this Erichthonius was a son of Hephaestus and Atthis, daughter of Cranaus, and some that he was a son of Hephaestus and Athena, as follows: Athena came to Hephaestus, desirous of fashioning arms. But he, being forsaken by Aphrodite, fell in love with Athena, and began to pursue her; but she fled. When he got near her with much ado ( for he was lame), he attempted to embrace her; but she, being a chaste virgin, would not submit to him, and he dropped his seed on the leg of the goddess. In disgust, she wiped off the seed with wool and threw it on the ground; and as she fled and the seed fell on the ground, Erichthonius was produced. Him Athena brought up unknown to the other gods, wishing to make him immortal; and having put him in a chest, she committed it to Pandrosus, daughter of Cecrops, forbidding her to open the chest. But the sisters of Pandrosus opened it out of curiosity, and beheld a serpent coiled about the babe; and, as some say, they were destroyed by the serpent, but according to others they were driven mad by reason of the anger of Athena and threw themselves down from the acropolis. Having been brought up by Athena herself in the precinct, Erichthonius expelled Amphictyon and became king of Athens; and he set up the wooden image of Athena in the acropolis, and instituted the festival of the Panathenaea, and married Praxithea, a Naiad nymph, by whom he had a son Pandion.

When Erichthonius died and was buried in the same precinct of Athena, Pandion became king, in whose time Demeter and Dionysus came to Attica. But Demeter was welcomed by Celeus at Eleusis, and Dionysus by Icarius, who received from him a branch of a vine and learned the process of making wine. And wishing to bestow the god's boons on men, Icarius went to some shepherds, who, having tasted the beverage and quaffed it copiously without water for the pleasure of it, imagined that they were bewitched and killed him; but by day they understood how it was and buried him. When his daughter Erigone was searching for her father, a domestic dog, named Maera, which had attended Icarius, discovered his dead body to her, and she bewailed her father and hanged herself.

Pandion married Zeuxippe, his mother's sister, and begat two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and twin sons, Erechtheus and Butes. But war having broken out with Labdacus on a question of boundaries, he called in the help of Tereus, son of Ares, from Thrace, and having with his help brought the war to a successful close, he gave Tereus his own daughter Procne in marriage. Tereus had by her a son Itys, and having fallen in love with Philomela, he seduced her also saying that Procne was dead, for he concealed her in the country. Afterwards he married Philomela and bedded with her, and cut out her tongue. But by weaving characters in a robe she revealed thereby to Procne her own sorrows. And having sought out her sister, Procne killed her son Itys, boiled him, served him up for supper to the unwitting Tereus, and fled with her sister in haste. When Tereus was aware of what had happened, he snatched up an axe and pursued them. And being overtaken at Daulia in Phocis, they prayed the gods to be turned into birds, and Procne became a nightingale, and Philomela a swallow. And Tereus also was changed into a bird and became a hoopoe.

When Pandion died, his sons divided their father's inheritance between them, and Erechtheus got the kingdom, and Butes got the priesthood of Athena and Poseidon Erechtheus. Erechtheus married Praxithea, daughter of Phrasimus by Diogenia, daughter of Cephisus, and had sons, to wit, Cecrops, Pandorus, and Metion; and daughters, to wit, Procris, Creusa, Chthonia, and Orithyia, who was carried off by Boreas. Chthonia was married to Butes, Creusa to Xuthus, and Procris to Cephalus, son of Deion. Bribed by a golden crown, Procris admitted Pteleon to her bed, and being detected by Cephalus she fled to Minos. But he fell in love with her and tried to seduce her. Now if any woman had intercourse with Minos, it was impossible for her to escape with life; for because Minos cohabited with many women, Pasiphae bewitched him, and whenever he took another woman to his bed, he discharged wild beasts at her joints, and so the women perished. But Minos had a swift dog and a dart that flew straight; and in return for these gifts Procris shared his bed, having first given him the Circaean root to drink that he might not harm her. But afterwards, fearing the wife of Minos, she came to Athens and being reconciled to Cephalus she went forth with him to the chase; for she was fond of hunting. As she was in pursuit of game in the thicket, Cephalus, not knowing she was there, threw a dart, hit and killed Procris, and, being tried in the Areopagus, was condemned to perpetual banishment.

While Orithyia was playing by the Ilissus river, Boreas carried her off and had intercourse with her; and she bore daughters, Cleopatra and Chione, and winged sons, Zetes and Calais. These sons sailed with Jason and met their end in chasing the Harpies; but according to Acusilaus, they were killed by Hercules in Tenos.

Cleopatra was married to Phineus, who had by her two sons, Plexippus and Pandion. When he had these sons by Cleopatra, he married Idaea, daughter of Dardanus. She falsely accused her stepsons to Phineus of corrupting her virtue, and Phineus, believing her, blinded them both. But when the Argonauts sailed past with Boreas, they punished him.

Chione had connexion with Poseidon, and having given birth to Eumolpus unknown to her father, in order not to be detected, she flung the child into the deep. But Poseidon picked him up and conveyed him to Ethiopia, and gave him to Benthesicyme( a daughter of his own by Amphitrite) to bring up. When he was full grown, Benthesicyme's husband gave him one of his two daughters. But he tried to force his wife's sister, and being banished on that account, he went with his son Ismarus to Tegyrius, king of Thrace, who gave his daughter in marriage to Eumolpus's son. But being afterwards detected in a plot against Tegyrius, he fled to the Eleusinians and made friends with them. Later, on the death of Ismarus, he was sent for by Tegyrius and went, composed his old feud with him, and succeeded to the kingdom. And war having broken out between the Athenians and the Eleusinians, he was called in by the Eleusinians and fought on their side with a large force of Thracians. When Erechtheus inquired of the oracle how the Athenians might be victorious, the god answered that they would win the war if he would slaughter one of his daughters; and when he slaughtered his youngest, the others also slaughtered themselves; for, as some said, they had taken an oath among themselves to perish together. In the battle which took place after the slaughter, Erechtheus killed Eumolpus.

But Poseidon having destroyed Erechtheus and his house, Cecrops, the eldest of the sons of Erechtheus, succeeded to the throne. He married Metiadusa, daughter of Eupalamus, and begat Pandion. This Pandion, reigning after Cecrops, was expelled by the sons of Metion in a sedition, and going to Pylas at Megara married his daughter Pylia. And at a later time he was even appointed king of the city; for Pylas slew his father's brother Bias and gave the kingdom to Pandion, while he himself repaired to Peloponnese with a body of people and founded the city of Pylus. While Pandion was at Megara, he had sons born to him, to wit, Aegeus, Pallas, Nisus, and Lycus. But some say that Aegeus was a son of Scyrius, but was passed off by Pandion as his own.

After the death of Pandion his sons marched against Athens, expelled the Metionids, and divided the government in four; but Aegeus had the whole power. The first wife whom he married was Meta, daughter of Hoples, and the second was Chalciope, daughter of Rhexenor. As no child was born to him, he feared his brothers, and went to Pythia and consulted the oracle concerning the begetting of children. The god answered him: The bulging mouth of the wineskin, O best of men, Loose not until thou hast reached the height of Athens. Not knowing what to make of the oracle, he set out on his return to Athens.

Book 3, Part 9 Cite

And journeying by way of Troezen, he lodged with Pittheus, son of Pelops, who, understanding the oracle, made him drunk and caused him to lie with his daughter Aethra. But in the same night Poseidon also had connexion with her. Now Aegeus charged Aethra that, if she gave birth to a male child, she should rear it, without telling whose it was; and he left a sword and sandals under a certain rock, saying that when the boy could roll away the rock and take them up, she was then to send him away with them. But he himself came to Athens and celebrated the games of the Panathenian festival, in which Androgeus, son of Minos, vanquished all comers. Him Aegeus sent against the bull of Marathon, by which he was destroyed. But some say that as he journeyed to Thebes to take part in the games in honor of Laius, he was waylaid and murdered by the jealous competitors. But when the tidings of his death were brought to Minos, as he was sacrificing to the Graces in Paros, he threw away the garland from his head and stopped the music of the flute, but nevertheless completed the sacrifice; hence down to this day they sacrifice to the Graces in Paros without flutes and garlands.

But not long afterwards, being master of the sea, he attacked Athens with a fleet and captured Megara, then ruled by king Nisus, son of Pandion, and he slew Megareus, son of Hippomenes, who had come from Onchestus to the help of Nisus. Now Nisus perished through his daughter's treachery. For he had a purple hair on the middle of his head, and an oracle ran that when it was pulled out he should die; and his daughter Scylla fell in love with Minos and pulled out the hair. But when Minos had made himself master of Megara, he tied the damsel by the feet to the stern of the ship and drowned her. When the war lingered on and he could not take Athens, he prayed to Zeus that he might be avenged on the Athenians. And the city being visited with a famine and a pestilence, the Athenians at first, in obedience to an ancient oracle, slaughtered the daughters of Hyacinth, to wit, Antheis, Aegleis, Lytaea, and Orthaea, on the grave of Geraestus, the Cyclops; now Hyacinth, the father of the damsels, had come from Lacedaemon and dwelt in Athens. But when this was of no avail, they inquired of the oracle how they could be delivered; and the god answered them that they should give Minos whatever satisfaction he might choose. So they sent to Minos and left it to him to claim satisfaction. And Minos ordered them to send seven youths and the same number of damsels without weapons to be fodder for the Minotaur. Now the Minotaur was confined in a labyrinth, in which he who entered could not find his way out; for many a winding turn shut off the secret outward way. The labyrinth was constructed by Daedalus, whose father was Eupalamus, son of Metion, and whose mother was Alcippe; for he was an excellent architect and the first inventor of images. He had fled from Athens, because he had thrown down from the acropolis Talos, the son of his sister Perdix; for Talos was his pupil, and Daedalus feared that with his talents he might surpass himself, seeing that he had sawed a thin stick with a jawbone of a snake which he had found. But the corpse was discovered; Daedalus was tried in the Areopagus, and being condemned fled to Minos. And there Pasiphae having fallen in love with the bull of Poseidon, Daedalus acted as her accomplice by contriving a wooden cow, and he constructed the labyrinth, to which the Athenians every year sent seven youths and as many damsels to be fodder for the Minotaur.

Aethra bore to Aegeus a son Theseus, and when he was grown up, he pushed away the rock and took up the sandals and the sword, and hastened on foot to Athens. And he cleared the road, which had been beset by evildoers. For first in Epidaurus he slew Periphetes, son of Hephaestus and Anticlia, who was surnamed the Clubman from the club which he carried. For being crazy on his legs he carried an iron club, with which he despatched the passers-by. That club Theseus wrested from him and continued to carry about.

Second, he killed Sinis, son of Polypemon and Sylea, daughter of Corinthus. This Sinis was surnamed the Pine-bender; for inhabiting the Isthmus of Corinth he used to force the passersby to keep bending pine trees; but they were too weak to do so, and being tossed up by the trees they perished miserably. In that way also Theseus killed Sinis.

Contents — 7 sections

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7

Chapter 1 Cite

Third, he slew at Crommyon the sow that was called Phaea after the old woman who bred it; that sow, some say, was the offspring of Echidna and Typhon.

Fourth, he slew Sciron, the Corinthian, son of Pelops, or, as some say, of Poseidon. He in the Megarian territory held the rocks called after him Scironian, and compelled passers-by to wash his feet, and in the act of washing he kicked them into the deep to be the prey of a huge turtle.

But Theseus seized him by the feet and threw him into the sea. Fifth, in Eleusis he slew Cercyon, son of Branchus and a nymph Argiope. This Cercyon compelled passers-by to wrestle, and in wrestling killed them. But Theseus lifted him up on high and dashed him to the ground.

Sixth, he slew Damastes, whom some call Polypemon. He had his dwelling beside the road, and made up two beds, one small and the other big; and offering hospitality to the passers-by, he laid the short men on the big bed and hammered them, to make them fit the bed; but the tall men he laid on the little bed and sawed off the portions of the body that projected beyond it. So, having cleared the road, Theseus came to Athens.

But Medea, being then wedded to Aegeus, plotted against him and persuaded Aegeus to beware of him as a traitor. And Aegeus, not knowing his own son, was afraid and sent him against the Marathonian bull.

And when Theseus had killed it, Aegeus presented to him a poison which he had received the selfsame day from Medea. But just as the draught was about to be administered to him, he gave his father the sword, and on recognizing it Aegeus dashed the cup from his hands. And when Theseus was thus made known to his father and informed of the plot, he expelled Medea.

And he was numbered among those who were to be sent as the third tribute to the Minotaur; or, as some affirm, he offered himself voluntarily. And as the ship had a black sail, Aegeus charged his son, if he returned alive, to spread white sails on the ship.

And when he came to Crete, Ariadne, daughter of Minos, being amorously disposed to him, offered to help him if he would agree to carry her away to Athens and have her to wife. Theseus having agreed on oath to do so, she besought Daedalus to disclose the way out of the labyrinth.

And at his suggestion she gave Theseus a clue when he went in; Theseus fastened it to the door, and, drawing it after him, entered in. And having found the Minotaur in the last part of the labyrinth, he killed him by smiting him with his fists; and drawing the clue after him made his way out again. And by night he arrived with Ariadne and the children at Naxos. There Dionysus fell in love with Ariadne and carried her off; and having brought her to Lemnos he enjoyed her, and begat Thoas, Staphylus, Oenopion, and Peparethus.

In his grief on account of Ariadne, Theseus forgot to spread white sails on his ship when he stood for port; and Aegeus, seeing from the acropolis the ship with a black sail, supposed that Theseus had perished; so he cast himself down and died.

But Theseus succeeded to the sovereignty of Athens, and killed the sons of Pallas, fifty in number; likewise all who would oppose him were killed by him, and he got the whole government to himself.

On being apprized of the flight of Theseus and his company, Minos shut up the guilty Daedalus in the labyrinth, along with his son Icarus, who had been borne to Daedalus by Naucrate, a female slave of Minos. But Daedalus constructed wings for himself and his son, and enjoined his son, when he took to flight, neither to fly high, lest the glue should melt in the sun and the wings should drop off, nor to fly near the sea, lest the pinions should be detached by the damp.

But the infatuated Icarus, disregarding his father's injunctions, soared ever higher, till, the glue melting, he fell into the sea called after him Icarian, and perished. But Daedalus made his way safely to Camicus in Sicily.

And Minos pursued Daedalus, and in every country that he searched he carried a spiral shell and promised to give a great reward to him who should pass a thread through the shell, believing that by that means he should discover Daedalus. And having come to Camicus in Sicily, to the court of Cocalus, with whom Daedalus was concealed, he showed the spiral shell. Cocalus took it, and promised to thread it, and gave it to Daedalus;

and Daedalus fastened a thread to an ant, and, having bored a hole in the spiral shell, allowed the ant to pass through it. But when Minos found the thread passed through the shell, he perceived that Daedalus was with Cocalus, and at once demanded his surrender. Cocalus promised to surrender him, and made an entertainment for Minos; but after his bath Minos was undone by the daughters of Cocalus; some say, however, that he died through being drenched with boiling water.

Theseus joined Hercules in his expedition against the Amazons and carried off Antiope, or, as some say, Melanippe; but Simonides calls her Hippolyte. Wherefore the Amazons marched against Athens, and having taken up a position about the Areopagus they were vanquished by the Athenians under Theseus. And though he had a son Hippolytus by the Amazon,

Theseus afterwards received from Deucalion in marriage Phaedra, daughter of Minos; and when her marriage was being celebrated, the Amazon that had before been married to him appeared in arms with her Amazons, and threatened to kill the assembled guests. But they hastily closed the doors and killed her. However, some say that she was slain in battle by Theseus.

And Phaedra, after she had borne two children, Acamas and Demophon, to Theseus, fell in love with the son he had by the Amazon, to wit, Hippolytus, and besought him to lie with her. Howbeit, he fled from her embraces, because he hated all women. But Phaedra, fearing that he might accuse her to his father, cleft open the doors of her bed-chamber, rent her garments, and falsely charged Hippolytus with an assault.

Theseus believed her and prayed to Poseidon that Hippolytus might perish. So, when Hippolytus was riding in his chariot and driving beside the sea, Poseidon sent up a bull from the surf, and the horses were frightened, the chariot dashed in pieces, and Hippolytus, entangled in the reins, was dragged to death. And when her passion was made public, Phaedra hanged herself.

Ixion fell in love with Hera and attempted to force her; and when Hera reported it, Zeus, wishing to know if the thing were so, made a cloud in the likeness of Hera and laid it beside him; and when Ixion boasted that he had enjoyed the favours of Hera, Zeus bound him to a wheel, on which he is whirled by winds through the air; such is the penalty he pays. And the cloud, impregnated by Ixion, gave birth to Centaurus.

And Theseus allied himself with Pirithous, when he engaged in war against the centaurs. For when Pirithous wooed Hippodamia, he feasted the centaurs because they were her kinsmen. But being unaccustomed to wine, they made themselves drunk by swilling it greedily, and when the bride was brought in, they attempted to violate her. But Pirithous, fully armed, with Theseus, joined battle with them, and Theseus killed many of them.

Caeneus was formerly a woman, but after that Poseidon had intercourse with her, she asked to become an invulnerable man; wherefore in the battle with the centaurs he thought scorn of wounds and killed many of the centaurs; but the rest of them surrounded him and by striking him with fir trees buried him in the earth.

Having made a compact with Pirithous that they would marry daughters of Zeus, Theseus, with the help of Pirithous, carried off Helen from Sparta for himself, when she was twelve years old, and in the endeavor to win Persephone as a bride for Pirithous he went down to Hades. And the Dioscuri, with the Lacedaemonians and Arcadians, captured Athens and carried away Helen, and with her Aethra, daughter of Pittheus, into captivity; but Demophon and Acamas fled. And the Dioscuri also brought back Menestheus from exile, and gave him the sovereignty of Athens.

But when Theseus arrived with Pirithous in Hades, he was beguiled; for, on the pretence that they were about to partake of good cheer, Hades bade them first be seated on the Chair of Forgetfulness, to which they grew and were held fast by coils of serpents. Pirithous, therefore, remained bound for ever, but Hercules brought Theseus up and sent him to Athens. Thence he was driven by Menestheus and went to Lycomedes, who threw him down an abyss and killed him.

Chapter 2 Cite

Tantalus is punished in Hades by having a stone impending over him, by being perpetually in a lake and seeing at his shoulders on either side trees with fruit growing beside the lake. The water touches his jaws, but when he would take a draught of it, the water dries up; and when he would partake of the fruits, the trees with the fruits are lifted by winds as high as the clouds. Some say that he is thus punished because he blabbed to men the mysteries of the gods, and because he attempted to share ambrosia with his fellows.

Broteas, a hunter, did not honor Artemis, and said that even fire could not hurt him. So he went mad and threw himself into fire.

Pelops, after being slaughtered and boiled at the banquet of the gods, was fairer than ever when he came to life again, and on account of his surpassing beauty he became a minion of Poseidon, who gave him a winged chariot, such that even when it ran through the sea the axles were not wet.

Now Oenomaus, the king of Pisa, had a daughter Hippodamia, and whether it was that he loved her, as some say, or that he was warned by an oracle that he must die by the man that married her, no man got her to wife; for her father could not persuade her to cohabit with him, and her suitors were put by him to death.

For he had arms and horses given him by Ares, and he offered as a prize to the suitors the hand of his daughter, and each suitor was bound to take up Hippodamia on his own chariot and flee as far as the Isthmus of Corinth, and Oenomaus straightway pursued him, in full armour, and if he overtook him he slew him; but if the suitor were not overtaken, he was to have Hippodamia to wife. And in this way he slew many suitors, some say twelve; and he cut off the heads of the suitors and nailed them to his house.

So Pelops also came a-wooing; and when Hippodamia saw his beauty, she conceived a passion for him, and persuaded Myrtilus, son of Hermes, to help him; for Myrtilus was charioteer to Oenomaus.

Accordingly Myrtilus, being in love with her and wishing to gratify her, did not insert the linchpins in the boxes of the wheels, and thus caused Oenomaus to lose the race and to be entangled in the reins and dragged to death; but according to some, he was killed by Pelops. And in dying he cursed Myrtilus, whose treachery he had discovered, praying that he might perish by the hand of Pelops.

Pelops, therefore, got Hippodamia; and on his journey, in which he was accompanied by Myrtilus, he came to a certain place, and withdrew a little to fetch water for his wife, who was athirst; and in the meantime Myrtilus tried to rape her. But when Pelops learned that from her, he threw Myrtilus into the sea, called after him the Myrtoan Sea, at Cape Geraestus; and Myrtilus, as he was being thrown, uttered curses against the house of Pelops.

When Pelops had reached the Ocean and been cleansed by Hephaestus, he returned to Pisa in Elis and succeeded to the kingdom of Oenomaus, but not till he had subjugated what was formerly called Apia and Pelasgiotis, which he called Peloponnesus after himself.

The sons of Pelops were Pittheus, Atreus, Thyestes, and others. Now the wife of Atreus was Aerope, daughter of Catreus, and she loved Thyestes. And Atreus once vowed to sacrifice to Artemis the finest of his flocks; but when a golden lamb appeared, they say that he neglected to perform his vow,

and having choked the lamb, he deposited it in a box and kept it there, and Aerope gave it to Thyestes, by whom she had been debauched. For the Mycenaeans had received an oracle which bade them choose a Pelopid for their king, and they had sent for Atreus and Thyestes. And when a discussion took place concerning the kingdom, Thyestes declared to the multitude that the kingdom ought to belong to him who owned the golden lamb, and when Atreus agreed, Thyestes produced the lamb and was made king.

But Zeus sent Hermes to Atreus and told him to stipulate with Thyestes that Atreus should be king if the sun should go backward; and when Thyestes agreed, the sun set in the east; hence the deity having plainly attested the usurpation of Thyestes, Atreus got the kingdom and banished Thyestes.

But afterwards being apprized of the adultery, he sent a herald to Thyestes with a proposal of accommodation; and when he had lured Thyestes by a pretence of friendship, he slaughtered the sons, Aglaus, Callileon, and Orchomenus, whom Thyestes had by a Naiad nymph, though they had sat down as suppliants on the altar of Zeus. And having cut them limb from limb and boiled them, he served them up to Thyestes without the extremities; and when Thyestes had eaten heartily of them, he showed him the extremities, and cast him out of the country.

But seeking by all means to pay Atreus out, Thyestes inquired of the oracle on the subject, and received an answer that it could be done if he were to beget a son by intercourse with his own daughter. He did so accordingly, and begot Aegisthus by his daughter. And Aegisthus, when he was grown to manhood and had learned that he was a son of Thyestes, killed Atreus, and restored the kingdom to Thyestes.

But the nurse took Agamemnon and Menelaus to Polyphides, lord of Sicyon, who again sent them to Oeneus, the Aetolian. Not long afterwards Tyndareus brought them back again, and they drove away Thyestes to dwell in Cytheria, after that they had taken an oath of him at the altar of Hera, to which he had fled. And they became the sons-in-law of Tyndareus by marrying his daughters, Agamemnon getting Clytaemnestra to wife, after he had slain her spouse Tantalus, the son of Thyestes, together with his newborn babe, while Menelaus got Helen.

And Agamemnon reigned over the Mycenaeans and married Clytaemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus, after slaying her former husband Tantalus, son of Thyestes, with his child. And there were born to Agamemnon a son Orestes, and daughters, Chrysothemis, Electra, and Iphigenia. And Menelaus married Helen and reigned over Sparta, Tyndareus having ceded the kingdom to him.

Chapter 3 Cite

But afterwards Alexander carried off Helen, as some say, because such was the will of Zeus, in order that his daughter might be famous for having embroiled Europe and Asia; or, as others have said, that the race of the demigods might be exalted.

For one of these reasons Strife threw an apple as a prize of beauty to be contended for by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite; and Zeus commanded Hermes to lead them to Alexander on Ida in order to be judged by him. And they promised to give Alexander gifts. Hera said that if she were preferred to all women, she would give him the kingdom over all men; and Athena promised victory in war, and Aphrodite the hand of Helen. And he decided in favour of Aphrodite; and sailed away to Sparta with ships built by Phereclus.

For nine days he was entertained by Menelaus; but on the tenth day, Menelaus having gone on a journey to Crete to perform the obsequies of his mother's father Catreus, Alexander persuaded Helen to go off with him. And she abandoned Hermione, then nine years old, and putting most of the property on board, she set sail with him by night.

But Hera sent them a heavy storm which forced them to put in at Sidon. And fearing lest he should be pursued, Alexander spent much time in Phoenicia and Cyprus. But when he thought that all chance of pursuit was over, he came to Troy with Helen.

But some say that Hermes, in obedience to the will of Zeus, stole Helen and carried her to Egypt, and gave her to Proteus, king of the Egyptians, to guard, and that Alexander repaired to Troy with a phantom of Helen fashioned out of clouds.

When Menelaus was aware of the rape, he came to Agamemnon at Mycenae, and begged him to muster an army against Troy and to raise levies in Greece. And he, sending a herald to each of the kings, reminded them of the oaths which they had sworn, and warned them to look to the safety each of his own wife, saying that the affront had been offered equally to the whole of Greece. And while many were eager to join in the expedition, some repaired also to Ulysses in Ithaca.

But he, not wishing to go to the war, feigned madness. However, Palamedes, son of Nauplius, proved his madness to be fictitious; and when Ulysses pretended to rave, Palamedes followed him, and snatching Telemachus from Penelope's bosom, drew his sword as if he would kill him. And in his fear for the child Ulysses confessed that his madness was pretended, and he went to the war.

Having taken a Phrygian prisoner, Ulysses compelled him to write a letter of treasonable purport ostensibly sent by Priam to Palamedes; and having buried gold in the quarters of Palamedes, he dropped the letter in the camp. Agamemnon read the letter, found the gold, and delivered up Palamedes to the allies to be stoned as a traitor.

Menelaus went with Ulysses and Talthybius to Cinyras in Cyprus and tried to persuade him to join the allies. He made a present of breastplates to the absent Agamemnon, and swore he would send fifty ships, but he sent only one, commanded by the son of Mygdalion, and the rest he moulded out of earth and launched them in the sea.

The daughters of Anius, the son of Apollo, to wit, Elais, Spermo, and Oeno, are called the Wine-growers: Dionysus granted them the power of producing oil, corn, and wine from the earth.

The armament mustered in Aulis. The men who went to the Trojan war were as follows:— Of the Boeotians, ten leaders: they brought forty ships. Of the Orchomenians, four: they brought thirty ships. Of the Phocians, four leaders: they brought forty ships. Of the Locrians, Ajax, son of Oeleus: he brought forty ships. Of the Euboeans, Elephenor, son of Chalcodon and Alcyone: he brought forty ships. Of the Athenians, Menestheus: he brought fifty ships. Of the Salaminians, Telamonian Ajax: he brought twelve ships.

Of the Argives, Diomedes, son of Tydeus, and his company: they brought eighty ships. Of the Mycenaeans, Agamemnon, son of Atreus and Aerope: a hundred ships. Of the Lacedaemonians, Menelaus, son of Atreus and Aerope: sixty ships. Of the Pylians, Nestor, son of Neleus and Chloris: forty ships. Of the Arcadians, Agapenor: seven ships. Of the Eleans, Amphimachus and his company: forty ships. Of the Dulichians, Meges, son of Phyleus: forty ships. Of the Cephallenians, Ulysses, son of Laertes and Anticlia: twelve ships. Of the Aetolians, Thoas, son of Andraemon and Gorge: he brought forty ships.

Of the Cretans, Idomeneus, son of Deucalion: forty ships. Of the Rhodians, Tlepolemus, son of Hercules and Astyoche: nine ships. Of the Symaeans, Nireus, son of Charopus: three ships. Of the Coans, Phidippus and Antiphus, the sons of Thessalus: thirty ships.

Of the Myrmidons, Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis: fifty ships. From Phylace, Protesilaus, son of Iphiclus: forty ships. Of the Pheraeans, Eumelus, son of Admetus: eleven ships. Of the Olizonians, Philoctetes, son of Poeas: seven ships. Of the Aeanianians, Guneus, son of Ocytus: twenty-two ships. Of the Triccaeans, Podalirius:thirty ships. Of the Ormenians, Eurypylus: forty ships. Of the Gyrtonians, Polypoetes, son of Pirithous: thirty ships. Of the Magnesians, Prothous, son of Tenthredon: forty ships. The total of ships was one thousand and thirteen; of leaders, forty-three; of leaderships, thirty.

When the armament was in Aulis, after a sacrifice to Apollo, a serpent darted from the altar beside the neighboring plane-tree, in which there was a nest; and having consumed the eight sparrows in the nest, together with the mother bird, which made the ninth, it was turned to stone. Calchas said that this sign was given them by the will of Zeus, and he inferred from what had happened that Troy was destined to be taken in a period of ten years. And they made ready to sail against Troy.

So Agamemnon in person was in command of the whole army, and Achilles was admiral, being fifteen years old.

But not knowing the course to steer for Troy, they put in to Mysia and ravaged it, supposing it to be Troy. Now Telephus son of Hercules, was king of the Mysians, and seeing the country pillaged, he armed the Mysians, chased the Greeks in a crowd to the ships, and killed many, among them Thersander, son of Polynices, who had made a stand. But when Achilles rushed at him, Telephus did not abide the onset and was pursued, and in the pursuit he was entangled in a vine-branch and wounded with a spear in the thigh.

Departing from Mysia, the Greeks put to sea, and a violent storm coming on, they were separated from each other and landed in their own countries. So the Greeks returned at that time, and it is said that the war lasted twenty years. For it was in the second year after the rape of Helen that the Greeks, having completed their preparations, set out on the expedition and after their retirement from Mysia to Greece eight years elapsed before they again returned to Argos and came to Aulis.

Having again assembled at Aulis after the aforesaid interval of eight years, they were in great perplexity about the voyage, because they had no leader who could show them the way to Troy.

But Telephus, because his wound was unhealed, and Apollo had told him that he would be cured when the one who wounded him should turn physician, came from Mysia to Argos, clad in rags, and begged the help of Achilles, promising to show the course to steer for Troy. So Achilles healed him by scraping off the rust of his Pelian spear. Accordingly, on being healed, Telephus showed the course to steer, and the accuracy of his information was confirmed by Calchas by means of his own art of divination.

But when they had put to sea from Argos and arrived for the second time at Aulis, the fleet was windbound, and Calchas said that they could not sail unless the fairest of Agamemnon's daughters were presented as a sacrifice to Artemis; for the goddess was angry with Agamemnon, both because, on shooting a deer, he had said, “ Artemis herself could not ( do it better),” and because Atreus had not sacrificed to her the golden lamb.

On receipt of this oracle, Agamemnon sent Ulysses and Talthybius to Clytaemnestra and asked for Iphigenia, alleging a promise of his to give her to Achilles to wife in reward for his military service. So Clytaemnestra sent her, and Agamemnon set her beside the altar, and was about to slaughter her, when Artemis carried her off to the Taurians and appointed her to be her priestess, substituting a deer for her at the altar; but some say that Artemis made her immortal.

After putting to sea from Aulis they touched at Tenedos. It was ruled by Tenes, son of Cycnus and Proclia, but according to some, he was a son of Apollo. He dwelt there because he had been banished by his father.

For Cycnus had a son Tenes and a daughter Hemithea by Proclia, daughter of Laomedon, but he afterwards married Philonome, daughter of Tragasus; and she fell in love with Tenes, and, failing to seduce him, falsely accused him to Cycnus of attempting to debauch her, and in witness of it she produced a flute-player, by name Eumolpus.

Cycnus believed her, and putting him and his sister in a chest he set them adrift on the sea. The chest was washed up on the island of Leucophrys, and Tenes landed and settled in the island, and called it Tenedos after himself. But Cycnus afterwards learning the truth, stoned the flute-player to death and buried his wife alive in the earth.

So when the Greeks were standing in for Tenedos, Tenes saw them and tried to keep them off by throwing stones, but was killed by Achilles with a sword-cut in the breast, though Thetis had forewarned Achilles not to kill Tenes, because he himself would die by the hand of Apollo if he slew Tenes.

and as they were offering a sacrifice to Apollo, a water-snake approached from the altar and bit Philoctetes; and as the sore did not heal and grew noisome, the army could not endure the stench, and Ulysses, by the orders of Agamemnon, put him ashore on the island of Lemnos, with the bow of Hercules which he had in his possession; and there, by shooting birds with the bow, he subsisted in the wilderness.

Putting to sea from Tenedos they made sail for Troy, and sent Ulysses and Menelaus to demand the restoration of Helen and the property. But the Trojans, having summoned an assembly, not only refused to restore Helen, but threatened to kill the envoys.

These were, however, saved by Antenor; but the Greeks, exasperated at the insolence of the barbarians, stood to arms and made sail against them. Now Thetis charged Achilles not to be the first to land from the ships, because the first to land would be the first to die. Being apprized of the hostile approach of the fleet, the barbarians marched in arms to the sea, and endeavored by throwing stones to prevent the landing.

Of the Greeks the first to land from his ship was Protesilaus, and having slain not a few of the barbarians, he fell by the hand of Hector. His wife Laodamia loved him even after his death, and she made an image of him and consorted with it. The gods had pity on her, and Hermes brought up Protesilaus from Hades. On seeing him, Laodamia thought it was himself returned from Troy, and she was glad; but when he was carried back to Hades, she stabbed herself to death.

On the death of Protesilaus, Achilles landed with the Myrmidons, and throwing a stone at the head of Cycnus, killed him. When the barbarians saw him dead, they fled to the city, and the Greeks, leaping from their ships, filled the plain with bodies. and having shut up the Trojans, they besieged them; and they drew up the ships.

The barbarians showing no courage, Achilles waylaid Troilus and slaughtered him in the sanctuary of Thymbraean Apollo, and coming by night to the city he captured Lycaon. Moreover, taking some of the chiefs with him, Achilles laid waste the country, and made his way to Ida to lift the kine of Aeneas. But Aeneas fled, and Achilles killed the neatherds and Nestor, son of Priam, and drove away the kine.

He also took Lesbos and Phocaea, then Colophon, and Smyrna, and Clazomenae, and Cyme; and afterwards Aegialus and Tenos, the so-called Hundred Cities; then, in order, Adramytium and Side; then Endium, and Linaeum, and Colone. He took also Hypoplacian Thebes and Lyrnessus, and further Antandrus, and many other cities.

A period of nine years having elapsed, allies came to join the Trojans: from the surrounding cities, Aeneas, son of Anchises, and with him Archelochus and Acamas, sons of Antenor, and Theanus, leaders of the Dardanians; of the Thracians, Acamas, son of Eusorus; of the Cicones, Euphemus, son of Troezenus; of the Paeonians, Pyraechmes; of the Paphlagonians, Pylaemenes, son of Bilsates;

from Zelia, Pandarus, son of Lycaon; from Adrastia, Adrastus and Amphius, sons of Merops; from Arisbe, Asius, son of Hyrtacus; from Larissa, Hippothous, son of Pelasgus; from Mysia, Chromius and Ennomus, sons of Arsinous; of the Alizones, Odius and Epistrophus, sons of Mecisteus; of the Phrygians, Phorcys and Ascanius, sons of Aretaon; of the Maeonians, Mesthles and Antiphus, sons of Talaemenes; of the Carians, Nastes and Amphimachus, sons of Nomion; of the Lycians, Sarpedon, son of Zeus, and Glaucus, son of Hippolochus.

Chapter 4 Cite

Achilles did not go forth to the war, because he was angry on account of Briseis, [...] the daughter of Chryses the priest. Therefore the barbarians took heart of grace and sallied out of the city. And Alexander fought a single combat with Menelaus; and when Alexander got the worst of it, Aphrodite carried him off. And Pandarus, by shooting an arrow at Menelaus, broke the truce.

Diomedes, doing doughty deeds, wounded Aphrodite when she came to the help of Aeneas; and encountering Glaucus, he recalled the friendship of their fathers and exchanged arms. And Hector having challenged the bravest to single combat, many came forward, but the lot fell on Ajax, and he did doughty deeds; but night coming on, the heralds parted them.

The Greeks made a wall and a ditch to protect the roadstead, and a battle taking place in the plain, the Trojans chased the Greeks within the wall. But the Greeks sent Ulysses, Phoenix, and Ajax as ambassadors to Achilles, begging him to fight for them, and promising Briseis and other gifts.

And night coming on, they sent Ulysses and Diomedes as spies; and these killed Dolon, son of Eumelus, and Rhesus, the Thracian ( who had arrived the day before as an ally of the Trojans, and having not yet engaged in the battle was encamped at some distance from the Trojan force and apart from Hector); they also slew the twelve men that were sleeping around him, and drove the horses to the ships.

But by day a fierce fight took place; Agamemnon and Diomedes, Ulysses, Eurypylus, and Machaon were wounded, the Greeks were put to flight Hector made a breach in the wall and entered and, Ajax having retreated, he set fire to the ships.

But when Achilles saw the ship of Protesilaus burning, he sent out Patroclus with the Myrmidons, after arming him with his own arms and giving him the horses. Seeing him the Trojans thought that he was Achilles and turned to flee. And having chased them within the wall, he killed many, amongst them Sarpedon, son of Zeus, and was himself killed by Hector, after being first wounded by Euphorbus.

And a fierce fight taking place for the corpse, Ajax with difficulty, by performing feats of valor, rescued the body. And Achilles laid aside his anger and recovered Briseis. And a suit of armour having been brought him from Hephaestus, he donned the armour and went forth to the war, and chased the Trojans in a crowd to the Scamander, and there killed many, and amongst them Asteropaeus, son of Pelegon, son of the river Axius; and the river rushed at him in fury. But Hephaestus dried up the streams of the river, after chasing them with a mighty flame. And Achilles slew Hector in single combat, and fastening his ankles to his chariot dragged him to the ships. And having buried Patroclus, he celebrated games in his honor, at which Diomedes was victorious in the chariot race, Epeus in boxing, and Ajax and Ulysses in wrestling. And after the games Priam came to Achilles and ransomed the body of Hector, and buried it.

Chapter 5 Cite

Penthesilia, daughter of Otrere and Ares, accidentally killed Hippolyte and was purified by Priam. In battle she slew many, and amongst them Machaon, and was afterwards herself killed by Achilles, who fell in love with the Amazon after her death and slew Thersites for jeering at him.

Hippolyte was the mother of Hippolytus; she also goes by the names of Glauce and Melanippe. For when the marriage of Phaedra was being celebrated, Hippolyte appeared in arms with her Amazons, and said that she would slay the guests of Theseus. So a battle took place, and she was killed, whether involuntarily by her ally Penthesilia, or by Theseus, or because his men, seeing the threatening attitude of the Amazons, hastily closed the doors and so intercepted and slew her.

Memnon, the son of Tithonus and the Dawn, came with a great force of Ethiopians to Troy against the Greeks, and having slain many of the Greeks, including Antilochus, he was himself slain by Achilles. Having chased the Trojans also, Achilles was shot with an arrow in the ankle by Alexander and Apollo at the Scaean gate.

A fight taking place for the corpse, Ajax killed Glaucus, and gave the arms to be conveyed to the ships, but the body he carried, in a shower of darts, through the midst of the enemy, while Ulysses fought his assailants.

The death of Achilles filled the army with dismay, and they buried him with Patroclus in the White Isle, mixing the bones of the two together. It is said that after death Achilles consorts with Medea in the Isles of the Blest. And they held games in his honor, at which Eumelus won the chariot-race, Diomedes the footrace, Ajax the quoit match, and Teucer the competition in archery.

Also his arms were offered as a prize to the bravest, and Ajax and Ulysses came forward as competitors. The judges were the Trojans or, according to some, the allies, and Ulysses was preferred. Disordered by chagrin, Ajax planned a nocturnal attack on the army. And Athena drove him mad, and turned him, sword in hand, among the cattle, and in his frenzy he slaughtered the cattle with the herdsmen, taking them for the Achaeans.

But afterwards he came to his senses and slew also himself. And Agamemnon forbade his body to be burnt; and he alone of all who fell at Ilium is buried, in a coffin. His grave is at Rhoeteum.

When the war had already lasted ten years, and the Greeks were despondent, Calchas prophesied to them that Troy could not be taken unless they had the bow and arrows of Hercules fighting on their side. On hearing that, Ulysses went with Diomedes to Philoctetes in Lemnos, and having by craft got possession of the bow and arrows he persuaded him to sail to Troy. So he went, and after being cured by Podalirius, he shot Alexander.

After the death of Alexander, Helenus and Deiphobus quarrelled as to which of them should marry Helen; and as Deiphobus was preferred, Helenus left Troy and abode in Ida. But as Chalcas said that Helenus knew the oracles that protected the city, Ulysses waylaid and captured him and brought him to the camp;

and Helenus was forced to tell how Ilium could be taken, to wit, first, if the bones of Pelops were brought to them; next, if Neoptolemus fought for them; and third, if the Palladium, which had fallen from heaven, were stolen from Troy, for while it was within the walls the city could not be taken.

On hearing these things the Greeks caused the bones of Pelops to be fetched, and they sent Ulysses and Phoenix to Lycomedes at Scyros, and these two persuaded him to let Neoptolemus go. On coming to the camp and receiving his father's arms from Ulysses, who willingly resigned them, Neoptolemus slew many of the Trojans.

Afterwards, Eurypylus, son of Telephus, arrived to fight for the Trojans, bringing a great force of Mysians. He performed doughty deeds, but was slain by Neoptolemus.

And Ulysses went with Diomedes by night to the city, and there he let Diomedes wait, and after disfiguring himself and putting on mean attire he entered unknown into the city as a beggar. And being recognized by Helen, he with her help stole away the Palladium, and after killing many of the guards, brought it to the ships with the aid of Diomedes.

But afterwards he invented the construction of the Wooden Horse and suggested it to Epeus, who was an architect. Epeus felled timber on Ida, and constructed the horse with a hollow interior and an opening in the sides. Into this horse Ulysses persuaded fifty ( or, according to the author of the Little Iliad, three thousand) of the doughtiest to enter, while the rest, when night had fallen, were to burn their tents, and, putting to sea, to lie to off Tenedos, but to sail back to land after the ensuing night.

They followed the advice of Ulysses and introduced the doughtiest into the horse, after appointing Ulysses their leader and engraving on the horse an inscription which signified, “ For their return home, the Greeks dedicate this thank—offering to Athena.” But they themselves burned their tents, and leaving Sinon, who was to light a beacon as a signal to them, they put to sea by night, and lay to off Tenedos.

And at break of day, when the Trojans beheld the camp of the Greeks deserted and believed that they had fled, they with great joy dragged the horse, and stationing it beside the palace of Priam deliberated what they should do.

As Cassandra said that there was an armed force in it, and she was further confirmed by Laocoon, the seer, some were for burning it, and others for throwing it down a precipice; but as most were in favour of sparing it as a votive offering sacred to a divinity, they betook them to sacrifice and feasting.

However, Apollo sent them a sign; for two serpents swam through the sea from the neighboring islands and devoured the sons of Laocoon.

And when night fell, and all were plunged in sleep, the Greeks drew near by sea from Tenedos, and Sinon kindled the beacon on the grave of Achilles to guide them. And Helen, going round the horse, called the chiefs, imitating the voices of each of their wives. But when Anticlus would have answered, Ulysses held fast his mouth.

and when they thought that their foes were asleep, they opened the horse and came forth with their arms. The first, Echion, son of Portheus, was killed by leaping from it; but the rest let themselves down by a rope, and lighted on the walls, and having opened the gates they admitted their comrades who had landed from Tenedos.

And marching, arms in hand, into the city, they entered the houses and slew the sleepers. Neoptolemus slew Priam, who had taken refuge at the altar of Zeus of the Courtyard. But when Glaucus, son of Antenor, fled to his house, Ulysses and Menelaus recognized and rescued him by their armed intervention. Aeneas took up his father Anchises and fled, and the Greeks let him alone on account of his piety.

But Menelaus slew Deiphobus and led away Helen to the ships; and Aethra, mother of Theseus, was also led away by Demophon and Acamas, the sons of Theseus; for they say that they afterwards went to Troy. And the Locrian Ajax, seeing Cassandra clinging to the wooden image of Athena, violated her; therefore they say that the image looks to heaven.

And having slain the Trojans, they set fire to the city and divided the spoil among them. And having sacrificed to all the gods, they threw Astyanax from the battlements and slaughtered Polyxena on the grave of Achilles. And as special awards Agamemnon got Cassandra, Neoptolemus got Andromache, and Ulysses got Hecuba. But some say that Helenus got her, and crossed over with her to the Chersonese ; and that there she turned into a bitch, and he buried her at the place now called the Bitch's Tomb. As for Laodice, the fairest of the daughters of Priam, she was swallowed up by a chasm in the earth in the sight of all. When they had laid Troy waste and were about to sail away, they were detained by Calchas, who said that Athena was angry with them on account of the impiety of Ajax. And they would have killed Ajax, but he fled to the altar and they let him alone.

Chapter 6 Cite

After these things they met in assembly, and Agamemnon and Menelaus quarrelled, Menelaus advising that they should sail away, and Agamemnon insisting that they should stay and sacrifice to Athena. When they put to sea, Diomedes, Nestor, and Menelaus in company, the two former had a prosperous voyage, but Menelaus was overtaken by a storm, and after losing the rest of his vessels, arrived with five ships in Egypt.

But Amphilochus, and Calchas, and Leonteus, and Podalirius, and Polypoetes left their ships in Ilium and journeyed by land to Colophon, and there buried Calchas the diviner; for it was foretold him that he would die if he met with a wiser diviner than himself.

Well, they were lodged by the diviner Mopsus, who was a son of Apollo and Manto, and he wrangled with Calchas about the art of divination. A wild fig-tree grew on the spot, and when Calchas asked, “ How many figs does it bear?” Mopsus answered, “ Ten thousand, and a bushel, and one fig over,” and they were found to be so.

And when Mopsus asked Calchas concerning a pregnant sow, “ How many pigs has she in her womb, and when will she farrow?” Calchas answered, “ Eight.” But Mopsus smiled and said,“ The divination of Calchas is the reverse of exact; but I, as a son of Apollo and Manto, am extremely rich in the sharp sight which comes of exact divination, and I divine that the number of pigs in the womb is not eight, as Calchas says, but nine, and that they are all male and will be farrowed without fail tomorrow at the sixth hour.” So when these things turned out so, Calchas died of a broken heart and was buried at Notium.

After sacrificing, Agamemnon put to sea and touched at Tenedos. But Thetis came and persuaded Neoptolemus to wait two days and to offer sacrifice; and he waited. But the others put to sea and encountered a storm at Tenos; for Athena entreated Zeus to send a tempest against the Greeks; and many ships foundered.

And Athena threw a thunderbolt at the ship of Ajax; and when the ship went to pieces he made his way safe to a rock, and declared that he was saved in spite of the intention of Athena. But Poseidon smote the rock with his trident and split it, and Ajax fell into the sea and perished; and his body, being washed up, was buried by Thetis in Myconos.

The others being driven to Euboea by night, Nauplius kindled a beacon on Mount Caphareus; and they, thinking it was some of those who were saved, stood in for the shore, and the vessels were wrecked on the Capherian rocks, and many men perished.

For Palamedes, the son of Nauplius and Clymene daughter of Catreus, had been stoned to death through the machinations of Ulysses. And when Nauplius learned of it, he sailed to the Greeks and claimed satisfaction for the death of his son;

but when he returned unsuccessful ( for they all favoured King Agamemnon, who had been the accomplice of Ulysses in the murder of Palamedes), he coasted along the Grecian lands and contrived that the wives of the Greeks should play their husbands false, Clytaemnestra with Aegisthus, Aegialia with Cometes, son of Sthenelus, and Meda, wife of Idomeneus, with Leucus.

But Leucus killed her, together with her daughter Clisithyra, who had taken refuge in the temple; and having detached ten cities from Crete he made himself tyrant of them; and when after the Trojan war Idomeneus landed in Crete, Leucus drove him out.

These were the earlier contrivances of Nauplius; but afterwards, when he learned that the Greeks were on their way home to their native countries, he kindled the beacon fire on Mount Caphereus, which is now called Xylophagus; and there the Greeks, standing in shore in the belief that it was a harbor, were cast away.

After remaining in Tenedos two days at the advice of Thetis, Neoptolemus set out for the country of the Molossians by land with Helenus, and on the way Phoenix died, and Neoptolemus buried him; and having vanquished the Molossians in battle he reigned as king and begat Molossus on Andromache. And

Helenus founded a city in Molossia and inhabited it, and Neoptolemus gave him his mother Deidamia to wife. And when Peleus was expelled from Phthia by the sons of Acastus and died, Neoptolemus succeeded to his father's kingdom.

And when Orestes went mad, Neoptolemus carried off his wife Hermione, who had previously been betrothed to him in Troy ; and for that reason he was slain by Orestes at Delphi. But some say that he went to Delphi to demand satisfaction from Apollo for the death of his father, and that he rifled the votive offerings and set fire to the temple, and was on that account slain by Machaereus the Phocian.

After their wanderings the Greeks landed and settled in various countries, some in Libya, some in Italy, others in Sicily, and some in the islands near Iberia, others on the banks of the Sangarius river; and some settled also in Cyprus. And of those that were shipwrecked at Caphereus, some drifted one way and some another. Guneus went to Libya; Antiphus, son of Thessalus, went to the Pelasgians, and, having taken possession of the country, called it Thessaly. Philoctetes went to the Campanians in Italy; Phidippus with the Coans settled in Andros, Agapenor in Cyprus, and others elsewhere.

Apollodorus and the rest say as follows. Guneus left his own ships, and having come to the Cinyps river in Libya he dwelt there. But Meges and Prothous, with many others, were cast away at Caphereus in Euboea ... and when Prothous was shipwrecked at Caphereus, the Magnesians with him drifted to Crete and settled there.

After the sack of Ilium, Menestheus, Phidippus and Antiphus, and the people of Elephenor, and Philoctetes sailed together as far as Mimas. Then Menestheus went to Melos and reigned as king, because the king there, Polyanax, had died. And Antiphus the son of Thessalus went to the Pelasgians, and having taken possession of the country he called it Thessaly. Phidippus with the Coans was driven first to Andros, and then to Cyprus, where he settled. Elephenor died in Troy, but his people were cast away in the Ionian gulf and inhabited Apollonia in Epirus. And the people of Tlepolemus touched at Crete; then they were driven out of their course by winds and settled in the Iberian islands. ...The people of Protesilaus were cast away on Pellene near the plain of Canastrum. And Philoctetes was driven to Campania in Italy, and after making war on the Lucanians, he settled in Crimissa, near Croton and Thurium ; and, his wanderings over, he founded a sanctuary of Apollo the Wanderer (Alaios), to whom also he dedicated his bow, as Euphorion says.

Navaethus is a river of Italy. It was called so, according to Apollodorus and the rest, because after the capture of Ilium the daughters of Laomedon, the sisters of Priam, to wit, Aethylla, Astyoche, and Medesicaste, with the other female captives, finding themselves in that part of Italy, and dreading slavery in Greece, set fire to the vessels; whence the river was called Navaethus and the women were called Nauprestides; and the Greeks who were with the women, having lost the vessels, settled there.

Demophon with a few ships put in to the land of the Thracian Bisaltians, and there Phyllis, the king's daughter, falling in love with him, was given him in marriage by her father with the kingdom for her dower. But he wished to depart to his own country, and after many entreaties and swearing to return, he did depart. And Phyllis accompanied him as far as what are called the Nine Roads, and she gave him a casket, telling him that it contained a sacrament of Mother Rhea, and that he was not to open it until he should have abandoned all hope of returning to her.

And Demophon went to Cyprus and dwelt there. And when the appointed time was past, Phyllis called down curses on Demophon and killed herself; and Demophon opened the casket, and, being struck with fear, he mounted his horse and galloping wildly met his end; for, the horse stumbling, he was thrown and fell on his sword. But his people settled in Cyprus.

Podalirius went to Delphi and inquired of the oracle where he should settle; and on receiving an oracle that he should settle in the city where, if the encompassing heaven were to fall, he would suffer no harm, he settled in that place of the Carian Chersonnese which is encircled by mountains all round the horizon.

Amphilochus son of Alcmaeon, who, according to some, arrived later at Troy, was driven in the storm to the home of Mopsus; and, as some say, they fought a single combat for the kingdom, and slew each other.

The Locrians regained their own country with difficulty, and three years afterwards, when Locris was visited by a plague, they received an oracle bidding them to propitiate Athena at Ilium and to send two maidens as suppliants for a thousand years. The lot first fell on Periboea and Cleopatra.

And when they came to Troy they were chased by the natives and took refuge in the sanctuary. And they did not approach the goddess, but swept and sprinkled the sanctuary; and they did not go out of the temple, and their hair was cropped, and they wore single garments and no shoes.

And when the first maidens died, they sent others; and they entered into the city by night, lest, being seen outside the precinct, they should be put to the sword; but afterwards they sent babes with their nurses. And when the thousand years were passed, after the Phocian war they ceased to send suppliants.

After Agamemnon had returned to Mycenae with Cassandra, he was murdered by Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra; for she gave him a shirt without sleeves and without a neck, and while he was putting it on he was cut down, and Aegisthus reigned over Mycenae. And they killed Cassandra also.

But Electra, one of Agamemnon's daughters, smuggled away her brother Orestes and gave him to Strophius, the Phocian, to bring up; and he brought him up with Pylades, his own son. And when Orestes was grown up, he repaired to Delphi and asked the god whether he should take vengeance on his father's murderers.

The god gave him leave, so he departed secretly to Mycenae in company with Pylades, and killed both his mother and Aegisthus. And not long afterwards, being afflicted with madness and pursued by the Furies, he repaired to Athens and was tried in the Areopagus. He is variously said to have been brought to trial by the Furies, or by Tyndareus, or by Erigone, daughter of Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra; and the votes at his trial being equal he was acquitted.

When he inquired how he should be rid of his disorder, the god answered that he would be rid of it if he should fetch the wooden image that was in the land of the Taurians. Now the Taurians are a part of the Scythians, who murder strangers and throw them into the sacred fire, which was in the precinct, being wafted up from Hades through a certain rock.

So when Orestes was come with Pylades to the land of the Taurians, he was detected, caught, and carried in bonds before Thoas the king, who sent them both to the priestess. But being recognized by his sister, who acted as priestess among the Taurians, he fled with her, carrying off the wooden image. It was conveyed to Athens and is now called the image of Tauropolus. But some say that Orestes was driven in a storm to the island of Rhodes, [...] and in accordance with an oracle the image was dedicated in a fortification wall.

and having come to Mycenae, he united his sister Electra in marriage to Pylades, and having himself married Hermione, or, according to some, Erigone, he begat Tisamenus, and was killed by the bite of a snake at Oresteum in Arcadia.

Menelaus, with five ships in all under his command, put in at Sunium, a headland of Attica; and being again driven thence by winds to Crete he drifted far away, and wandering up and down Libya, and Phoenicia, and Cyprus, and Egypt, he collected much treasure. And according to some, he discovered Helen at the court of Proteus, king of Egypt; for till then Menelaus had only a phantom of her made of clouds. And after wandering for eight years he came to port at Mycenae, and there found Orestes, who had avenged his father's murder. And having come to Sparta he regained his own kingdom, and being made immortal by Hera he went to the Elysian Fields with Helen.

Chapter 7 Cite

Ulysses, as some say, wandered about Libya, or, as some say, about Sicily, or, as others say, about the ocean or about the Tyrrhenian Sea.

And putting to sea from Ilium, he touched at Ismarus, a city of the Cicones, and captured it in war, and pillaged it, sparing Maro alone, who was priest of Apollo. And when the Cicones who inhabited the mainland heard of it, they came in arms to withstand him, and having lost six men from each ship he put to sea and fled.

And he landed in the country of the Lotus-eaters, and sent some to learn who inhabited it, but they tasted of the lotus and remained there; for there grew in the country a sweet fruit called lotus, which caused him who tasted it to forget everything. When Ulysses was informed of this, he restrained the rest of his men, and dragged those who had tasted the lotus by force to the ships. And having sailed to the land of the Cyclopes, he stood in for the shore.

And having left the rest of the ships in the neighboring island, he stood in for the land of the Cyclopes with a single ship, and landed with twelve companions. And near the sea was a cave which he entered, taking with him the skin of wine that had been given him by Maro. Now the cave belonged to Polyphemus, who was a son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa, a huge, wild, cannibal man, with one eye on his forehead.

And having lit a fire and sacrificed some of the kids, they feasted. But the Cyclops came, and when he had driven in his flocks, he put a huge stone to the door, and perceiving the men he ate some of them.

But Ulysses gave him of Maro's wine to drink, and when he had drunk, he asked for another draught, and when he had drunk the second, he inquired his name; and when Ulysses said that he was called Nobody, he threatened to devour Nobody last and the others first, and that was the token of friendship which he promised to give him in return. And being overcome by wine, he fell asleep.

But Ulysses found a club lying there, and with the help of four comrades he sharpened it, and, having heated it in the fire, he blinded him. And when Polyphemus cried to the Cyclopes round about for help, they came and asked who was hurting him, and when he said, “ Nobody,” they thought he meant that he was being hurt by nobody, and so they retired.

And when the flocks sought their usual pasture, he opened the cave, and standing at the doorway spread out his hands and felt the sheep. But Ulysses tied three rams together, [...] and himself getting under the bigger, and hiding under its belly, he passed out with the sheep. And having released his comrades from the sheep, he drove the animals to the ships, and sailing away shouted to the Cyclops that he was Ulysses and that he had escaped out of his hands.

Now the Cyclops had been forewarned by a soothsayer that he should be blinded by Ulysses; and when he learned the name, he tore away rocks and hurled them into the sea, and hardly did the ship evade the rocks. From that time Poseidon was wroth with Ulysses.

Having put to sea with all his ships, he came to the island of Aeolia, of which the king was Aeolus. He was appointed by Zeus keeper of the winds, both to calm them and to send them forth. Having entertained Ulysses, he gave him an oxhide bag in which he had bound fast the winds, after showing what winds to use on the voyage and binding fast the bag in the vessel. And by using suitable winds Ulysses had a prosperous voyage; and when he was near Ithaca and already saw the smoke rising from the town, he fell asleep.

But his comrades, thinking he carried gold in the bag, loosed it and let the winds go free, and being swept away by the blasts they were driven back again. And having come to Aeolus, Ulysses begged that he might be granted a fair wind; but Aeolus drove him from the island, saying that he could not save him when the gods opposed.

So sailing on he came to the land of the Laestrygones, and [...] his own ship he moored last. Now the Laestrygones were cannibals, and their king was Antiphates. Wishing, therefore, to learn about the inhabitants, Ulysses sent some men to inquire. But the king's daughter met them and led them to her father.

And he snatched up one of them and devoured him; but the rest fled, and he pursued them, shouting and calling together the rest of the Laestrygones. They came to the sea, and by throwing stones they broke the vessels and ate the men. Ulysses cut the cable of his ship and put to sea; but the rest of the ships perished with their crews.

With one ship he put in to the Aeaean isle. It was inhabited by Circe, a daughter of the Sun and of Perse, and a sister of Aeetes; skilled in all enchantments was she. Having divided his comrades, Ulysses himself abode by the ship, in accordance with the lot, but Eurylochus with two and twenty comrades repaired to Circe.

At her call they all entered except Eurylochus; and to each she gave a tankard she had filled with cheese and honey and barley meal and wine, and mixed with an enchantment. And when they had drunk, she touched them with a wand and changed their shapes, and some she made wolves, and some swine, and some asses, and some lions.

But Eurylochus saw these things and reported them to Ulysses. And Ulysses went to Circe with moly, which he had received from Hermes, and throwing the moly among her enchantments, he drank and alone was not enchanted. Then drawing his sword, he would have killed her, but she appeased his wrath and restored his comrades. And when he had taken an oath of her that he should suffer no harm, Ulysses shared her bed, and a son, Telegonus, was born to him.

Having tarried a year there, he sailed the ocean, and offered sacrifices to the souls, and by Circe's advice consulted the soothsayer Tiresias, and beheld the souls both of heroes and of heroines. He also looked on his mother Anticlia and Elpenor, who had died of a fall in the house of Circe.

And having come to Circe he was sent on his way by her, and put to sea, and sailed past the isle of the Sirens. Now the Sirens were Pisinoe, Aglaope, and Thelxiepia, daughters of Achelous and Melpomene, one of the Muses. One of them played the lyre, another sang, and another played the flute, and by these means they were fain to persuade passing mariners to linger;

and from the thighs they had the forms of birds. Sailing by them, Ulysses wished to hear their song, so by Circe's advice he stopped the ears of his comrades with wax, and ordered that he should himself be bound to the mast. And being persuaded by the Sirens to linger, he begged to be released, but they bound him the more, and so he sailed past. Now it was predicted of the Sirens that they should themselves die when a ship should pass them; so die they did.

And after that he came to two ways. On the one side were the Wandering Rocks, and on the other side two huge cliffs, and in one of them was Scylla, a daughter of Crataeis and Trienus or Phorcus, with the face and breast of a woman, but from the flanks she had six heads and twelve feet of dogs.

And in the other cliff was Charybdis, who thrice a day drew up the water and spouted it again. By the advice of Circe he shunned the passage by the Wandering Rocks, and in sailing past the cliff of Scylla he stood fully armed on the poop. But Scylla appeared, snatched six of his comrades, and gobbled them up.

And thence he came to Thrinacia, an island of the Sun, where kine were grazing, and being windbound, he tarried there. But when his comrades slaughtered some of the kine and banqueted on them, for lack of food, the Sun reported it to Zeus, and when Ulysses put out to sea, Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt.

And when the ship broke up, Ulysses clung to the mast and drifted to Charybdis. And when Charybdis sucked down the mast, he clutched an overhanging wild fig-tree and waited, and when he saw the mast shot up again, he cast himself on it, and was carried across to the island of Ogygia.

There Calypso, daughter of Atlas, received him, and bedding with him bore a son Latinus. He stayed with her five years, and then made a raft and sailed away. But on the high sea the raft was broken in pieces by the wrath of Poseidon, and Ulysses was washed up naked on the shore of the Phaeacians.

Now Nausicaa, the daughter of king Alcinous, was washing the clothes, and when Ulysses implored her protection, she brought him to Alcinous, who entertained him, and after bestowing gifts on him sent him away with a convoy to his native land. But Poseidon was wroth with the Phaeacians, and he turned the ship to stone and enveloped the city with a mountain.

And on arriving in his native land Ulysses found his substance wasted; for, believing that he was dead, suitors were wooing Penelope. From Dulichium came fifty-seven:

Amphinomus, Thoas, Demoptolemus, Amphimachus, Euryalus, Paralus, Evenorides, Clytius, Agenor, Eurypylus, Pylaemenes, Acamas, Thersilochus, Hagius, Clymenus, Philodemus, Meneptolemus, Damastor, Bias, Telmius, Polyidus, Astylochus, Schedius, Antigonus, Marpsius, Iphidamas, Argius, Glaucus, Calydoneus, Echion, Lamas, Andraemon, Agerochus, Medon, Agrius, Promus, Ctesius, Acarnan, Cycnus, Pseras, Hellanicus, Periphron, Megasthenes, Thrasymedes, Ormenius, Diopithes, Mecisteus, Antimachus, Ptolemaeus, Lestorides, Nicomachus, Polypoetes, and Ceraus.

And from Samethere came twenty—three:— Agelaus, Pisander, Elatus, Ctesippus, Hippodochus, Eurystratus, Archemolus, Ithacus, Pisenor, Hyperenor, Pheroetes, Antisthenes, Cerberus, Perimedes, Cynnus, Thriasus, Eteoneus, Clytius, Prothous, Lycaethus, Eumelus, Itanus, Lyammus.

And from Zacynthos came forty—four: Eurylochus, Laomedes, Molebus, Phrenius, Indius, Minis, Liocritus, Pronomus, Nisas, Daemon, Archestratus, Hippomachus, Euryalus, Periallus, Evenorides, Clytius, Agenor, Polybus, Polydorus, Thadytius, Stratius, Phrenius, Indius, Daesenor, Laomedon, Laodicus, Halius, Magnes, Oloetrochus, Barthas, Theophron, Nissaeus, Alcarops, Periclymenus, Antenor, Pellas, Celtus, Periphus, Ormenus, Polybus and Andromedes.

And from Ithaca itself the suitors were twelve, to wit:— Antinous, Pronous, Liodes, Eurynomus, Amphimachus, Amphialus, Promachus, Amphimedon, Aristratus, Helenus, Dulicheus, and Ctesippus.

These, journeying to the palace, consumed the herds of Ulysses at their feasts. And Penelope was compelled to promise that she would wed when the shroud of Laertes was finished, and she wove it for three years, weaving it by day and undoing it by night. In this way the suitors were deceived by Penelope, till she was detected.

And Ulysses, being apprized of the state of things at home, came to his servant Eumaeus in the guise of a beggar, and made himself known to Telemachus, and arrived in the city. And Melanthius, the goatherd, a servant man, met them, and scorned them. On coming to the palace Ulysses begged food of the suitors, and finding a beggar called Irus he wrestled with him. But he revealed himself to Eumaeus and Philoetius, and along with them and Telemachus he laid a plot for the suitors.

Now Penelope delivered to the suitors the bow of Ulysses, which he had once received from Iphitus; and she said that she would marry him who bent the bow. When none of them could bend it, Ulysses took it and shot down the suitors, with the help of Eumaeus, Philoetius, and Telemachus. He killed also Melanthius, and the handmaids that bedded with the suitors, and he made himself known to his wife and his father.

And after sacrificing to Hades, and Persephone, and Tiresias, he journeyed on foot through Epirus, and came to the Thesprotians, and having offered sacrifice according to the directions of the soothsayer Tiresias, he propitiated Poseidon. But Callidice, who was then queen of the Thesprotians, urged him to stay and offered him the kingdom;

and she had by him a son Polypoetes. And having married Callidice, he reigned over the Thesprotians, and defeated in battle the neighboring peoples who attacked him. But when Callidice died he handed over the kingdom to his son and repaired to Ithaca, and there he found Poliporthes, whom Penelope had borne to him.

When Telegonus learned from Circe that he was a son of Ulysses, he sailed in search of him. And having come to the island of Ithaca, he drove away some of the cattle, and when Ulysses defended them, Telegonus wounded him with the spear he had in his hands, which was barbed with the spine of a sting-ray, and Ulysses died of the wound.

But when Telegonus recognized him, he bitterly lamented, and conveyed the corpse and Penelope to Circe, and there he married Penelope. And Circe sent them both away to the Islands of the Blest.

But some say that Penelope was seduced by Antinous and sent away by Ulysses to her father Icarius, and that when she came to Mantinea in Arcadia she bore Pan to Hermes.

However others say that she met her end at the hands of Ulysses himself on account of Amphinomus, for they allege that she was seduced by him.

And there are some who say that Ulysses, being accused by the kinsfolk of the slain, submitted the case to the judgment of Neoptolemus, king of the islands off Epirus; that Neoptolemus, thinking to get possession of Cephallenia if once Ulysses were put out of the way, condemned him to exile; and that Ulysses went to Aetolia, to Thoas, son of Andraemon, married the daughter of Thoas, and leaving a son Leontophonus, whom he had by her, died in old age.

Contents — 33 sections

1. Hymn 1 To Dionysus
2. Hymn 2 To Demeter
3. Hymn 3 To Delian Apollo
4. Hymn 4 To Hermes
5. Hymn 5 To Aphrodite
6. Hymn 6 To Aphrodite
7. Hymn 7 Το Dionysus
8. Hymn 8 To Ares
9. Hymn 9 To Artemis
10. Hymn 10 To Aphrodite
11. Hymn 11 To Athena
12. Hymn 12 To Hera
13. Hymn 13 To Demeter
14. Hymn 14 to the Mother of the Gods
15. Hymn 15 To Heracles the Lion-Hearted
16. Hymn 16 To Asclepius
17. Hymn 17 To the Dioscuri
18. Hymn 18 To Hermes
19. Hymn 19 To Pan
20. Hymn 20 To Hephaestus
21. Hymn 21 To Apollo
22. Hymn 22 To Poseidon
23. Hymn 23 to Zeus
24. Hymn 24 To Hestia
25. Hymn 25 To the Muses and Apollo
26. Hymn 26 To Dionysus
27. Hymn 27 To Artemis
28. Hymn 28 To Athena
29. Hymn 29 To Hestia
30. Hymn 30 To Earth
31. Hymn 31 To Helios
32. Hymn 32 To Selene
33. Hymn 32 To the Dioscuri

Hymn 1 To Dionysus Cite

[...] For some say, at Dracanum; and some, on windy Icarus; and some, in Naxos, O Heaven-born, Insewn; and others by the deep-eddying river Alpheus that pregnant Semele bare you to Zeus the thunder-lover. And others yet, lord, say you were born in Thebes; but all these lie. The Father of men and gods gave you birth remote from men and secretly from white-armed Hera. There is a certain Nysa, a mountain most high and richly grown with woods, far off in Phoenice, near the streams of Aegyptus [...] “and men will lay up for her many offerings in her shrines. And as these things are three, so shall mortals ever sacrifice perfect hecatombs to you at your feasts each three years.”The Son of Cronos spoke and nodded with his dark brows. And the divine locks of the king flowed forward from his immortal head, and he made great Olympus reel. So spake wise Zeus and ordained it with a nod. Be favorable, O Insewn, Inspirer of frenzied women! we singers sing of you as we begin and as we end a strain, and none forgetting you may call holy song to mind. And so, farewell, Dionysus, Insewn, with your mother Semele whom men call Thyone.

Hymn 2 To Demeter Cite

I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess —of her and her trim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus rapt away, given to him by all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer. Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus, which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl — a marvellous, radiant flower. It was a thing of awe whether for deathless gods or mortal men to see: from its root grew a hundred blooms and it smelled most sweetly, so that all wide heaven above and the whole earth and the sea's salt swell laughed for joy. And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her —the Son of Cronos, He who has many names. He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting. Then she cried out shrilly with her voice, calling upon her father, the Son of Cronos, who is most high and excellent. But no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tender-hearted Hecate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaeus, heard the girl from her cave, and the lord Helios, Hyperion's bright son, as she cried to her father, the Son of Cronos. But he was sitting aloof, apart from the gods, in his temple where many pray, and receiving sweet offerings from mortal men. So he, that son of Cronos, of many names, who is Ruler of Many and Host of Many, was bearing her away by leave of Zeus on his immortal chariot —his own brother's child and all unwilling. And so long as she, the goddess, yet beheld earth and starry heaven and the strong-flowing sea where fishes shoal, and the rays of the sun, and still hoped to see her dear mother and the tribes of the eternal gods, so long hope calmed her great heart for all her trouble [...] and the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea rang with her immortal voice: and her queenly mother heard her. Bitter pain seized her heart, and she rent the covering upon her divine hair with her dear hands: her dark cloak she cast down from both her shoulders and sped, like a wild-bird, over the firm land and yielding sea, seeking her child. But no one would tell her the truth, neither god nor mortal man; and of the birds of omen none came with true news for her. Then for nine days queenly Deo wandered over the earth with flaming torches in her hands, so grieved that she never tasted ambrosia and the sweet draught of nectar, nor sprinkled her body with water. But when the tenth enlightening dawn had come, Hecate, with a torch in her hands, met her, and spoke to her and told her news: “Queenly Demeter, bringer of seasons and giver of good gifts, what god of heaven or what mortal man has rapt away Persephone and pierced with sorrow your dear heart? For I heard her voice, yet saw not with my eyes who it was. But I tell you truly and shortly all I know.” So, then, said Hecate.

And the daughter of rich-haired Rhea answered her not, but sped swiftly with her, holding flaming torches in her hands. So they came to Helios, who is watchman of both gods and men, and stood in front of his horses: and the bright goddess enquired of him: “Helios, do you at least regard me, goddess as I am, if ever by word or deed of mine I have cheered your heart and spirit. Through the fruitless air I heard the thrilling cry of my daughter whom I bare, sweet scion of my body and lovely in form, as of one seized violently; though with my eyes I saw nothing. But you —for with your beams you look down from the bright upper air over all the earth and sea —tell me truly of my dear child, if you have seen her anywhere, what god or mortal man has violently seized her against her will and mine, and so made off.” So said she. And the Son of Hyperion answered her: “Queen Demeter, daughter of rich-haired Rhea, I will tell you the truth; for I greatly reverence and pity you in your grief for your trim-ankled daughter. None other of the deathless gods is to blame, but only cloud-gathering Zeus who gave her to Hades, her father's brother, to be called his buxom wife. And Hades seized her and took her loudly crying in his chariot down to his realm of mist and gloom. Yet, goddess, cease your loud lament and keep not vain anger unrelentingly: Aidoneus, the Ruler of Many, is no unfitting husband among the deathless gods for your child, being your own brother and born of the same stock: also, for honor, he has that third share which he received when division was made at the first, and is appointed lord of those among whom he dwells.” So he spake, and called to his horses: and at his chiding they quickly whirled the swift chariot along, like long-winged birds. But grief yet more terrible and savage came into the heart of Demeter, and thereafter she was so angered with the dark-clouded Son of Cronos that she avoided the gathering of the gods and high Olympus, and went to the towns and rich fields of men, disfiguring her form a long while. And no one of men or deep-bosomed women knew her when they saw her, until she came to the house of wise Celeus who then was lord of fragrant Eleusis. Vexed in her dear heart, she sat near the wayside by the Maiden Well, from which the women of the place were used to draw water, in a shady place over which grew an olive shrub. And she was like an ancient woman who is cut off from childbearing and the gifts of garland-loving Aphrodite, like the nurses of kings' children who deal justice, or like the house-keepers in their echoing halls. There the daughters of Celeus, son of Eleusis, saw her, as they were coming for easy-drawn water, to carry it in pitchers of bronze to their dear father's house: four were they and like goddesses in the flower of their girlhood, Callidice and Cleisidice and lovely Demo and Callithoë who was the eldest of them all. They knew her not,—for the gods are not easily discerned by mortals—, but standing near by her spoke winged words: “Old mother, whence and who are you of folk born long ago? Why are you gone away from the city and do not draw near the houses?

For there in the shady halls are women of just such age as you, and others younger; and they would welcome you both by word and by deed.” Thus they said. And she, that queen among goddesses answered them saying: “Hail, dear children, whosoever you are of woman-kind. I will tell you my story; for it is not unseemly that I should tell you truly what you ask. Doso is my name, for my stately mother gave it me. And now I am come from Crete over the sea's wide back,—not willingly; but against my liking, by force of strength, pirates brought me thence. Afterwards they put in with their swift craft to Thoricus, and there the women landed on the shore in full throng and the men likewise, and they began to make ready a meal by the stern-cables of the ship. But my heart craved not pleasant food, and I fled secretly across the dark country and escaped my masters, that they should not take me unpurchased across the sea, there to win a price for me. And so I wandered and am come here: and I know not at all what land this is or what people are in it. But may all those who dwell on Olympus give you husbands and birth of children as parents desire, so you take pity on me, maidens, and show me this clearly that I may learn, dear children, to the house of what man and woman I may go, to work for them cheerfully at such tasks as belong to a woman of my age. Well could I nurse a new born child, holding him in my arms, or keep house, or spread my masters' bed in a recess of the well-built chamber, or teach the women their work.” So said the goddess. And straightway the unwed maiden Callidice, goodliest in form of the daughters of Celeus, answered her and said: “Mother, what the gods send us, we mortals bear perforce, although we suffer; for they are much stronger than we. But now I will teach you clearly, telling you the names of men who have great power and honor here and are chief among the people, guarding our city's coif of towers by their wisdom and true judgements: there is wise Triptolemus and Dioclus and Polyxeinus and blameless Eumolpus and Dolichus and our own brave father. All these have wives who manage in the house, and no one of them, so soon as she had seen you, would dishonor you and turn you from the house, but they will welcome you; for indeed you are godlike. But if you will, stay here; and we will go to our father's house and tell Metaneira, our deep-bosomed mother, all this matter fully, that she may bid you rather come to our home than search after the houses of others. She has an only son,

late-born, who is being nursed in our well-built house, a child of many prayers and welcome: if you could bring him up until he reached the full measure of youth, any one of womankind who should see you would straightway envy you, such gifts would our mother give for his upbringing.” So she spake: and the goddess bowed her head in assent. And they filled their shining vessels with water and carried them off rejoicing. Quickly they came to their father's great house and straightway told their mother according as they had heard and seen. Then she bade them go with all speed and invite the stranger to come for a measureless hire. As hinds or heifers in spring time, when sated with pasture, bound about a meadow, so they, holding up the folds of their lovely garments, darted down the hollow path, and their hair like a crocus flower streamed about their shoulders. And they found the good goddess near the wayside where they had left her before, and led her to the house of their dear father. And she walked behind, distressed in her dear heart, with her head veiled and wearing a dark cloak which waved about the slender feet of the goddess. Soon they came to the house of heaven-nurtured Celeus and went through the portico to where their queenly mother sat by a pillar of the close-fitted roof, holding her son, a tender scion, in her bosom. And the girls ran to her. But the goddess walked to the threshold: and her head reached the roof and she filled the doorway with a heavenly radiance. Then awe and reverence and pale fear took hold of Metaneira, and she rose up from her couch before Demeter, and bade her be seated. But Demeter, bringer of seasons and giver of perfect gifts, would not sit upon the bright couch, but stayed silent with lovely eyes cast down until careful Iambe placed a jointed seat for her and threw over it a silvery fleece. Then she sat down and held her veil in her hands before her face. A long time she sat upon the stool without speaking because of her sorrow, and greeted no one by word or by sign, but rested, never smiling, and tasting neither food nor drink, because she pined with longing for her deep-bosomed daughter, until careful Iambe —who pleased her moods in aftertime also —moved the holy lady with many a quip and jest to smile and laugh and cheer her heart. Then Metaneira filled a cup with sweet wine and offered it to her; but she refused it, for she said it was not lawful for her to drink red wine, but bade them mix meal and water with soft mint and give her to drink. And Metaneira mixed the draught and gave it to the goddess as she bade. So the great queen Deo received it to observe the sacrament [...] And of them all, well-girded Metaneira first began to speak: “Hail, lady! For I think you are not meanly but nobly born; truly dignity and grace are conspicuous upon your eyes as in the eyes of kings that deal justice. Yet we mortals bear perforce what the gods send us, though we be grieved; for a yoke is set upon our necks. But now, since you are come here, you shall have what I can bestow: and nurse me this child whom the gods gave me in my old age and beyond my hope, a son much prayed for. If you should bring him up until he reach the full measure of youth, any one of woman-kind that sees you will straightway envy you, so great reward would I give for his upbringing.” Then rich-haired Demeter answered her:

“And to you, also, lady, all hail, and may the gods give you good! Gladly will I take the boy to my breast, as you bid me, and will nurse him. Never, I ween, through any heedlessness of his nurse shall witchcraft hurt him nor yet the Undercutter: for I know a charm far stronger than the Woodcutter, and I know an excellent safeguard against woeful witchcraft.” When she had so spoken, she took the child in her fragrant bosom with her divine hands: and his mother was glad in her heart. So the goddess nursed in the palace Demophoon, wise Celeus' goodly son whom well-girded Metaneira bare. And the child grew like some immortal being, not fed with food nor nourished at the breast: for by day rich-crowned Demeter would anoint him with ambrosia as if he were the offspring of a god and breathe sweetly upon him as she held him in her bosom. But at night she would hide him like a brand in the heart of the fire, unknown to his dear parents. And it wrought great wonder in these that he grew beyond his age; for he was like the gods face to face. And she would have made him deathless and unageing, had not well-girded Metaneira in her heedlessness kept watch by night from her sweet-smelling chamber and spied. But she wailed and smote her two hips, because she feared for her son and was greatly distraught in her heart; so she lamented and uttered winged words: “Demophoön, my son, the strange woman buries you deep in fire and works grief and bitter sorrow for me.” Thus she spoke, mourning. And the bright goddess, lovely-crowned Demeter, heard her, and was wroth with her. So with her divine hands she snatched from the fire the dear son whom Metaneira had born unhoped-for in the palace, and cast him from her to the ground; for she was terribly angry in her heart. Forthwith she said to well-girded Metaneira: “Witless are you mortals and dull to foresee your lot, whether of good or evil, that comes upon you. For now in your heedlessness you have wrought folly past healing; for —be witness the oath of the gods, the relentless water of Styx — I would have made your dear son deathless and unaging all his days and would have bestowed on him everlasting honor, but now he can in no way escape death and the fates. Yet shall unfailing honor always rest upon him, because he lay upon my knees and slept in my arms. But, as the years move round and when he is in his prime, the sons of the Eleusinians shall ever wage war and dread strife with one another continually. Lo! I am that Demeter who has share of honor and is the greatest help and cause of joy to the undying gods and mortal men. But now, let all the people build me a great temple and an altar below it and beneath the city and its sheer wall upon a rising hillock above Callichorus. And I myself will teach my rites, that hereafter you may reverently perform them and so win the favour of my heart.” When she had so said, the goddess changed her stature and her looks, thrusting old age away from her: beauty spread round about her and a lovely fragrance was wafted from her sweet-smelling robes, and from the divine body of the goddess a light shone afar, while golden tresses spread down over her shoulders,

so that the strong house was filled with brightness as with lightning. And so she went out from the palace. And straightway Metaneira's knees were loosed and she remained speechless for a long while and did not remember to take up her late-born son from the ground. But his sisters heard his pitiful wailing and sprang down from their well-spread beds: one of them took up the child in her arms and laid him in her bosom, while another revived the fire, and a third rushed with soft feet to bring their mother from her fragrant chamber. And they gathered about the struggling child and washed him, embracing him lovingly; but he was not comforted, because nurses and handmaids much less skilful were holding him now. All night long they sought to appease the glorious goddess, quaking with fear. But, as soon as dawn began to show, they told powerful Celeus all things without fail, as the lovely-crowned goddess Demeter charged them. So Celeus called the countless people to an assembly and bade them make a goodly temple for rich-haired Demeter and an altar upon the rising hillock. And they obeyed him right speedily and harkened to his voice, doing as he commanded. As for the child, he grew like an immortal being. Now when they had finished building and had drawn back from their toil, they went every man to his house. But golden-haired Demeter sat there apart from all the blessed gods and stayed, wasting with yearning for her deep-bosomed daughter. Then she caused a most dreadful and cruel year for mankind over the all-nourishing earth: the ground would not make the seed sprout, for rich-crowned Demeter kept it hid. In the fields the oxen drew many a curved plough in vain, and much white barley was cast upon the land without avail. So she would have destroyed the whole race of man with cruel famine and have robbed them who dwell on Olympus of their glorious right of gifts and sacrifices, had not Zeus perceived and marked this in his heart. First he sent golden-winged Iris to call rich-haired Demeter, lovely in form. So he commanded. And she obeyed the dark-clouded Son of Cronos, and sped with swift feet across the space between. She came to the stronghold of fragrant Eleusis, and there finding dark-cloaked Demeter in her temple, spake to her and uttered winged words: “Demeter, father Zeus, whose wisdom is everlasting, calls you to come join the tribes of the eternal gods: come therefore, and let not the message I bring from Zeus pass unobeyed.” Thus said Iris imploring her. But Demeter's heart was not moved. Then again the father sent forth all the blessed and eternal gods besides: and they came, one after the other, and kept calling her and offering many very beautiful gifts and whatever rights she might be pleased to choose among the deathless gods. Yet no one was able to persuade her mind and will, so wroth was she in her heart; but she stubbornly rejected all their words: for she vowed that she would never set foot on fragrant Olympus nor let fruit spring out of the ground, until she beheld with her eyes her own fair-faced daughter. Now when all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer heard this, he sent the Slayer of Argus whose wand is of gold to Erebus, so that having won over Hades with soft words, he might lead forth chaste Persephone to the light from the misty gloom to join the gods, and that her mother might see her with her eyes and cease from her anger.

And Hermes obeyed, and leaving the house of Olympus, straightway sprang down with speed to the hidden places of the earth. And he found the lord Hades in his house seated upon a couch, and his shy mate with him, much reluctant, because she yearned for her mother. But she was afar off, brooding on her fell design because of the deeds of the blessed gods. And the strong Slayer of Argus drew near and said: “Dark-haired Hades, ruler over the departed, father Zeus bids me bring noble Persephone forth from Erebus unto the gods, that her mother may see her with her eyes and cease from her dread anger with the immortals; for now she plans an awful deed, to destroy the weakly tribes of earth-born men by keeping seed hidden beneath the earth, and so she makes an end of the honors of the undying gods. For she keeps fearful anger and does not consort with the gods, but sits aloof in her fragrant temple, dwelling in the rocky hold of Eleusis.” So he said. And Aidoneus, ruler over the dead, smiled grimly and obeyed the behest of Zeus the king. For he straightway urged wise Persephone, saying: “Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore.” When he said this, wise Persephone was filled with joy and hastily sprang up for gladness. But he on his part secretly gave her sweet pomegranate seed to eat, taking care for himself that she might not remain continually with grave, dark-robed Demeter. Then Aidoneus the Ruler of Many openly got ready his deathless horses beneath the golden chariot. And she mounted on the chariot, and the strong Slayer of Argus took reins and whip in his dear hands and drove forth from the hall, the horses speeding readily. Swiftly they traversed their long course, and neither the sea nor river-waters nor grassy glens nor mountain-peaks checked the career of the immortal horses, but they clave the deep air above them as they went. And Hermes brought them to the place where rich-crowned Demeter was staying and checked them before her fragrant temple. And when Demeter saw them, she rushed forth as does a Maenad down some thick-wooded mountain, while Persephone on the other side, when she saw her mother's sweet eyes, left the chariot and horses, and leaped down to run to her, and falling upon her neck, embraced her. But while Demeter was still holding her dear child in her arms, her heart suddenly misgave her for some snare, so that she feared greatly and ceased fondling her daughter and asked of her at once: “My child, tell me, surely you have not tasted any food while you were below? Speak out and hide nothing, but let us both know. For if you have not, you shall come back from loathly Hades and live with me and your father, the dark-clouded Son of Cronos and be honored by all the deathless gods; but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret places of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every year:

yet for the two parts you shall be with me and the other deathless gods. But when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring in every kind, then from the realm of darkness and gloom thou shalt come up once more to be a wonder for gods and mortal men. And now tell me how he rapt you away to the realm of darkness and gloom, and by what trick did the strong Host of Many beguile you?” Then beautiful Persephone answered her thus: “Mother, I will tell you all without error. When luck-bringing Hermes came, swift messenger from my father the Son of Cronos and the other Sons of Heaven, bidding me come back from Erebus that you might see me with your eyes and so cease from your anger and fearful wrath against the gods, I sprang up at once for joy; but he secretly put in my mouth sweet food, a pomegranate seed, and forced me to taste against my will. Also I will tell how he rapt me away by the deep plan of my father the Son of Cronos and carried me off beneath the depths of the earth, and will relate the whole matter as you ask. All we were playing in a lovely meadow, Leucippe and Phaeno and Electra and Ianthe, Melita also and Iache with Rhodea and Callirhoe and Melobosis and Tyche and Ocyrhoe, fair as a flower, Chryseis, Ianeira, Acaste and Admete and Rhodope and Pluto and charming Calypso; Styx too was there and Urania and lovely Galaxaura with Pallas who rouses battles and Artemis delighting in arrows: we were playing and gathering sweet flowers in our hands, soft crocuses mingled with irises and hyacinths, and rose-blooms and lilies, marvellous to see, and the narcissus which the wide earth caused to grow yellow as a crocus. That I plucked in my joy; but the earth parted beneath, and there the strong lord, the Host of Many, sprang forth and in his golden chariot he bore me away, all unwilling, beneath the earth: then I cried with a shrill cry. All this is true, sore though it grieves me to tell the tale.” So did they then, with hearts at one, greatly cheer each the other's soul and spirit with many an embrace: their hearts had relief from their griefs while each took and gave back joyousness. Then bright-coiffed Hecate came near to them, and often did she embrace the daughter of holy Demeter: and from that time the lady Hecate was minister and companion to Persephone. And all-seeing Zeus sent a messenger to them, rich-haired Rhea, to bring dark-cloaked Demeter to join the families of the gods: and he promised to give her what rights she should choose among the deathless gods and agreed that her daughter should go down for the third part of the circling year to darkness and gloom, but for the two parts should live with her mother and the other deathless gods. Thus he commanded. And the goddess did not disobey the message of Zeus; swiftly she rushed down from the peaks of Olympus and came to the plain of Rharus, rich, fertile corn-land once, but then in nowise fruitful, for it lay idle and utterly leafless, because the white grain was hidden by design of trim-ankled Demeter. But afterwards,

as spring-time waxed, it was soon to be waving with long ears of corn, and its rich furrows to be loaded with grain upon the ground, while others would already be bound in sheaves. There first she landed from the fruitless upper air: and glad were the goddesses to see each other and cheered in heart. Then bright-coiffed Rhea said to Demeter: “Come, my daughter; for far-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer calls you to join the families of the gods, and has promised to give you what rights you please among the deathless gods, and has agreed that for a third part of the circling year your daughter shall go down to darkness and gloom, but for the two parts shall be with you and the other deathless gods: so has he declared it shall be and has bowed his head in token. But come, my child, obey, and be not too angry unrelentingly with the dark-clouded Son of Cronos; but rather increase forthwith for men the fruit that gives them life.” So spake Rhea. And rich-crowned Demeter did not refuse but straightway made fruit to spring up from the rich lands, so that the whole wide earth was laden with leaves and flowers. Then she went, and to the kings who deal justice, Triptolemus and Diocles, the horse-driver, and to doughty Eumolpus and Celeus, leader of the people, she showed the conduct of her rites and taught them all her mysteries, to Triptolemus and Polyxeinus and Diocles also, —awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice. Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom. But when the bright goddess had taught them all, they went to Olympus to the gathering of the other gods. And there they dwell beside Zeus who delights in thunder, awful and reverend goddesses. Right blessed is he among men on earth whom they freely love: soon they do send Plutus as guest to his great house, Plutus who gives wealth to mortal men. And now, queen of the land of sweet Eleusis and sea-girt Paros and rocky Antron, lady, giver of good gifts, bringer of seasons, queen Deo, be gracious, you and your daughter all beauteous Persephone, and for my song grant me heart-cheering substance. And now I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 3 To Delian Apollo Cite

I will remember and not be unmindful of Apollo who shoots afar. As he goes through the house of Zeus, the gods tremble before him and all spring up from their seats when he draws near, as he bends his bright bow. But Leto alone stays by the side of Zeus who delights in thunder; and then she unstrings his bow, and closes his quiver, and takes his archery from his strong shoulders in her hands and hangs them on a golden peg against a pillar of his father's house. Then she leads him to a seat and makes him sit: and the Father gives him nectar in a golden cup welcoming his dear son, while the other gods make him sit down there, and queenly Leto rejoices because she bare a mighty son and an archer. Rejoice, blessed Leto, for you bare glorious children, the lord Apollo and Artemis who delights in arrows; her in Ortygia, and him in rocky Delos, as you rested against the great mass of the Cynthian hill hard by a palm-tree by the streams of Inopus. How, then, shall I sing of you who in all ways are a worthy theme of song? For everywhere, O Phoebus, the whole range of song is fallen to you, both over the mainland that rears heifers and over the isles. All mountain-peaks and high headlands of lofty hills and rivers flowing out to the deep and beaches sloping seawards and havens of the sea are your delight. Shall I sing how at the first Leto bare you to be the joy of men, as she rested against Mount Cynthus in that rocky isle, in sea-girt Delos —while on either hand a dark wave rolled on landwards driven by shrill winds —whence arising you rule over all mortal men? Among those who are in Crete, and in the township of Athens, and in the isle of Aegina and Euboea, famous for ships, in Aegae and Eiresiae and Peparethus near the sea, in Thracian Athos and Pelion's towering heights and Thracian Samos and the shady hills of Ida, in Scyros and Phocaea and the high hill of Autocane and fair-lying Imbros and smouldering Lemnos and rich Lesbos, home of Macar, the son of Aeolus, and Chios, brightest of all the isles that lie in the sea, and craggy Mimas and the heights of Corycus and gleaming Claros and the sheer hill of Aesagea and watered Samos and the steep heights of Mycale, in Miletus and Cos, the city of Meropian men, and steep Cnidos and windy Carpathos, in Naxos and Paros and rocky Rhenaea — so far roamed Leto in travail with the god who shoots afar, to see if any land would be willing to make a dwelling for her son. But they greatly trembled and feared, and none, not even the richest of them, dared receive Phoebus, until queenly Leto set foot on Delos and uttered winged words and asked her: “Delos, if you would be willing to be the abode of my son Phoebus Apollo and make him a rich temple —; for no other will touch you, as you will find: and I think you will never be rich in oxen and sheep, nor bear vintage nor yet produce plants abundantly. But if you have the temple of far-shooting Apollo, all men will bring you hecatombs and gather here, and incessant savour of rich sacrifice will always arise, and you will feed those who dwell in you

from the hand of strangers; for truly your own soil is not rich.” So spake Leto. And Delos rejoiced and answered and said: “Leto, most glorious daughter of great Coeus, joyfully would I receive your child the far-shooting lord; for it is all too true that I am ill-spoken of among men, whereas thus I should become very greatly honored. But this saying I fear, and I will not hide it from you, Leto. They say that Apollo will be one that is very haughty and will greatly lord it among gods and men all over the fruitful earth. Therefore, I greatly fear in heart and spirit that as soon as he sees the light of the sun, he will scorn this island —for truly I have but a hard, rocky soil —and overturn me and thrust me down with his feet in the depths of the sea; then will the great ocean wash deep above my head for ever, and he will go to another land such as will please him, there to make his temple and wooded groves. So many-footed creatures of the sea will make their lairs in me and black seals their dwellings undisturbed, because I lack people. Yet if you will but dare to swear a great oath, goddess, that here first he will build a glorious temple to be an oracle for men, then let him afterwards make temples and wooded groves amongst all men; for surely he will be greatly renowned. So said Delos. And Leto swear the great oath of the gods: “Now hear this, Earth and wide Heaven above, and dropping water of Styx (this is the strongest and most awful oath for the blessed gods), surely Phoebus shall have here his fragrant altar and precinct, and you he shall honor above all.” Now when Leto had sworn and ended her oath, Delos was very glad at the birth of the far-shooting lord. But Leto was racked nine days and nine nights with pangs beyond wont. And there were with her all the chiefest of the goddesses, Dione and Rhea and Ichnaea and Themis and loud-moaning Amphitrite and the other deathless goddesses save white-armed Hera, who sat in the halls of cloud-gathering Zeus. Only Eilithyia, goddess of sore travail, had not heard of Leto's trouble, for she sat on the top of Olympus beneath golden clouds by white-armed Hera's contriving, who kept her close through envy, because Leto with the lovely tresses was soon to bear a son faultless and strong. But the goddesses sent out Iris from the well-set isle to bring Eilithyia, promising her a great necklace strung with golden threads, nine cubits long. And they bade Iris call her aside from white-armed Hera, lest she might afterwards turn her from coming with her words. When swift Iris, fleet of foot as the wind, had heard all this, she set to run; and quickly finishing all the distance she came to the home of the gods, sheer Olympus, and forthwith called Eilithyia out from the hall to the door and spoke winged words to her, telling her all as the goddesses who dwell on Olympus had bidden her. So she moved the heart of Eilithyia in her dear breast; and they went their way, like shy wild-doves in their going.

And as soon as Eilithyia the goddess of sore travail set foot on Delos, the pains of birth seized Leto, and she longed to bring forth; so she cast her arms about a palm tree and kneeled on the soft meadow while the earth laughed for joy beneath. Then the child leaped forth to the light, and all the goddesses raised a cry. Straightway, great Phoebus, the goddesses washed you purely and cleanly with sweet water, and swathed you in a white garment of fine texture, new-woven, and fastened a golden band about you. Now Leto did not give Apollo, bearer of the golden blade, her breast; but Themis duly poured nectar and ambrosia with her divine hands: and Leto was glad because she had borne a strong son and an archer. But as soon as you had tasted that divine heavenly food, O Phoebus, you could no longer then be held by golden cords nor confined with bands, but all their ends were undone. Forth-with Phoebus Apollo spoke out among the deathless goddesses:“The lyre and the curved bow shall ever be dear to me, and I will declare to men the unfailing will of Zeus.” So said Phoebus, the long-haired god who shoots afar and began to walk upon the wide-pathed earth; and all the goddesses were amazed at him. Then with gold all Delos [was laden, beholding the child of Zeus and Leto, for joy because the god chose her above the islands and shore to make his dwelling in her: and she loved him yet more in her heart.] blossomed as does a mountain-top with woodland flowers. And you, O lord Apollo, god of the silver bow, shooting afar, now walked on craggy Cynthus, and now kept wandering about the islands and the people in them. Many are your temples and wooded groves, and all peaks and towering bluffs of lofty mountains and rivers flowing to the sea are dear to you, Phoebus, yet in Delos do you most delight your heart; for there the long robed Ionians gather in your honor with their children and shy wives: with boxing and dancing and song, mindful, they delight you so often as they hold their gathering. A man would say that they were deathless and unageing if he should then come upon the Ionians so met together. For he would see the graces of them all, and would be pleased in heart gazing at the men and well-girded women with their swift ships and great wealth. And there is this great wonder besides —and its renown shall never perish —, the girls of Delos, hand-maidens of the Far-shooter; for when they have praised Apollo first, and also Leto and Artemis who delights in arrows, they sing a strain telling of men and women of past days, and charm the tribes of men. Also they can imitate the tongues of all men and their clattering speech: each would say that he himself were singing, so close to truth is their sweet song. And now may Apollo be favorable and Artemis; and farewell all you maidens. Remember me in after time whenever any one of men on earth, a stranger who has seen and suffered much, comes here and asks of you: “Whom think ye, girls, is the sweetest singer that comes here, and in whom do you most delight?” Then answer, each and all, with one voice: “He is a blind man, and dwells in rocky Chios: his lays are evermore supreme.” As for me, I will carry your renown as far as I roam over the earth

to the well-placed cities of man, and they will believe also; for indeed this thing is true. And I will never cease to praise far-shooting Apollo, god of the silver bow, whom rich-haired Leto bare. O Lord, Lycia is yours and lovely Maeonia and Miletus, charming city by the sea, but over wave-girt Delos you greatly reign your own self. Leto's all-glorious son goes to rocky Pytho, playing upon his hollow lyre, clad in divine, perfumed garments; and his lyre, at the touch of the golden key, sings sweet. Thence, swift as thought, he speeds from earth to Olympus, to the house of Zeus, to join the gathering of the other gods: then straightway the undying gods think only of the lyre and song, and all the Muses together, voice sweetly answering voice, hymn the unending gifts the gods enjoy and the sufferings of men, all that they endure at the hands of the deathless gods, and how they live witless and helpless and cannot find healing for death or defence against old age. Meanwhile the rich-tressed Graces and cheerful Seasons dance with Harmonia and Hebe and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, holding each other by the wrist. And among them sings one, not mean nor puny, but tall to look upon and enviable in mien, Artemis who delights in arrows, sister of Apollo. Among them sport Ares and the keen-eyed Slayer of Argus, while Apollo plays his lyre stepping high and featly and a radiance shines around him, the gleaming of his feet and close-woven vest. And they, even gold-tressed Leto and wise Zeus, rejoice in their great hearts as they watch their dear son playing among the undying gods. How then shall I sing of you —though in all ways you are a worthy theme for song? Shall I sing of you as wooer and in the fields of love, how you went wooing the daughter of Azan along with god-like Ischys the son of well-horsed Elatius, or with Phorbas sprung from Triops, or with Ereutheus, or with Leucippus and the wife of Leucippus [...] you on foot, he with his chariot, yet he fell not short of Triops. Or shall I sing how at the first you went about the earth seeking a place of oracle for men, O far-shooting Apollo? To Pieria first you went down from Olympus and passed by sandy Lectus and Enienae and through the land of the Perrhaebi. Soon you came to Iolcus and set foot on Cenaeum in Euboea, famed for ships: you stood in the Lelantine plain, but it pleased not your heart to make a temple there and wooded groves. From there you crossed the Euripus, far-shooting Apollo, and went up the green, holy hills, going on to Mycalessus and grassy-bedded Teumessus, and so came to the wood-clad abode of Thebe; for as yet no man lived in holy Thebe, nor were there tracks or ways about Thebe's wheat-bearing plain as yet. And further still you went, O far-shooting Apollo,

and came to Onchestus, Poseidon's bright grove: there the new-broken colt distressed with drawing the trim chariot gets spirit again, and the skilled driver springs from his car and goes on his way. Then the horses for a while rattle the empty car, being rid of guidance; and if they break the chariot in the woody grove, men look after the horses, but tilt the chariot and leave it there; for this was the rite from the very first. And the drivers pray to the lord of the shrine; but the chariot falls to the lot of the god. Further yet you went, O far-shooting Apollo, and reached next Cephissus' sweet stream which pours forth its sweet-flowing water from Lilaea, and crossing over it, O worker from afar, you passed many-towered Ocalea and reached grassy Haliartus. Then you went towards Telphusa: and there the pleasant place seemed fit for making a temple and wooded grove. You came very near and spoke to her: “Telphusa, here I am minded to make a glorious temple, an oracle for men, and hither they will always bring perfect hecatombs, both those who live in rich Peloponnesus and those of Europe and all the wave-washed isles, coming to seek oracles. And I will deliver to them all counsel that cannot fail, giving answer in my rich temple.” So said Phoebus Apollo, and laid out all the foundations throughout, wide and very long. But when Telphusa saw this, she was angry in heart and spoke, saying: “Lord Phoebus, worker from afar, I will speak a word of counsel to your heart, since you are minded to make here a glorious temple to be an oracle for men who will always bring hither perfect hecatombs for you; yet I will speak out, and do you lay up my words in your heart. The trampling of swift horses and the sound of mules watering at my sacred springs will always irk you, and men will like better to gaze at the well-made chariots and stamping, swift-footed horses than at your great temple and the many treasures that are within. But if you will be moved by me —for you, lord, are stronger and mightier than I, and your strength is very great —build at Crisa below the glades of Parnassus: there no bright chariot will clash, and there will be no noise of swift-footed horses near your well-built altar. But so the glorious tribes of men will bring gifts to you as Iepaeon (‘Hail-Healer’), and you will receive with delight rich sacrifices from the people dwelling round about.” So said Telphusa, that she alone, and not the Far-Shooter, should have renown there; and she persuaded the Far-Shooter. Further yet you went, far-shooting Apollo, until you came to the town of the presumptuous Phlegyae who dwell on this earth in a lovely glade near the Cephisian lake, caring not for Zeus. And thence you went speeding swiftly to the mountain ridge, and came to Crisa beneath snowy Parnassus, a foothill turned towards the west: a cliff hangs over it from above, and a hollow, rugged glade runs under. There the lord Phoebus Apollo resolved to make his lovely temple, and thus he said: “In this place I am minded to build a glorious temple to be an oracle for men, and here they will always bring perfect hecatombs,

both they who dwell in rich Peloponnesus and the men of Europe and from all the wave-washed isles, coming to question me. And I will deliver to them all counsel that cannot fail, answering them in my rich temple.” When he had said this, Phoebus Apollo laid out all the foundations throughout, wide and very long; and upon these the sons of Erginus, Trophonius and Agamedes, dear to the deathless gods, laid a footing of stone. And the countless tribes of men built the whole temple of wrought stones, to be sung of for ever. But near by was a sweet flowing spring, and there with his strong bow the lord, the son of Zeus, killed the bloated, great she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, to men themselves and to their thin-shanked sheep; for she was a very bloody plague. She it was who once received from gold-throned Hera and brought up fell, cruel Typhaon to be a plague to men. Once on a time Hera bare him because she was angry with father Zeus, when the Son of Cronos bare all-glorious Athena in his head. Thereupon queenly Hera was angry and spoke thus among the assembled gods: “Hear from me, all gods and goddesses, how cloud-gathering Zeus begins to dishonor me wantonly, when he has made me his true-hearted wife. See now, apart from me he has given birth to bright-eyed Athena who is foremost among all the blessed gods. But my son Hephaestus whom I bare was weakly among all the blessed gods and shrivelled of foot, a shame and a disgrace to me in heaven, whom I myself took in my hands and cast out so that he fell in the great sea. But silver-shod Thetis the daughter of Nereus took and cared for him with her sisters: would that she had done other service to the blessed gods! O wicked one and crafty! What else will you now devise? How dared you by yourself give birth to bright-eyed Athena? Would not I have borne you a child —I, who was at least called your wife among the undying gods who hold wide heaven. Beware now lest I devise some evil thing for you hereafter: yes, now I will contrive that a son be born me to be foremost among the undying gods —and that without casting shame on the holy bond of wedlock between you and me. And I will not come to your bed, but will consort with the blessed gods far off from you.” When she had so spoken, she went apart from the gods, being very angry. Then straightway large-eyed queenly Hera prayed, striking the ground flatwise with her hand, and speaking thus: “Hear now, I pray, Earth and wide Heaven above and you Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartarus, and from whom are sprung both gods and men! Harken you now to me, one and all, and grant that I may bear a child apart from Zeus, no wit lesser than him in strength —nay, let him be as much stronger than Zeus as all-seeing Zeus than Cronos.”

Thus she cried and lashed the earth with her strong hand. Then the life-giving earth was moved: and when Hera saw it she was glad in heart, for she thought her prayer would be fulfilled. And thereafter she never came to the bed of wise Zeus for a full year, nor to sit in her carved chair as aforetime to plan wise counsel for him, but stayed in her temples where many pray, and delighted in her offerings, large-eyed queenly Hera. But when the months and days were fulfilled and the seasons duly came on as the earth moved round, she bare one neither like the gods nor mortal men, fell, cruel Typhaon, to be a plague to men. Straightway large-eyed queenly Hera took him and bringing one evil thing to another such, gave him to the dragoness; and she received him. And this Typhaon used to work great mischief among the famous tribes of men. Whosoever met the dragoness, the day of doom would sweep him away, until the lord Apollo, who deals death from afar, shot a strong arrow at her. Then she, rent with bitter pangs, lay drawing great gasps for breath and rolling about that place. An awful noise swelled up unspeakable as she writhed continually this way and that amid the wood: and so she left her life, breathing it forth in blood. Then Phoebus Apollo boasted over her: “Now rot here upon the soil that feeds man' You at least shall live no more to be a fell bane to men who eat the fruit of the all-nourishing earth, and who will bring hither perfect hecatombs. Against cruel death neither Typhoeus shall avail you nor ill-famed Chimera, but here shall the Earth and shining Hyperion make you rot.” Thus said Phoebus, exulting over her: and darkness covered her eyes. And the holy strength of Helios made her rot away there; wherefore the place is now called Pytho, and men call the lord Apollo by another name, Pythian; because on that spot the power of piercing Helios made the monster rot away. Then Phoebus Apollo saw that the sweet-flowing spring had beguiled him, and he started out in anger against Telphusa; and soon coming to her, he stood close by and spoke to her: “Telphusa, you were not, after all, to keep to yourself this lovely place by deceiving my mind, and pour forth your clear flowing water: here my renown shall also be and not yours alone?”Thus spoke the lord, far-working Apollo, and pushed over upon her a crag with a shower of rocks, hiding her streams: and he made himself an altar in a wooded grove very near the clear-flowing stream. In that place all men pray to the great one by the name Telphusian, because he humbled the stream of holy Telphusa. Then Phoebus Apollo pondered in his heart what men he should bring in to be his ministers in sacrifice and to serve him in rocky Pytho. And while he considered this, he became aware of a swift ship upon the wine-like sea in which were many men and goodly, Cretans from Cnossos, the city of Minos, they who do sacrifice to the prince and announce his decrees, whatsoever Phoebus Apollo, bearer of the golden blade, speaks in answer from his laurel tree below the dells of Parnassus. These men were sailing in their black ship for traffic and for profit to sandy Pylos and to the men of Pylos. But Phoebus Apollo met them:

in the open sea he sprang upon their swift ship, like a dolphin in shape, and lay there, a great and awesome monster, and none of them gave heed so as to understand; but they sought to cast the dolphin overboard. But he kept shaking the black ship every way and making the timbers quiver. So they sat silent in their craft for fear, and did not loose the sheets throughout the black, hollow ship, nor lowered the sail of their dark-prowed vessel, but as they had set it first of all with oxhide ropes, so they kept sailing on; for a rushing south wind hurried on the swift ship from behind. First they passed by Malea, and then along the Laconian coast they came to Taenarum, sea-garlanded town and country of Helios who gladdens men, where the thick-fleeced sheep of the lord Helios feed continually and occupy a gladsome country. There they wished to put their ship to shore, and land and comprehend the great marvel and see with their eyes whether the monster would remain upon the deck of the hollow ship, or spring back into the briny deep where fishes shoal. But the well-built ship would not obey the helm, but went on its way all along Peloponnesus: and the lord, far-working Apollo, guided it easily with the breath of the breeze. So the ship ran on its course and came to Arena and lovely Argyphea and Thryon, the ford of Alpheus, and well-placed Aepy and sandy Pylos and the men of Pylos; past Cruni it went and Chalcis and past Dyme and fair Elis, where the Epei rule. And at the time when she was making for Pherae, exulting in the breeze from Zeus, there appeared to them below the clouds the steep mountain of Ithaca, and Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus. But when they were passed by all the coast of Peloponnesus, then, towards Crisa, that vast gulf began to heave in sight which through all its length cuts off the rich isle of Pelops. There came on them a strong, clear west-wind by ordinance of Zeus and blew from heaven vehemently, that with all speed the ship might finish coursing over the briny water of the sea. So they began again to voyage back towards the dawn and the sun: and the lord Apollo, son of Zeus, led them on until they reached far-seen Crisa, land of vines, and into haven: there the sea-coursing ship grounded on the sands. Then, like a star at noonday, the lord, far-working Apollo, leaped from the ship: flashes of fire flew from him thick and their brightness reached to heaven. He entered into his shrine between priceless tripods, and there made a flame to flare up bright, showing forth the splendor of his shafts, so that their radiance filled all Crisa, and the wives and well-girded daughters of the Crisaeans raised a cry at that outburst of Phoebus; for he cast great fear upon them all. From his shrine he sprang forth again, swift as a thought, to speed again to the ship, bearing the form of a man, brisk and sturdy, in the prime of his youth, while his broad shoulders were covered with his hair: and he spoke to the Cretans, uttering winged words: “Strangers, who are you? Whence come you sailing along the paths of the sea? Are you for traffic, or do you wander at random over the sea as pirates do who put

their own lives to hazard and bring mischief to men of foreign parts as they roam? Why rest you so and are afraid, and do not go ashore nor stow the gear of your black ship? For that is the custom of men who live by bread, whenever they come to land in their dark ships from the main, spent with toil: at once desire for sweet food catches them about the heart.”So speaking, he put courage in their hearts, and the master of the Cretans answered him and said: “Stranger —though you are nothing like mortal men in shape or stature, but are as the deathless gods —hail and all happiness to you, and may the gods give you good. Now tell me truly that I may surely know it: what country is this, and what land, and what men live herein? As for us, with thoughts set otherwards, we were sailing over the great sea to Pylos from Crete (for from there we declare that we are sprung), but now are come on shipboard to this place by no means willingly —another way and other paths —and gladly would we return. But one of the deathless gods brought us here against our will.” Then far-working Apollo answered them and said: “Strangers who once dwelt about wooded Cnossos but now shall return no more each to his loved city and fair house and dear wife; here shall you keep my rich temple that is honored by many men. I am the son of Zeus; Apollo is my name: but you I brought here over the wide gulf of the sea, meaning you no hurt; nay, here you shall keep my rich temple that is greatly honored among men, and you shall know the plans of the deathless gods, and by their will you shall be honored continually for all time. And now come, make haste and do as I say. First loose the sheets and lower the sail, and then draw the swift ship up upon the land. Take out your goods and the gear of the straight ship, and make an altar upon the beach of the sea: light fire upon it and make an offering of white meal. Next, stand side by side around the altar and pray: and in as much as at the first on the hazy sea I sprang upon the swift ship in the form of a dolphin, pray to me as Apollo Delphinius; also the altar itself shall be called Delphinius and overlooking for ever. Afterwards, sup beside your dark ship and pour an offering to the blessed gods who dwell on Olympus. But when you have put away craving for sweet food, come with me singing the hymn Ie Paean (Hail, Healer!), until you come to the place where you shall keep my rich temple.” So said Apollo. And they readily harkened to him and obeyed him. First they unfastened the sheets and let down the sail and lowered the mast by the forestays upon the mast-rest. Then, landing upon the beach of the sea, they hauled up the ship from the water to dry land and fixed long stays under it. Also they made an altar upon the beach of the sea, and when they had lit a fire, made an offering of white meal, and prayed standing around the altar as Apollo had bidden them. Then they took their meal by the swift, black ship, and poured an offering to the blessed gods who dwell on Olympus. And when they had put away craving for drink and food, they started out with the lord Apollo, the son of Zeus, to lead them,

holding a lyre in his hands, and playing sweetly as he stepped high and featly. So the Cretans followed him to Pytho, marching in time as they chanted the Ie Paean after the manner of the Cretan paean-singers and of those in whose hearts the heavenly Muse has put sweet-voiced song. With tireless feet they approached the ridge and straightway came to Parnassus and the lovely place where they were to dwell honored by many men. There Apollo brought them and showed them his most holy sanctuary and rich temple. But their spirit was stirred in their dear breasts, and the master of the Cretans asked him, saying: “Lord, since you have brought us here far from our dear ones and our fatherland, —for so it seemed good to your heart,—tell us now how we shall live. That we would know of you. This land is not to be desired either for vineyards or for pastures so that we can live well thereon and also minister to men.” Then Apollo, the son of Zeus, smiled upon them and said: “Foolish mortals and poor drudges are you, that you seek cares and hard toils and straits! Easily will I tell you a word and set it in your hearts. Though each one of you with knife in hand should slaughter sheep continually, yet would you always have abundant store, even all that the glorious tribes of men bring here for me. But guard you my temple and receive the tribes of men that gather to this place, and especially show mortal men my will, and do you keep righteousness in your heart. But if any shall be disobedient and pay no heed to my warning, or if there shall be any idle word or deed and outrage as is common among mortal men, then other men shall be your masters and with a strong hand shall make you subject for ever. All has been told you: do you keep it in your heart.” And so, farewell, son of Zeus and Leto; but I will remember you and another hymn also.

Hymn 4 To Hermes Cite

Muse, sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks, the luck-bringing messenger of the immortals whom Maia bare, the rich-tressed nymph, when she was joined in love with Zeus, —a shy goddess, for she avoided the company of the blessed gods, and lived within a deep, shady cave. There the son of Cronos used to lie with the rich-tressed nymph, unseen by deathless gods and mortal men, at dead of night while sweet sleep should hold white-armed Hera fast. And when the purpose of great Zeus was fulfilled, and the tenth moon with her was fixed in heaven, she was delivered and a notable thing was come to pass. For then she bare a son, of many shifts, blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods. Born with the dawning, at mid-day he played on the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo on the fourth day of the month; for on that day queenly Maia bare him. So soon as he had leaped from his mother's heavenly womb, he lay not long waiting in his holy cradle, but he sprang up and sought the oxen of Apollo. But as he stepped over the threshold of the high-roofed cave, he found a tortoise there and gained endless delight. For it was Hermes who first made the tortoise a singer. The creature fell in his way at the courtyard gate, where it was feeding on the rich grass before the dwelling, waddling along. When he saw it, the luck-bringing son of Zeus laughed and said: “An omen of great luck for me so soon! I do not slight it. Hail, comrade of the feast, lovely in shape, sounding at the dance! With joy I meet you! Where got you that rich gaud for covering, that spangled shell —a tortoise living in the mountains? But I will take and carry you within: you shall help me and I will do you no disgrace, though first of all you must profit me. It is better to be at home: harm may come out of doors. Living, you shall be a spell against mischievous witchcraft; but if you die, then you shall make sweetest song.” Thus speaking, he took up the tortoise in both hands and went back into the house carrying his charming toy. Then he cut off its limbs and scooped out the marrow of the mountain-tortoise with a scoop of grey iron. As a swift thought darts through the heart of a man when thronging cares haunt him, or as bright glances flash from the eye, so glorious Hermes planned both thought and deed at once. He cut stalks of reed to measure and fixed them, fastening their ends across the back and through the shell of the tortoise, and then stretched ox hide all over it by his skill. Also he put in the horns and fitted a cross-piece upon the two of them, and stretched seven strings of sheep-gut. But when he had made it he proved each string in turn with the key, as he held the lovely thing. At the touch of his hand it sounded marvelously; and, as he tried it, the god sang sweet random snatches, even as youths bandy taunts at festivals. He sang of Zeus the son of Cronos and neat-shod Maia, the converse which they had before in the comradeship of love, telling all the glorious tale of his own begetting.

He celebrated, too, the handmaids of the nymph, and her bright home, and the tripods all about the house, and the abundant cauldrons.But while he was singing of all these, his heart was bent on other matters. And he took the hollow lyre and laid it in his sacred cradle, and sprang from the sweet-smelling hall to a watch-place, pondering sheer trickery in his heart —deeds such as knavish folk pursue in the dark night-time; for he longed to taste flesh. The Sun was going down beneath the earth towards Ocean with his horses and chariot when Hermes came hurrying to the shadowy mountains of Pieria, where the divine cattle of the blessed gods had their steads and grazed the pleasant, unmown meadows. Of these the Son of Maia, the sharp-eyed slayer of Argus then cut off from the herd fifty loud-lowing kine, and drove them straggling-wise across a sandy place, turning their hoof-prints aside. Also, he bethought him of a crafty ruse and reversed the marks of their hoofs, making the front behind and the hind before, while he himself walked the other way. Then he wove sandals with wicker-work by the sand of the sea, wonderful things, unthought of, unimagined; for he mixed together tamarisk and myrtle-twigs, fastening together an armful of their fresh, young wood, and tied them, leaves and all securely under his feet as light sandals. That brushwood the glorious Slayer of Argus plucked in Pieria as he was preparing for his journey, making shift as one making haste for a long journey. But an old man tilling his flowering vineyard saw him as he was hurrying down the plain through grassy Onchestus. So the Son of Maia began and said to him: “Old man, digging about your vines with bowed shoulders, surely you shall have much wine when all these bear fruit, if you obey me and strictly remember not to have seen what you have seen, and not to have heard what you have heard, and to keep silent when nothing of your own is harmed.” When he had said this much, he hurried the strong cattle on together: through many shadowy mountains and echoing gorges and flowery plains glorious Hermes drove them. And now the divine night, his dark ally, was mostly passed, and dawn that sets folk to work was quickly coming on, while bright Selene, daughter of the lord Pallas, Megamedes' son, had just climbed her watch-post, when the strong Son of Zeus drove the wide-browed cattle of Phoebus Apollo to the river Alpheus. And they came unwearied to the high-roofed byres and the drinking-troughs that were before the noble meadow. Then, after he had well-fed the loud-bellowing cattle with fodder and driven them into the byre, close-packed and chewing lotus and dewy galingal, he gathered a pile of wood and began to seek the art of fire. He chose a stout laurel branch and trimmed it with the knife [...] held firmly in his hand: and the hot smoke rose up. For it was Hermes who first invented fire-sticks and fire. Next he took many dried sticks and piled them thick and plenty in a sunken trench: and flame began to glow, spreading afar the blast of fierce-burning fire.

And while the strength of glorious Hephaestus was beginning to kindle the fire, he dragged out two lowing, horned cows close to the fire; for great strength was with him. He threw them both panting upon their backs on the ground, and rolled them on their sides, bending their necks over, and pierced their vital chord. Then he went on from task to task: first he cut up the rich, fatted meat, and pierced it with wooden spits, and roasted flesh and the honorable chine and the paunch full of dark blood all together. He laid them there upon the ground, and spread out the hides on a rugged rock: and so they are still there many ages afterwards, a long, long time after all this, and are continually. Next glad-hearted Hermes dragged the rich meats he had prepared and put them on a smooth, flat stone, and divided them into twelve portions distributed by lot, making each portion wholly honorable. Then glorious Hermes longed for the sacrificial meat, for the sweet savour wearied him, god though he was; nevertheless his proud heart was not prevailed upon to devour the flesh, although he greatly desired. But he put away in the high-roofed byre the fat and all the flesh, placing them high up to be a token of his youthful theft. And after that he gathered dry sticks and utterly destroyed with fire all the hoofs and all the heads. And when the god had duly finished all, he threw his sandals into deep-eddying Alpheus, and quenched the embers, covering the black ashes with sand, and so spent the night while Selene's soft light shone down. Then the god went straight back again at dawn to the bright crests of Cyllene, and no one met him on the long journey either of the blessed gods or mortal men, nor did any dog bark. And luck-bringing Hermes, the son of Zeus, passed edgeways through the key-hole of the hall like the autumn breeze, even as mist: straight through the cave he went and came to the rich inner chamber, walking softly, and making no noise as one might upon the floor. Then glorious Hermes went hurriedly to his cradle, wrapping his swaddling clothes about his shoulders as though he were a feeble babe, and lay playing with the covering about his knees; but at his left hand he kept close his sweet lyre. But the god did not pass unseen by the goddess his mother; but she said to him: “How now, you rogue! Whence come you back so at night-time, you that wear shamelessness as a garment? And now I surely believe the son of Leto will soon have you forth out of doors with unbreakable cords about your ribs, or you will live a rogue's life in the glens robbing by whiles. Go to, then; your father got you to be a great worry to mortal men and deathless gods.” Then Hermes answered her with crafty words: “Mother, why do you seek to frighten me like a feeble child whose heart knows few words of blame, a fearful babe that fears its mother's scolding? Nay, but I will try whatever plan is best, and so feed myself and you continually. We will not be content to remain here, as you bid, alone of all the gods unfee'd with offerings and prayers. Better to live in fellowship with the deathless gods continually, rich, wealthy, and enjoying stores of grain, than to sit always in a gloomy cave: and, as regards honor, I too will enter upon the rite that Apollo has. If my father will not give it me,

I will seek —and I am able —to be a prince of robbers. And if Leto's most glorious son shall seek me out, I think another and a greater loss will befall him. For I will go to Pytho to break into his great house, and will plunder therefrom splendid tripods, and cauldrons, and gold, and plenty of bright iron, and much apparel; and you shall see it if you will.” With such words they spoke together, the son of Zeus who holds the aegis, and the lady Maia. Now Eos the early born, bringing light to men, was rising from deep-flowing Ocean, when Apollo, as he went, came to Onchestus, the lovely grove and sacred place of the loud-roaring Holder of the Earth. There he found an old man grazing his beast along the pathway from his court-yard fence, and the all-glorious Son of Leto began and said to him. “Old man, weeder of grassy Onchestus, I am come here from Pieria seeking cattle, cows all of them, all with curving horns, from my herd. The black bull was grazing alone away from the rest, but fierce-eyed hounds followed the cows, four of them, all of one mind, like men. These were left behind, the dogs and the bull —which is a great marvel; but the cows strayed out of the soft meadow, away from the pasture when the sun was just going down. Now tell me this, old man born long ago: have you seen one passing along behind those cows?” Then the old man answered him and said: “My son, it is hard to tell all that one's eyes see; for many wayfarers pass to and fro this way, some bent on much evil, and some on good: it is difficult to know each one. However, I was digging about my plot of vineyard all day long until the sun went down, and I thought, good sir, but I do not know for certain, that I marked a child, whoever the child was, that followed long-horned cattle— an infant who had a staff and kept walking from side to side: he was driving them backwards way, with their heads towards him.” So said the old man. And when Apollo heard this report, he went yet more quickly on his way, and presently, seeing a long-winged bird, he knew at once by that omen that the thief was the child of Zeus the son of Cronos. So the lord Apollo, son of Zeus, hurried on to goodly Pylos seeking his shambling oxen, and he had his broad shoulders covered with a dark cloud. But when the Far-Shooter perceived the tracks, he cried: “Oh, oh! Truly this is a great marvel that my eyes behold! These are indeed the tracks of straight-horned oxen, but they are turned backwards towards the flowery meadow. But these others are not the footprints of man or woman or grey wolves or bears or lions, nor do I think they are the tracks of a rough-maned Centaur — whoever it be that with swift feet makes such monstrous footprints; wonderful are the tracks on this side of the way, but yet more wonderful are those on that.” When he had so said, the lord Apollo, the Son of Zeus hastened on and came to the forest-clad mountain of Cyllene and the deep-shadowed cave in the rock where the divine nymph brought forth the child of Zeus who is the son of Cronos. A sweet odor spread over the lovely hill, and many thin-shanked sheep were grazing on the grass. Then far-shooting Apollo himself stepped down in haste over the stone threshold into the dusky cave.

Now when the Son of Zeus and Maia saw Apollo in a rage about his cattle, he snuggled down in his fragrant swaddling-clothes; and as wood-ash covers over the deep embers of tree-stumps, so Hermes cuddled himself up when he saw the Far-Shooter. He squeezed head and hands and feet together in a small space, like a new born child seeking sweet sleep, though in truth he was wide awake, and he kept his lyre under his armpit. But the Son of Leto was aware and failed not to perceive the beautiful mountain-nymph and her dear son, albeit a little child and swathed so craftily. He peered in every corner of the great dwelling and, taking a bright key, he opened three closets full of nectar and lovely ambrosia. And much gold and silver was stored in them, and many garments of the nymph, some purple and some silvery white, such as are kept in the sacred houses of the blessed gods. Then, after the Son of Leto had searched out the recesses of the great house, he spake to glorious Hermes: “Child, lying in the cradle, make haste and tell me of my cattle, or we two will soon fall out angrily. For I will take and cast you into dusky Tartarus and awful hopeless darkness, and neither your mother nor your father shall free you or bring you up again to the light, but you will wander under the earth and be the leader amongst little folk.” Then Hermes answered him with crafty words: “Son of Leto, what harsh words are these you have spoken? And is it cattle of the field you are come here to seek? I have not seen them: I have not heard of them: no one has told me of them. I cannot give news of them, nor win the reward for news. Am I like a cattle-lifter, a stalwart person? This is no task for me: rather I care for other things: I care for sleep, and milk of my mother's breast, and wrappings round my shoulders, and warm baths. Let no one hear the cause of this dispute; for this would be a great marvel indeed among the deathless gods, that a child newly born should pass in through the forepart of the house with cattle of the field: herein you speak extravagantly. I was born yesterday, and my feet are soft and the ground beneath is rough; nevertheless, if you will have it so, I will swear a great oath by my father's head and vow that neither am I guilty myself, neither have I seen any other who stole your cows —whatever cows may be; for I know them only by hearsay.” So, then, said Hermes, shooting quick glances from his eyes: and he kept raising his brows and looking this way and that, whistling long and listening to Apollo's story as to an idle tale. But far-working Apollo laughed softly and said to him: “O rogue, deceiver, crafty in heart, you talk so innocently that I most surely believe that you have broken into many a well-built house and stripped more than one poor wretch bare this night, gathering his goods together all over the house without noise. You will plague many a lonely herdsman in mountain glades, when you come on herds and thick-fleeced sheep, and have a hankering after flesh. But come now, if you would not sleep your last and latest sleep, get out of your cradle, you comrade of dark night. Surely hereafter this shall be your title amongst the deathless gods, to be called the prince of robbers continually.” So said Phoebus Apollo, and took the child and began to carry him. But at that moment the strong Slayer of Argus

had his plan, and, while Apollo held him in his hands, sent forth an omen, a hard-worked belly-serf, a rude messenger, and sneezed directly after. And when Apollo heard it, he dropped glorious Hermes out of his hands on the ground: then sitting down before him, though he was eager to go on his way, he spoke mockingly to Hermes: “Fear not, little swaddling baby, son of Zeus and Maia. I shall find the strong cattle presently by these omens, and you shall lead the way.” When Apollo had so said, Cyllenian Hermes sprang up quickly, starting in haste. With both hands he pushed up to his ears the covering that he had wrapped about his shoulders, and said: “Where are you carrying me, Far-Worker, hastiest of all the gods? Is it because of your cattle that you are so angry and harass me? O dear, would that all the sort of oxen might perish; for it is not I who stole your cows, nor did I see another steal them —whatever cows may be, and of that I have only heard report. Nay, give right and take it before Zeus, the Son of Cronos.” So Hermes the shepherd and Leto's glorious son kept stubbornly disputing each article of their quarrel: Apollo, speaking truly [...] not unfairly sought to seize glorious Hermes because of the cows; but he, the Cyllenian, tried to deceive the God of the Silver Bow with tricks and cunning words. But when, though he had many wiles, he found the other had as many shifts, he began to walk across the sand, himself in front, while the Son of Zeus and Leto came behind. Soon they came, these lovely children of Zeus, to the top of fragrant Olympus, to their father, the Son of Cronos; for there were the scales of judgement set for them both. There was an assembly on snowy Olympus, and the immortals who perish not were gathering after the hour of gold-throned Dawn. Then Hermes and Apollo of the Silver Bow stood at the knees of Zeus: and Zeus who thunders on high spoke to his glorious son and asked him: “Phoebus, whence come you driving this great spoil, a child new born that has the look of a herald? This is a weighty matter that is come before the council of the gods.” Then the lord, far-working Apollo, answered him: “O my father, you shall soon hear no trifling tale though you reproach me that I alone am fond of spoil. Here is a child, a burgling robber, whom I found after a long journey in the hills of Cyllene: for my part I have never seen one so pert either among the gods or all men that catch folk unawares throughout the world. He stole away my cows from their meadow and drove them off in the evening along the shore of the loud-roaring sea, making straight for Pylos. There were double tracks, and wonderful they were, such as one might marvel at, the doing of a clever sprite; for as for the cows, the dark dust kept and showed their footprints leading towards the flowery meadow; but he himself —bewildering creature —crossed the sandy ground outside the path, not on his feet nor yet on his hands; but, furnished with some other means he trudged his way —wonder of wonders! —as though one walked on slender oak-trees. Now while he followed the cattle across sandy ground, all the tracks showed quite clearly in the dust; but when he had finished the long way across the sand, presently the cows' track and his own could not be traced over the hard ground. But a mortal man noticed him

as he drove the wide-browed kine straight towards Pylos. And as soon as he had shut them up quietly, and had gone home by crafty turns and twists, he lay down in his cradle in the gloom of a dim cave, as still as dark night, so that not even an eagle keenly gazing would have spied him. Much he rubbed his eyes with his hands as he prepared falsehood, and himself straightway said roundly: ‘I have not seen them: I have not heard of them: no man has told me of them. I could not tell you of them, nor win the reward of telling.’” When he had so spoken, Phoebus Apollo sat down. But Hermes on his part answered and said, pointing at the Son of Cronos, the lord of all the gods: “Zeus, my father, indeed I will speak truth to you; for I am truthful and I cannot tell a lie. He came to our house to-day looking for his shambling cows, as the sun was newly rising. He brought no witnesses with him nor any of the blessed gods who had seen the theft, but with great violence ordered me to confess, threatening much to throw me into wide Tartarus. For he has the rich bloom of glorious youth, while I was born but yesterday —as he too knows —, nor am I like a cattle-lifter, a sturdy fellow. Believe my tale (for you claim to be my own father), that I did not drive his cows to my house —so may I prosper— nor crossed the threshold: this I say truly. I reverence Helios greatly and the other gods, and you I love and him I dread. You yourself know that I am not guilty: and I will swear a great oath upon it:—No! by these rich-decked porticoes of the gods. And some day I will punish him, strong as he is, for this pitiless inquisition; but now do you help the younger.” So spake the Cyllenian, the Slayer of Argus, while he kept shooting sidelong glances and kept his swaddling-clothes upon his arm, and did not cast them away. But Zeus laughed out loud to see his evil-plotting child well and cunningly denying guilt about the cattle. And he bade them both to be of one mind and search for the cattle, and guiding Hermes to lead the way and, without mischievousness of heart, to show the place where now he had hidden the strong cattle. Then the Son of Cronos bowed his head: and goodly Hermes obeyed him; for the will of Zeus who holds the aegis easily prevailed with him. Then the two all-glorious children of Zeus hastened both to sandy Pylos, and reached the ford of Alpheus, and came to the fields and the high-roofed byre where the beasts were cherished at night-time. Now while Hermes went to the cave in the rock and began to drive out the strong cattle, the son of Leto, looking aside, saw the cowhides on the sheer rock. And he asked glorious Hermes at once: “How were you able, you crafty rogue, to flay two cows, new-born and babyish as you are? For my part, I dread the strength that will be yours: there is no need you should keep growing long, Cyllenian, son of Maia!” So saying, Apollo twisted strong withes with his hands meaning to bind Hermes with firm bands;

but the bands would not hold him, and the withes of osier fell far from him and began to grow at once from the ground beneath their feet in that very place. And intertwining with one another, they quickly grew and covered all the wild-roving cattle by the will of thievish Hermes, so that Apollo was astonished as he gazed. Then the strong slayer of Argus looked furtively upon the ground with eyes flashing fire [...] desiring to hide [...] Very easily he softened the son of all-glorious Leto as he would, stern though the Far-shooter was. He took the lyre upon his left arm and tried each string in turn with the key, so that at his touch it sounded awesomely. And Phoebus Apollo laughed for joy; for the sweet throb of the marvellous music went to his heart, and a soft longing took hold on his soul as he listened. Then the son of Maia, harping sweetly upon his lyre, took courage and stood at the left hand of Phoebus Apollo; and soon, while he played shrilly on his lyre, he lifted up his voice and sang, and lovely was the sound of his voice that followed. He sang the story of the deathless gods and of the dark earth, how at the first they came to be, and how each one received his portion. First among the gods he honored Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses, in his song; for the son of Maia was of her following. And next the goodly son of Zeus hymned the rest of the immortals according to their order in age, and told how each was born, mentioning all in order as he struck the lyre upon his arm. But Apollo was seized with a longing not to be allayed, and he opened his mouth and spoke winged words to Hermes: “Slayer of oxen, trickster, busy one, comrade of the feast, this song of yours is worth fifty cows, and I believe that presently we shall settle our quarrel peacefully. But come now, tell me this, resourceful son of Maia: has this marvellous thing been with you from your birth, or did some god or mortal man give it you —a noble gift —and teach you heavenly song? For wonderful is this new-uttered sound I hear, the like of which I vow that no man nor god dwelling on Olympus ever yet has known but you,O thievish son of Maia. What skill is this? What song for desperate cares? What way of song? For verily here are three things to hand all at once from which to choose, —mirth, and love, and sweet sleep. And though I am a follower of the Olympian Muses who love dances and the bright path of song —the full-toned chant and ravishing thrill of flutes —yet I never cared for any of those feats of skill at young men's revels, as I do now for this: I am filled with wonder, O son of Zeus, at your sweet playing. But now, since you, though little, have such glorious skill, sit down, dear boy, and respect the words of your elders For now you shall have renown among the deathless gods, you and your mother also. This I will declare to you exactly: by this shaft of cornel wood I will surely make you a leader renowned among the deathless gods, and fortunate, and will give you glorious gifts and will not deceive you from first to last.” Then Hermes answered him with artful words: “You question me carefully, O Far-worker; yet I am

not jealous that you should enter upon my art: this day you shall know it. For I seek to be friendly with you both in thought and word. Now you well know all things in your heart, since you sit foremost among the deathless gods, O son of Zeus, and are goodly and strong. And wise Zeus loves you as all right is, and has given you splendid gifts. And they say that from the utterance of Zeus you have learned both the honors due to the gods, O Far-worker, and oracles from Zeus, even all his ordinances. Of all these I myself have already learned that you have great wealth. Now, you are free to learn whatever you please; but since, as it seems, your heart is so strongly set on playing the lyre, chant, and play upon it, and give yourself to merriment, taking this as a gift from me, and do you, my friend, bestow glory on me. Sing well with this clear-voiced companion in your hands; for you are skilled in good, well-ordered utterance. From now on bring it confidently to the rich feast and lovely dance and glorious revel, a joy by night and by day. Whoso with wit and wisdom enquires of it cunningly, him it teaches through its sound all manner of things that delight the mind, being easily played with gentle familiarities, for it abhors toilsome drudgery; but whoso in ignorance enquires of it violently, to him it chatters mere vanity and foolishness. But you are able to learn whatever you please. So then, I will give you this lyre, glorious son of Zeus, while I for my part will graze down with wild-roving cattle the pastures on hill and horse-feeding plain: so shall the cows covered by the bulls calve abundantly both males and females. And now there is no need for you, bargainer though you are, to be furiously angry.” When Hermes had said this, he held out the lyre: and Phoebus Apollo took it, and readily put his shining whip in Hermes' hand, and ordained him keeper of herds. The son of Maia received it joyfully, while the glorious son of Leto, the lord far-working Apollo, took the lyre upon his left arm and tried each string with the key. Awesomely it sounded at the touch of the god, while he sang sweetly to its note. Afterwards they two, the all-glorious sons of Zeus turned the cows back towards the sacred meadow, but themselves hastened back to snowy Olympus, delighting in the lyre. Then wise Zeus was glad and made them both friends. And Hermes loved the son of Leto continually, even as he does now, when he had given the lyre as token to the Far-shooter, who played it skilfully, holding it upon his arm. But for himself Hermes found out another cunning art and made himself the pipes whose sound is heard afar. Then the son of Leto said to Hermes: “Son of Maia, guide and cunning one, I fear you may steal from me the lyre and my curved bow together; for you have an office from Zeus, to establish deeds of barter amongst men throughout the fruitful earth. Now if you would only swear me the great oath of the gods, either by nodding your head, or by the potent water of Styx, you would do all that can please and ease my heart.” Then Maia's son nodded his head and promised that he would never steal anything of all the Far-shooter possessed, and would never go near his strong house; but Apollo, son of Leto, swore to be fellow and friend to Hermes,

vowing that he would love no other among the immortals, neither god nor man sprung from Zeus, better than Hermes: and the Father sent forth an eagle in confirmation. And Apollo swear also: “Verily I will make you only to be an omen for the immortals and all alike, trusted and honored by my heart. Moreover, I will give you a splendid staff of riches and wealth: it is of gold, with three branches, and will keep you scatheless, accomplishing every task, whether of words or deeds that are good, which I claim to know through the utterance of Zeus. But as for sooth-saying, noble, heaven-born child, of which you ask, it is not lawful for you to learn it, nor for any other of the deathless gods: only the mind of Zeus knows that. I am pledged and have vowed and sworn a strong oath that no other of the eternal gods save I should know the wise-hearted counsel of Zeus. And do not you, my brother, bearer of the golden wand, bid me tell those decrees which all-seeing Zeus intends. As for men, I will harm one and profit another, sorely perplexing the tribes of unenviable men. Whosoever shall come guided by the call and flight of birds of sure omen, that man shall have advantage through my voice, and I will not deceive him. But whoso shall trust to idly-chattering birds and shall seek to invoke my prophetic art contrary to my will, and to understand more than the eternal gods, I declare that he shall come on an idle journey; yet his gifts I would take. But I will tell you another thing, Son of all-glorious Maia and Zeus who holds the aegis, luck-bringing genius of the gods. There are certain holy ones, sisters born —three virgins gifted with wings: their heads are besprinkled with white meal, and they dwell under a ridge of Parnassus. These are teachers of divination apart from me, the art which I practised while yet a boy following herds, though my father paid no heed to it. From their home they fly now here, now there, feeding on honey-comb and bringing all things to pass. And when they are inspired through eating yellow honey, they are willing to speak truth; but if they be deprived of the gods' sweet food, then they speak falsely, as they swarm in and out together. These, then, I give you; enquire of them strictly and delight your heart: and if you should teach any mortal so to do, often will he hear your response —if he have good fortune. Take these, Son of Maia, and tend the wild roving, horned oxen and horses and patient mules.” So he spake. And from heaven father Zeus himself gave confirmation to his words, and commanded that glorious Hermes should be lord over all birds of omen and grim-eyed lions, and boars with gleaming tusks,

and over dogs and all flocks that the wide earth nourishes, and over all sheep; also that he only should be the appointed messenger to Hades, who, though he takes no gift, shall give him no mean prize. Thus the lord Apollo showed his kindness for the Son of Maia by all manner of friendship: and the Son of Cronos gave him grace besides. He consorts with all mortals and immortals: a little he profits, but continually throughout the dark night he cozens the tribes of mortal men. And so, farewell, Son of Zeus and Maia; but I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 5 To Aphrodite Cite

Muse, tell me the deeds of golden Aphrodite the Cyprian, who stirs up sweet passion in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men and birds that fly in air and all the many creatures that the dry land rears, and all that the sea: all these love the deeds of rich-crowned Cytherea. Yet there are three hearts that she cannot bend nor yet ensnare. First is the daughter of Zeus who holds the aegis, bright-eyed Athena; for she has no pleasure in the deeds of golden Aphrodite, but delights in wars and in the work of Ares, in strifes and battles and in preparing famous crafts. She first taught earthly craftsmen to make chariots of war and cars variously wrought with bronze, and she, too, teaches tender maidens in the house and puts knowledge of goodly arts in each one's mind. Nor does laughter-loving Aphrodite ever tame in love Artemis, the huntress with shafts of gold; for she loves archery and the slaying of wild beasts in the mountains, the lyre also and dancing and thrilling cries and shady woods and the cities of upright men. Nor yet does the pure maiden Hestia love Aphrodite's works. She was the first-born child of wily Cronos and youngest too, by will of Zeus who holds the aegis, —a queenly maid whom both Poseidon and Apollo sought to wed. But she was wholly unwilling, nay, stubbornly refused; and touching the head of father Zeus who holds the aegis, she, that fair goddess, swear a great oath which has in truth been fulfilled, that she would be a maiden all her days. So Zeus the Father gave her an high honor instead of marriage, and she has her place in the midst of the house and has the richest portion. In all the temples of the gods she has a share of honor, and among all mortal men she is chief of the goddesses. Of these three Aphrodite cannot bend or ensnare the hearts. But of all others there is nothing among the blessed gods or among mortal men that has escaped Aphrodite. Even the heart of Zeus, who delights in thunder, is led astray by her; though he is greatest of all and has the lot of highest majesty, she beguiles even his wise heart whensoever she pleases, and mates him with mortal women, unknown to Hera, his sister and his wife, the grandest far in beauty among the deathless goddesses —most glorious is she whom wily Cronos with her mother Rhea did beget: and Zeus, whose wisdom is everlasting, made her his chaste and careful wife. But upon Aphrodite herself Zeus cast sweet desire to be joined in love with a mortal man, to the end that, very soon, not even she should be innocent of a mortal's love; lest laughter-loving Aphrodite should one day softly smile and say mockingly among all the gods that she had joined the gods in love with mortal women who bare sons of death to the deathless gods, and had mated the goddesses with mortal men. And so he put in her heart sweet desire for Anchises who at that time among the steep hills of many-fountained Ida was tending cattle, and in shape was like the immortal gods. Therefore, when laughter-loving Aphrodite saw him, she loved him, and terribly desire seized her in her heart. She went to Cyprus, to Paphos, where her precinct is and fragrant altar, and passed into her sweet-smelling temple.

There she went in and put to the glittering doors, and there the Graces bathed her with heavenly oil such as blooms upon the bodies of the eternal gods —oil divinely sweet, which she had by her, filled with fragrance. And laughter-loving Aphrodite put on all her rich clothes, and when she had decked herself with gold, she left sweet-smelling Cyprus and went in haste towards Troy, swiftly travelling high up among the clouds. So she came to many-fountained Ida, the mother of wild creatures and went straight to the homestead across the mountains. After her came grey wolves, fawning on her, and grim-eyed lions, and bears, and fleet leopards, ravenous for deer: and she was glad in heart to see them, and put desire in their breasts, so that they all mated, two together, about the shadowy coombes. But she herself came to the neat-built shelters, and him she found left quite alone in the homestead —the hero Anchises who was comely as the gods. All the others were following the herds over the grassy pastures, and he, left quite alone in the homestead, was roaming hither and thither and playing thrillingly upon the lyre. And Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus stood before him, being like a pure maiden in height and mien, that he should not be frightened when he took heed of her with his eyes. Now when Anchises saw her, he marked her well and wondered at her mien and height and shining garments. For she was clad in a robe out-shining the brightness of fire, a splendid robe of gold, enriched with all manner of needlework, which shimmered like the moon over her tender breasts, a marvel to see. Also she wore twisted brooches and shining earrings in the form of flowers; and round her soft throat were lovely necklaces. And Anchises was seized with love, and said to her: “Hail, lady, whoever of the blessed ones you are that are come to this house, whether Artemis, or Leto, or golden Aphrodite, or high-born Themis, or bright-eyed Athena. Or, maybe, you are one of the Graces come hither, who bear the gods company and are called immortal, or else one of the Nymphs who haunt the pleasant woods, or of those who inhabit this lovely mountain and the springs of rivers and grassy meads.

I will make you an altar upon a high peak in a far seen place, and will sacrifice rich offerings to you at all seasons. And do you feel kindly towards me and grant that I may become a man very eminent among the Trojans, and give me strong offspring for the time to come. As for my own self, let me live long and happily, seeing the light of the sun, and come to the threshold of old age, a man prosperous among the people.” Thereupon Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus answered him: “Anchises, most glorious of all men born on earth, know that I am no goddess: why do you liken me to the deathless ones? Nay, I am but a mortal, and a woman was the mother that bare me. Otreus of famous name is my father, if so be you have heard of him, and he reigns over all Phrygia rich in fortresses. But I know your speech well beside my own, for a Trojan nurse brought me up at home: she took me from my dear mother and reared me thenceforth when I was a little child. So comes it, then, that I well know your tongue also. And now the Slayer of Argus with the golden wand has caught me up from the dance of huntress Artemis, her with the golden arrows. For there were many of us, nymphs and marriageable maidens, playing together; and an innumerable company encircled us: from these the Slayer of Argus with the golden wand rapt me away. He carried me over many fields of mortal men and over much land untilled and unpossessed, where savage wild-beasts roam through shady coombes, until I thought never again to touch the life-giving earth with my feet. And he said that I should be called the wedded wife of Anchises, and should bear you goodly children. But when he had told and advised me, he, the strong Slayer of Argos, went back to the families of the deathless gods, while I am now come to you: for unbending necessity is upon me. But I beseech you by Zeus and by your noble parents —for no base folk could get such a son as you —take me now, stainless and unproved in love, and show me to your father and careful mother and to your brothers sprung from the same stock. I shall be no ill-liking daughter for them, but a likely. Moreover, send a messenger quickly to the swift-horsed Phrygians, to tell my father and my sorrowing mother; and they will send you gold in plenty and woven stuffs, many splendid gifts; take these as bride-piece. So do, and then prepare the sweet marriage that is honorable in the eyes of men and deathless gods.” When she had so spoken, the goddess put sweet desire in his heart. And Anchises was seized with love, so that he opened his mouth and said: “If you are a mortal and a woman was the mother who bare you, and Otreus of famous name is your father as you say, and if you are come here by the will of Hermes the immortal Guide, and are to be called my wife always, then neither god nor mortal man shall here restrain me till I have lain with you in love right now; no, not even if far-shooting Apollo himself should launch grievous shafts from his silver bow. Willingly would I go down into the house of Hades, O lady, beautiful as the goddesses, once I had gone up to your bed.” So speaking, he caught her by the hand. And laughter-loving Aphrodite, with face turned away and lovely eyes downcast, crept to the well-spread couch which was already laid with soft coverings for the hero; and upon it lay skins of bears and deep-roaring lions

which he himself had slain in the high mountains. And when they had gone up upon the well-fitted bed, first Anchises took off her bright jewelry of pins and twisted brooches and earrings and necklaces, and loosed her girdle and stripped off her bright garments and laid them down upon a silver-studded seat. Then by the will of the gods and destiny he lay with her, a mortal man with an immortal goddess, not clearly knowing what he did. But at the time when the herdsmen drive their oxen and hardy sheep back to the fold from the flowery pastures, even then Aphrodite poured soft sleep upon Anchises, but herself put on her rich raiment. And when the bright goddess had fully clothed herself, she stood by the couch, and her head reached to the well-hewn roof-tree; from her cheeks shone unearthly beauty such as belongs to rich-crowned Cytherea. Then she aroused him from sleep and opened her mouth and said:“Up, son of Dardanus! —why sleep you so heavily? —and consider whether I look as I did when first you saw me with your eyes.” So she spake. And he awoke in a moment and obeyed her. But when he saw the neck and lovely eyes of Aphrodite, he was afraid and turned his eyes aside another way, hiding his comely face with his cloak. Then he uttered winged words and entreated her: “So soon as ever I saw you with my eyes, goddess, I knew that you were divine; but you did not tell me truly. Yet by Zeus who holds the aegis I beseech you, leave me not to lead a palsied life among men, but have pity on me; for he who lies with a deathless goddess is no hale man afterwards.”Then Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus answered him: “Anchises, most glorious of mortal men, take courage and be not too fearful in your heart. You need fear no harm from me nor from the other blessed ones, for you are dear to the gods: and you shall have a dear son who shall reign among the Trojans, and children's children after him, springing up continually. His name shall be Aeneas, because I felt awful grief in that I laid me in the bed of a mortal man: yet are those of your race always the most like to gods of all mortal men in beauty and in stature. Verily wise Zeus carried off golden-haired Ganymedes because of his beauty, to be amongst the Deathless Ones and pour drink for the gods in the house of Zeus — a wonder to see—,honored by all the immortals as he draws the red nectar from the golden bowl. But grief that could not be soothed filled the heart of Tros; for he knew not whither the heaven-sent whirlwind had caught up his dear son, so that he mourned him always, unceasingly, until Zeus pitied him and gave him high-stepping horses such as carry the immortals as recompense for his son. These he gave him as a gift. And at the command of Zeus, the Guide, the slayer of Argus, told him all, and how his son would be deathless and unageing, even as the gods. So when Tros heard these tidings from Zeus, he no longer kept mourning but rejoiced in his heart and rode joyfully with his storm-footed horses.So also golden-throned Eos rapt away Tithonus who was of your race and like the deathless gods.

And she went to ask the dark-clouded Son of Cronos that he should be deathless and live eternally; and Zeus bowed his head to her prayer and fulfilled her desire. Too simple was queenly Eos: she thought not in her heart to ask youth for him and to strip him of the slough of deadly age. So while he enjoyed the sweet flower of life he lived rapturously with golden-throned Eos, the early-born, by the streams of Ocean, at the ends of the earth; but when the first grey hairs began to ripple from his comely head and noble chin, queenly Eos kept away from his bed, though she cherished him in her house and nourished him with food and ambrosia and gave him rich clothing. But when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs. I would not have you be deathless among the deathless gods and live continually after such sort. Yet if you could live on such as now you are in look and in form, and be called my husband, sorrow would not then enfold my careful heart. But, as it is, harsh old age will soon enshroud you — ruthless age which stands someday at the side of every man, deadly, wearying, dreaded even by the gods.And now because of you I shall have great shame among the deathless gods henceforth, continually. For until now they feared my jibes and the wiles by which, or soon or late, I mated all the immortals with mortal women, making them all subject to my will. But now my mouth shall no more have this power among the gods; for very great has been my madness, my miserable and dreadful madness, and I went astray out of my mind who have gotten a child beneath my girdle, mating with a mortal man. As for the child, as soon as he sees the light of the sun, the deep-breasted mountain Nymphs who inhabit this great and holy mountain shall bring him up. They rank neither with mortals nor with immortals: long indeed do they live, eating heavenly food and treading the lovely dance among the immortals, and with them the Sileni and the sharp-eyed Slayer of Argus mate in the depths of pleasant caves; but at their birth pines or high-topped oaks spring up with them upon the fruitful earth, beautiful, flourishing trees, towering high upon the lofty mountains (and men call them holy places of the immortals, and never mortal lops them with the axe); but when the fate of death is near at hand, first those lovely trees wither where they stand, and the bark shrivels away about them, and the twigs fall down, and at last the life of the Nymph and of the tree leave the light of the sun together. These Nymphs shall keep my son with them and rear him, and as soon as he is come to lovely boyhood, the goddesses will bring him here to you and show you your child. But, that I may tell you all that I have in mind, I will come here again towards the fifth year and bring you my son. So soon as ever you have seen him —a scion to delight the eyes —, you will rejoice in beholding him; for he shall be most godlike:

them bring him at once to windy Ilion. And if any mortal man ask you who got your dear son beneath her girdle, remember to tell him as I bid you: say he is the offspring of one of the flower-like Nymphs who inhabit this forest-clad hill. But if you tell all and foolishly boast that you lay with rich-crowned Aphrodite, Zeus will smite you in his anger with a smoking thunderbolt. Now I have told you all. Take heed: refrain and name me not, but have regard to the anger of the gods.” When the goddess had so spoken, she soared up to windy heaven. Hail, goddess, queen of well-builded Cyprus! with you have I begun; now I will turn me to another hymn.

Hymn 6 To Aphrodite Cite

I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful, whose dominion is the walled cities of all sea-set Cyprus. There the moist breath of the western wind wafted her over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam, and there the gold-filleted Hours welcomed her joyously. They clothed her with heavenly garments: on her head they put a fine, well-wrought crown of gold, and in her pierced ears they hung ornaments of orichalc and precious gold, and adorned her with golden necklaces over her soft neck and snow-white breasts, jewels which the gold-filleted Hours wear themselves whenever they go to their father's house to join the lovely dances of the gods. And when they had fully decked her, they brought her to the gods, who welcomed her when they saw her, giving her their hands. Each one of them prayed that he might lead her home to be his wedded wife, so greatly were they amazed at the beauty of violet-crowned Cytherea. Hail, sweetly-winning, coy-eyed goddess! Grant that I may gain the victory in this contest, and order you my song. And now I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 7 Το Dionysus Cite

I will tell of Dionysus, the son of glorious Semele, how he appeared on a jutting headland by the shore of the fruitless sea, seeming like a stripling in the first flush of manhood: his rich, dark hair was waving about him, and on his strong shoulders he wore a purple robe. Presently there came swiftly over the sparkling sea Tyrsenian pirates on a well-decked ship —a miserable doom led them on. When they saw him they made signs to one another and sprang out quickly, and seizing him straightway put him on board their ship exultingly; for they thought him the son of heaven-nurtured kings. They sought to bind him with rude bonds, but the bonds would not hold him, and the withes fell far away from his hands and feet: and he sat with a smile in his dark eyes. Then the helmsman understood all and cried out at once to his fellows and said: “Madmen! what god is this whom you have taken and bind, strong that he is? Not even the well-built ship can carry him. Surely this is either Zeus or Apollo who has the silver bow, or Poseidon, for he looks not like mortal men but like the gods who dwell on Olympus. Come, then, let us set him free upon the dark shore at once: do not lay hands on him, lest he grow angry and stir up dangerous winds and heavy squalls.” So said he: but the master chid him with taunting words: “Madman, mark the wind and help hoist sail on the ship: catch all the sheets. As for this fellow we men will see to him: I reckon he is bound for Egypt or for Cyprus or to the Hyperboreans or further still. But in the end he will speak out and tell us his friends and all his wealth and his brothers, now that providence has thrown him in our way.” When he had said this, he had mast and sail hoisted on the ship, and the wind filled the sail and the crew hauled taut the sheets on either side. But soon strange things were seen among them. First of all sweet, fragrant wine ran streaming throughout all the black ship and a heavenly smell arose, so that all the seamen were seized with amazement when they saw it. And all at once a vine spread out both ways along the top of the sail with many clusters hanging down from it, and a dark ivy-plant twined about the mast, blossoming with flowers, and with rich berries growing on it; and all the thole-pins were covered with garlands. When the pirates saw all this, then at last they bade the helmsman to put the ship to land. But the god changed into a dreadful lion there on the ship, in the bows, and roared loudly: amidships also he showed his wonders and created a shaggy bear which stood up ravening, while on the forepeak was the lion glaring fiercely with scowling brows. And so the sailors fled into the stern and crowded bemused about the right-minded helmsman, until suddenly the lion sprang upon the master and seized him; and when the sailors saw it they leapt out overboard one and all into the bright sea, escaping from a miserable fate, and were changed into dolphins. But on the helmsman Dionysus had mercy and held him back and made him altogether happy, saying to him: “Take courage, good [...] ; you have found favour with my heart. I am loud-crying Dionysus whom Cadmus' daughter Semele bare of union with Zeus.” Hail, child of fair-faced Semele! He who forgets you can in no wise order sweet song.

Hymn 8 To Ares Cite

Ares, exceeding in strength, chariot-rider, golden-helmed, doughty in heart, shield-bearer, Saviour of cities, harnessed in bronze, strong of arm, unwearying, mighty with the spear, O defence of Olympus, father of warlike Victory, ally of Themis, stern governor of the rebellious, leader of righteous men, sceptred King of manliness, who whirl your fiery sphere among the planets in their sevenfold courses through the aether wherein your blazing steeds ever bear you above the third firmament of heaven; hear me, helper of men, giver of dauntless youth! Shed down a kindly ray from above upon my life, and strength of war, that I may be able to drive away bitter cowardice from my head and crush down the deceitful impulses of my soul. Restrain also the keen fury of my heart which provokes me to tread the ways of blood-curdling strife. Rather, O blessed one, give you me boldness to abide within the harmless laws of peace, avoiding strife and hatred and the violent fiends of death.

Hymn 9 To Artemis Cite

Muse, sing of Artemis, sister of the Far-shooter, the virgin who delights in arrows, who was fostered with Apollo. She waters her horses from Meles deep in reeds, and swiftly drives her all-golden chariot through Smyrna to vine-clad Claros where Apollo, god of the silver bow, sits waiting for the far-shooting goddess who delights in arrows. And so hail to you, Artemis, in my song and to all goddesses as well. Of you first I sing and with you I begin; now that I have begun with you, I will turn to another song.

Hymn 10 To Aphrodite Cite

Of Cytherea, born in Cyprus, I will sing. She gives kindly gifts to men: smiles are ever on her lovely face, and lovely is the brightness that plays over it. Hail, goddess, queen of well-built Salamis and sea-girt Cyprus; grant me a cheerful song. And now I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 11 To Athena Cite

Of Pallas Athena, guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and with Ares she loves deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle. It is she who saves the people as they go out to war and come back. Hail, goddess, and give us good fortune with happiness!

Hymn 12 To Hera Cite

I sing of golden-throned Hera whom Rhea bare. Queen of the immortals is she, surpassing all in beauty: she is the sister and the wife of loud-thundering Zeus, —the glorious one whom all the blessed throughout high Olympus reverence and honor even as Zeus who delights in thunder.

Hymn 13 To Demeter Cite

I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess, of her and of her daughter lovely Persephone. Hail, goddess! Keep this city safe, and govern my song.

Hymn 14 to the Mother of the Gods Cite

I Prithee, clear-voiced Muse, daughter of mighty Zeus, sing of the mother of all gods and men. She is well-pleased with the sound of rattles and of timbrels, with the voice of flutes and the outcry of wolves and bright-eyed lions, with echoing hills and wooded coombes. And so hail to you in my song and to all goddesses as well!

Hymn 15 To Heracles the Lion-Hearted Cite

I will sing of Heracles, the son of Zeus and much the mightiest of men on earth. Alcmena bare him in Thebes, the city of lovely dances, when the dark-clouded Son of Cronos had lain with her. Once he used to wander over unmeasured tracts of land and sea at the bidding of King Eurystheus, and himself did many deeds of violence and endured many; but now he lives happily in the glorious home of snowy Olympus, and has neat-ankled Hebe for his wife. Hail, lord, son of Zeus' Give me success and prosperity.

Hymn 16 To Asclepius Cite

I begin to sing of Asclepius, son of Apollo and healer of sicknesses. In the Dotian plain fair Coronis, daughter of King Phlegyas, bare him, a great joy to men, a soother of cruel pangs. And so hail to you, lord: in my song I make my prayer to thee!

Hymn 17 To the Dioscuri Cite

Sing, clear-voiced Muse, of Castor and Polydeuces, the Tyndaridae, who sprang from Olympian Zeus. Beneath the heights of Taygetus stately Leda bare them, when the dark-clouded Son of Cronos had privily bent her to his will. Hail, children of Tyndareus, riders upon swift horses!

Hymn 18 To Hermes Cite

I sing of Cyllenian Hermes, the Slayer of Argus, lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks, luck-bringing messenger of the deathless gods. He was born of Maia, the daughter of Atlas, when she had mated with Zeus,— a shy goddess she. Ever she avoided the throng of the blessed gods and lived in a shadowy cave, and there the Son of Cronos used to lie with the rich-tressed nymph at dead of night, while white-armed Hera lay bound in sweet sleep: and neither deathless god nor mortal man knew it. And so hail to you, Son of Zeus and Maia; with you I have begun: now I will turn to another song!Hail, Hermes, giver of grace, guide, and giver of good things!

Hymn 19 To Pan Cite

Muse, tell me about Pan, the dear son of Hermes, with his goat's feet and two horns —a lover of merry noise. Through wooded glades he wanders with dancing nymphs who foot it on some sheer cliff's edge, calling upon Pan, the shepherd-god, long-haired, unkempt. He has every snowy crest and the mountain peaks and rocky crests for his domain; hither and thither he goes through the close thickets, now lured by soft streams, and now he presses on amongst towering crags and climbs up to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks. Often he courses through the glistening high mountains, and often on the shouldered hills he speeds along slaying wild beasts, this keen-eyed god. Only at evening, as he returns from the chase, he sounds his note, playing sweet and low on his pipes of reed: not even she could excel him in melody —that bird who in flower-laden spring pouring forth her lament utters honey-voiced song amid the leaves. At that hour the clear-voiced nymphs are with him and move with nimble feet, singing by some spring of dark water, while Echo wails about the mountain-top, and the god on this side or on that of the choirs, or at times sidling into the midst, plies it nimbly with his feet. On his back he wears a spotted lynx-pelt, and he delights in high-pitched songs in a soft meadow where crocuses and sweet-smelling hyacinths bloom at random in the grass. They sing of the blessed gods and high Olympus and choose to tell of such an one as luck-bringing Hermes above the rest, how he is the swift messenger of all the gods, and how he came to Arcadia, the land of many springs and mother of flocks, there where his sacred place is as god of Cyllene. For there, though a god, he used to tend curly-fleeced sheep in the service of a mortal man, because there fell on him and waxed strong melting desire to wed the rich-tressed daughter of Dryops, and there he brought about the merry marriage. And in the house she bare Hermes a dear son who from his birth was marvellous to look upon, with goat's feet and two horns —a noisy, merry-laughing child. But when the nurse saw his uncouth face and full beard, she was afraid and sprang up and fled and left the child. Then luck-bringing Hermes received him and took him in his arms: very glad in his heart was the god. And he went quickly to the abodes of the deathless gods, carrying his son wrapped in warm skins of mountain hares, and set him down beside Zeus and showed him to the rest of the gods. Then all the immortals were glad in heart and Bacchic Dionysus in especial; and they called the boy Pan because he delighted all their hearts. And so hail to you, lord! I seek your favour with a song. And now I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 20 To Hephaestus Cite

Sing, clear-voiced Muse, of Hephaestus famed for inventions. With bright-eyed Athena he taught men glorious crafts throughout the world, —men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts. But now that they have learned crafts through Hephaestus the famed worker, easily they live a peaceful life in their own houses the whole year round. Be gracious, Hephaestus, and grant me success and prosperity!

Hymn 21 To Apollo Cite

Phoebus, of you even the swan sings with clear voice to the beating of his wings, as he alights upon the bank by the eddying river Peneus; and of you the sweet-tongued minstrel, holding his high-pitched lyre, always sings both first and last. And so hail to you, lord! I seek your favor with my song.

Hymn 22 To Poseidon Cite

I begin to sing about Poseidon, the great god, mover of the earth and fruitless sea, god of the deep who is also lord of Helicon and wide Aegae. A two-fold office the gods allotted you, O Shaker of the Earth, to be a tamer of horses and a saviour of ships! Hail, Poseidon, Holder of the Earth, dark-haired lord! O blessed one, be kindly in heart and help those who voyage in ships!

Hymn 23 to Zeus Cite

I will sing of Zeus, chiefest among the gods and greatest, all-seeing, the lord of all, the fulfiller who whispers words of wisdom to Themis as she sits leaning towards him. Be gracious, all-seeing Son of Cronos, most excellent and great!

Hymn 24 To Hestia Cite

Hestia, you who tend the holy house of the lord Apollo, the Far-shooter at goodly Pytho, with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house, come, having one mind with Zeus the all-wise —draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song.

Hymn 25 To the Muses and Apollo Cite

I will begin with the Muses and Apollo and Zeus. For it is through the Muses and Apollo that there are singers upon the earth and players upon the lyre; but kings are from Zeus. Happy is he whom the Muses love: sweet flows speech from his lips. Hail, children of Zeus! Give honor to my song! And now I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 26 To Dionysus Cite

I begin to sing of ivy-crowned Dionysus, the loud-crying god, splendid son of Zeus and glorious Semele. The rich-haired Nymphs received him in their bosoms from the lord his father and fostered and nurtured him carefully in the dells of Nysa, where by the will of his father he grew up in a sweet-smelling cave, being reckoned among the immortals. But when the goddesses had brought him up, a god oft hymned, then began he to wander continually through the woody coombes, thickly wreathed with ivy and laurel. And the Nymphs followed in his train with him for their leader; and the boundless forest was filled with their outcry. And so hail to you, Dionysus, god of abundant clusters! Grant that we may come again rejoicing to this season, and from that season onwards for many a year.

Hymn 27 To Artemis Cite

I sing of Artemis, whose shafts are of gold, who cheers on the hounds, the pure maiden, shooter of stags, who delights in archery, own sister to Apollo with the golden sword. Over the shadowy hills and windy peaks she draws her golden bow, rejoicing in the chase, and sends out grievous shafts. The tops of the high mountains tremble and the tangled wood echoes awesomely with the outcry of beasts: earth quakes and the sea also where fishes shoal. But the goddess with a bold heart turns every way destroying the race of wild beasts: and when she is satisfied and has cheered her heart, this huntress who delights in arrows slackens her supple bow and goes to the great house of her dear brother Phoebus Apollo, to the rich land of Delphi, there to order the lovely dance of the Muses and Graces. There she hangs up her curved bow and her arrows, and heads and leads the dances, gracefully arrayed, while all they utter their heavenly voice, singing how neat-ankled Leto bare children supreme among the immortals both in thought and in deed. Hail to you, children of Zeus and rich-haired Leto! And now I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 28 To Athena Cite

I begin to sing of Pallas Athena, the glorious goddess, bright-eyed, inventive, unbending of heart, pure virgin, saviour of cities, courageous, Tritogeneia. Wise Zeus himself bare her from his awful head, arrayed in warlike arms of flashing gold, and awe seized all the gods as they gazed. But Athena sprang quickly from the immortal head and stood before Zeus who holds the aegis, shaking a sharp spear: great Olympus began to reel horribly at the might of the bright-eyed goddess, and earth round about cried fearfully, and the sea was moved and tossed with dark waves, while foam burst forth suddenly: the bright Son of Hyperion stopped his swift-footed horses a long while, until the maiden Pallas Athena had stripped the heavenly armour from her immortal shoulders. And wise Zeus was glad. And so hail to you, daughter of Zeus who holds the aegis! Now I will remember you and another song as well.

Hymn 29 To Hestia Cite

Hestia, in the high dwellings of all, both deathless gods and men who walk on earth, you have gained an everlasting abode and highest honor: glorious is your portion and your right. For without you mortals hold no banquet, — where one does not duly pour sweet wine in offering to Hestia both first and last. And you, Slayer of Argus, Son of Zeus and Maia, messenger of the blessed gods, bearer of the golden rod, giver of good, be favorable and help us, you and Hestia, the worshipful and dear. Come and dwell in this glorious house in friendship together; for you two, well knowing the noble actions of men, aid on their wisdom and their strength. Hail, Daughter of Cronos, and you also, Hermes, bearer of the golden rod! Now I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 30 To Earth Cite

I will sing of well-founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly: all these are fed of her store. Through you, O queen, men are blessed in their children and blessed in their harvests, and to you it belongs to give means of life to mortal men and to take it away. Happy is the man whom you delight to honor! He has all things abundantly: his fruitful land is laden with corn, his pastures are covered with cattle, and his house is filled with good things. Such men rule orderly in their cities of fair women: great riches and wealth follow them: their sons exult with ever-fresh delight, and their daughters in flower-laden bands play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field. Thus is it with those whom you honor O holy goddess, bountiful spirit. Hail, Mother of the gods, wife of starry Heaven; freely bestow upon me for this my song substance that cheers the heart! And now I will remember you and another song also.

Hymn 31 To Helios Cite

And now, O Muse Calliope, daughter of Zeus, begin to sing of glowing Helios whom mild-eyed Euryphaessa, the far-shining one, bare to the Son of Earth and starry Heaven. For Hyperion wedded glorious Euryphaessa, his own sister, who bare him lovely children, rosy-armed Eos and rich-tressed Selene and tireless Helios who is like the deathless gods. As he rides in his chariot, he shines upon men and deathless gods, and piercingly he gazes with his eyes from his golden helmet. Bright rays beam dazzlingly from him, and his bright locks streaming from the temples of his head gracefully enclose his far-seen face: a rich, fine-spun garment glows upon his body and flutters in the wind: and stallions carry him. Then, when he has stayed his golden-yoked chariot and horses, he rests there upon the highest point of heaven, until he marvelously drives them down again through heaven to Ocean. Hail to you, lord! Freely bestow on me substance that cheers the heart. And now that I have begun with you, I will celebrate the race of mortal men half-divine whose deeds the Muses have showed to mankind.

Hymn 32 To Selene Cite

And next, sweet voiced Muses, daughters of Zeus, well-skilled in song, tell of the long-winged Moon. From her immortal head a radiance is shown from heaven and embraces earth; and great is the beauty that ariseth from her shining light. The air, unlit before, glows with the light of her golden crown, and her rays beam clear, whensoever bright Selene having bathed her lovely body in the waters of Ocean, and donned her far-gleaming raiment, and yoked her strong-necked, shining team, drives on her long-maned horses at full speed, at eventime in the mid-month: then her great orbit is full and then her beams shine brightest as she increases. So she is a sure token and a sign to mortal men. Once the Son of Cronos was joined with her in love; and she conceived and bare a daughter Pandia, exceeding lovely amongst the deathless gods. Hail, white-armed goddess, bright Selene, mild, bright-tressed queen! And now I will leave you and sing the glories of men half-divine, whose deeds minstrels, the servants of the Muses, celebrate with lovely lips.

Hymn 32 To the Dioscuri Cite

Bright-eyed Muses, tell of the Tyndaridae, the Sons of Zeus, glorious children of neat-ankled Leda, Castor the tamer of horses, and blameless Polydeuces. When Leda had lain with the dark-clouded Son of Cronos, she bare them beneath the peak of the great hill Taygetus, — children who are deliverers of men on earth and of swift-going ships when stormy gales rage over the ruthless sea. Then the shipmen call upon the sons of great Zeus with vows of white lambs, going to the forepart of the prow; but the strong wind and the waves of the sea lay the ship under water, until suddenly these two are seen darting through the air on tawny wings. Forthwith they allay the blasts of the cruel winds and still the waves upon the surface of the white sea: fair signs are they and deliverance from toil. And when the shipmen see them they are glad and have rest from their pain and labour. Hail, Tyndaridae, riders upon swift horses! Now I will remember you and another song also.

1. Section urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0020.tlg003.perseus-eng2

Section urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0020.tlg003.perseus-eng2 Cite

Or like her who left home and country and came to Thebes, following warlike Amphitryon,—even Alcmena, the daughter of Electryon, gatherer of the people. She surpassed the tribe of womankind in beauty and in height; and in wisdom none vied with her of those whom mortal women bore of union with mortal men. Her face and her dark eyes wafted such charm as comes from golden Aphrodite. And she so honored her husband in her heart as none of womankind did before her. In truth he had slain her noble father violently when he was angry about oxen; so he left his own country and came to Thebes and was suppliant to the shield-carrying men of Cadmus. There he dwelt with his modest wife without the joys of love, nor might he go in unto the neat-ankled daughter of Electryon until he had avenged the death of his wife's great-hearted brothers and utterly burned with blazing fire the villages of the heroes, the Taphians and Teleboans; for this thing was laid upon him, and the gods were witnesses to it. And he feared their anger, and hastened to perform the great task to which Zeus had bound him. With him went the horse-driving Boeotians, breathing above their shields, and the Locrians who fight hand to hand, and the gallant Phocians eager for war and battle. And the noble son of Alcaeus led them, rejoicing in his host. But the father of men and gods was forming another scheme in his heart, to beget one to defend against destruction gods and men who eat bread. So he arose from Olympus by night pondering guile in the deep of his heart, and yearned for the love of the well-girded woman. Quickly he came to Typhaonium, and from there again wise Zeus went on and trod the highest peak of Phicium: there he sat and planned marvellous things in his heart. So in one night Zeus shared the bed and love of the neat-ankled daughter of Electryon and fulfilled his desire; and in the same night Amphitryon, gatherer of the people, the glorious hero, came to his house when he had ended his great task. He hastened not to go to his bondmen and shepherds afield, but first went in to his wife: such desire took hold on the shepherd of the people. And as a man who has escaped joyfully from misery, whether of sore disease or cruel bondage, so then did Amphitryon, when he had wound up all his heavy task, come glad and welcome to his home. And all night long he lay with his modest wife, delighting in the gifts of golden Aphrodite. And she, being subject in love to a god and to a man exceeding goodly, brought forth twin sons in seven-gated Thebes. Though they were brothers, these were not of one spirit; for one was weaker but the other a far better man, one terrible and strong, the mighty Heracles. She bore him through the embrace of the son of Cronos lord of dark clouds and the other, Iphicles, of Amphitryon the spear-wielder— offspring distinct, this one of union with a mortal man, but that other of union with Zeus, leader of all the gods. And he slew Cycnus, the gallant son of Ares. For he found him in the precinct of far-shooting Apollo, him and his father Ares, never sated with war.

Their armour shone like a flame of blazing fire as they two stood in their chariot: their swift horses struck the earth and pawed it with their hoofs, and the dust rose like smoke about them, pounded by the chariot wheels and the horses' hoofs, while the well-made chariot and its rails rattled around them as the horses plunged. And blameless Cycnus was glad, for he hoped to slay the warlike son of Zeus and his charioteer with the sword, and to strip off their splendid armour. But Phoebus Apollo would not listen to his vaunts, for he himself had stirred up mighty Heracles against him. And all the grove and altar of Pagasaean Apollo flamed because of the dread god and because of his arms; for his eyes flashed as with fire. What mortal man would have dared to meet him face to face save Heracles and glorious Iolaus? For great was their strength and unconquerable were the arms which grew from their shoulders on their strong limbs. Then Heracles spake to his charioteer strong Iolaus: “O hero Iolaus, best beloved of all men, truly Amphitryon sinned deeply against the blessed gods who dwell on Olympus when he came to sweet-crowned Thebes and left Tiryns, the well-built citadel, because he slew Electryon for the sake of his wide-browed oxen. Then he came to Creon and long-robed Eniocha, who received him kindly and gave him all fitting things, as is due to suppliants, and honored him in their hearts even more. And he lived joyfully with his wife the neat-ankled daughter of Electryon: and presently, while the years rolled on, we were born, unlike in body as in mind, even your father and I. From him Zeus took away sense, so that he left his home and his parents and went to do honor to the wicked Eurystheus—unhappy man! Deeply indeed did he grieve afterwards in bearing the burden of his own mad folly; but that cannot be taken back. But on me fate laid heavy tasks. “Yet, come, friend, quickly take the red-dyed reins of the swift horses and raise high courage in your heart and guide the swift chariot and strong fleet-footed horses straight on. Have no secret fear at the noise of man-slaying Ares who now rages shouting about the holy grove of Phoebus Apollo, the lord who shoots from afar. Surely, strong though he be, he will have enough of war.” And blameless Iolaus answered him again: “Good friend, truly the father of men and gods greatly honors your head and the bull-like Earth-Shaker also, who keeps Thebe's veil of walls and guards the city,—so great and strong is this fellow they bring into your hands that you may win great glory. But come, put on your arms of war that with all speed we may bring the car of Ares and our own together and fight; for he shall not frighten the dauntless son of Zeus, nor yet the son of Iphiclus: rather I think he will flee before the two sons of blameless Alcides who are near him and eager to raise the war cry for battle; for this they love better than a feast.” So he said. And mighty Heracles was glad in heart and smiled, for the other's words pleased him well, and he answered him with winged words: “O hero Iolaus, heaven-sprung, now is rough battle hard at hand.

But, as you have shown your skill at other times, so now also wheel the great black-maned horse Arion about every way, and help me as you may be able.” So he said, and put upon his legs greaves of shining bronze, the splendid gift of Hephaestus. Next he fastened about his breast a fine golden breast-plate, curiously wrought, which Pallas Athena the daughter of Zeus had given him when first he was about to set out upon his grievous labors. Over his shoulders the fierce warrior put the steel that saves men from doom, and across his breast he slung behind him a hollow quiver. Within it were many chilling arrows, dealers of death which makes speech forgotten: in front they had death, and trickled with tears; their shafts were smooth and very long; and their butts were covered with feathers of a brown eagle. And he took his strong spear, pointed with shining bronze, and on his valiant head set a well-made helm of adamant, cunningly wrought, which fitted closely on the temples; and that guarded the head of god-like Heracles. In his hands he took his shield, all glittering: no one ever broke it with a blow or crushed it. And a wonder it was to see; for its whole orb shimmered with enamel and white ivory and electrum, and it glowed with shining gold; and there were zones of cyanusdrawn upon it. In the center was Fear worked in adamant, unspeakable, staring backwards with eyes that glowed with fire. His mouth was full of teeth in a white row, fearful and daunting, and upon his grim brow hovered frightful Strife who arrays the throng of men: pitiless she, for she took away the mind and senses of poor wretches who made war against the son of Zeus. Their souls passed beneath the earth and went down into the house of Hades; but their bones, when the skin is rotted about them, crumble away on the dark earth under parching Sirius. Upon the shield Pursuit and Flight were wrought, and Tumult, and Panic, and Slaughter. Strife also, and Uproar were hurrying about, and deadly Fate was there holding one man newly wounded, and another unwounded; and one, who was dead, she was dragging by the feet through the tumult. She had on her shoulders a garment red with the blood of men, and terribly she glared and gnashed her teeth. And there were heads of snakes unspeakably frightful, twelve of them; and they used to frighten the tribes of men on earth made war against the son of Zeus; for they would clash their teeth when Amphitryon's son was fighting: and brightly shone these wonderful works. And it was as though there were spots upon the frightful snakes: and their backs were dark blue and their jaws were black. Also there were upon the shield droves of boars and lions who glared at each other, being furious and eager: the rows of them moved on together, and neither side trembled but both bristled up their manes. For already a great lion lay between them and two boars, one on either side, bereft of life, and their dark blood was dripping down upon the ground; they lay dead with necks outstretched beneath the grim lions. And both sides were roused still more to fight because they were angry, the fierce boars and the bright-eyed lions. And there was the strife of the Lapith spearmen gathered round the prince Caeneus and Dryas and Peirithous,

with Hopleus, Exadius, Phalereus, and Prolochus, Mopsus the son of Ampyce of Titaresia, a scion of Ares, and Theseus, the son of Aegeus, like the deathless gods. These were of silver, and had armor of gold upon their bodies. And the Centaurs were gathered against them on the other side with Petraeus and Asbolus the diviner, Arctus, and Ureus, and black-haired Mimas, and the two sons of Peuceus, Perimedes and Dryalus: these were of silver, and they had pinetrees of gold in their hands, and they were rushing together as though they were alive and striking at one another hand to hand with spears and with pines. And on the shield stood the fleet-footed horses of grim Ares made of gold, and deadly Ares the spoil-winner himself. He held a spear in his hands and was urging on the footmen: he was red with blood as if he were slaying living men, and he stood in his chariot. Beside him stood Fear and Flight, eager to plunge amidst the fighting men. There, too, was the daughter of Zeus, Tritogeneia who drives the spoil.She was like as if she would array a battle, with a spear in her hand, and a golden helmet, and the aegis about her shoulders. And she was going towards the awful strife. And there was the holy company of the deathless gods: and in the midst the son of Zeus and Leto played sweetly on a golden lyre. There also was the abode of the gods, pure Olympus, and their assembly, and infinite riches were spread around in the gathering of the deathless gods. Also the goddesses, the Muses of Pieria were beginning a song like clear-voiced singers. And on the shield was a harbor with a safe haven from the irresistible sea, made of refined tin wrought in a circle, and it seemed to heave with waves. In the middle of it were many dolphins rushing this way and that, fishing: and they seemed to be swimming. Two dolphins of silver were spouting and devouring the mute fishes. And beneath them fishes of bronze were trembling. And on the shore sat a fisherman watching: in his hands he held a casting net for fish, and seemed as if about to cast it forth. There, too, was the son of rich-haired Danae, the horseman Perseus: his feet did not touch the shield and yet were not far from it—very marvellous to remark, since he was not supported anywhere; for so did the famous Lame One fashion him of gold with his hands. On his feet he had winged sandals, and his black-sheathed sword was slung across his shoulders by a cross-belt of bronze. He was flying swift as thought. The head of a dreadful monster, the Gorgon, covered the broad of his back, and a bag of silver—a marvel to see— contained it: and from the bag bright tassels of gold hung down. Upon the head of the hero lay the dread capof Hades which had the awful gloom of night. Perseus himself, the son of Danae, was at full stretch, like one who hurries and shudders with horror. And after him rushed the Gorgons, unapproachable and unspeakable, longing to seize him: as they trod upon the pale adamant, the shield rang sharp and clear with a loud clanging. Two serpents hung down at their girdles with heads curved forward: their tongues were flickering, and their teeth gnashing with fury, and their eyes glaring fiercely. And upon the awful heads of the Gorgons great Fear was quaking. And beyond these there were men fighting in warlike harness, some defending their own town and parents

from destruction, and others eager to sack it; many lay dead, but the greater number still strove and fought. The women on well-built towers of bronze were crying shrilly and tearing their cheeks like living beings—the work of famous Hephaestus. And the men who were elders and on whom age had laid hold were all together outside the gates, and were holding up their hands to the blessed gods, fearing for their own sons. But these again were engaged in battle: and behind them the dusky Fates, gnashing their white fangs, lowering, grim, bloody, and unapproachable, struggled for those who were falling, for they all were longing to drink dark blood. So soon as they caught a man overthrown or falling newly wounded, one of them would clasp her great claws about him, and his soul would go down to Hades to chilly Tartarus. And when they had satisfied their souls with human blood, they would cast that one behind them, and rush back again into the tumult and the fray. Clotho and Lachesis were over them and Atropos less tall than they, a goddess of no great frame, yet superior to the others and the eldest of them. And they all made a fierce fight over one poor wretch, glaring evilly at one another with furious eyes and fighting equally with claws and hands. By them stood Darkness of Death, mournful and fearful, pale, shrivelled, shrunk with hunger, swollen-kneed. Long nails tipped her hands, and she dribbled at the nose, and from her cheeks blood dripped down to the ground. She stood leering hideously, and much dust sodden with tears lay upon her shoulders. Next, there was a city of men with goodly towers; and seven gates of gold, fitted to the lintels, guarded it. The men were making merry with festivities and dances; some were bringing home a bride to her husband on a well-wheeled car, while the bridalsong swelled high, and the glow of blazing torches held by handmaidens rolled in waves afar. And these maidens went before, delighting in the festival; and after them came frolicsome choirs, the youths singing soft-mouthed to the sound of shrill pipes, while the echo was shivered around them, and the girls led on the lovely dance to the sound of lyres. Then again on the other side was a rout of young men revelling, with flutes playing; some frolicking with dance and song, and others were going forward in time with a flute player and laughing. The whole town was filled with mirth and dance and festivity. Others again were mounted on horseback and galloping before the town. And there were ploughmen breaking up the good soil, clothed in tunics girt up. Also there was a wide cornland, and some men were reaping with sharp hooks the stalks which bended with the weight of the ears—as if they were reaping Demeter's grain: others were binding the sheaves with bands and were spreading the threshing floor. And some held reaping hooks and were gathering the vintage, while others were taking from the reapers into baskets white and black clusters from the long rows of vines which were heavy with leaves and tendrils of silver. Others again were gathering them into baskets. Beside them was a row of vines

in gold, the splendid work of cunning Hephaestus: it had shivering leaves and stakes of silver and was laden with grapes which turned black.And there were men treading out the grapes and others drawing off the liquor. Also there were men boxing and wrestling, and huntsmen chasing swift hares with a leash of sharp-toothed dogs before them, they eager to catch the hares, and the hares eager to escape. Next to them were horsemen hard set, and they contended and labored for a prize. The charioteers standing on their well-woven cars, urged on their swift horses with loose rein; the jointed cars flew along clattering and the naves of the wheels shrieked loudly. So they were engaged in an unending toil, and the end with victory came never to them, and the contest was ever unwon. And there was set out for them within the course a great tripod of gold, the splendid work of cunning Hephaestus. And round the rim Ocean was flowing, with a full stream as it seemed, and enclosed all the cunning work of the shield. Over it swans were soaring and calling loudly, and many others were swimming upon the surface of the water; and near them were shoals of fish. A wonderful thing the great strong shield was to see—even for Zeus the loud-thunderer, by whose will Hephaestus made it and fitted it with his hands. This shield the valiant son of Zeus wielded masterly, and leaped upon his horse-chariot like the lightning of his father Zeus who holds the aegis, moving lithely. And his charioteer, strong Iolaus, standing upon the car, guided the curved chariot. Then the goddess grey-eyed Athena came near them and spoke winged words, encouraging them: “Hail, offspring of far-famed Lynceus! Even now Zeus who reigns over the blessed gods gives you power to slay Cycnus and to strip off his splendid armor. Yet I will tell you something besides, mightiest of the people. When you have robbed Cycnus of sweet life, then leave him there and his armor also, and you yourself watch man-slaying Ares narrowly as he attacks, and wherever you shall see him uncovered below his cunningly-wrought shield, there wound him with your sharp spear. Then draw back; for it is not ordained that you should take his horses or his splendid armor.” So said the bright-eyed goddess and swiftly got up into the car with victory and renown in her hands. Then heaven-nurtured Iolaus called terribly to the horses, and at his cry they swiftly whirled the fleet chariot along, raising dust from the plain; for the goddess bright-eyed Athena put mettle into them by shaking her aegis. And the earth groaned all round them. And they, horse-taming Cycnus and Ares, insatiable in war, came on together like fire or whirlwind. Then their horses neighed shrilly, face to face; and the echo was shivered all round them. And mighty Heracles spoke first and said to that other:

“Cycnus, my friend! Why do you set your swift horses at us, men who are tried in labor and pain? No, guide your fleet car aside and yield and go out of the path. It is to Trachis I am driving on, to Ceyx the king, who is the first in Trachis for power and for honor, and that you yourself know well, for you have his daughter dark-eyed Themistinoe to wife. Fool! For Ares shall not deliver you from the end of death, if we two meet together in battle. Another time ere this I declare he has made trial of my spear, when he defended sandy Pylos and stood against me, fiercely longing for fight. Thrice was he stricken by my spear and dashed to earth, and his shield was pierced; but the fourth time I struck his thigh, laying on with all my strength, and tore deep into his flesh. And he fell headlong in the dust upon the ground through the force of my spear-thrust; then truly he would have been disgraced among the deathless gods, if by my hands he had left behind his bloody spoils.” So said he. But Cycnus the stout spearman cared not to obey him and to pull up the horses that drew his chariot. Then it was that from their well-woven chariots they both leaped straight to the ground, the son of Zeus and the son of the Lord of War. The charioteers drove near by their horses with beautiful manes, and the wide earth rang with the beat of their hoofs as they rushed along. As when rocks leap forth from the high peak of a great mountain, and fall on one another, and many towering oaks and pines and long-rooted poplars are broken by them as they whirl swiftly down until they reach the plain; so did they fall on one another with a great shout: and all the town of the Myrmidons, and famous Iolcus, and Arne, and Helice, and grassy Anthea echoed loudly at the voice of the two. With an awful cry they closed: and wise Zeus thundered loudly and rained down drops of blood, giving the signal for battle to his dauntless son. As a tusked boar, fearful for a man to see before him in the glens of a mountain, resolves to fight with the huntsmen and whets his white tusks, turning sideways, while foam flows all round his mouth as he gnashes, and his eyes are like glowing fire, and he bristles the hair on his mane and around his neck—, like him the son of Zeus leaped from his horse chariot. And when the dark-winged whirring grasshopper, perched on a green shoot, begins to sing of summer to men— his food and drink is the dainty dew—and all day long from dawn pours forth his voice in the deadliest heat, when Sirius scorches the flesh (then the beard grows upon the millet which men sow in summer), when the crude grapes which Dionysus gave to men— a joy and a sorrow both—begin to color, in that season they fought and loud rose the clamor. As two lionson either side of a slain deer spring at one another in fury, and there is a fearful snarling and a clashing also of teeth—, like vultures with crooked talons and hooked beak that fight and scream aloud on a high rock over a mountain goat or fat wild-deer which some active man has shot with an arrow from the string, and himself has wandered away elsewhere,

not knowing the place; but they quickly mark it and vehemently do keen battle about it—, like these they two rushed upon one another with a shout. Then Cycnus, eager to kill the son of almighty Zeus, struck upon his shield with a brazen spear, but did not break the bronze; and the gift of the god saved his foe. But the son of Amphitryon, mighty Heracles, with his long spear struck Cycnus violently in the neck beneath the chin, where it was unguarded between helm and shield. And the deadly spear cut through the two sinews; for the hero's full strength lighted on his foe. And Cycnus fell as an oak falls or a lofty pine that is stricken by the lurid thunderbolt of Zeus; even so he fell, and his armour adorned with bronze clashed about him. Then the stout-hearted son of Zeus let him be, and himself watched for the onset of manslaying Ares: fiercely he stared, like a lion who has come upon a body and full eagerly rips the hide with his strong claws and takes away the sweet life with all speed: his dark heart is filled with rage and his eyes glare fiercely, while he tears up the earth with his paws and lashes his flanks and shoulders with his tail so that no one dares to face him and go near to give battle. Even so, the son of Amphitryon, unsated of battle, stood eagerly face to face with Ares, nursing courage in his heart. And Ares drew near him with grief in his heart; and they both sprang at one another with a cry. As it is when a rock shoots out from a great cliff and whirls down with long bounds, careering eagerly with a roar, and a high crag clashes with it and keeps it there where they strike together; with no less clamor did deadly Ares, the chariot-borne, rush shouting at Heracles. And he quickly received the attack. But Athena the daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus came to meet Ares, wearing the dark aegis, and she looked at him with an angry frown and spoke winged words to him. “Ares, check your fierce anger and matchless hands; for it is not ordained that you should kill Heracles, the bold-hearted son of Zeus, and strip off his rich armor. Come, then, cease fighting and do not withstand me.” So said she, but did not move the courageous spirit of Ares. But he uttered a great shout and waving his spears like fire, he rushed headlong at strong Heracles, longing to kill him, and hurled a brazen spear upon the great shield, for he was furiously angry because of his dead son; but bright-eyed Athena reached out from the chariot and turned aside the force of the spear. Then bitter grief seized Ares, and he drew his keen sword and leaped upon bold-hearted Heracles. But as he came on, the son of Amphitryon, unsated of fierce battle, shrewdly wounded his thigh where it was exposed under his richly-wrought shield, and tore deep into his flesh with the spear thrust and cast him flat upon the ground. And Panic and Dread quickly drove his smooth-wheeled chariot and horses near him and lifted him from the wide-pathed earth into his richly-wrought car, and then straight lashed the horses and came to high Olympus. But the son of Alcmena and glorious Iolaus stripped the fine armour off Cycnus' shoulders and went,

and their swift horses carried them straight to the city of Trachis. And bright-eyed Athena went from there to great Olympus and her father's house. As for Cycnus, Ceyx buried him and the countless people who lived near the city of the glorious king, in Anthe and the city of the Myrmidons, and famous Iolcus, and Arne, and Helice: and many people were gathered doing honor to Ceyx, the friend of the blessed gods. But Anaurus, swelled by a rain-storm, blotted out the grave and memorial of Cycnus; for so Apollo, Leto's son, commanded him, because he used to watch for and violently despoil the rich hecatombs that any might bring to Phyto.

Contents — 14 sections

1. Olympian Ode 1
2. Olympian Ode 2
3. Olympian Ode 3
4. Olympian Ode 4
5. Olympian Ode 5
6. Olympian Ode 6
7. Olympian Ode 7
8. Olympian Ode 8
9. Olympian Ode 9
10. Olympian Ode 10
11. Olympian Ode 11
12. Olympian Ode 12
13. Olympian Ode 13
14. Olympian Ode 14

Olympian Ode 1 Cite

Water is best, and gold, like a blazing fire in the night, stands out supreme of all lordly wealth. But if, my heart, you wish to sing of contests, look no further for any star warmer than the sun, shining by day through the lonely sky, and let us not proclaim any contest greater than Olympia, From there glorious song enfolds the wisdom of poets, so that they loudly sing the son of Cronus, when they arrive at the rich and blessed hearth of Hieron, who wields the scepter of law in Sicily of many flocks, reaping every excellence at its peak, and is glorified by the choicest music, which we men often play around his hospitable table. Come, take the Dorian lyre down from its peg, if the splendor of Pisa and of Pherenicus placed your mind under the influence of sweetest thoughts, when that horse ran swiftly beside the Alpheus, not needing to be spurred on in the race, and brought victory to his master, the king of Syracuse who delights in horses. His glory shines in the settlement of fine men founded by Lydian Pelops, with whom the mighty holder of the earth Poseidon fell in love, when Clotho took him out of the pure cauldron, furnished with a gleaming ivory shoulder. Yes, there are many marvels, and yet I suppose the speech of mortals beyond the true account can be deceptive, stories adorned with embroidered lies; and Grace, who fashions all gentle things for men, confers esteem and often contrives to make believable the unbelievable. But the days to come are the wisest witnesses. It is seemly for a man to speak well of the gods; for the blame is less that way. Son of Tantalus, I will speak of you, contrary to earlier stories. When your father invited the gods to a very well-ordered banquet at his own dear Sipylus, in return for the meals he had enjoyed, then it was that the god of the splendid trident seized you, his mind overcome with desire, and carried you away on his team of golden horses to the highest home of widely-honored Zeus, to which at a later time Ganymede came also,

to perform the same service for Zeus. But when you disappeared, and people did not bring you back to your mother, for all their searching, right away some envious neighbor whispered that they cut you limb from limb with a knife into the water’s rolling boil over the fire, and among the tables at the last course they divided and ate your flesh. For me it is impossible to call one of the blessed gods a glutton. I stand back from it. Often the lot of evil-speakers is profitlessness. If indeed the watchers of Olympus ever honored a mortal man, that man was Tantalus. But he was not able to digest his great prosperity, and for his greed he gained overpowering ruin, which the Father hung over him: a mighty stone. Always longing to cast it away from his head, he wanders far from the joy of festivity. He has this helpless life of never-ending labor, a fourth toil after three others, because he stole from the gods nectar and ambrosia, with which they had made him immortal, and gave them to his drinking companions. If any man expects that what he does escapes the notice of a god, he is wrong. Because of that the immortals sent the son of Tantalus back again to the swift-doomed race of men. And when he blossomed with the stature of fair youth, and down darkened his cheek, he turned his thoughts to an available marriage, to win glorious Hippodameia from her father, the lord of Pisa, He drew near to the gray sea, alone in the darkness, and called aloud on the deep-roaring god, skilled with the trident; and the god appeared to him, close at hand. Pelops said to the god, “If the loving gifts of Cyprian Aphrodite result in any gratitude, Poseidon, then restrain the bronze spear of Oenomaus, and speed me in the swiftest chariot to Elis, and bring me to victory. For he has killed thirteen suitors, and postpones the marriage of his daughter. Great danger does not take hold of a coward. Since all men are compelled to die, why should anyone sit stewing an inglorious old age in the darkness, with no share of any fine deeds? As for me, on this contest I will take my stand. May you grant a welcome achievement.” So he spoke, and he did not touch on words that were unaccomplished. Honoring him, the god gave him a golden chariot, and horses with untiring wings.

He overcame the might of Oenomaus, and took the girl as his bride. She bore six sons, leaders of the people eager for excellence. Now he has a share in splendid blood-sacrifices, resting beside the ford of the Alpheus, where he has his attendant tomb beside the altar that is thronged with many visitors. The fame of Pelops shines from afar in the races of the Olympic festivals, where there are contests for swiftness of foot, and the bold heights of toiling strength. A victor throughout the rest of his life enjoys honeyed calm, so far as contests can bestow it. But at any given time the glory of the present day is the highest one that comes to every mortal man. I must crown that man with the horse-song in the Aeolian strain. I am convinced that there is no host in the world today who is both knowledgeable about fine things and more sovereign in power, whom we shall adorn with the glorious folds of song. A god is set over your ambitions as a guardian, Hieron, and he devises with this as his concern. If he does not desert you soon, I hope that I will celebrate an even greater sweetness, sped by a swift chariot, finding a helpful path of song when I come to the sunny hill of Cronus. For me the Muse tends her mightiest shaft of courage. Some men are great in one thing, others in another; but the peak of the farthest limit is for kings. Do not look beyond that! May it be yours to walk on high throughout your life, and mine to associate with victors as long as I live, distinguished for my skill among Greeks everywhere.

Olympian Ode 2 Cite

Songs, rulers of the lyre, what god, what hero, what man shall we celebrate? Indeed, Pisa belongs to Zeus; and Heracles established the Olympic festival, as the finest trophy of battle; and Theron must be proclaimed because of his victorious four-horse chariot, Theron who is just in his regard for guests, and is the bulwark of Acragas, the strength of the city, the choicest bloom of illustrious ancestors, who labored much with their spirits, and won a sacred home by the river, and were the eye of Sicily ; their allotted lifetime attended them, bringing wealth and grace to their inborn excellence. But you, son of Cronus and Rhea, who rule over your home on Olympus, and over the foremost of festivals, and over the ford of Alpheus, be warmed by our songs and graciously preserve their ancestral land for their future generations. When deeds have been accomplished, whether justly or contrary to justice, not even Time the father of all things could undo the outcome. But forgetfulness may come, with favorable fortune. Under the power of noble joys, malignant pain is subdued and dies, whenever god-sent Fate lifts prosperity on high. This saying applies to the daughters of Cadmus on their lovely thrones: they suffered greatly, but their heavy sorrow collapsed in the presence of greater blessings. Long-haired Semele, who died in the roar of the thunderbolt, lives among the Olympians; Pallas is her constant friend, and indeed so is father Zeus, and she is loved by her ivy-crowned son. And they say that even in the sea, among the ocean-daughters of Nereus, immortal life is granted to Ino for all time. Truly, for mortal men at least, the time when we will reach the limit of death is by no means fixed, nor when we will bring a peaceful day, the sun’s child, to an end in unworried well-being. But at various times various currents, both of pleasure and of toil, come to men. In such a way does Fate, who keeps their pleasant fortune to be handed from father to son, bring at another time some painful reversal together with god-sent prosperity, since the destined son met and killed Laius, and fulfilled the oracle of Pytho, spoken long before.

But the sharp-eyed Erinys saw it, and destroyed his warlike sons through mutual slaughter. Yet Polyneices, when laid low, left behind him a son, Thersander, honored in youthful contests and in the battles of war, a scion to defend the house of the descendants of Adrastus. And it is fitting that the son of Aenesidamus, whose roots grew from that seed, should meet with songs of praise and with the lyre. For in Olympia he himself received a prize of honor; at Pytho and at the Isthmus, the Graces who love them both brought garlands of flowers to his equally blessed brother for his four-horse team, victorious in the twelve courses of the race. To attempt a contest and be successful brings release from sadness. Wealth adorned with excellence brings many opportunities, rousing deep wild ambitions; it is a brilliant star, a man’s true light, at least if one has and knows the future, that the reckless souls of those who have died on earth immediately pay the penalty—and for the crimes committed in this realm of Zeus there is a judge below the earth; with hateful compulsion he passes his sentence. But having the sun always in equal nights and equal days, the good receive a life free from toil, not scraping with the strength of their arms the earth, nor the water of the sea, for the sake of a poor sustenance. But in the presence of the honored gods, those who gladly kept their oaths enjoy a life without tears, while the others undergo a toil that is unbearable to look at. Those who have persevered three times, on either side, to keep their souls free from all wrongdoing, follow Zeus’ road to the end, to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of the blessed, and flowers of gold are blazing, some from splendid trees on land, while water nurtures others. With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthys, whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner. Peleus and Cadmus are counted among them, and Achilles who was brought there by his mother, when she had persuaded the heart of Zeus with her prayers—

Achilles, who laid low Hector, the irresistible, unswerving pillar of Troy, and who consigned to death Memnon the Ethiopian, son of the Dawn. I have many swift arrows in the quiver under my arm, arrows that speak to the initiated. But the masses need interpreters. The man who knows a great deal by nature is truly skillful, while those who have only learned chatter with raucous and indiscriminate tongues in vain like crows against the divine bird of Zeus. Now, bend your bow toward the mark; tell me, my mind, whom are we trying to hit as we shoot arrows of fame from a gentle mind? I will aim at Acragas, and speak with true intent a word sworn by oath: no city for a hundred years has given birth to a man more beneficent in his mind or more generous with his hand than Theron. But praise is confronted by greed, which is not accompanied by justice, but stirred up by depraved men, eager to babble and to bury the fine deeds of noble men. Since the sand of the shore is beyond all counting, who could number all the joys that Theron has given others?

Olympian Ode 3 Cite

I pray that I may be pleasing to the hospitable sons of Tyndareus and to Helen of the beautiful hair while I honor renowned Acragas by raising my song in praise of Theron’s victory at Olympia, won by the choicest of horses with untiring feet. With this in view the Muse stood beside me when I found a shining new manner of fitting the splendid voice of the victory procession to the Dorian sandal. For the garlands twined around his hair exact from me this sacred debt, to blend harmoniously for the son of Aenesidamus the embroidered song of the lyre and the cry of the flutes with the arrangement of words, and Pisa bids me to raise my voice— Pisa, from which god-fated songs come often to men, for anyone over whose brow the strict Aetolian judge of the Greeks tosses up around his hair the gray-green adornment of olive leaves, fulfilling the ancient behests of Heracles; the olive which once the son of Amphitryon brought from the shady springs of the Danube, to be the most beautiful memorial of the Olympian contests, when he had persuaded the Hyperborean people, the servants of Apollo, with speech. With trustworthy intentions he was entreating them for a shady plant, to be shared by all men and to be a garland of excellence in the grove of Zeus which is hospitable to all. For already the altars had been consecrated to his father, and in mid-month the full evening’s eye shone brightly, the Moon on her golden chariot, and he had established the consecrated trial of the great games along with the four years’ festival beside the sacred banks of the Alpheus. But Pelops’ sacred ground was not flourishing with beautiful trees in the valleys below the hill of Cronus. He saw that this garden, bare of trees, was exposed to the piercing rays of the sun. And so his spirit prompted him to travel to the land of the Danube, where the horse-driving daughter of Leto had received him when he came from the mountain-glens and deep, winding valleys of Arcadia ; through the commands of Eurystheus, compulsion from his father urged him on the quest of the doe with the golden horns, which once Taÿgete had inscribed as a sacred dedication to Artemis who sets things right.

Pursuing that doe he had also seen that land beyond the cold blasts of Boreas; there he had stood and marvelled at the trees, and sweet desire for them possessed him, to plant them around the boundary-line of the horse-racing ground with its twelve courses. And now in his kindness he comes regularly to this festival of ours, together with the godlike twin sons of deep-waisted Leda. For Heracles, when he ascended to Olympus, assigned to them the ordering of the marvellous contest of men, the contest in excellence and in the driving of swift chariots. And so my spirit somehow urges me to say that glory has come to the Emmenidae and to Theron through the dispensation of the sons of Tyndareus with their fine horses, because that family comes to them with the most hospitable feasting-tables of any mortal men, observing the rites of the blessed gods with pious thoughts. If water is best and gold is the most honored of all possessions, so now Theron reaches the farthest point by his own native excellence; he touches the pillars of Heracles. Beyond that the wise cannot set foot; nor can the unskilled set foot beyond that. I will not pursue it; I would be a fool.

Olympian Ode 4 Cite

Charioteer of the thundercloud with untiring feet, highest Zeus! Your Seasons, whirling to the embroidered notes of the lyre’s song, sent me as a witness of the most lofty games. When friends are successful, the noble immediately smile on the sweet announcement. Son of Cronus, you who hold Aetna, the wind-swept weight on terrible hundred-headed Typhon, receive, for the sake of the Graces, this Olympic victory-procession, this most enduring light of widely powerful excellence. For the procession comes in honor of Psaumis’ chariot; Psaumis, who, crowned with the olive of Pisa, hurries to rouse glory for Camarina. May the god be gracious to his future prayers, since I praise a man who is most eager in the raising of horses, who rejoices in being hospitable to all guests, and whose pure thoughts are turned towards city-loving peace. I will not stain my words with lies. Perseverance is what puts men to the test, and what saved the son of Clymenus from the contempt of the Lemnian women. He won the foot race in bronze armor, and said to Hypsipyle as he went to take the garland: “Such is my swiftness; and I have hands and heart to match. Even on young men gray hair often grows, even before the expected age.”

Olympian Ode 5 Cite

Daughter of Ocean, with a smiling heart receive the sweet bloom of lofty excellence and Olympian garlands, the gifts of Psaumis and of his mule car team with untiring feet. Psaumis who, exalting your city, Camarina, which cares for its people, honored the six double altars, at the greatest festivals of the gods, with the sacrifice of oxen and in contests on the fifth day, contests of horse teams, and mule teams, and of riding the single horse. To you he has dedicated rich renown by his victory, and he had his father Acron and his new-founded home proclaimed by the herald. Coming from the lovely homes of Oenomaus and of Pelops, he sings of your sacred grove, Pallas protector of the city, and of the river Oanis, and the local lake, and the sacred canals with which Hipparis waters its people, and swiftly builds a tall-standing grove of steadfast dwellings, bringing this host of citizens out of helplessness into the light. Always, when it is a question of excellence, toil and expense strive to accomplish a deed that is shrouded in danger; those who are successful seem wise, even to their fellow-citizens. Savior Zeus, high in the clouds, you who dwell on the hill of Cronus and honor the wide-flowing Alpheus and the sacred cave of Ida! I come as your suppliant, singing to the sound of Lydian flutes, entreating you to adorn this city with glorious hosts of noble men; and that you, Psaumis the Olympic victor, delighting in the horses of Poseidon, may carry on to the end a pleasurable old age with your sons standing beside you. If a man cultivates both prosperity and health, being generous with his possessions and winning praise as well, let him not seek to become a god.

Olympian Ode 6 Cite

Raising the fine-walled porch of our dwelling with golden pillars, we will build, as it were, a marvellous hall; at the beginning of our work we must place a far-shining front. If someone were an Olympic victor, and a guardian of the prophetic altar of Zeus at Pisa, and a fellow-founder of renowned Syracuse, what hymn of praise would that man fail to win, by finding fellow-citizens ungrudging in delightful song? Let the son of Sostratus know that this sandal fits his divinely-blessed foot. But excellence without danger is honored neither among men nor in hollow ships. But many people remember, if a fine thing is done with toil. Hagesias, that praise is ready for you, which once Adrastus’ tongue rightly spoke for the seer Amphiaraus, son of Oicles, when the earth swallowed up him and his shining horses. In Thebes, when the seven pyres of corpses had been consumed, the son of Talaus spoke in this way: “I long for the eye of my army, a man who was good both as a prophet and at fighting with the spear.” And this holds good as well for the man of Syracuse who is master of our victory-procession. Though I am not prone to quarrel, and not overly fond of victory, I would even swear a great oath, and on this point at least I will clearly bear witness for him; and the honey-voiced Muses will give their consent. Phintis, come now and yoke the strength of mules for me, quickly, so that we can drive the chariot along a clear path, and I can at last arrive at the race of these men. For those mules above all others know how to lead the way along this path, since they have won garlands at Olympia, And so it is right to open for them the gates of song; and I must go today, in good time, to Pitana, beside the ford of Eurotas. Pitana, who, it is said, lay with Poseidon son of Cronus, and bore a child, violet-haired Evadne. But she hid her unwedded pregnancy in the folds of her robe. And in the appointed month she sent servants, and told them to give the baby to be tended by the hero, Aepytus son of Eilatus, who ruled over the Arcadians at Phaesana, and had his allotted home on the Alpheus, where Evadne was raised, and first touched the sweets of Aphrodite beneath Apollo’s embrace. She did not escape the notice of Aepytus in all the time that she was hiding the offspring of the god; no, he went to Pytho, pressing down the unspeakable anger in his spirit with intense concern, to consult the oracle about this unbearable disaster. And she laid down her purple and saffron girdle,

and her silver pitcher, and beneath a blue-shaded thicket gave birth to a god-inspired boy. The golden-haired god sent gentle-minded Eleithuia and the Fates to help her. From her womb and her sweet birth-pangs Iamus came right away into the light. In her distress, she left him on the ground. But by the will of the gods, two gray-eyed serpents nurtured him with the harmless venom of bees, caring for him. And when the king had driven back from rocky Pytho, he questioned everyone in the household about the child whom Evadne had borne. For he said that he was begotten by Phoebus, and that he would be, for men on earth, a prophet above all mortals, and that his race would never fail. Such was his speech. But they claimed that they had neither seen nor heard the baby, born four days ago. For it had been hidden in the rushes and the boundless thicket, his tender body washed in the golden and purple light of violets. Therefore his mother declared that he should be called for all time by this immortal name, “Iamus.” And when he had attained the delightful fruit of golden-crowned Youth, he went down into the middle of the Alpheus, and called on wide-ruling Poseidon, his grandfather, and on the Archer who watches over god-built Delos, praying that the honor of caring for the people be on his head, under the clear night sky. His father’s voice responded in clear speech, and sought him out: “Rise, my son, and follow my voice here to a place that welcomes all.” They came to the steep rock of the lofty hill of Cronus. There the god gave him a double treasure of prophecy: there and then to hear a voice that did not know how to lie; and when bold-plotting Heracles came, the sacred scion of the Alcidae, and founded for his father a festival frequented by mortals and the greatest ritual of contests, then he commanded him to establish an oracle on the highest altar of Zeus. Since then the race of the sons of Iamus has been very famous throughout Greece, Prosperity attended them; and by honoring excellence, they walk along a bright path. Every action brings evidence. Envious blame from others hangs over those who have once driven first down the final course of a race, and on whom honored Grace has shed glorious beauty. But if, Hagesias, it is true that the men on your mother’s side, living below the boundaries of Cyllene,

piously gave many gifts, with prayers and sacrifices, to the herald of the gods, Hermes, who rules over games and the dispensation of contests, and honors Arcadia, the home of fine men, it is that god, son of Sostratus, who with his loud-thundering father fulfills your good fortune. I think I have on my tongue a shrill whetstone, which steals over me (and I am willing) with fair-flowing breaths. My mother’s mother was the nymph of Stymphalus, blossoming Metopa, who bore horse-driving Thebe, whose delicious water I drink, while I weave my embroidered song for heroic spearmen. Now rouse your companions, Aeneas, first to shout the praises of Hera Parthenia, and then to know whether we have truly escaped the ancient reproach of men’s speech, “Boeotian pig.” For you are a faithful herald, a message-stick of the lovely-haired Muses, a sweet mixing-bowl of loud-sounding songs. Tell them to remember Syracuse and Ortygia, which Hieron rules with his pure scepter and with good counsels, while he attends on the worship of Demeter of the red feet, and on the festival of her daughter with her white horses, and on the might of Aetnaean Zeus. The sweet-voiced lyres and music are familiar with Hieron. May time not creep up and disturb his prosperity, but may he with loving friendliness welcome the victory-procession of Hagesias as it comes to one home from his other home within the walls of Stymphalus, leaving his motherland, Arcadia of the fine flocks. On a stormy night it is good to have two anchors to throw down from a swift ship. May a god lovingly bestow a glorious lot on the men of both cities. Master, ruler of the sea, husband of Amphitrite of the golden distaff, grant straight sailing free from troubles, and give new growth to the delightful flower of my songs.

Olympian Ode 7 Cite

As when someone takes a goblet, all golden, the most prized of his possessions, foaming with the dew of the vine from a generous hand, and makes a gift of it to his young son-in-law, welcoming him with a toast from one home to another, honoring the grace of the symposium and the new marriage-bond, and thereby, in the presence of his friends, makes him enviable for his harmonious marriage-bed; I too, sending to victorious men poured nectar, the gift of the Muses, the sweet fruit of my mind, I try to win the gods’ favor for those men who were victors at Olympia and at Pytho, That man is prosperous, who is encompassed by good reports. Grace, which causes life to flourish, looks with favor now on one man, now on another, with both the sweet-singing lyre and the full-voiced notes of flutes. And now, with the music of flute and lyre alike I have come to land with Diagoras, singing the sea-child of Aphrodite and bride of Helios, Rhodes, so that I may praise this straight-fighting, tremendous man who had himself crowned beside the Alpheus and near Castalia, as a recompense for his boxing, and also his father Damagetus, a man pleasing to Justice, living on the island of three cities near the foreland of spacious Asia, among Argive spearmen. I shall want to proclaim my message for them, the widely powerful race of Heracles, and tell correctly from the beginning, from Tlepolemus, the story that concerns all. For, on the father’s side, they boast descent from Zeus, while, on the mother’s, they are descendants of Amyntor, through Astydameia. But around the minds of men countless errors loom; and this is impossible to discover: what is best to happen to a man, now and in the end. For indeed, striking Licymnius, the bastard brother of Alcmena, with a staff of hard olive-wood as he came out of the chamber of Midea, the founder of this land once killed that man, in anger. Disturbances of the mind lead astray even a wise man. Tlepolemus went and sought the god’s oracle. To him the golden-haired god spoke, from his fragrant sanctuary, of a voyage by ship from the shore of Lerna straight to the pasture land with sea all around it, where once the great king of the gods showered the city with golden snow, when, by the skills of Hephaestus with the bronze-forged hatchet, Athena leapt from the top of her father’s head and cried aloud with a mighty shout. The Sky and mother Earth shuddered before her.

Then even the god that brings light to mortals, son of Hyperion, enjoined his dear children to observe the obligation that was soon to be due: that they should be the first to build for the goddess an altar visible to all men, and by founding a sacred burnt-offering warm the spirit of the father and of the daughter who thunders with her spear. She who casts excellence and joys into men is the daughter of Forethought, Reverence. Truly, a cloud of forgetfulness sometimes descends unexpectedly, and draws the straight path of action away from the mind. For they climbed the hill without bringing the seed of burning flame; and they established the sacred precinct on the acropolis with fireless sacrifices. Zeus brought to them a yellow cloud and rained on them abundant gold. And the gray-eyed goddess herself bestowed on them every art, so that they surpassed all mortal men as the best workers with their hands; and the roads bore works of art like living, moving creatures, and their fame was profound. For a wise craftsman, even superior skill is free from guile. The ancient stories of men tell that when Zeus and the immortals were dividing the earth among them, Rhodes was not yet visible in the expanse of the sea, but the island was hidden in the salty depths. Helios was absent, and no one marked out a share for him; in fact they left him without any allotment of land, although he was a holy god. And when Helios mentioned it, Zeus was about to order a new casting of lots, but Helios did not allow him. For he said that he himself saw in the gray sea, growing from the bottom, a rich, productive land for men, and a kindly one for flocks. And he bid Lachesis of the golden headband raise her hands right away, and speak, correctly and earnestly, the great oath of the gods, and consent with the son of Cronus that that island, when it had risen into the shining air, should thereafter be his own prize of honor. And the essence of his words was fulfilled and turned out to be true. There grew from the waters of the sea an island, which is held by the birthgiving father of piercing rays, the ruler of fire-breathing horses. And there he once lay with Rhodes, and begat seven sons who inherited from him the wisest minds in the time of earlier men; and of these one begat Cameirus, and Ialysus the eldest, and Lindus, Each had his own separate share of cities in their threefold division of their father’s land, and their dwelling-places were named after them.

There it is that a sweet recompense for his pitiful misfortune is established for Tlepolemus, the first leader of the Tirynthians, as for a god: a procession of flocks for burnt sacrifice and the trial of contests. With the flowers from these Diagoras has had himself crowned twice, and at the renowned Isthmus four times, in his good fortune, and again and again at Nemea and in rocky Athens ; and the prizes of the bronze shield in Argos and the works of art in Arcadia and Thebes are familiar with him, and the duly ordered contests of the Boeotians, and Pellana and Aegina, where he was six times victor. And in Megara the list carved in stone gives no other account. But, Father Zeus, you who rule over the ridges of Atabyrium, grant honor to the hymn ordained in praise of an Olympian victor, and to the man who has found excellence as a boxer, and grant to him honored grace in the eyes of both citizens and strangers. For he walks a straight course on a road that hates arrogance, knowing clearly the sound prophetic wisdom of his good ancestors. Do not bury in obscurity the shared seed of Callianax. When the Eratidae are graced with victories, the city too holds festivities; but in a single space of apportioned time the winds shift quickly from moment to moment.

Olympian Ode 8 Cite

Mother of golden-crowned contests, Olympia, queen of truth! where prophets, judging from burnt sacrifices, inquire of Zeus of the flashing thunderbolt, if he has any message to give concerning men whose spirits are seeking to attain great excellence and a breathing-space from toils. Accomplishment is granted to the prayers of men in gratitude for their piety. Well-wooded grove of Pisa beside the Alpheus, welcome this victory-procession and the garland we bring to the victor; the man who is attended by your splendid prize of honor has great glory forever. Some good things come to one man, some to another; with the favor of the gods, there are many paths of success. Timosthenes, fortune has allotted you and your brother to the care of your ancestor Zeus, who made you renowned at Nemea, and made Alcimedon an Olympic victor beside the hill of Cronus. He was beautiful to look at, and his deeds did not belie his beauty when by his victory in wrestling he had Aegina with her long oars proclaimed as his fatherland. There the savior Themis, seated beside Zeus the god of hospitality, is honored more than among all other men. For when there is a heavy weight in the balance that sways many ways, to judge with a straight mind and not inopportunely is a difficult struggle. But some ordinance of the immortals set up as a divine pillar for visitors of all kinds this sea-girt land—and may the dawning time to come never tire of fulfilling this— guarded by the Dorian people since the time of Aeacus, whom wide-ruling Poseidon and the son of Leto, when they were about to build the crown of walls to encircle Ilium, summoned as a fellow worker; for it was fated that when war arose, in the city-destroying battles, that wall would breathe forth ravening smoke. And three gray-green serpents, when the wall was newly built, tried to leap into it; two of them fell down, stunned, and gave up their lives, and the third leapt up with a cry. Pondering this adverse omen, Apollo said right away: “ Pergamos is taken, hero, through the works of your hands—so says a vision sent to me from the son of Cronus, loud-thundering Zeus—

not without your sons: the city will be destroyed with the first generation, and with the third.” The god spoke clearly, and then hurried on his way, driving to Xanthus, and to the Amazons with their fine horses, and to the Danube, And the wielder of the trident drove his swift chariot to the sea-washed Isthmus, bringing Aeacus here on his golden horses, and going to see the ridge of Corinth, famous for its feasts. But nothing can be equally delightful to all men. If I have, in my song, exalted the glory of Melesias for his training of beardless youths, let envy not strike me with a rough stone. For I will tell how he himself won the same grace at Nemea, and later, among men, in the battle of the pancratium. To teach is easier for one who has knowledge himself. And it is foolish not to learn in advance; for the minds of those with no experience are insubstantial. Melesias, beyond all others, could speak of those deeds: what manner of training will advance a man who is going to win the most longed-for glory from the sacred games. Now it is his honor that his thirtieth victory has been won for him by Alcimedon, who, with divine good fortune, yet without falling short in his own manliness, thrust off from himself and onto the four limbs of other boys a hateful homecoming with contemptuous talk and a secret way back, and breathed into his father’s father the force that wrestles off old age. Hades is forgotten by a man with good accomplishments. But I must awaken memory and tell of the choicest victory of hands for the Blepsiads, who are now crowned with their sixth garland from the contests flourishing with leaves. Even the dead have a share in rites performed according to law; the dust does not cover the good grace of their kinsmen.

Having heard the voice of Hermes’ daughter, Angelia, Iphion might tell Callimachus of the splendid adornment at Olympia, which Zeus gave to their race. May he be willing to grant noble deeds upon noble deeds, and to ward off bitter diseases. I pray that, for the share of fine things allotted to them, Zeus may not cause the mind of Nemesis to waver; rather, may he grant a painless life, and thus give new growth to themselves and their city.

Olympian Ode 9 Cite

The resounding strain of Archilochus, the swelling thrice-repeated song of triumph, sufficed to lead Epharmostus to the hill of Cronus, in victory-procession with his dear companions. But now, from the bow of the Muses who, shooting from afar, send a shower of such arrows of song as these on Zeus of the red lightning-bolt and on the sacred height of Elis, which once the Lydian hero Pelops won as the very fine dowry of Hippodameia. And shoot a winged sweet arrow to Pytho ; for your words will not fall to the ground, short of the mark, when you trill the lyre in honor of the wrestling of the man from renowned Opus. Praise Opus and her son; praise her whom Themis and her glorious daughter, the savior Eunomia, have received under their protection; she flourishes with excellence beside your stream, Castalia, and beside the Alpheus. From there the choicest garlands glorify the famous mother-city of the Locrians with her splendid trees. I am lighting up that dear city with fiery songs, and more swiftly than a spirited horse or a winged ship I will send that message everywhere, so surely as I, by some destined skill, am cultivating the exquisite garden of the Graces; for they are the givers of delight, but men become brave and skillful by divine will. For how could Heracles have wielded his club against the trident, when Poseidon took his stand to guard Pylos, and pressed him hard, and Phoebus pressed him hard, attacking with his silver bow; nor did Hades keep his staff unmoved, with which he leads mortal bodies down to the hollow path of the dead. My mouth, fling this story away from me! Since to speak evil of the gods is a hateful skill, and untimely boasting is in harmony with madness.

Do not babble of such things now. Keep war and all battles apart from the immortals. But lend your tongue to the city of Protogeneia, where, by the ordinance of Zeus with the flashing thunderbolt, Pyrrha and Deucalion came down from Parnassus and made their first home, and without the marriage-bed they founded a unified race of stone offspring, and the stones gave the people their name , Arouse for them a clear-sounding path of song; praise wine that is old, but praise the flowers of songs that are new. They tell, indeed, how the strength of the waters overwhelmed the dark earth; but by the skills of Zeus the ebbing tide suddenly drained off the flood. From these were descended your ancestors with their bronze shields, young men sprung from the beginning from the stock of the daughters of Iapetus and from the powerful sons of Cronus, always a native line of kings, until the ruler of Olympus carried off the daughter of Opus from the land of the Epeians, and lay with her peacefully in the glens of Mount Maenalus, and brought her to Locrus, so that age would not overtake him and lay the burden of childlessness on him. His bride was carrying in her womb the seed of the greatest god, and the hero rejoiced to see his adopted son, and gave him the same name as his mother’s father, Opus, a man beyond words in beauty and fine deeds. Locrus gave him a city and a people to govern, and strangers came to him from Argos and Thebes, from Arcadia and Pisa, But among the settlers he chiefly honored the son of Actor and Aegina, Menoetius, whose son went with the Atreidae to the plain of Teuthras, and stood alone beside Achilles, when Telephus turned to flight the mighty Danaans, and attacked their ships beside the sea, to reveal to a man of understanding the powerful mind of Patroclus. From that time forward, the son of Thetis exhorted him in deadly war never to post himself far from his own man-subduing spear.

May I be a suitable finder of words as I move onward in the Muses’ chariot; may boldness and all-embracing power attend me. Because of his friendship with my people and his excellence, I went to honor the Isthmian crowning of Lampromachus, when both he and Epharmostus were victors on a single day. And then there were two other joyous victories at the gates of Corinth, and others won by Epharmostus in the vale of Nemea ; and at Argos he won glory in a contest of men, and as a boy at Athens, And at Marathon, when he was barred from competing with the beardless youths, how he endured the contest for silver cups among the older men! Having subdued those men by the trick of quickly shifting balance without falling, with what a roar of applause did he pass through the ring, in his prime, and handsome, and having accomplished the finest deeds. Again, among the Parrhasian people he was marvellous to look at, at the festival of Lycaean Zeus, and when at Pellana he carried off as his prize a warm remedy against chilly winds. The tomb of Iolaus bears witness for him, and also Eleusis by the sea, for his splendid achievements. That which is inborn is always the best; but many men strive to win glory with excellence that comes from training. Anything in which a god has no part is none the worse for being quelled in silence. For some roads lead farther than others, and a single occupation will not nourish us all. The paths to skill are steep; but, while offering this prize of song, boldly shout aloud that this man, by the blessing of the gods, was born with deftness of hand and litheness of limb, and with valor in his eyes; and at the banquet of Aias son of Oileus he laid his victorious garland on the altar.

Olympian Ode 10 Cite

Read me the name of the Olympic victor, the son of Archestratus, where it has been written in my mind. For I owed him a sweet song, and I have forgotten. But come, Muse, you and the daughter of Zeus, unforgetting Truth: with the hand that puts things right, keep from me the blame for lying, for wronging my friend. Approaching from far away, the future has arrived and made me ashamed of my deep debt. Still, payment with interest has a way of dissolving the bitter reproach of men. Now, just as the flowing wave overwhelms the rolling pebble, so shall I pay my account in full, in gratitude and friendship. For unswerving Exactitude rules the city of the Western Locrians, and Calliope is important to them, and bronze-armored Ares. Battle with Cycnus set back even Heracles, strong and violent; let Hagesidamus, victorious as a boxer at Olympia, offer thanks to Ilas, just as Patroclus did to Achilles. With the help of a god, one man can sharpen another who is born for excellence, and encourage him to tremendous achievement. Without toil only a few have attained joy, a light of life above all labors. The laws of Zeus urge me to sing of that extraordinary contest-place which Heracles founded by the ancient tomb of Pelops with its six altars, after he killed Cteatus, the flawless son of Poseidon and Eurytus too, with a will to exact from the unwilling Augeas, strong and violent, the wages for his menial labor. Heracles lay in wait in the thicket below Cleonae, and in his turn overcame those men by the roadside; for once before those arrogant Moliones had destroyed his Tirynthian army, when it was encamped in the valley of Elis, And indeed it was not much later before the man who betrayed his friend,

the king of the Epeians, saw his land with all its possessions, his own city, sink into a deep channel of destruction beneath unyielding fire and blows of iron. A fight with a stronger man is impossible to push away. So even he, by his own senselessness, last of all found himself captured and did not escape sheer destruction. But the brave son of Zeus gathered the entire army and all the spoils together in Pisa and measured out a sacred precinct for his supreme father. He enclosed the Altis all around and marked it off in the open, and he made the encircling area a resting-place for feasting, honoring the stream of the Alpheus along with the twelve ruling gods. And he called it the Hill of Cronus; it had been nameless before, while Oenomaus was king, and it was covered with wet snow. But in this rite of first birth the Fates stood close by, and the one who alone puts genuine truth to the test, Time. Time moved forward and told the clear and precise story, how Heracles divided the gifts of war and sacrificed the finest of them, and how he established the four years’ festival with the first Olympic games and its victories. Who won the first garland, with the skill of his hands or feet or chariot, setting the boast of victory in his mind and achieving it with his deeds? In the foot race the best at running the straight course with his feet was the son of Licymnius, Oeonus, who had come from Midea at the head of an army. In wrestling, Echemus won glory for Tegea, And the prize in boxing was won by Doryclus, who lived in the city of Tiryns, And in the four-horse chariot the victor was Samos of Mantinea, the son of Halirhothius. Phrastor hit the mark with the javelin. Niceus sent the stone flying from his circling arm beyond all the others, and his fellow soldiers raised a sudden burst of loud cheering. The lovely light of the moon’s beautiful face lit up the evening

and in the delightful festivities the whole precinct rang with a song in praise of victory. Even now we will follow the first beginnings, and as a namesake song of proud victory, we will shout of the thunder and the fire-wrought shaft of Zeus who rouses the thunder-clap, the burning bolt that suits omnipotence. Swelling music will answer the reed-pipe in songs which have come to light beside famous Dirce, after a long time, but like a long-desired child from the wife of a man who has already reached the opposite of youth, who fills his father’s mind with the warmth of love; since his wealth falling into the hands of a stranger who is master of another home is the most hateful thing to a dying man. And, Hagesidamus, when a man with fine achievements but no songs reaches the house of Hades, he has spent his strength and his breath in vain and gained only a short-lived delight with his effort. But on you the soft-singing lyre and the sweet flute scatter grace and the Pierian daughters of Zeus nurture your wide fame. While I, earnestly lending my hand, have embraced the famous tribe of the Locrians, showering with honey their city of fine men. And I praised the lovely son of Archestratus, whom I saw at that time beside the Olympic altar, winning victory with the valor of his hands—beautiful in form, and blended with that youthful bloom which once kept Ganymede from shameless death, with the help of Cyprian Aphrodite.

Olympian Ode 11 Cite

There is a time when men’s need for winds is the greatest, and a time for waters from the sky, the rainy offspring of clouds. But when anyone is victorious through his toil, then honey-voiced odes become the foundation for future fame, and a faithful pledge for great deeds of excellence. This praise is dedicated to Olympian victors, without stint. My tongue wants to foster such themes; but it is by the gift of a god that a man flourishes with a skillful mind, as with anything else. For the present rest assured, Hagesidamus son of Archestratus: for the sake of your boxing victory, I shall loudly sing a sweet song, an adornment for your garland of golden olive, while I honor the race of the Western Locrians. There, Muses, join in the victory-song; I shall pledge my word to you that we will find there a race that does not repel the stranger, or is inexperienced in fine deeds, but one that is wise and warlike too. For neither the fiery fox nor loud-roaring lions change their nature.

Olympian Ode 12 Cite

I entreat you, child of Zeus the Deliverer, saving Fortune, keep protecting Himera, and make her powerful. For by your favor swift ships are steered on the sea, and on dry land rushing battles and assemblies where counsel is given. But men’s expectations are often tossed up and then back down, as they cleave the waves of vain falsehood. Never yet has any man on earth found a reliable token of what will happen from the gods. Our understanding of the future is blind. And therefore many things fall out for men contrary to their judgement, bringing to some reversal of delight, while others, having encountered grievous storms, in a short time exchange their troubles for high success. Son of Philanor, truly, like a cock that fights at home, even the fame of your swift feet would have shed its leaves ingloriously beside your native hearth, if hostile civil strife had not deprived you of your Cnossian fatherland. But as things are, Ergoteles, having been crowned with garlands at Olympia, and twice from Pytho, and at the Isthmus, you exalt the hot baths of the Nymphs, while keeping company with them beside your own fields.

Olympian Ode 13 Cite

While I praise a house that has been three times victorious at Olympia, gentle to her own citizens, and hospitable to strangers, I shall recognize prosperous Corinth, the portal of Isthmian Poseidon, glorious in her young men. There dwell Eunomia and her sisters, the secure foundation of cities: Dike, and Eirene, who was raised together with her, the guardians of wealth for men, the golden daughters of wise Themis. They are resolute in repelling Hybris, the bold-tongued mother of Koros, I have fine things to tell, and straightforward boldness urges my tongue to speak. It is impossible to conceal one’s inborn nature. As for you, sons of Aletes, often the Seasons have sent you victorious splendor for your consummate excellence when you won in sacred contests, and often into the hearts of men the Seasons rich in flowers have cast ancient inventiveness. But the fame for every work is due to its inventor. Whence did the graces of Dionysus first come to light, with the ox-driving dithyramb? Who invented the bridle for the harness of horses, or placed the double king of birds on top of the temples of gods? And in Corinth the sweet-breathing Muse blossoms, and also Ares, with the deadly spears of young men. Highest lord of Olympia, ruling far and wide; for all time, father Zeus, may you be ungrudging of our words, and ruling this people in safety, grant a straight course to the fair wind of Xenophon’s good fortune. Receive the ordained song of praise in honor of his garlands, the procession which he leads from the plains of Pisa, since he has been victorious in both the pentathlon and the foot race; he has attained what no mortal man has ever attained before. Two wreaths of wild celery crowned him, when he appeared at the Isthmian festival; and Nemea does not speak differently. The brilliance of his father Thessalus’ feet is stored up by the streams of the Alpheus, and at Pytho he has honor for the single and the double foot race within the circuit of a single day’s sun; and in the same month, in rocky Athens, one swift-footed day placed three very beautiful prizes on his head,

and the games of Athena Hellotis give him seven victories. In the games of Poseidon between the two seas, the songs would be too long that could tell of all the victories won by Terpsias and Eritimus, with their father Ptoeodorus. And as for all the times you were best at Delphi, and in the lion’s pastures, I am ready to contend with many over the number of your honors; for, truly, I would not know how to give a clear account of the number of pebbles in the sea. Each thing has its limit; knowing it is the best and most timely way. And I, sailing on my own course for the common good, and singing of the wisdom and the battles of ancient men in their heroic excellence, shall not falsify the story of Corinth; I shall tell of Sisyphus, who, like a god, was very shrewd in his devising, and of Medea, who resolved on her own marriage against her father’s will, and thus saved the ship Argo and its seamen. And again, in the fight long ago before the walls of Dardanus, Corinthians seemed to decide the issue of battles on either side: some of them attempting, with the dear race of Atreus, to recover Helen, and others doing everything they could to oppose the attempt. And the Danaans trembled before Glaucus, when he came from Lycia ; he boasted to them that in the city of Peirene lay the rule and rich estate and hall of his ancestor, Bellerophon, who once suffered greatly when beside the spring he wanted to harness Pegasus, the son of the snake-entwined Gorgon; until the maiden Pallas brought to him a bridle with golden cheek-pieces. The dream suddenly became waking reality, and she spoke: “Are you sleeping, king, son of Aeolus? Come, take this charm for the horse; and, sacrificing a white bull, show it to your ancestor, Poseidon the Horse-Tamer.” The goddess of the dark aegis seemed to say such words to him as he slumbered in the darkness, and he leapt straight up to his feet. He seized the marvellous thing that lay beside him, and gladly went to the seer of the land, and he told the son of Coeranus the whole story: how, at the seer’s bidding, he had gone to sleep for the night on the altar of the goddess, and how the daughter herself of Zeus whose spear is the thunderbolt had given him the spirit-subduing gold. The seer told him to obey the dream with all speed; and, when he sacrificed a strong-footed bull to the widely powerful holder of the earth, straightaway to dedicate an altar to Athena, goddess of horses. The power of the gods accomplishes as a light achievement what is contrary to oaths and expectations. And so mighty Bellerophon eagerly

stretched the gentle charmed bridle around its jaws and caught the winged horse. Mounted on its back and armored in bronze, at once he began to play with weapons. And with Pegasus, from the chilly bosom of the lonely air, he once attacked the Amazons, the female army of archers, and he killed the fire-breathing Chimaera, and the Solymi. I shall pass over his death in silence; but Pegasus has found his shelter in the ancient stables of Zeus in Olympus, But I, while casting the whirling javelins with straight aim, must not miss the mark as I speed many shafts with the strength of my hands. I have come as a willing champion of the Muses on their splendid thrones and of the race of Oligaethus. I shall make their many victories at the Isthmus and at Nemea manifest in a few words; and, as a truthful witness under oath, the sweet-tongued cry of the noble herald, who announced their victories sixty times at both places, will confirm my words. Their victories at Olympia seem to have already been mentioned; and of those in the future I could tell clearly when the time comes. For now I am hopeful, although a god controls the outcome. If the good fortune of their family continues, we shall leave this to Zeus and Enyalius to accomplish. They won six times beneath the brow of Parnassus ; and all their victories in Argos and in Thebes, and all that shall be witnessed by the royal Lycaean altar that rules over the Arcadians, and by Pellana, and Sicyon, and Megara, the beautifully enclosed precinct of the Aeacidae, and Eleusis and splendid Marathon, and the wealthy and beautiful cities beneath the high crest of Aetna, and Euboea—you may search through all Greece, and you will find that their victories are more than the eye can see. Come, swim away with agile feet! Zeus the Accomplisher, grant reverence, and a sweet good fortune of delights.

Olympian Ode 14 Cite

You who have your home by the waters of Cephisus, who dwell in the town of beautiful horses: songful queens, Graces of splendid Orchomenus, guardians of the ancient race of Minyans, hear me; I am praying. For with your help all delightful and sweet things are accomplished for mortals, if any man is skillful, or beautiful, or splendid. Not even the gods arrange dances or feasts without the holy Graces, who oversee everything that is done in heaven; with their thrones set beside Pythian Apollo of the golden bow, they worship the everlasting honor of the Olympian father. Lady Aglaia, and Euphrosyne, lover of dance and song, daughters of the strongest god, listen now; and you, Thalia, passionate for dance and song, having looked with favor on this victory procession, stepping lightly in honor of gracious fortune. For I have come to sing of Asopichus in Lydian melodies and chosen phrases, because the Minyan land is victorious at Olympia, thanks to you. Now go, Echo, to the dark-walled home of Persephone and bring the glorious message to his father; when you see Cleodamus, tell him that his son, by the famous valley of Pisa, has wreathed his youthful hair with the wings of the renowned games.

Contents — 12 sections

1. Pythian Ode 1
2. Pythian Ode 2
3. Pythian Ode 3
4. Pythian Ode 4
5. Pythian Ode 5
6. Pythian Ode 6
7. Pythian Ode 7
8. Pythian Ode 8
9. Pythian Ode 9
10. Pythian Ode 10
11. Pythian Ode 11
12. Pythian Ode 12

Pythian Ode 1 Cite

Golden lyre, rightful joint possession of Apollo and the violet-haired Muses, to which the dance-step listens, the beginning of splendid festivity; and singers obey your notes, whenever, with your quivering strings, you prepare to strike up chorus-leading preludes. You quench even the warlike thunderbolt of everlasting fire. And the eagle sleeps on the scepter of Zeus, relaxing his swift wings on either side, the king of birds; and you pour down a dark mist over his curved head, a sweet seal on his eyelids. Slumbering, he ripples his liquid back, under the spell of your pulsing notes. Even powerful Ares, setting aside the rough spear-point, warms his heart in repose; your shafts charm the minds even of the gods, by virtue of the skill of Leto’s son and the deep-bosomed Muses. But those whom Zeus does not love are stunned with terror when they hear the cry of the Pierian Muses, on earth or on the irresistible sea; among them is he who lies in dread Tartarus, that enemy of the gods, Typhon with his hundred heads. Once the famous Cilician cave nurtured him, but now the sea-girt cliffs above Cumae, and Sicily too, lie heavy on his shaggy chest. And the pillar of the sky holds him down, snow-covered Aetna, year-round nurse of bitter frost, from whose inmost caves belch forth the purest streams of unapproachable fire. In the daytime her rivers roll out a fiery flood of smoke, while in the darkness of night the crimson flame hurls rocks down to the deep plain of the sea with a crashing roar. That monster shoots up the most terrible jets of fire; it is a marvellous wonder to see, and a marvel even to hear about when men are present. Such a creature is bound beneath the dark and leafy heights of Aetna and beneath the plain, and his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it. Grant that we may be pleasing to you, Zeus, you who frequent this mountain, this brow of the fruitful earth, whose namesake city near at hand was glorified by its renowned founder, when the herald at the Pythian racecourse proclaimed the name of Aetna, announcing Hieron’s triumph with the chariot. For seafaring men, the first blessing at the outset of their voyage is a favorable wind; for then it is likely that

at the end as well they will win a more prosperous homecoming. And that saying, in these fortunate circumstances, brings the belief that from now on this city will be renowned for garlands and horses, and its name will be spoken amid harmonious festivities. Phoebus, lord of Lycia and Delos, you who love the Castalian spring of Parnassus, may you willingly put these wishes in your thoughts, and make this a land of fine men. All the resources for the achievements of mortal excellence come from the gods; for being skillful, or having powerful arms, or an eloquent tongue. As for me, in my eagerness to praise that man, I hope that I may not be like one who hurls the bronze-cheeked javelin, which I brandish in my hand, outside the course, but that I may make a long cast, and surpass my rivals. Would that all of time may, in this way, keep his prosperity and the gift of wealth on a straight course, and bring forgetfulness of troubles. Indeed he might remember in what kind of battles of war he stood his ground with an enduring soul, when, by the gods’ devising, they found honor such as no other Greek can pluck, a proud garland of wealth. But now he has gone to battle in the manner of Philoctetes; and under compulsion even a haughty man fawned on him for his friendship. They say that the god-like heroes went to bring from Lemnos that man afflicted with a wound, the archer son of Poeas, who sacked the city of Priam and brought an end to the toils of the Danaans; he went with a weak body, but it was fated. In such a way may a god be the preserver of Hieron for the time that is still to come, giving him the opportunity for all he desires. Muse, hear me, and beside Deinomenes sing loud praises for the reward of the four-horse chariot. The joy of his father’s victory is not alien to him. Come, let us devise a friendly song for the king of Aetna, for whom Hieron founded that city with god-built freedom, in accordance with the laws of the rule of Hyllus. The descendants of Pamphylus, and, truly, of the Heracleidae also, dwelling beneath the cliffs of Taÿgetus, are willing to abide forever as Dorians under the ordinances of Aegimius. Setting out from Pindus they took Amyclae and prospered, highly renowned neighbors of the Tyndaridae with their white horses, and the fame of their spear burst into bloom. Zeus the Accomplisher, grant that beside the waters of Amenas the true report of men may always assign such good fortune to citizens and kings alike; with your blessing the man who is himself the leader,

and who instructs his son, may bring honor to the people and turn them towards harmonious peace. I entreat you, son of Cronus, grant that the battle-shouts of the Carthaginians and Etruscans stay quietly at home, now that they have seen their arrogance bring lamentation to their ships off Cumae. Such were their sufferings, when they were conquered by the leader of the Syracusans—a fate which flung their young men from their swift ships into the sea, delivering Hellas from grievous bondage. From Salamis I will win as my reward the gratitude of the Athenians, and in Sparta from the battles before Cithaeron —those battles in which the Medes with their curved bows suffered sorely; but beside the well-watered bank of the river Himeras I shall win my reward by paying my tribute of song to the sons of Deinomenes, the song which they earned by their excellence, when their enemies were suffering. If you speak in due proportion, twisting the strands of many themes into a brief compass, less blame follows from men. For wearying satiety blunts the edge of short-lived expectations, and what the citizens hear secretly weighs heavy on their spirits, especially concerning the merits of others. Nevertheless, since envy is better than pity, do not abandon fine deeds! Steer your men with the rudder of justice; forge your tongue on the anvil of truth: if even a small spark flies, it is carried along as a great thing when it comes from you. You are the guardian of an ample store. You have many faithful witnesses of both good and bad. But abide in a blossoming temper, and if you are fond of always hearing sweet things spoken of you, do not be too distressed by expenses, but, like a steersman, let your sail out to the wind. Do not be deceived, my friend, by glib profit-seeking. The loud acclaim of renown that survives a man is all that reveals the way of life of departed men to storytellers and singers alike. The kindly excellence of Croesus does not perish, but Phalaris, with his pitiless mind, who burned his victims in a bronze bull, is surrounded on all sides by a hateful reputation; lyres that resound beneath the roof do not welcome him as a theme in gentle partnership with the voices of boys. The first of prizes is good fortune; the second is to be well spoken of; but a man who encounters and wins both has received the highest garland.

Pythian Ode 2 Cite

Great city of Syracuse! Sacred precinct of Ares, plunged deep in war! Divine nurse of men and horses who rejoice in steel! For you I come from splendid Thebes bringing this song, a message of the earth-shaking four-horse race in which Hieron with his fine chariot won the victory, and so crowned Ortygia with far-shining garlands—Ortygia, home of Artemis the river-goddess: not without her help did Hieron master with his gentle hands the horses with embroidered reins. For the virgin goddess who showers arrows and Hermes the god of contests present the gleaming reins to him with both hands when he yokes the strength of his horses to the polished car, to the chariot that obeys the bit, and calls on the wide-ruling god who wields the trident. Other kings have other men to pay them the tribute of melodious song, the recompense for excellence. The voices of the men of Cyprus often shout the name of Cinyras, whom golden-haired Apollo gladly loved, Cinyras, the obedient priest of Aphrodite. Reverent gratitude is a recompense for friendly deeds. And you, son of Deinomenes, the West Locrian girl invokes you, standing outside her door: out of the helpless troubles of war, through your power she looks at the world in security. They say that by the commands of the gods Ixion spins round and round on his feathered wheel, saying this to mortals: “Repay your benefactor frequently with gentle favors in return.” He learned a clear lesson. For although he received a sweet life among the gracious children of Cronus, he did not abide his prosperity for long, when in his madness of spirit he desired Hera, who was allotted to the joyful bed of Zeus. But his arrogance drove him to extreme delusion; and soon the man suffered a suitable exquisite punishment. Both of his crimes brought him toil in the end. First, he was the hero who, not without guile, was the first to stain mortal men with kindred blood; second, in the vast recesses of that bridal chamber he once made an attempt on the wife of Zeus. A man must always measure all things according to his own place. Unnatural lust throws men into dense trouble; it befell even him, since the man in his ignorance chased a sweet fake and lay with a cloud, for its form was like the supreme celestial goddess, the daughter of Cronus. The hands of Zeus set it as a trap for him, a beautiful misery. Ixion brought upon himself the four-spoked fetter,

his own ruin. He fell into inescapable bonds, and received the message that warns the whole world. She bore to him, without the blessing of the Graces, a monstrous offspring—there was never a mother or a son like this—honored neither by men nor by the laws of the gods. She raised him and named him Centaurus, and he mated with the Magnesian mares in the foothills of Pelion, and from them was born a marvelous horde, which resembled both its parents: like the mother below, the father above. The gods accomplish everything according to their wishes; the gods, who overtake even the flying eagle and outstrip the dolphin in the sea, and bend down many a man who is overly ambitious, while to others they give unaging glory. For my part, I must avoid the aggressive bite of slander. For I have seen, long before me, abusive Archilochus often in a helpless state, fattening himself with strong words and hatred. But to be rich by the grace of fortune is the best part of skillful wisdom. And you clearly have this blessing, and can display it with a generous mind, ruler and leader of many garland-crowned streets and a great army. When wealth and influence are in question, anyone who says that any man in Greece of earlier times surpassed you has a soft mind that flails around in vain. But I shall ascend a ship covered with flowers, and sing the praises of excellence. Boldness helps youth in terrible wars; and so I say that you too have found boundless fame by fighting among both horsemen and foot soldiers. And your wisdom beyond your years provides me with praise of you that cannot be challenged in any detail. Greetings! This song, like Phoenician merchandise, is sent to you over the gray sea: look kindly on the Castor-song, composed in Aeolian strains; come and greet the gracious offering of the seven-toned lyre. Learn and become who you are. To children, you know, an ape is pretty, always pretty. But Rhadamanthys has prospered, because his allotted portion was the blameless fruit of intelligence, and he does not delight his inner spirit with deceptions, the kind that always follow a man because of the schemes of whisperers. Those who mutter slander are an evil that makes both sides helpless; they are utterly like foxes in their temper. But what does the fox really gain by outfoxing? For while the rest of the tackle labors in the depths, I am unsinkable, like a cork above the surface of the salt sea.

A crafty citizen is unable to speak a compelling word among noble men; and yet he fawns on everyone, weaving complete destruction. I do not share his boldness. Let me be a friend to my friend; but I will be an enemy to my enemy, and pounce on him like a wolf, treading every crooked path. Under every type of law the man who speaks straightforwardly prospers: in a tyranny, and where the raucous masses oversee the state, and where men of skill do. One must not fight against a god, who raises up some men’s fortunes at one time, and at another gives great glory to others. But even this does not comfort the minds of the envious; they pull the line too tight and plant a painful wound in their own heart before they get what they are scheming for. It is best to take the yoke on one’s neck and bear it lightly; kicking against the goad makes the path treacherous. I hope that I may associate with noble men and please them.

Pythian Ode 3 Cite

If it were proper for this commonplace prayer to be made by my tongue, I would want Cheiron the son of Philyra to be alive again, he who has departed, the wide-ruling son of Cronus son of Uranus; and I would want him to reign again in the glens of Pelion, the beast of the wilds whose mind was friendly to men; just as he was when once he reared Asclepius, that gentle craftsman who drove pain from the limbs that he healed, that hero who cured all types of diseases. His mother, the daughter of Phlegyas with his fine horses, before she could bring him to term with the help of Eleithuia who attends on childbirth, was stricken by the golden arrows of Artemis in her bedroom and descended to the house of Hades, by the skills of Apollo. The anger of the children of Zeus is not in vain. But she made light of Apollo, in the error of her mind, and consented to another marriage without her father’s knowledge, although she had before lain with Phoebus of the unshorn hair, and was bearing within her the pure seed of the god. She did not wait for the marriage-feast to come, nor for the full-voiced cry of the hymenaeal chorus, such things as unmarried girls her own age love to murmur in evening songs to their companion. Instead, she was in love with what was distant; many others have felt that passion. There is a worthless tribe among men which dishonors what is at home and looks far away, hunting down empty air with hopes that cannot be fulfilled. Such was the strong infatuation that the spirit of lovely-robed Coronis had caught. For she lay in the bed of a stranger who came from Arcadia ; but she did not elude the watcher. Even in Pytho where sheep are sacrificed, the king of the temple happened to perceive it, Loxias, persuading his thoughts with his unerring counsellor: his mind, which knows all things. He does not grasp falsehood, and he is deceived by neither god nor man, neither in deeds nor in thoughts. Knowing even then of her sleeping with Ischys, son of Elatus, and of her lawless deceit, he sent his sister, raging with irresistible force, to Lacereia, since the girl lived by the banks of Lake Boebias. A contrary fortune turned her to evil and overcame her. And many neighbors shared her fate and perished with her; fire leaps from a single spark on a mountain, and destroys a great forest. But when her kinsmen had placed the girl in the wooden walls of the pyre, and

the ravening flame of Hephaestus ran around it, then Apollo spoke: “I can no longer endure in my soul to destroy my own child by a most pitiful death, together with his mother’s grievous suffering.” So he spoke. In one step he reached the child and snatched it from the corpse; the burning fire divided its blaze for him, and he bore the child away and gave him to the Magnesian Centaur to teach him to heal many painful diseases for men. And those who came to him afflicted with congenital sores, or with their limbs wounded by gray bronze or by a far-hurled stone, or with their bodies wasting away from summer’s fire or winter’s cold, he released and delivered all of them from their different pains, tending some of them with gentle incantations, others with soothing potions, or by wrapping remedies all around their limbs, and others he set right with surgery. But even skill is enthralled by the love of gain. Gold shining in his hand turned even that man, for a handsome price, to bring back from death a man who was already caught. And so the son of Cronus hurled his shaft with his hands through both of them, and swiftly tore the breath out of their chests; the burning thunderbolt brought death crashing down on them. We must seek from the gods what is appropriate for mortal minds, knowing what lies before our feet, and what kind of destiny we have. Do not crave immortal life, my soul, but use to the full the resources of what is possible. But if wise Cheiron were still living in his cave, and if our honey-voiced odes had cast a spell on his spirit, I would have persuaded him to send even now a healer to cure noble men of their feverish diseases, someone called a son of Apollo or of his father Zeus. And I would have gone on a ship, cleaving the Ionian waters, to the fountain of Arethusa and the presence of my Aetnaean host, the king who rules Syracuse, gentle to his citizens, bearing no envious grudge against good men, a marvellous father to his guests. If I had reached his shores bringing a double blessing, golden health and a victory-song to add brilliance to his garlands from the Pythian games, which once Pherenicus took when he was the best at Cirrha, I say that I would have come across the deep sea to him as a light that shines farther than a star of the sky. But I, for my part, want to offer a prayer to the Mother, the revered goddess whose praises, with those of Pan, girls often sing at night beside my doorway.

Hieron, if you are skilled in understanding the true essence of words, you have learned and know the saying of former times: “The immortals dispense to men two pains for every blessing.” Fools cannot bear their pain with grace, but noble men can, by turning the good side outwards. It is your lot to be attended by good fortune. For great destiny watches over the leader of the people, the tyrant, if over any man. But a secure life was not granted either to Peleus son of Aeacus or to godlike Cadmus; yet they are said to have attained the highest prosperity of all mortal men, since they heard the Muses of the golden headbands singing on the mountain and in seven-gated Thebes, when Cadmus married ox-eyed Harmonia, and Peleus married the famous daughter of wise Nereus. And the gods held feasts for both of them, and they saw the royal sons of Cronus on their golden seats, and they received wedding gifts. By the grace of Zeus, they set their hearts right again from their former troubles. But in time Cadmus’ three daughters, by their bitter suffering, took from him his share of joy; even though father Zeus had visited the desirable bed of white-armed Thyone. And Peleus’ son, the only child whom immortal Thetis bore in Phthia, had his life taken in battle by the bow, and roused the wailing of the Danaans while his body was burning on the pyre. But if any mortal has the path of truth in his mind, he must fare well at the hands of the gods as he has the opportunity. But the winds are changeable that blow on high. The prosperity of men does not stay secure for long, when it follows weighing upon them in abundance. I will be small when my fortunes are small, great when they are great. I will honor in my mind the fortune that attends me from day to day, tending it to the best of my ability. But if a god were to give me luxurious wealth, I hope that I would find lofty fame in the future. We know of Nestor and Lycian Sarpedon, whom men speak of, from melodious words which skilled craftsmen join together. Through renowned songs excellence gains a long life. But few find that easy to accomplish.

Pythian Ode 4 Cite

Today you must stand beside a beloved man, Muse, the king of Cyrene with its fine horses, so that while Arcesilas celebrates his triumph you may swell the fair wind of song that is due to the children of Leto and to Pytho, where once the priestess seated beside the golden eagles of Zeus, on a day when Apollo happened to be present, gave an oracle naming Battus as the colonizer of fruitful Libya, and telling how he would at once leave the holy island and found a city of fine chariots on a shining white breast of the earth, and carry out in the seventeenth generation the word spoken at Thera by Medea, which once the inspired daughter of Aeetes, the queen of the Colchians, breathed forth from her immortal mouth. She spoke in this way to the heroes who sailed with the warrior Jason: “Hear me, sons of high-spirited men and of gods. For I say that from this wave-washed land one day the daughter of Epaphus will have planted in her a root of cities that are dear to men, in the temple of Zeus Ammon. Instead of short-finned dolphins they will have swift horses, and reins instead of oars, and they will drive storm-footed chariot teams. That token shall make Thera the mother-city of great cities, the token which once, beside the out-flowing waters of lake Tritonis, Euphemus received as he descended from the prow, a clod of earth as a gift of friendship from a god in the likeness of a man. And as a sign of favor, Zeus the son of Cronus sounded a peal of thunder, when the stranger found us hanging the bronze-jawed anchor , the bridle of the swift Argo, against the ship. Before that we had been dragging our seafaring ship for twelve days from the Ocean over the deserted back of the land, having drawn it ashore by my counsels. And then the solitary god approached, who had assumed the splendid appearance of an honored man. He began to speak friendly words, such as beneficent hosts use when they first invite arriving strangers to a meal. But we could not stay, for the plea of our sweet homecoming prevented us from lingering. He said that he was Eurypylus, the son of the holder of the earth, the immortal earth-shaker Poseidon. He realized that we were hurrying on our way, and straightaway with his right hand he snatched up a piece of earth, the first thing to come to hand, and sought to present it as a gift of hospitality. He did not fail to persuade Euphemus; the hero leapt down onto the shore, and, pressing his hand in the hand of the stranger, received the divine clod of earth. But now I learn that it was washed out of the ship into the sea by a wave

at evening, following the watery tide. Truly, I often urged the sailors who relieve their masters from toil to guard it; but their minds were forgetful, and now on this island the immortal seed of spacious Libya is washed ashore before the proper time. For if only Euphemus had gone to his home in holy Taenarus and cast the clod beside the earthly mouth of Hades— Euphemus the son of lord Poseidon, ruler of horses, whom once Europa the daughter of Tityus bore beside the banks of the Cephisus— the blood of the fourth generation descended from him would have taken possession of that broad continent together with the Danaans; for then they will be uprooted from Lacedaemon and the Argive gulf and Mycenae. As it is, Euphemus shall find in the beds of foreign women a chosen race, who, with the honor of the gods, will come to this island and beget a man who will be master of the dark-clouded plains; whom one day Phoebus, in his home rich in gold, will mention in his oracles when he goes into the Pythian shrine at a later time; Phoebus will tell him to carry cities in his ships to the fertile precinct of the son of Cronus beside the Nile.” Indeed, these were the oracular verses of Medea. And the godlike heroes bowed down motionless and in silence, listening to her shrewd words of wisdom. Battus, blessed son of Polymnestus, it was you that, in accord with this word of prophecy, the oracle glorified by the spontaneous cry of the Delphic Bee, who three times loudly bid you hail, and declared that you were the destined king of Cyrene, when you came to ask the oracle what relief the gods would grant you for your stammering voice. And even now, in later days, as in the prime of red-blossoming spring, eighth in the line of Battus’ descendants flourishes Arcesilas. To him Apollo and Pytho gave glory in the chariot race above those that live around. I will offer him, and the all-golden fleece of the ram, to the Muses as a theme for song. For when the Minyans sailed after that fleece, divinely-sent honors were planted for his race. What beginning of their seafaring welcomed them? What danger bound them with strong bolts of adamant? There was a divine prophecy that Pelias would be killed by the illustrious descendants of Aeolus, either at their hands or through their unflinching counsels; and an oracle came to him that chilled his shrewd spirit, spoken beside the central navel of well-wooded mother earth: to be on careful guard in every way against a man with one sandal, whenever he should come from the homesteads in the steep mountains to the sunny land of famous Iolcus, whether he be stranger or citizen. And in time he arrived: an awesome man armed with two spears. He wore two different types of clothing: his native Magnesian dress fitted to his marvellous limbs, and a leopard-skin wrapped around him protected him from shivering showers. His splendid locks of hair had not been cut away, but flowed shining down his back. He quickly went straight ahead, making trial of his dauntless spirit, and stood

in the marketplace crowded with people. They did not recognize him. Nevertheless, one of the awed onlookers said even this: “Surely this is not Apollo, nor Ares, the husband of Aphrodite, with his bronze chariot. And they say that the sons of Iphimedeia—Otus and you, bold lord Ephialtes—died in splendid Naxos. And indeed Tityus was hunted down by the swift arrow of Artemis, which she sped from her unconquerable quiver, so that men might desire to touch only the loves that are within their reach.” They said such things among themselves; and Pelias arrived, rushing headlong with his mule team and his polished chariot. He was instantly astonished, looking at the single sandal, plain to see on the stranger’s right foot. But he hid his fear in his heart and said: “What country, stranger, do you claim as your fatherland? And what woman, of mortals on earth, bore you from her aged womb? Do not befoul your story with most hateful lies, but tell me of your birth.” And the stranger boldly answered him with gentle words, in this way: “I say that I am going to bring the teaching of Cheiron; for I come from his cave, from the presence of Chariclo and Philyra, where the holy daughters of the Centaur raised me. Living twenty years without having said or done anything shameful in their house, I have come to my home to recover the ancient honor of my father, now held improperly, which once Zeus granted to Aeolus, the leader of the people, and to his sons. For I hear that lawless Pelias, yielding to his empty mind, violently robbed it from my parents, who were the rulers by right. When I first saw the light, they feared the arrogance of the monstrous ruler, and made a show of dark mourning in the home, with the wailing of women as if someone had died, and sent me away secretly, in purple swaddling clothes, making the night my escort on the journey, and gave me to Cheiron the son of Cronus to rear. But you know the chief points of this story. Good citizens, show me clearly the home of my ancestors, who rode on white horses. For I am the son of Aeson, and a native; I do not arrive in a strange foreign land. The divine centaur called me by the name Jason.”

So he spoke; and as he entered his father’s eyes recognized him, and tears burst forth from his aged eyelids, for his soul rejoiced when he saw his son, the choicest and most handsome of men. And both his father’s brothers came when they heard the report of Jason. Pheres was near by; he came from the Hypereian spring, and Amythaon came from Messene. Admetus and Melampus came quickly, showing kindness to their cousin. And while they joined in the banquet, Jason, welcoming them with gentle words and offering them fitting hospitality, extended every kind of joyfulness, reaping the sacred bloom of good living for five full nights and as many days. But on the sixth day, speaking in earnest, Jason confided the entire story from the beginning to his kinsmen; and they took his side. At once he hurried from the camp with them, and they came to the hall of Pelias. They rushed in, and took their stand. And when Pelias heard them he came to meet them himself, the son of Tyro with beautiful hair. And Jason, with his soothing voice distilling gentle language, laid the foundation of skillful words: “Son of Poseidon, Cleaver of the Rock, the minds of mortals are all too swift to praise crafty gain rather than justice, although they are moving towards a harsh reckoning. But you and I must govern our tempers rightly and weave our future prosperity. You know what I am going to say. A single cow was mother to Cretheus and to bold-thinking Salmoneus. And now we, sprung from them in the third generation, look on the golden strength of the sun. May the Fates withdraw if there is any hatred between members of the same family, which blots out reverence. It is not right for us to resort to swords of sharp bronze or spears in dividing the great honors of our ancestors. I leave you the flocks, and the golden herds of cattle, and all the fields, which you keep, having stolen them from my ancestors, feeding fat your wealth; and it does not grieve me that they provide for your household beyond all measure. But as for the royal scepter and the throne, in which Aeson son of Cretheus once sat, and dispensed straight justice for a nation of horsemen: without any distress between us, release these to me, lest some more disturbing evil arise from them.” So he spoke. And Pelias answered softly: “I will be such a man as you ask. But already old age attends me, while the flower of your youth is now swelling. You have it in your power to remove the anger of the gods below. For Phrixus asks us to bring his soul home,

going to the halls of Aeetes, and to recover the deep-fleeced hide of the ram, on which he was once saved from the sea and from the impious weapons of his stepmother. A marvellous dream came and told me these things, and I have asked the oracle at Castalia whether it must be pursued; and the oracle urges me to make ready as soon as possible a ship to escort him home. Willingly fulfill this quest, and I swear that I will deliver up to you the royal power and the kingdom. And, as a mighty oath, may Zeus, who is ancestor to us both, be our witness.” They approved this agreement, and they parted. And Jason himself at once sent messengers everywhere to announce the voyage. Soon there came the three sons, untiring in battle, whom dark-eyed Alcmena and Leda bore to Zeus son of Cronus; and two high-haired men, sons of the earth-shaker, obeying their innate valor, one from Pylos and the other from the headland of Taenarus; you both achieved noble fame, Euphemus and wide-ruling Periclymenus. And from Apollo the lyre-player came, the father of songs, much-praised Orpheus. And Hermes of the golden wand sent two sons to take part in the unabating toil, Echion and Erytus, bursting with youth. Swiftly came those that dwell around the foothills of Mount Pangaeon, for with a smiling spirit their father Boreas, king of the winds, quickly and willingly equipped Zetes and Calais with purple wings bristling down their backs. And Hera kindled in the demigods an all-persuasive sweet longing for the ship Argo, so that no one would be left behind to stay by his mother’s side, nursing a life without danger, but even at the risk of death would find the finest elixir of excellence together with his other companions. When the choicest seamen came down to Iolcus, Jason reviewed and praised them all; and the seer Mopsus, making his prophecy from birds and the casting of sacred lots, gladly gave the men the signal to set out. And when they hung the anchor over the ship’s ram, the leader, standing at the stern, took in his hands a golden goblet and called on the father of Uranus’ descendants, Zeus whose spear is the thunderbolt; and he called on the swift-rushing waves and winds, and on the nights, and the paths of the sea, and the propitious days, and on the kindly fortune of their homecoming.. And from the clouds there answered an auspicious peal of thunder, and bright flashes of lightning came bursting forth, and the heroes drew a breath of relief, trusting in the sign of the god. The seer shouted to them

to throw themselves into the oars, announcing that their hopes were sweet; and the rowing sped on under their swift hands, insatiably. Escorted by the breezes of the South wind, they reached the mouth of the Inhospitable Sea, and there they set up a holy precinct to Poseidon, god of the sea; there was a herd of red Thracian bulls, and a newly-built hollow of altar stones. And as they rushed into deep danger, they entreated the lord of ships that they might escape the irresistible onset of the clashing rocks. There was a pair of them; they were alive, and they rolled onward more swiftly than the battle-lines of the loud-thundering winds. But that voyage of the demigods put an end to them. And then the Argonauts came to Phasis, where they clashed with the dark-faced Colchians in the realm of Aeetes himself. And the queen of sharpest arrows brought the dappled wryneck from Olympus, bound to the four spokes of the indissoluble wheel: Aphrodite of Cyprus brought the maddening bird to men for the first time, and she taught the son of Aeson skill in prayerful incantations, so that he could rob Medea of reverence for her parents, and a longing for Greece would lash her, her mind on fire, with the whip of Persuasion. And she quickly revealed the means of performing the labors set by her father; and she mixed drugs with olive oil as a remedy for hard pains, and gave it to him to anoint himself. They agreed to be united with each other in sweet wedlock. But when Aeetes placed in their midst the adamantine plough and the oxen, who breathed the flame of burning fire from their golden jaws and stamped at the earth in turn with their bronze hoofs, he led them along and single-handedly brought them under the yoke. And he drove them, stretching the furrows straight, and split the back of the clodded earth, a fathom deep. Then he spoke in this way: “Let your king, whoever commands the ship, complete this work for me; then let him carry off the immortal coverlet, the fleece gleaming with its golden fringe.” When he had spoken thus, Jason threw off his saffron cloak and, trusting in the god, set his hand to the task. The fire did not touch him; he followed the advice of the foreign woman who knew every kind of remedy. He grasped the plough, and bound the necks of the oxen in the irresistible harness, and prodding their strong-ribbed bulk with the unceasing goad the powerful man accomplished the allotted measure of his task. And Aeetes wailed, though his cry was silent, amazed at Jason’s strength.

His companions stretched their friendly hands towards the mighty man, and crowned him with garlands of laurel, and greeted him with gentle words. But at once the marvellous son of Helios spoke of the shining fleece, telling where the sword of Phrixus had stretched it out. He expected that Jason would not be able to accomplish this further labor. For the fleece lay in a thicket, held in the ravening jaws of a serpent, which in thickness and length surpassed a ship with fifty oars, built by the blows of a hammer. It is too long a way for me to go by the beaten track; for time presses, and I know a shortcut. In poetic skill I am a guide to many others. Jason killed the gray-eyed serpent with its dappled back by cunning, Arcesilas, and stole away Medea, with her own help, to be the death of Pelias. And they reached the expanses of Ocean, and the Red Sea, and the race of the Lemnian women, who killed their husbands. There they displayed their prowess of limbs in athletic contests with a cloak for a prize, and they went to bed with the women. In foreign fields then the fated day, or night, received the seed of your shining prosperity; for there the race of Euphemus was planted, to continue forever. And having gone to share the home of the Lacedaemonians, in time they left to settle the island once called Calliste. From there the son of Leto granted that your race should bring prosperity to the plain of Libya , with the honor of the gods, and govern the divine city of golden-throned Cyrene, having discovered the wisdom of right counsel. Now, learn the skill of Oedipus: if a man, with a sharp-cutting axe, cuts the branches from a great oak, and spoils its marvellous beauty, even with its fruit destroyed it votes for its own worth, if it comes at last to the winter fire; or if it is placed with upright columns belonging to a ruler, performing a slavish service among foreign walls, having deserted its native place. But you are a most opportune healer, and Apollo Paean honors your light. One must apply a gentle hand to tend a sore wound: it is easy even for weak men to shake a city to its foundations, but to set it in its place again is indeed a difficult struggle, unless a god suddenly comes to guide its rulers. These blessings are woven out for you: be bold, and apply all earnestness for the sake of fortunate Cyrene.

Of the sayings of Homer, take to heart and heed this one: “a noble messenger,” he said, “brings the greatest honor to every business.” Even the Muse is exalted by a correct message. Cyrene and the most renowned hall of Battus recognized the just mind of Damophilus; a young man among boys, and in counsels like an elder who has lived a hundred years, he robs the evil tongue of its brash voice, and he has learned to hate the arrogant; he does not struggle against good men, or postpone any decisive action, for the right moment has a brief measure in the eyes of men. He recognizes it well, and he serves it as an attendant, not a slave. But they say that this is the most grievous thing of all, to recognize what is good and to be debarred from it by compulsion. And truly he, like Atlas, now strains against the weight of the sky, far from his ancestral land and his possessions. But immortal Zeus freed the Titans; and in time, when the wind ceases, there are changes of sails. But he prays that at some time, when he has drained to the dregs his cup of ruinous affliction, he will see his home, and, joining the symposium near the spring of Apollo, yield his spirit often to the joys of youth, and attain peace, holding the well-made lyre among his skillful fellow citizens, bringing no pain to anyone, and himself unharmed by his townsmen. Then he would tell you, Arcesilas, what a fountain of immortal song he found, when he was recently entertained by his host at Thebes.

Pythian Ode 5 Cite

Wealth is widely powerful, whenever a mortal man receives it, blended with pure excellence, from the hands of fortune, and takes it as a companion that makes many friends. Arcesilas, favored by the gods, from the first steps of your famous life you seek for it with glory, by the grace of Castor with his golden chariot, who, after the wintry storm, sheds calm on your blessed hearth. Skillful men are better able to bear even god-given power. Great prosperity surrounds you, as you walk with justice. First, since you are a king of great cities, your inborn eye looks on this as a most revered prize of honor, united with your mind; and you are blessed even now, because you have already earned the boast of victory with your horses from the renowned Pythian festival, and you will welcome this victory-procession of men, a delight for Apollo. And so, do not forget, when you are celebrated in song around Cyrene’s sweet garden of Aphrodite, to set the god in the highest place as the cause of all things, and to love Carrhotus above all your companions. He did not bring with him Excuse, the daughter of late-thinking Afterthought, when he came to the house of the descendants of Battus who rule by right; but he was welcomed beside the waters of Castalia, and he flung over your hair the prize of honor for the victorious chariot; his reins were undamaged in the precinct of the twelve swift-footed courses. For he broke no part of his strong equipment; it hangs dedicated there, all the handiwork of dextrous craftsmen, which he brought past the hill of Crisa to the hollow valley of the god. The cypress shrine keeps it beside the statue which the Cretan bowmen set up in the Parnassian chamber, carved from a single piece of wood.

Therefore it is fitting to welcome a benefactor with a willing mind. Son of Alexibias, the lovely-haired Graces make you radiant. You are blessed, you who have, even after great hardship, a memorial of the best words. For among forty drivers who fell, having brought your chariot through unscathed with a fearless mind, you have come now from the splendid games to the plain of Libya and your ancestral city. But no man is without a share of toils, or ever will be. Yet the ancient prosperity of Battus continues, despite its dispensation of both good and bad, a tower of the city and a most brilliant shining eye to strangers. Even loud-roaring lions fled in fear from Battus, when he unleashed on them his voice from across the sea. And Apollo, the first leader, doomed the beasts to dread fear, so that his oracles to the guardian of Cyrene would not go unfulfilled. It is Apollo who dispenses remedies to men and women for grievous diseases, and who bestowed on us the cithara, and gives the Muses’ inspiration to whomever he will, bringing peaceful concord into the mind, and who possesses the oracular shrine; wherefore he settled the mighty descendants of Heracles and Aegimius in Lacedaemon and in Argos and in sacred Pylos. But it is my part to sing of the lovely glory that comes from Sparta, where the Aegeidae were born, and from there they went to Thera, my ancestors, not without the gods; they were led by a certain fate. From there we have received the feast with its many sacrifices, and at your banquet, Carneian Apollo, we honor the well-built city of Cyrene, which is held by foreigners who delight in bronze, the Trojan descendants of Antenor. For they came with Helen, after they had seen their native city consumed in the smoke

of war. And that horse-driving race was faithfully welcomed with sacrifices by men who came to them bringing gifts, men whom Aristoteles led, when, with his swift ships, he opened a deep path across the sea. And he founded precincts of the gods that were greater than before, and he established, for the processions of Apollo, protector of men, a straight cut, level, paved road for the clatter of horses’ hooves, where at the edge of the marketplace he rests by himself in death. He was blessed when he dwelled among men, and thereafter a hero worshipped by the people. Apart from him, in front of the houses, are the other sacred kings who took their allotted places in Hades, and somehow below the earth they hear, in their minds, great excellence sprinkled with gentle dew by the outpourings of victory-songs—prosperity for themselves, and a justly earned and shared grace for their son Arcesilas. It is fitting for him, in the song of the young men, to celebrate Phoebus with his golden sword, now that he has received from Pytho the graceful victory-song as a compensation for his expense. Intelligent men praise him. I will say what has been said by others: he nurtures a mind and tongue that are beyond his years; in courage he is a long-winged eagle among birds; his strength in competition is like a bulwark. Among the Muses, he has had wings since he was a child in his dear mother’s lap, and he has proved himself a skillful charioteer. He has boldly tried every local opportunity for fine deeds, and now a god gladly brings his power to perfection; and in the future, blessed sons of Cronus, grant him the same, both in deeds and in counsels, lest some fruit-destroying blast of winter wind quell his life. The great mind of Zeus steers the fortune of men that he loves. I pray to him to grant another prize of honor at Olympia to the race of Battus.

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Listen! for we are again ploughing the field of dark-eyed Aphrodite, or of the Graces, as we approach the sacred navel of the loud-roaring land; where, for the prosperous Emmenids and Acragas on the river, and especially for Xenocrates, a Pythian victor’s treasure-house of songs has been built and is ready in the glen of Apollo, rich in gold. It is buffeted by neither the invading onset of winter rain, the loud-roaring cloud’s pitiless army, nor the wind that sweeps all kinds of rubble into the depths of the sea. Its facade, shining in pure light, will announce your chariot victory to the speech of men and make it famous—the victory you share with your father and your race, Thrasybulus, won in the vales of Crisa. You keep it on your right hand and uphold the commandment, one of the precepts which they say once in the mountains the son of Philyra enjoined on the powerful son of Peleus, when he was separated from his parents: first of the gods, worship the son of Cronus, the loud-voiced ruler of lightning and thunder; and never deprive your parents of such honor during their allotted lifetime. Long ago, too, powerful Antilochus showed that he had this way of thinking; he died for his father’s sake, by awaiting the man-slaying commander of the Ethiopians, Memnon. For the horse kept Nestor’s chariot from moving, since it had been wounded by Paris ’ arrows; and Memnon was aiming his strong spear. The old man of Messene, his mind reeling, shouted to his son; the cry he hurled did not fall to the ground; his god-like son stayed on the spot and paid for his father’s rescue with his own life, and because he accomplished this tremendous deed he seemed to the younger men to be the greatest man of his time in excellence towards his parents. These things are past. Of men alive today, Thrasybulus

more than anyone has approached his father’ s standard, and he rivals his father’s brother in every splendor. He manages his wealth with intelligence, reaping not an unjust or arrogant youth, but the wisdom found in the quiet haunts of the Pierian Muses. Earth-shaking Poseidon, he is devoted to you, who rule over horse-races, and his thoughts are pleasing to you. His sweet temperament, when he associates with his drinking companions, surpasses even the bee’s intricate honeycomb.

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The great city of Athens is the most beautiful prelude of song, which the widely powerful race of the Alcmaeonids can lay as a foundation of odes in honor of their horses. What fatherland, what family will you name that is more illustrious in Greece ? For in all cities the story of the citizens of Erechtheus makes the rounds, Apollo, how they made your dwelling in divine Pytho a marvel to see. Five Isthmian victories lead my song forward, and one outstanding triumph at Zeus’ Olympian games, and two from Cirrha — yours, Megacles, and your ancestors’. I rejoice at this new success; but I grieve that fine deeds are repaid with envy. It is true what they say: the abiding bloom of good fortune brings with it both good and bad.

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Kindly Peace, daughter of Justice, you who make cities great, holding the supreme keys of counsels and of wars, receive this honor due to Aristomenes for his Pythian victory. For you know both how to give and how to receive gentleness, with precise timing. And yet, whenever anyone drives pitiless anger into his heart, you meet the strength of your enemies roughly, sinking Arrogance in the flood. Porphyrion did not know your power, when he provoked you beyond all measure. Gain is most welcome, when one takes it from the home of a willing giver. Violence trips up even a man of great pride, in time. Cilician Typhon with his hundred heads did not escape you, nor indeed did the king of the Giants. One was subdued by the thunderbolt, the other by the bow of Apollo, who with a gracious mind welcomed the son of Xenarces on his return from Cirrha , crowned with a garland of laurel from Parnassus and with Dorian victory-song. His island with her just city has not fallen far from the Graces, having attained the famous excellence of the Aeacidae; she has had perfect glory from the beginning. She is praised in song for having fostered heroes who were supreme in many victory-bearing contests and in swift battles; and she is distinguished in these things even for her men. But I do not have the time to set up their whole long story to the lyre and the gentle voice, for fear that satiety would come and distress us. But my debt to you, child, which comes running at my feet, your latest fine achievement, let it fly on the wings of my artfulness. For in wrestling you follow in the footsteps of your mother’s brothers, and you do not disgrace Theognetus at Olympia, nor the bold-limbed victory of Cleitomachus at the Isthmus. And by exalting the clan of the Midylids, you fulfill the prophecy which once Amphiaraus the son of Oicles spoke in riddling words, when he saw, in seven-gated Thebes, those sons standing by their spears,

when they came from Argos on that second march, the Epigoni. Thus he spoke, while they were fighting: “By nature the genuine spirit of the fathers is conspicuous in the sons. I clearly see Alcmaeon, wielding a dappled serpent on his blazing shield, the first at the gates of Cadmus. And he who suffered in the earlier disaster, the hero Adrastus, now has the tidings of a better bird of omen. But at home his luck will be the opposite. For he alone of the Danaan army will gather the bones of his dead son, by the fortune sent from the gods, and come with his people unharmed to the spacious streets of Argos, the city of Abas.” So spoke Amphiaraus. And I myself rejoice as I fling garlands over Alcmaeon and sprinkle him with song, because this hero is my neighbor and guardian of my possessions, and he met me when I was going to the songful navel of the earth, and he touched on prophecies with his inborn arts. And you, Apollo, shooting from afar, you who govern the glorious temple, hospitable to all, in the hollows of Pytho, there you granted the greatest of joys. And before, in your festival at home, you brought him a coveted gift for the pentathlon. Lord, I pray that with a willing mind I may observe a certain harmony on every step of my way. Justice stands beside the sweet-singing victory procession. I pray that the gods may regard your fortunes without envy, Xenarces. For if anyone has noble achievements without long toil, to many he seems to be a skillful man among the foolish, arming his life with the resources of right counsel. But these things do not depend on men. It is a god who grants them; raising up one man and throwing down another. Enter the struggle with due measure. You have won a prize of honor at Megara, and in the valley of Marathon; and at the local contest of Hera you were dominant in action with three victories, Aristomenes.

And you fell from above on the bodies of four opponents, with grim intent; to them no cheerful homecoming was allotted, as it was to you, at the Pythian festival; nor, when they returned to their mothers, did sweet laughter awaken joy. They slink along the back-streets, away from their enemies, bitten by misfortune. But he who has gained some fine new thing in his great opulence flies beyond hope on the wings of his manliness, with ambitions that are greater than wealth. But the delight of mortals grows in a short time, and then it falls to the ground, shaken by an adverse thought. Creatures of a day. What is someone? What is no one? Man is the dream of a shadow. But when the brilliance given by Zeus comes, a shining light is on man, and a gentle lifetime. Dear mother Aegina, convey this city on her voyage of freedom, with the blessing of Zeus, and the ruler Aeacus, and Peleus, and good Telamon, and Achilles.

Pythian Ode 9 Cite

With the help of the deep-waisted Graces I want to shout aloud proclaiming the Pythian victory with the bronze shield of Telesicrates, a prosperous man, the crowning glory of chariot-driving Cyrene; the long-haired son of Leto once snatched her from the wind-echoing glens of Mt. Pelion, and carried the girl of the wilds in his golden chariot to a place where he made her mistress of a land rich in flocks and most rich in fruits, to live and flourish on the root of the third continent. Silver-footed Aphrodite welcomed the Delian guest from his chariot, touching him with a light hand, and she cast lovely modesty on their sweet union, joining together in a common bond of marriage the god and the daughter of wide-ruling Hypseus. He was at that time king of the proud Lapiths, a hero of the second generation from Oceanus; in the renowned glens of Mt. Pindus a Naiad bore him, Creusa the daughter of Gaia, delighting in the bed of the river-god Peneius. And Hypseus raised his lovely-armed daughter Cyrene. She did not care for pacing back and forth at the loom, nor for the delights of luncheons with her stay-at-home companions; instead, fighting with bronze javelins and with a sword, she killed wild beasts, providing great restful peace for her father’s cattle; but as for her sweet bed-fellow, sleep, she spent only a little of it on her eyelids as it fell on them towards dawn. Once the god of the broad quiver, Apollo who works from afar, came upon her wrestling alone and without spears with a terrible lion. Immediately he called Cheiron from out of his halls and spoke to him: “Leave your sacred cave, son of Philyra, and marvel at the spirit and great strength of this woman; look at what a struggle she is engaged in, with a fearless head, this young girl with a heart more than equal to any toil; her mind is not shaken with the cold wind of fear. From what mortal was she born? From what stock has this cutting been taken, that she should be living in the hollows of the shady mountains and putting to the test her boundless valor? Is it lawful to lay my renowned hand on her? And to cut the honey-sweet grass of her bed?” And the powerful Centaur, laughing softly with a gentle brow, right away gave his wise advice in reply: “Hidden are skilled Persuasion’s keys to holy love,

Phoebus, and both gods and men blush to take the pleasure of a bed for the first time openly. For even in your case, for whom it is unlawful to touch on falsehood, a gentle impulse has swayed you to dissemble your words. You ask me from what race the girl comes, lord Apollo? You who know the appointed end of all things, and all the paths that lead to them? And how many leaves the earth puts forth in spring, and how many grains of sand in the sea and in rivers are dashed by the waves and the gusting winds; and that which will be, and from where it will come, all this you clearly see. But if I must match myself even against one who is wise, I will speak. You came to this glen to be her husband, and you will bear her over the sea to the choicest garden of Zeus, where you will make her the ruler of a city, when you have gathered the island-people to the hill encircled by plains. And now queen Libya of the broad meadows will gladly welcome your glorious bride in her golden halls. There she will right away give her a portion of land to flourish with her as her lawful possession, not without tribute of all kinds of fruit, nor unfamiliar with wild animals. There she will bear a child, whom famous Hermes will take from beneath his own dear mother and carry to the Seasons on their lovely thrones and to Gaia. They will admire the baby on their knees and drop nectar and ambrosia on his lips, and they will make him immortal, to be called Zeus and holy Apollo, a delight to men he loves, an ever-present guardian of flocks, Agreus and Nomius, and others will call him Aristaeus.” Having spoken thus, Cheiron urged the god to fulfill the delightful consummation of his marriage. Accomplishment is swift when the gods are already hurrying, and the roads are short. That very day decided the matter. They lay together in the bedchamber of Libya, rich in gold, where she possesses a most beautiful city which is renowned for victories in contests. And now in very holy Pytho, where by his victory he had Cyrene proclaimed, the son of Carneiades brought lovely, flourishing good fortune to her; she will welcome him graciously, when he brings back home to the land of beautiful women desirable fame from Delphi.

Great excellence can always inspire many stories; but to embroider a short account from a lengthy theme is what wise men love to hear. Right proportion in the same way contains the gist of the whole; as seven-gated Thebes once knew well, Telesicrates was not dishonored by Iolaus; when he had cut off the head of Eurystheus with the edge of his sword, he was buried below the earth by the tomb of the charioteer Amphitryon, his father’s father, where he lay as the guest of the Sown Men, having come to dwell in the streets of the Cadmeans, who ride on white horses. Wise Alcmena lay with Amphitryon and with Zeus, and bore in a single birth twin sons, strong and victorious in battle. Only a mute man does not have Heracles’ name on his lips, and does not always remember the waters of Dirce, which reared him and Iphicles. To them I will sing a victory-song for the fulfillment of my prayer; may the pure light of the clear-voiced Graces not desert me. For I say that I have praised this city three times, in Aegina and on the hill of Nisus, truly escaping silent helplessness. Therefore, whether a man is friendly or hostile among the citizens, let him not obscure a thing that is done well for the common good and so dishonor the precept of the old man of the sea, who said to praise with all your spirit, and with justice, even an enemy when he accomplishes fine deeds. The women saw your many victories at the seasonal rites of Pallas, and each silently prayed that you could be her dear husband, Telesicrates, or her son; and in the Attic Olympia too, and in the contests of deep-bosomed Mother Earth, and in all your local games. But while I am quenching my thirst for song, someone exacts an unpaid debt from me, to awake again the ancient glory of his ancestors as well: for the sake of a Libyan woman they went to the city of Irasa, as suitors of the very famous daughter of Antaeus with the beautiful hair. Many excellent kinsmen sought her, and many strangers too, since her beauty was marvellous. They wanted to pluck the flowering fruit of golden-crowned Youth. But her father, cultivating for his daughter a more renowned marriage, heard how Danaus once in Argos had found for his forty-eight daughters, before noon overtook them, a very swift marriage. For right away he stood the whole band of suitors at the end of a course,

and told them to decide with a footrace which of the heroes, who came to be bridegrooms, would take which bride. The Libyan too made such an offer in joining his daughter with a husband. He placed her at the goal, when he had arrayed her as the crowning prize, and in their midst he announced that that man should lead her to his home, whoever was the first to leap forward and touch her robes. There Alexidamus, when he had sped to the front of the swift race, took the noble girl’s hand in his hand and led her through the crowd of Nomad horsemen. They cast on that man many leaves and garlands, and before he had received many wings for his victories.

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Lacedaemon is prosperous; Thessaly is divinely blessed. Both are ruled by the race of a single ancestor, Heracles, the best in battle. Why do I make this untimely boast? Because Pytho summons me, and Pelinna, and the sons of Aleuas; they want me to present to Hippocleas the glorious voices of men in celebration. For he is trying his hand at contests, and the gorge of Parnassus proclaimed him to the people that live around as the greatest of the boys in the double-course footrace. Apollo, the end and the beginning both grow sweet when a god urges on a man«s work. No doubt he accomplished this with the help of your counsels. Kinship has stepped into the footprints of the father, who was twice an Olympic victor in the war-enduring armor of Ares; and the contest in the deep meadow that stretches beneath the rock of Cirrha made Phricias victorious in the race. May a good fate follow them in their future days as well, so that their noble wealth will blossom; having received no small share of the delights of Greece, may they encounter no envious reversals at the hands of the gods. A god«s heart should be free from pain; but a man is considered fortunate, and wise poets sing his praises, if he wins victory with his hands or the excellence of his feet, and takes the greatest prizes through his courage and strength, and lives to see his young son duly winning Pythian garlands. He can never set foot in the bronze heavens; but whatever splendor we mortals can attain, he reaches the limit of that voyage. Neither by ship nor on foot could you find the marvellous road to the meeting-place of the Hyperboreans— Once Perseus, the leader of his people, entered their homes and feasted among them, when he found them sacrificing glorious hecatombs of donkeys to the god. In the festivities of those people and in their praises Apollo rejoices most, and he laughs when he sees the erect arrogance of the beasts. The Muse is not absent from their customs; all around swirl the dances of girls, the lyre«s loud chords and the cries of flutes.

They wreathe their hair with golden laurel branches and revel joyfully. No sickness or ruinous old age is mixed into that sacred race; without toil or battles they live without fear of strict Nemesis. Breathing boldness of spirit once the son of Danae went to that gathering of blessed men, and Athena led him there. He killed the Gorgon, and came back bringing stony death to the islanders, the head that shimmered with hair made of serpents. To me nothing that the gods accomplish ever appears unbelievable, however miraculous. Hold the oar! Quick, let the anchor down from the prow to touch the bottom, to protect us from the rocky reef. The choicest hymn of praise flits from theme to theme, like a bee. And I hope that, while the Ephyreans pour forth my sweet voice beside the Peneius, with my songs I will make Hippocleas even more admired for his garlands by boys his age and by his elders, and I will make the girls think of him. For people«s minds are tickled by various desires; but whatever each man strives for, let him hold on to it eagerly if he gets it, the concern that is close at hand. It is impossible to foresee what will happen a year from now. I trust in the gentle friendship of Thorax; he made busy efforts for my sake, and yoked this four-horse chariot of the Pierian Muses, a friend for a friend, going gladly arm in arm. Gold shows its nature when it is tried by the touchstone, and so does a right-thinking mind. We shall further praise his noble brothers, because they exalt and strengthen the traditional laws of the Thessaliaaans; the good piloting of states, handed from father to son, rests in the hands of noble men.

Pythian Ode 11 Cite

Daughters of Cadmus, Semele dwelling among the Olympians and Ino Leucothea, sharing the chamber of the Nereid sea-nymphs: come, with the mother of Heracles, greatest in birth, to the presence of Melia; come to the sanctuary of golden tripods, the treasure-house which Loxias honored above all and named the Ismenion, true seat of prophecy. Come, children of Harmonia, where even now he calls the native host of heroines to assemble, so that you may loudly sing of holy Themis and Pytho and the just navel of the earth, at the edge of evening, in honor of seven-gated Thebes and the contest at Cirrha, in which Thrasydaeus caused his ancestral hearth to be remembered by flinging over it a third wreath as a victor in the rich fields of Pylades, the friend of Laconian Orestes, who indeed, when his father was murdered, was taken by his nurse Arsinoe from the strong hands and bitter deceit of Clytaemnestra, when she sent the Dardanian daughter of Priam, Cassandra, together with the soul of Agamemnon, to the shadowy bank of Acheron with her gray blade of bronze, the pitiless woman. Was it Iphigeneia, slaughtered at the Euripus far from her fatherland, that provoked her to raise the heavy hand of her anger? Or was she vanquished by another bed and led astray by their nightly sleeping together? This is the most hateful error for young brides, and is impossible to conceal because other people will talk. Citizens are apt to speak evil, for prosperity brings with it envy as great as itself. But the man who breathes close to the ground roars unseen. He himself died, the heroic son of Atreus, when at last he returned to famous Amyclae,

and he caused the destruction of the prophetic girl, when he had robbed of their opulent treasures the houses of the Trojans, set on fire for Helen«s sake. And his young son went to the friend of the family, the old man Strophius, who dwelled at the foot of Parnassus. But at last, with the help of Ares, he killed his mother and laid Aegisthus low in blood. My friends, I was whirled off the track at a shifting fork in the road, although I had been traveling on a straight path before. Or did some wind throw me off course, like a skiff on the sea? Muse, it is your task, if you undertook to lend your voice for silver, to let it flit now this way, now that: now to the father, who was a Pythian victor, now to his son Thrasydaeus. Their joyfulness and renown shine brightly. With their chariots they were victorious long ago; they captured the swift radiance of the famous games at Olympia with their horses. And at Pytho, when they entered the naked footrace, they put to shame the Hellenic host with their speed. May I desire fine things from the gods, seeking what is possible at my time of life. For I have found that those of middle rank in a city flourish with longer prosperity, and I find fault with the lot of tyrannies. I am intent upon common excellences. The evil workings of envy are warded off, if a man who attains the summit and dwells in peace escapes dread arrogance. Such a man would go to the farthest shore of a dark death that is finer when he leaves to his sweetest offspring the grace of a good name, the best of possessions. Such is the grace that spreads abroad the fame of the son of Iphicles, Iolaus, whose praises are sung; and of the strength of Castor, and of you, lord Polydeuces, sons of the gods: you who dwell for one day at home in Therapne, and for the other in Olympus.

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I beseech you, splendor-loving city, most beautiful on earth, home of Persephone; you who inhabit the hill of well-built dwellings above the banks of sheep-pasturing Acragas: be propitious, and with the goodwill of gods and men, mistress, receive this victory garland from Pytho in honor of renowned Midas, and receive the victor himself, champion of Hellas in that art which once Pallas Athena discovered when she wove into music the dire dirge of the reckless Gorgons which Perseus heard pouring in slow anguish from beneath the horrible snakey hair of the maidens, when he did away with the third sister and brought death to sea-girt Seriphus and its people. Yes, he brought darkness on the monstrous race of Phorcus, and he repaid Polydectes with a deadly wedding-present for the long slavery of his mother and her forced bridal bed; he stripped off the head of beautiful Medusa, Perseus, the son of Danae, who they say was conceived in a spontaneous shower of gold. But when the virgin goddess had released that beloved man from those labors, she created the many-voiced song of flutes so that she could imitate with musical instruments the shrill cry that reached her ears from the fast-moving jaws of Euryale. The goddess discovered it; but she discovered it for mortal men to have, and called it the many-headed strain, the glorious strain that entices the people to gather at contests, often sounding through thin plates of brass and through reeds, which grow beside the city of lovely choruses, the city of the Graces, in the sacred precinct of the nymph of Cephisus, reeds that are the faithful witnesses of the dancers. If there is any prosperity among men, it does not appear without hardship. A god will indeed grant it in full today . . . What is fated cannot be escaped. But that time will come, striking unexpectedly, and give one thing beyond all expectation, and withhold another.

Contents — 11 sections

1. Nemean Ode 1
2. Nemean Ode 2
3. Nemean Ode 3
4. Nemean Ode 4
5. Nemean Ode 5
6. Nemean Ode 6
7. Nemean Ode 7
8. Nemean Ode 8
9. Nemean Ode 9
10. Nemean Ode 10
11. Nemean Ode 11

Nemean Ode 1 Cite

Sacred place where Alpheus breathed again; Ortygia, scion of renowned Syracuse, bed of Artemis, sister of Delos ! From you sweet-voiced song rushes out to give great praise for storm-footed horses, by the grace of Aetnaean Zeus. The chariot of Chromius and Nemea urge me to harness a song of praise for deeds of victory. The foundations of the song have been laid with the gods, and with this man’s god-given excellence. The summit of perfect glory is found in good fortune. The Muse loves to remember great contests. Sow some splendor on the island, which Zeus the lord of Olympus gave to Persephone; he nodded assent with his flowing hair, that as the best land on the fruitful earth he would make Sicily fertile and prosperous in her cities blossoming with wealth. And the son of Cronus sent her a people enamored of bronze-armored battle, horsemen often wedded to the golden leaves of Olympia ’s olive. I have embarked on the occasion for many themes, without flinging a false word. I have arrived singing of fine deeds at the courtyard gates of a man who loves guests, where a beautifully arranged meal has been prepared for me, and the halls are often familiar with strangers from other lands. It is his lot to have noble friends to bring against his slanderers, like water against smoke. Various men have various skills. It is right for a man to follow straight paths, and strive according to his nature. For strength manifests itself in action, and intelligence in counsels, for those who have the inborn skill of foreseeing the future. Son of Hagesidamus, your way of life grants you the enjoyment of many things. I take no pleasure in keeping great wealth hidden away in my hall, but in using what I have to be successful and to win a good name by helping my friends. For the hopes of men who toil much come to all alike. But as for me, I cling to the theme of Heracles gladly, rousing an ancient story from among the great heights of his excellence, how, when the son of Zeus suddenly came out of his mother’s womb into the brilliant light, escaping her birth-pangs, with his twin brother,

he did not escape the notice of gold-throned Hera when he was placed in his saffron swaddling-clothes. But the queen of the gods, stung in her heart, immediately sent serpents. The doors opened, and they crept into the spacious inner-chamber, eager to coil their swift jaws around the babies. But Heracles lifted his head straight up, and had his first experience of battle, seizing the two necks of the serpents in his two irresistible hands. When they were strangled, time squeezed the breath of life out of their unspeakable limbs. Unbearable fear struck the women who were then helping Alcmena at her bedside; for she herself leapt to her feet from her bed, unrobed as she was, and tried to ward off the violent attack of the monsters. And swiftly the chiefs of the Cadmeans rushed in together in their bronze armor, and Amphitryon came brandishing a sword bared from its scabbard, stricken with sharp distress. For each man alike is oppressed by his own trouble, but the heart recovers quickly from someone else’s grief. He stood, possessed by overwhelming astonishment and delight. For he saw the supernatural courage and power of his son; the immortals had turned the story of the messengers to falsehood for him. And he called his neighbor, the outstanding prophet of Zeus the highest, the truthful seer Teiresias. And the prophet told him and all the men what fortunes the boy would encounter: how many he would slay on land, and how many lawless monsters at sea. And he told of a certain one, most hateful, who walked with crooked insolence towards men, whom the boy would send to his doom. For he said that when the gods meet the giants in battle on the plain of Phlegra, the shining hair of the giants will be stained with dirt beneath the rushing arrows of that hero. But he himself will have allotted to him in peace, as an extraordinary reward for his great hardship, continuous peace for all time among the homes of the blessed. He will receive flourishing Hebe as his bride and celebrate the wedding-feast, and in the presence of Zeus the son of Cronus he will praise the sacred law.

Nemean Ode 2 Cite

Just as the Homeridae, the singers of woven verses, most often begin with Zeus as their prelude, so this man has received a first down-payment of victory in the sacred games by winning in the grove of Nemean Zeus, which is celebrated in many hymns. And if the life that guides him straight along the path of his fathers has given him as an adornment to great Athens, it must be that the son of Timonous will often reap the finest bloom of the Isthmian games, and be victorious in the Pythian contests. It is right for Orion to travel not far from the mountain Pleiades. And certainly Salamis can raise a warrior. In Troy Hector heard of Aias. And you, Timodemus, are exalted by your enduring spirit of valor in the pancratium. Acharnae has long been famous for fine men. And in everything that has to do with contests, the sons of Timodemus are proclaimed the most outstanding. Beside Parnassus, ruling on high, they carried off four victories in the games, while the men of Corinth have already given them eight garlands in the glades of noble Pelops; in the Nemean contest of Zeus they have won seven times, and at home their victories are countless. Citizens, praise Zeus in a victory procession for Timodemus’ glorious homecoming. Begin with a sweet-singing voice!

Nemean Ode 3 Cite

Queenly Muse, our mother! I entreat you, come in the sacred month of Nemea to the much-visited Dorian island of Aegina. For beside the waters of the Asopus young men are waiting, craftsmen of honey-voiced victory-songs, seeking your voice. Various deeds thirst for various things; but victory in the games loves song most of all, the most auspicious attendant of garlands and of excellence. Send an abundance of it, from my wisdom; begin, divine daughter, an acceptable hymn to the ruler of the cloud-filled sky, and I will communicate it by the voices of those singers and by the lyre. The hymn will have a pleasant toil, to be the glory of the land where the ancient Myrmidons lived, whose marketplace, famous long ago, Aristocleides, through your ordinance, did not stain with dishonor by proving himself too weak in the strenuous course of the pancratium. But in the deep plain of Nemea, his triumph-song brings a healing cure for wearying blows. Still, if the son of Aristophanes, who is beautiful, and whose deeds match his looks, embarked on the highest achievements of manliness, it is not easy to cross the trackless sea beyond the pillars of Heracles, which that hero and god set up as famous witnesses to the furthest limits of seafaring. He subdued the monstrous beasts in the sea, and tracked to the very end the streams of the shallows, where he reached the goal that sent him back home again, and he made the land known. My spirit, towards what foreign headland are you turning my voyage? I bid you to summon the Muse in honor of Aeacus and his race; consummate justice attends the precept, “praise the noble.” And no man should prefer to desire what is alien. Search at home; you have won a suitable adornment for singing something sweet. Among old examples of excellence is king Peleus, who rejoiced when he cut a matchless spear, and who alone, without an army, captured Iolcus, and caught the sea-nymph Thetis after many struggles. And powerful Telamon, the comrade of Iolaus, sacked the city of Laomedon; and once he followed him to meet the bronze-bowed strength of the Amazons. And fear, the subduer of men, never dulled the edge of his mind.

A man with inborn glory has great weight; but he who has only learned is a man in darkness, breathing changeful purposes, never taking an unwavering step, but trying his hand at countless forms of excellence with his ineffectual thought. But golden-haired Achilles, staying in the home of Philyra as a child, played at great deeds, often brandishing in his hands a javelin with a short blade; swift as the wind, he dealt death to wild lions in battle, and he slew wild boars and carried their panting bodies to the Centaur, son of Cronus, first when he was six years old, and afterwards for all the time he spent there. Artemis and bold Athena gazed at him with wonder, as he slew deer without the help of dogs and crafty nets; for he excelled with his feet. I have this story as it was told by earlier generations. Deep-thinking Cheiron reared Jason under his stone roof, and later Asclepius, whom he taught the gentle-handed laws of remedies. And he arranged a marriage for Peleus with the lovely-bosomed daughter of Nereus, and brought up for her their incomparable child, nurturing his spirit with all fitting things, so that when the blasts of the sea-winds sent him to Troy, he might withstand the spear-clashing war-shout of the Lycians and Phrygians and Dardanians; and when he came into close conflict with the spear-bearing Ethiopians, he might fix it in his mind that their leader, powerful Memnon the kinsman of Helenus, should not return to his home. From that point the light of the Aeacids has been fixed to shine far. Zeus, it is your blood and your contest at which my song aimed its shot, shouting the joy of this land with the voices of young men. Their cry is well-suited to victorious Aristocleides, who linked this island with glorious praise and the sacred Theoric temple of the Pythian god with splendid ambitions. By trial the accomplishment is made manifest, of that in which a man proves himself preeminent, as a boy among young boys, a man among men, or, thirdly, among elders, according to each stage which we,the race of men, possess.

And mortal life sets in motion four excellences, and bids us to think of what is at hand. You are not without these excellences. Farewell, my friend! I am sending this to you, honey mixed with white milk, crested with foam from mixing, a draught of song accompanied by the Aeolian breathings of flutes, although it is late. The eagle is swift among birds: he swoops down from afar, and suddenly seizes with his talons his blood-stained quarry; but chattering daws stay closer to the ground. By the grace of Clio on her lovely throne and because of your victorious spirit, the light has shone on you from Nemea and Epidaurus and Megara.

Nemean Ode 4 Cite

When toils have been resolved, festivity is the best physician; and songs, the skillful daughters of the Muses, soothe with their touch. And warm water does not wet the limbs so gently as praise that accompanies the lyre. Speech lives longer than deeds; whatever words the tongue, with the favor of the Graces, draws from the deep mind. May it be mine to set forth such speech, in honor of Zeus the son of Cronus, and Nemea, and Timasarchus’ wrestling, as a prelude to my song. And may it be welcomed by the home of the Aeacids, with its fine towers, that light which shines for all, with justice that defends the stranger. And if your father Timocritus had still been warmed by the strength of the sun, playing embroidered notes on the cithara and bending to this strain, he would have often celebrated his triumphant son, because he had sent back from the contest at Cleonae a chain of garlands, and from splendid, illustrious Athens; and because in seven-gated Thebes, beside Amphitryon’s splendid tomb, the Cadmeans gladly crowned him with flowers, for the sake of Aegina. For he looked on a hospitable city, when he came as a friend to friends, to the prosperous court of Heracles, with whom once powerful Telamon destroyed Troy and the Meropes and the great and terrible warrior Alcyoneus, but not before that giant had laid low, by hurling a rock, twelve chariots and twice twelve horse-taming heroes who were riding in them. A man who did not understand this proverb would appear to be inexperienced in battle: since “it is likely that the doer will also suffer.” The laws of song and the hurrying hours prevent me from telling a long story, and I am drawn, by a magic charm on my heart, to touch on the new-moon festival. Nevertheless, although the deep salt sea holds you around the middle, strain against treacherous plots. We will be seen arriving in the light far above our enemies. But another man, with an envious glance, broods in the darkness over an empty thought

that falls to the ground. As for me, I know that whatever excellence ruling destiny gave me, time will creep forward and bring it to its appointed perfection. Weave out, sweet lyre, right now, the beloved song with Lydian harmony, for Oenone and Cyprus, where Teucer the son of Telamon reigns far from home; but Aias holds ancestral Salamis, and Achilles holds the shining island in the Euxine sea. Thetis rules in Phthia, and Neoptolemus in the expanses of Epirus, where jutting ox-pasturing headlands, beginning in Dodona, slope down to the Ionian sea. But beside the foot of Pelion, Peleus turned a warlike hand against Iolcus and gave it in subjection to the Haemones after encountering the crafty arts of Acastus’ wife Hippolyte. With the sword of Daedalus, the son of Pelias sowed the seeds of death for Peleus from an ambush. But Cheiron rescued him and carried out the destiny which had been fated by Zeus. And Peleus, having thwarted all-powerful fire, and the sharp claws of bold-plotting lions, and the edge of their terrible teeth, married one of the Nereids throned on high, and saw the fine circle of seats in which the lords of sky and sea were sitting, as they gave him gifts and revealed the future strength of his race. Beyond Gadeira towards the western darkness there is no passage; turn back the ship’s sails again to the mainland of Europe, for it is impossible for me to tell the full story of the sons of Aeacus. For the Theandridae, having pledged my word, I went as a ready herald of the limb-strengthening contests at Olympia and the Isthmus and Nemea, where, whenever they make trial of their skill, they return home with the glorious fruit of garlands; in that home, Timasarchus, we hear that your family is an attendant of victory songs. But if in honor of your uncle Callicles you bid me

to build a monument whiter than Parian stone, know that gold, when it is refined, shows all radiance, and a song in honor of noble deeds makes a man equal in fortune to kings. May that man, who dwells beside the stream of Acheron, hear my voice singing, where in the contest of the loud-roaring wielder of the trident he flourished with crowns of Corinthian wild celery. Euphanes, your aged grandfather, once willingly sang his praises, child. Each man has his own generation; and each man expects to speak best of what he has seen himself. If he were praising Melesias, how he would throw his opponent in the struggle! Weaving his words, impossible to wrestle down in speech; with gentle thoughts towards noble men, but a rough adversary to his opponents.

Nemean Ode 5 Cite

I am not a sculptor, to make statues that stand motionless on the same pedestal. Sweet song, go on every merchant-ship and rowboat that leaves Aegina, and announce that Lampon’s powerful son Pytheas won the victory garland for the pancratium at the Nemean games, a boy whose cheeks do not yet show the tender season that is mother to the dark blossom. He has brought honor to the Aeacids, the heroic spearmen descended from Cronus and Zeus and the golden Nereids, and to his mother city, a land friendly to guests. Once by the altar of father Zeus Hellenius the illustrious sons of Endais and the strong, mighty Phocus stood and prayed, stretching their hands to the sky, that the city would one day be famous for men and ships. Phocus was the son of the goddess Psamatheia; he was born by the shore of the sea. Reverence restrains me from speaking of an enormous and unjust venture, how indeed they left the glorious island, and what divine power drove the brave men from Oenone. I will stop: it is not always beneficial for the precise truth to show her face, and silence is often the wisest thing for a man to heed. But if it is resolved to praise wealth, or the strength of hands, or iron war, let someone mark off a long jump for me from this point. I have a light spring in my knees, and eagles swoop over the sea. The most beautiful chorus of Muses sang gladly for the Aeacids on Mt. Pelion, and among them Apollo, sweeping the seven-tongued lyre with a golden plectrum, led all types of strains. And the Muses began with a prelude to Zeus, then sang first of divine Thetis and of Peleus; how Hippolyte, the opulent daughter of Cretheus, wanted to trap him with deceit. With elaborate planning she persuaded her husband, the watcher of the Magnesians, to be a partner in her plot, and she forged a false story; that Peleus had made an attempt on her in Acastus’ own bed. But the opposite was true; for she often begged him and coaxed him with all her heart, but her reckless words provoked his temper. Without hesitating he refused Acastus’ bride, fearing the anger of father Zeus, the god of hospitality. And from the sky Zeus who rouses the clouds noticed, Zeus the king of the immortals, and he promised that soon he would make one of the Nereids of the golden distaff the sea-dwelling wife of Peleus,

after gaining the consent of their brother-in-law Poseidon, who often comes from Aegae to the famous Dorian Isthmus. There joyful bands welcome the god with the cry of reed-pipes, and contend with the bold strength of their limbs. The fortune that is born along with a man decides in every deed. And you, Euthymenes from Aegina, have twice fallen into the arms of Victory and attained embroidered hymns. Truly even now, Pytheas, your mother’s brother honors the kindred race of that hero following after you. Nemea is linked to him, and Aegina’s festival month which belongs to Apollo. And he was victorious over his peers both at home and in the lovely hollows of the hill of Nisus. I rejoice, because every state strives for noble deeds. Know that through the help of Menander’s good fortune you won sweet requital for your toils. It is fitting that a trainer of athletes should come from Athens. But if you come to Themistius, let there be no more coldness! Lift up your voice, and hoist the sails to the top-most yard; proclaim him as a boxer, and tell how he claimed double excellence with his victory in the pancratium at Epidaurus. Bring to the porch of Aeacus green garlands of flowers, in company with the golden-haired Graces.

Nemean Ode 6 Cite

There is one race of men, one race of gods; and from a single mother we both draw our breath. But all allotted power divides us: man is nothing, but for the gods the bronze sky endures as a secure home forever. Nevertheless, we bear some resemblance to the immortals, either in greatness of mind or in nature, although we do not know, by day or by night, towards what goal fortune has written that we should run. Even now Alcimidas gives visible proof that his hereditary qualities are like the fruitful fields, which, in alternation, at one time give men yearly sustenance from the plains, and at another time gather strength from repose. He has come from the lovely games of Nemea, the athletic boy who, pursuing this ordinance of Zeus, has shown that he is a successful hunter in the wrestling ring, by planting his step in the tracks of his grandfather, his blood-relative. For that man, an Olympic victor, was the first to bring garlands from the Alpheus to the Aeacidae; and he had himself crowned five times at the Isthmus, and three times at Nemea, putting an end to the obscurity of Socleides, who proved to be the greatest of the sons of Hagesimachus, since he had three victorious sons who reached the summit of excellence, and who had a taste of toils. With the favorable fortune of the gods, no other family has been proclaimed by the boxing contest in the center of all Greece as the guardian of more garlands. I hope, with this great praise, to hit the target squarely, like one who shoots from a bow. Come, Muse, give a straight course to the glorious wind of song for this man. For when men pass away songs and stories preserve their fine deeds for them, and there is no shortage of these in the house of the Bassids. Their race has long been famous, carrying a cargo of their own victory songs; for those who plough the field of the Pierian Muses, they are able to provide a rich supply of songs, because of their proud achievements. In very holy Pytho the blood of this family was once victorious, his hands bound with leather straps—Callias, who had found favor with the children of Leto of the golden distaff, and beside Castalia at evening he was made radiant by the loud chorus of the Graces.

And the bridge of the untiring sea honored Creontidas in the biennial festival of those who live around, when bulls are slain in the sacred precinct of Poseidon. And the herb of the Nemean lion once crowned him when he was victorious beneath the shady primeval mountains of Phlius. There are broad avenues open on every side for storytellers to adorn this glorious island, since the Aeacids provided them by example with an outstanding share of great excellence. Their name flies far, over the land and across the sea. It even reached the Ethiopians, when Memnon did not return to his home; Achilles descended from his chariot and fell upon them, a grievous antagonist, when he slew the son of the shining Dawn with the edge of his raging sword. Poets of former times found this highway, and I myself am following them; this is my concern. But the wave that rolls nearest to the ship is said to stir the spirit most of all. I came as a messenger, willingly bearing on my back a double burden, to proclaim that this twenty-fifth boast of victory from the games which men call sacred, Alcimidas, has been provided by you for your glorious family. Beside the sacred precinct of the son of Cronus, child, you and Polytimidas were deprived of two Olympic garlands by a sudden drawing of lots. I would say that Melesias is equal in speed to a dolphin that darts through the salt sea; he is the charioteer who guided your hands and strength.

Nemean Ode 7 Cite

Eleithuia, seated beside the deep-thinking Fates, hear me, creator of offspring, child of Hera great in strength. Without you we see neither the light nor the dark night before it is our lot to go to your sister, Hebe, with her lovely limbs. Yet we do not all draw our first breath for equal ends. Under the yoke of destiny, different men are held by different restraints. But it is by your favor that, even so, Sogenes the son of Thearion, distinguished by his excellence, is celebrated in song as glorious among pentathletes. For he lives in a city that loves music, the city of the Aeacidae with their clashing spears; and they very much want to foster a spirit familiar with contests. If someone is successful in his deeds, he casts a cause for sweet thoughts into the streams of the Muses. For those great acts of prowess dwell in deep darkness, if they lack songs, and we know of only one way to hold a mirror up to fine deeds: if, by the grace of Mnemosyne with her splendid headdress, one finds a recompense for toils in glorious song. Skillful men know the wind that will come on the day after tomorrow, and they do not suffer loss through the love of gain. The rich man and the poor man alike travel together to the boundary of death. And I expect that the story of Odysseus came to exceed his experiences, through the sweet songs of Homer, since there is a certain solemnity in his lies and winged artfulness, and poetic skill deceives, seducing us with stories, and the heart of the mass of men is blind. For if they had been able to see the truth, then mighty Aias, in anger over the arms, would never have planted in his chest the smooth sword—Aias, who was the most powerful in battle, except for Achilles, and whom the breath of the unswerving Zephyr conveyed in swift ships, to bring back the wife of golden-haired Menelaus from the city of Ilus. But the wave of Hades breaks over all alike; it falls on the man who does not expect it, and on the one who does. There is honor for those whose fame a god causes to grow luxuriant when they are dead. Neoptolemus came to help, to the great navel of the broad-bosomed earth. And he lies beneath the Pythian soil, after he sacked the city of Priam, where even the Danaans toiled. But on his return voyage he missed Scyros, and after wandering from their course they came to Ephyra. He ruled in Molossia for a brief time; and his race always bore

this honor of his. He had gone to consult the god, bringing precious things from the finest spoils of Troy ; and there he met with a quarrel over the flesh of his sacrifice, and a man struck him with a knife. The hospitable Delphians were grieved beyond measure; but he fulfilled his fate. It was destined that within that most ancient grove one of the ruling race of Aeacus should, for all time to come, stay beside the fine-walled house of the god, and dwell there to preside over the processions of heroes, which are honored by many sacrifices. As for their justly earned good name, a few words will suffice: it is no lying witness that presides over achievements of the offspring of you and Zeus, Aegina. I have this bold speech to make, an authoritative path of words from their home, for their shining excellence. But enough, for respite is sweet in every deed. Even honey may cloy, and the delightful flowers of Aphrodite. Each of us differs in nature, for we were each allotted a different life. One man has this, others have something else; but for one man to win the prize of complete happiness is impossible. I cannot say to whom Fate has handed this consummation as a lasting possession. But to you, Thearion, she gives a due measure of prosperity, and while you have gained a bold spirit for fine deeds, she does not impair the wisdom of your mind. I am your friend; averting the dark shadow of abuse, and bringing genuine glory, like streams of water, to the man who is dear to me, I shall praise him. This wage is worthy of good men. If any Achaean man is nearby who lives above the Ionian sea, he will not find fault with me. I trust in my being their representative. And among my fellow townsmen, the glance of my eye is bright; I have not overshot the mark, and I have thrust all violence away from my path. May the rest of my days approach benevolently. Anyone who knows the truth will declare whether I follow a path that is out of tune, singing a twisted song. Sogenes, of the Euxenid clan, I swear that I did not overstep the line when I hurled, like a bronze-cheeked javelin, my swift tongue—a throw that disqualifies a man’s strong neck from the sweat of the wrestling-match, before his limbs fall under the burning sun. If there was toil, greater delight follows.

Let me go on. If I rose too high and shouted loudly, I am not too rude to pay my debt of gratitude to the victor. It is easy to weave garlands. Strike up the song! The Muse welds together gold and white ivory with coral, the lily she has stolen from beneath the ocean’s dew. But in remembrance of Zeus and in honor of Nemea, whirl a far-famed strain of song, softly. On this spot it is fitting to sing with a gentle voice of the king of gods. For they say that he planted the seed of Aeacus, received by the mother, to be a city-ruler in my illustrious fatherland, and to be a kindly friend and brother to you, Heracles. If one man has any benefit from another, we would say that a neighbor, if he loves his neighbor with an earnest mind, is a joy worth any price. But if a god should also uphold this truth, then under your protection, Heracles, you who subdued the Giants, Sogenes would dwell happily, fostering a spirit of devotion to his father, beside the rich and sacred road of his ancestors, since he has his house in your precincts, flanking him on either hand as he goes, like the yoke-arms of a four-horse chariot. Blessed Heracles, it is fitting for you to persuade the husband of Hera and the gray-eyed virgin goddess; you are often able to give mortals courage against the impasse of helplessness. Would that you might join their youth and splendid old age to a strong and secure life, and weave it through to the end in good fortune, and may their children’s children always have the honor of the present day, and a still better one to come. But my heart will never say that I have done violence to Neoptolemus with cruel words. To plough the same ground three or four times is poverty of thought, like babbling “Corinth of Zeus” to children.

Nemean Ode 8 Cite

Queenly Season of Youth, herald of the divine embraces of Aphrodite, you who rest in the eyes of young girls and boys, and carry one man in the gentle arms of compulsion, but handle another man differently. It is a desirable thing, for one who has not strayed from due measure in any deed, to be able to win the better kinds of love; such loves,the shepherds of Cyprian Aphrodite’s gifts, attended the marriage-bed of Zeus and Aegina. And from that union a son was born, the king of Oenone, the best in hands and mind. Many men often prayed that they might see him; for, unbidden, the choicest heroes that dwelled around him wanted to submit to his commands willingly, those who marshalled their people in rocky Athens, and the descendants of Pelops in Sparta. As a suppliant I cling to the sacred knees of Aeacus, on behalf of his dear city and these citizens, bringing a Lydian crown embroidered with song, glory from Nemea in the double foot race for Deinias and his father Megas. For prosperity that is planted with a god’s blessing is more abiding for men; such prosperity as once loaded Cinyras with wealth in sea-washed Cyprus. I stand with feet lightly poised, catching my breath before I speak. For many stories have been told in many ways. But to find something new and submit it to the touchstone for testing is danger itself. Words are a dainty morsel for the envious; and envy always clings to the noble, and has no quarrel with worse men. Envy devoured the son of Telamon, throwing him onto his own sword. A man who was not gifted in speech, but brave in his heart, is held down by oblivion under deadly strife; and the greatest prize of honor has been offered to the shifty lie. For in a secret vote the Danaans favored Odysseus; and Aias, robbed of the golden armor, wrestled with death. Truly, they did not tear equal wounds in the warm flesh of the enemy when they were driven back under the man-protecting spear, at one time around the newly-slain corpse of Achilles, and on destructive days spent on other toils. It seems that hateful Misrepresentation existed even long ago: a fellow traveler of flattering tales, deceitful-minded, a malignant disgrace. She does violence to the illustrious, and upholds the rotten glory of the obscure.

May I never have such a nature, father Zeus; may I stick to the simple paths of life, so that when I die I will not fasten a bad name to my children. Some men pray for gold, others for boundless land; I pray to find favor with my fellow-citizens until my limbs are buried in the earth, by praising what is praiseworthy and casting blame on wrongdoers. Excellence grows among skillful and just men up to the liquid air, as a tree shoots up fed by fresh dew. The uses of friends are of all kinds; those in times of toil are the highest, yet delight also seeks to set a trustworthy pledge before the eyes. Megas, to bring your soul back to life again is not possible for me. Empty hopes end in vain; but it is easy to set up, for your fatherland and for the Chariads, a monument of the Muses in honor of the twice illustrious feet of two men. I rejoice in letting fly a boast suitable to such a deed; and with incantations a man makes hardship painless. Truly, the song of victory existed long ago, even before the quarrel arose between Adrastus and the race of Cadmus.

Nemean Ode 9 Cite

Muses, we will go in victory procession from Apollo’s shrine in Sicyon to newly-founded Aetna, where the doors flung open wide are overwhelmed by guests, at the prosperous home of Chromius. Make a sweet song of verses! For, mounting his chariot of victorious horses, he gives the word to sing for the mother and her twin children who jointly watch over steep Pytho. There is a saying among men: a noble deed when it is accomplished should not be buried silently in the ground; and divine song is suited to boasting. But we will wake the shouting lyre and the flute in honor of the very pinnacle of horse-contests, which Adrastus established for Phoebus by the streams of the Asopus. Having mentioned them, I will adorn that hero with glorious honors, who, at the time when he was ruler there, made his city famous and glorious with new festivals, and contests of men’s strength, and hollow chariots. For once Adrastus fled from bold-thinking Amphiaraus and terrible civil strife, from his ancestral home, Argos ; and the sons of Talaus were no longer rulers, overpowered by sedition. A stronger man puts an end to the previous justice. The sons of Talaus gave man-conquering Eriphyle, as a faithful pledge, in marriage to Amphiaraus son of Oicles, and became the most powerful of the golden-haired Danaans; and once they led a noble army of men to seven-gated Thebes—an expedition not attended by birds of good omen. In their mad desire to leave home, the son of Cronus, by whirling his lightning-bolt, urged them not to go, but to abstain from the journey. And so that company, in bronze armor, and with their horses in war-harnesses, was hastening to arrive at manifest doom. And planting their sweet return on the banks of the Ismenus, they fattened the white-flowering smoke with their corpses . For seven funeral pyres feasted on their bodies’ young limbs. But, for the sake of Amphiaraus, Zeus with his all-powerful thunderbolt split the deep-breasted earth, and concealed him together with his horses, before he could be struck in the back by the spear of Periclymenus, and his warlike spirit disgraced. For amid divinely-sent panic even the children of gods flee. If it is possible, son of Cronus, I would like to put off for as long as I can this fierce trial of empurpled spears, this contest for life and death; and I pray to you, grant to the children of the Aetnaeans the long-lived blessing of good laws,

father Zeus, and join the people with splendid celebrations in their city. There they have men who love horses and whose souls are superior to wealth. My words are hard to believe; for reverence, which brings renown, is secretly beguiled by the love of gain. If you had been Chromius’ shield-bearer among foot-soldiers and horses, and in ship-battles, you would have been able to judge the danger of the sharp battle-cry, because in battle it was that goddess, Reverence, who armed his warrior-spirit to repel the destruction of the war-god. But few are able to conspire with hand and heart to turn back against the ranks of the enemy the cloud of slaughter that presses close upon them. Indeed men say that glory blossomed for Hector beside the flowing Scamander; and around the steep cliffs of the Helorus’ banks at the place which men call “the passage of Rhea,” this light has shone on the son of Hagesidamus, in his earliest manhood. I will tell of the honors he won at other times, many on the dust of dry land and on the neighboring sea. And out of toils, which are undertaken with the aid of youth and justice, there comes a gentle life at the approach of old age. Let him know that he has received marvellous prosperity from the gods. For if, together with many possessions, a man wins renown and glory, there is no higher peak on which a mortal can set his feet. Peace loves the symposium, and new-flourishing victory is fostered by soft song, and the voice becomes bold beside the mixing-bowl. Let someone mix the wine now, the sweet forerunner of victory-song, and dispense the powerful son of the vine in those silver goblets which once Chromius’ horses won for him and sent from holy Sicyon together with the duly twined garlands of Leto’s son. Father Zeus, I pray that I may celebrate this excellence by the favor of the Graces, and excel many poets in honoring victory with my verses, throwing my shaft nearest of all to the mark of the Muses.

Nemean Ode 10 Cite

Graces, sing of the city of Danaus and his fifty daughters on their splendid thrones, Hera’s Argos, a home suitable for a god; it blazes with countless excellences because of its bold deeds. Long indeed is the story of Perseus and the Gorgon Medusa, and many are the cities founded in Egypt by the devising of Epaphus. Nor did Hypermnestra go astray, when she restrained in its scabbard her sword, which was alone in its verdict. And once the golden-haired, gray-eyed goddess made Diomedes an immortal god; and the earth in Thebes, thunder-struck by the bolts of Zeus, swallowed up the prophetic son of Oicles, Amphiaraus, the storm-cloud of war. And Argos has long been the best city for women with beautiful hair; Zeus made this saying clear by visiting Alcmena and Danae, and he united the fruit of intelligence with straightforward justice in the father of Adrastus and in Lynceus. And Zeus nourished the spear of Amphitryon, who attained the height of prosperity and entered into kinship with that god, when, clad in bronze armor, he slew the Teleboae. Taking on the appearance of Amphitryon, the king of the immortals entered the hall of that hero, bearing the fearless seed of Heracles; whose bride Hebe, the most beautiful of the goddesses, walks forever in Olympus beside her mother Hera, goddess of marriage. My mouth is too small to tell the whole story of all the noble things in which the precinct of Argos has a share. And there is also the satiety of men, which is grievous to encounter. But nevertheless, awaken the well-strung lyre, and take thought of wrestling; the contest for the bronze shield calls the people to the sacrifice of oxen in honor of Hera and to the trial of contests. There the son of Ulias, Theaeus, was victorious twice, and gained forgetfulness of toils that were bravely borne. And he once was victor over the people of Greece at Pytho ; and, going with good fortune, he won the crown at the Isthmus and at Nemea, and he gave the Muses a field to plough, since he won three times at the gates of the sea, and three times on the sacred ground, according to the ordinance of Adrastus. Father Zeus, his mouth keeps silent what his heart truly desires. The accomplishment of all deeds rests with you. Adding boldness to a heart that does not shrink from labor , he asks for your grace. I sing what is known to the god and to whoever strives for the chief crown in the foremost games. Pisa holds the highest ordinance, that of Heracles. Still, the sweet voices of the Athenians at their festival twice sang victory-songs as a prelude for Theaeus, and in earth baked by fire olive oil came to the fine men of Hera’s city in jars with richly painted sides.

Theaeus, the honor of successful contests often attends on the well-known race of your maternal ancestors, by the favor of the Graces and the Tyndarids. I would think it right, if I were a kinsman of Thrasyclus and Antias, not to veil the light in my eyes. For this horse-breeding city of Proetus has flourished with so many victories in the glens of Corinth, and four times from the men of Cleonae. And from Sicyon they returned with silver wine-goblets, and from Pellana with soft wool cloaks around their shoulders. But it is impossible to give a full reckoning of their countless prizes of bronze—for it would require long leisure to number them—which Cleitor and Tegea and the upland cities of the Achaeans and Mount Lycaeon set by the racecourse of Zeus for men to win with the strength of their feet and hands. But since Castor and his brother Polydeuces came to Pamphaës to receive a hospitable welcome, it is no wonder that it is innate in their race to be good athletes; since the Dioscuri, guardians of spacious Sparta, along with Hermes and Heracles, administer the flourishing institution of the games, and they care very much for just men. Indeed, the race of the gods is trustworthy. Changing places in alternation, the Dioscuri spend one day beside their dear father Zeus, and the other beneath the depths of the earth in the hollows of Therapne, each fulfilling an equal destiny, since Polydeuces preferred this life to being wholly a god and living in heaven, when Castor was killed in battle. For Idas, angered for some reason about his cattle, stabbed him with the point of his bronze spear. Looking out from Taÿgetus, Lynceus saw them seated in the hollow of an oak ; for that man had the sharpest eye of all who live on earth. He and Idas at once reached the spot with swift feet, and quickly contrived a mighty deed; and these sons of Aphareus themselves suffered terribly by the devising of Zeus. For right away Polydeuces the son of Leda came in pursuit. They were stationed opposite, near the tomb of their father; from there they seized the grave-column, monument to Hades, a polished stone, and hurled it at the chest of Polydeuces. But they did not crush him, or drive him back; rushing forward with his swift javelin, he drove its bronze point into the ribs of Lynceus, and Zeus hurled against Idas a fiery smoking thunderbolt. They burned together, deserted. Strife with those who are stronger is a harsh companion for men.

Swiftly Polydeuces the son of Tyndareus went back to his mighty brother, and found him not yet dead, but shuddering with gasps of breath. Shedding warm tears amid groans, he spoke aloud: “Father, son of Cronus, what release will there be from sorrows? Order me to die too, along with him, lord. A man’s honor is gone when he is deprived of friends; but few mortals are trustworthy in times of toil to share the hardship.” So he spoke. And Zeus came face to face with him, and said these words: “You are my son. But Castor was begotten after your conception by the hero, your mother’s husband, who came to her and sowed his mortal seed. But nevertheless I grant you your choice in this. If you wish to escape death and hated old age, and to dwell in Olympus yourself with me and with Athena and Ares of the dark spear, you can have this lot. But if you strive to save your brother, and intend to share everything equally with him, then you may breathe for half the time below the earth, and for half the time in the golden homes of heaven.” When Zeus had spoken thus, Polydeuces did not have a second thought. He opened the eye, and then released the voice of the bronze-clad warrior, Castor.

Nemean Ode 11 Cite

Daughter of Rhea, you who have received the town hall under your protection, Hestia, sister of Zeus the highest and of Hera who shares his throne, welcome Aristagoras to your dwelling, and welcome to a place near your splendid scepter his companions, who, in honoring you, guard Tenedos and keep her on a straight course; often they worship you, first of the gods, with libations, and often with the savor of burnt sacrifice. Lyres and songs peal among them, and Themis, who belongs to Zeus the god of hospitality, is honored with everlasting feasts. With glory to the end may he fulfill his twelve-month office, with his heart unwounded. I call that man blessed in his father Hagesilas, in his marvellous body, and in his inborn steadiness. But if any man who has prosperity surpasses others in beauty, and displays his strength by being best in the games, let him remember that his robes are thrown around mortal limbs, and that he will clothe himself with earth, the end of all. Yet it is right for him to be praised in the good words of his fellow-citizens, and for us to adorn him with the honeyed sound of songs. For in contests of those who live around him, sixteen splendid victories crowned Aristagoras and his illustrious fatherland, in wrestling and in the proud pancratium. But the too hesitant hopes of his parents restrained the boy’s strength from attempting the contests at Pytho and Olympia. For I swear by the power of Oath: in my judgment, whether he went to Castalia or to the well-wooded hill of Cronus, he would have returned home in finer fashion than the opponents who strove against him, having celebrated the four years’ festival ordained by Heracles, and having crowned his hair with purple wreaths. But, among mortals, empty-headed pride casts one man out of his goods; and a timid spirit foils another man of the fine achievements that should be his, dragging him back by the hand as he disparages his own strength too much.

Truly, it was easy to recognize in him the ancient blood of Peisander of Sparta, who came from Amyclae with Orestes, leading here a bronze-armored host of Aetolians, and also the blending of his blood with that of his mother’s ancestor Melanippus, beside the stream of the Ismenus. But ancient excellence yields strength in alternate generations of men; the dark fields do not give fruit continuously, nor are trees accustomed to bear an equal wealth of fragrant flowers in every circling year, but in alternation. And thus the race of mortal men is led by Fate. But no clear sign comes to mortals from Zeus. Nevertheless we embark on bold endeavors, longing for many deeds, for our limbs are bound by shameless hope, while the streams of foresight lie far away. But we must hunt for due measure in our love of gain. The madness of unattainable desires is too sharp.

Contents — 8 sections

1. Isthmian Ode 1
2. Isthmian Ode 2
3. Isthmian Ode 3
4. Isthmian Ode 4
5. Isthmian Ode 5
6. Isthmian Ode 6
7. Isthmian Ode 7
8. Isthmian Ode 8

Isthmian Ode 1 Cite

My mother, Thebe of the golden shield, I shall place your interests above my lack of leisure. May rocky Delos, in whose praises I have poured myself out, not be indignant at me. What is dearer to good men than their noble parents? Yield, island of Apollo; indeed, with the help of the gods I shall accomplish the end of both graceful songs, honoring in the dance both Phoebus with the unshorn hair, in wave-washed Ceos with its mariners, and the sea-dividing reef of the Isthmus. Since the Isthmus gave to the people of Cadmus six garlands from her games, the glory of triumph for my fatherland, where Alcmena bore her fearless son, before whom the bold hounds of Geryon once trembled. But I, while I frame for Herodotus a prize of honor for his four-horse chariot, and for managing the reins with his own hands and not another’s, want to join him to the song of Castor or of Iolaus, for of all heroes they were the strongest charioteers, the one born in Sparta and the other in Thebes. And in the games they attempted the greatest number of contests, and adorned their homes with tripods and caldrons and goblets of gold, tasting victorious garlands. Their excellence shines clearly, in the naked footraces and in the shield-clashing hoplite races, and in all the deeds of their hands, in flinging the spear and whenever they hurled the stone discus. For there was no pentathlon, but for each feat a separate prize was set up. Often crowning their hair with wreaths from these contests they appeared beside the streams of Dirce or near the Eurotas, the son of Iphicles, who was of the same city as the race of the Sown Men, and the son of Tyndareus, dwelling among the Achaeans in his highland home of Therapne. Farewell. But I, arraying with song Poseidon and the sacred Isthmus and the shores of Onchestus, shall tell, along with the honors of this man, the very famous fortune of his father Asopodorus and of his ancestral land of Orchomenus, which received him from the boundless sea when he was hard-pressed by shipwreck, in chilly misfortune. But now once more his hereditary fortune has embarked him on

the fair weather of the old days. And he who has suffered toils gains foresight in his mind. If a man has devoted his whole spirit to excellence, sparing neither expense nor toils, it is right to grant the boast of manliness to those who achieve excellence, with an ungrudging mind. For it is an easy gift for a skilled man to speak words of praise in recompense for labors of all kinds and thus to promote the common good. Different wages for different deeds are sweet to men, to the shepherd and the ploughman and the bird-trapper, and the man whom the sea nourishes. Every man is intent upon keeping persistent famine from his belly. But he who wins rich renown in the games or in war receives the highest gain: to be well spoken of by his fellow-citizens and by strangers, the choicest bloom of speech. For us it is right to celebrate the earth-shaking son of Cronus, returning a good deed to our beneficent neighbor, the lord of horse-racing and chariots; and to invoke your sons, Amphitryon, and the secluded valley of Minyas, and Eleusis, the famous precinct of Demeter, and Euboea, when we speak of curving race-courses. Protesilas, I add besides your sacred ground in Phylace, the home of Achaean men. But the brief limits of my song prevent me from telling of all the victories that Hermes, lord of games, granted to Herodotus and his horses. Truly, often that which is hushed in silence actually brings greater pleasure. May he, raised up on the splendid wings of the Pierian Muses with their lovely voices, also arm his hand with wreaths from Pytho, with exquisite wreaths from the Alpheus and the Olympian games, thus winning glory for seven-gated Thebes. But if someone hoards hidden wealth at home, and attacks others with mockery, he fails to consider that he is giving up his soul to Hades without glory.

Isthmian Ode 2 Cite

The men of old, Thrasybulus, who mounted the chariot of the Muses with their golden headbands, joining the glorious lyre, lightly shot forth their honey-voiced songs for young men, if one was handsome and had the sweetest ripeness that brings to mind Aphrodite on her lovely throne. For in those days the Muse was not yet a lover of gain, nor did she work for hire. And sweet gentle-voiced odes did not go for sale, with silvered faces, from honey-voiced Terpsichore. But as things are now, she bids us heed the saying of the Argive man, which comes closest to actual truth: “Money, money makes the man,” he said, when he lost his wealth and his friends at the same time. But enough, for you are wise. I sing the Isthmian victory with horses, not unrecognized, which Poseidon granted to Xenocrates, and sent him a garland of Dorian wild celery for his hair, to have himself crowned, thus honoring the man of the fine chariot, the light of the people of Acragas. And in Crisa widely powerful Apollo looked graciously on him, and gave him glory there as well. And joined with the renowned favors of the sons of Erechtheus in splendid Athens, he found no fault with the chariot-preserving hand of the man who drove his horses, the hand with which Nicomachus gave the horses full rein at the right moment—that driver whom the heralds of the seasons, the Elean truce-bearers of Zeus son of Cronus recognized, since they had no doubt experienced some hospitable act of friendship from him. And with sweet-breathing voice they greeted him when he fell into the lap of golden Victory in their own land, which they call the precinct of Olympian Zeus, where the sons of Aenesidamus were linked with immortal honors. Truly, Thrasybulus, the homes of your family are not unfamiliar with lovely victory-processions, nor with the sweet boasting of songs.

For it is no hill to climb, nor is the road steep, if one brings the honors of the Heliconian Muses to the homes of famous men. Having hurled the discus far, may I fling my javelin as far beyond all others, as Xenocrates obtained a sweet temper surpassing all men. He was honored in his townsmen’s company, and he upheld the raising of horses according to the customs of all Greeks. He also welcomed all the banquets for the gods, and the force of the blowing wind never made him furl his sail around his hospitable table; he journeyed as far as Phasis in the summer, and in the winter sailed to the banks of the Nile. Now, although envious hopes beset the minds of mortals, let him never hush in silence either his father’s excellence or these songs. For I did not fashion them to stand idle. Give this message, Nicasippus, when you come across my trusty friend.

Isthmian Ode 3 Cite

If any man has good fortune, either in famous contests or by the strength of his wealth, yet restrains troublesome ambition in his mind, he is worthy to be joined with his townsmen’s praises. Zeus, great excellence attends on mortals from you. Greater prosperity lives with those who revere you; but it does not keep company with crooked minds, flourishing equally for all time. As a recompense for glorious deeds, it is right to celebrate a noble man, and it is right to exalt him in victory-songs with the gentle Graces. Yes, in two contests Melissus has had a share of good fortune, to turn his heart to sweet joyfulness; he received garlands in the glens of the Isthmus, and in the valley of the deep-chested lion he had Thebes announced when he was victorious in horse-racing. He does not dishonor the inborn excellence he has from his ancestors. Surely you know of the ancient glory of Cleonymus in the chariot-races. And, being related to the Labdacids on their mother’s side, they followed a path of wealth with the toil of their four-horse teams. But the whirling days of a man’s lifetime change many things. Only the children of the gods are unwounded.

Isthmian Ode 4 Cite

Thanks to the gods, I have countless paths opening on every side; Melissus, at the Isthmian games you revealed abundant resources for celebrating in song the excellence of your family, in which the sons of Cleonymus flourish perpetually, with a god’s favor, as they progress towards the mortal end of life. But a changeable wind sweeps down and drives all men at different times. These men truly are spoken of as honored in Thebes from the beginning; they have good relations with the neighboring towns, and are bereft of loud arrogance. And as for the memorials that fly through all the world, memorials of boundless fame for living and dead men, they have attained all of these in full. Through their manly deeds they reached from home to touch the farthest limit, the pillars of Heracles— do not pursue excellence any farther than that! And they became breeders of horses and were pleasing to bronze-clad Ares. But on a single day the rough storm of war robbed their blessed hearth of four men. Now, after the wintry gloom of the changing months, the ground has blossomed as if with crimson roses by the will of the gods. The shaker of the earth who dwells at Onchestus and at the sea-bridge before the walls of Corinth, by offering to that family this marvellous song, wakes from her bed their ancient fame for glorious deeds. For she had fallen asleep, but now she has awakened and her body shines, marvellous to see, like the morning-star among other stars. She proclaimed their chariot victorious on the high ground of Athens and also in Sicyon at the games of Adrastus, and thus gave them leaves of song, like these, from the singers of their time. Nor did they keep their curved chariot from competing in the general contests; striving against all of Greece, they rejoiced in spending their wealth on their horses. Those who attempt nothing face silence and obscurity, and fortune remains hidden even to those who contend, until they reach the final goal. For she dispenses from this side and from that, and the skill of weaker men can overtake and trip up a stronger man. Indeed, you know of the bloodstained might of Aias, which late at night he pierced by falling on his own sword, thus bringing blame on all the sons of the Greeks who went to Troy.

But he is honored throughout the world by Homer, who set the record right concerning all his excellence and told it with the staff of his divine words, for posterity to play. For if one says something well, that saying goes forth speaking with an immortal voice. And the radiance of fine deeds, forever unquenchable, has crossed the fruitful earth and the sea. May we win the favor of the Muses and kindle that torch of song, a worthy garland from the pancratium for Melissus, too, the scion of the race of Telesias. For in the toil of conflict he resembles the spirit of loud-roaring lions in boldness, while in wisdom he is like the fox, who forestalls the swoop of the eagle by falling on her back. And it is right to do anything to blot out one’s enemy. For Melissus was not allotted the nature of Orion; he is negligible to look at, though heavy to grapple with in his strength. And yet once there went from Thebes, Cadmus’ city, a hero short in stature but unflinching in spirit. This hero went to the house of Antaeus in grain-bearing Libya, to keep him from roofing Poseidon’s temple with the skulls of strangers, Alcmena’s son. He went to Olympus, after he had explored all lands and the high-cliffed hollow of the gray sea, and had tamed the straits for sailors. Now he dwells beside aegis-bearing Zeus, and has the most beautiful prosperity. He is honored as a friend by the immortals and is married to Hebe; he is lord of a golden house, and son-in-law to Hera. For him, above the Electran gates, we Thebans, busily preparing the feast and the circle of newly-built altars, pile up burnt offerings in honor of the eight bronze-clad men, now dead, the sons whom Megara, Creon’s daughter, bore him. For them the flame rises in the rays of the setting sun and blazes all night long, prodding the air with fragrant smoke. And on the second day is that struggle of strength, the final event of the annual games. And there, his head wreathed with white myrtle, this man showed forth a double victory, having won before in the boy’s contest by heeding the wise advice of his helmsman and trainer, Orseas. I will honor him together with Orseas in my victory-song, pouring delightful grace on both.

Isthmian Ode 5 Cite

Mother of the Sun, Theia of many names, for your sake men honor gold as more powerful than anything else; and through the value you bestow on them, o queen, ships contending on the sea and yoked teams of horses in swift-whirling contests become marvels. And in athletic contests, someone who has wreathed his hair with many garlands has achieved longed-for fame, when he has been victorious with his hands or with the swiftness of his feet. But the valor of men is judged by gods, and there are only two things that cultivate the sweetest flower of life in blossoming prosperity: to have good fortune and a noble reputation. Do not seek to become Zeus; you have everything, if a share of these fine things comes to you. Mortal aims befit mortal men. But for you, Phylacidas, flourishing twofold excellence is recorded at the Isthmus, and at Nemea for both you and Pytheas in the pancratium. But my heart cannot taste songs without telling of the race of Aeacus. I have come with the Graces for the sons of Lampon to this well-governed city. If Aegina turns her steps to the clear road of god-given deeds, then do not grudge to mix for her in song a boast that is fitting recompense for toils. In heroic times, too, fine warriors gained fame, and they are celebrated with lyres and flutes in full-voiced harmonies for time beyond reckoning. Heroes who are honored by the grace of Zeus provide a theme for skilled poets: among the Aetolians the brave sons of Oeneus are worshipped with shining sacrifices; in Thebes the horseman Iolaus has his honor, and Perseus in Argos, and the spearman Castor together with Polydeuces by the streams of Eurotas. But in Oenone the honors belong to the great-hearted spirits

of Aeacus and his sons. Twice in battles they sacked the city of the Trojans: the first time following Heracles, the second time the sons of Atreus. Now, drive me into the air! Tell me, who killed Cycnus, and who Hector, and the fearless commander of the Ethiopians, bronze-armed Memnon? Who wounded noble Telephus with his spear by the banks of Caïcus? Men whose voices name the outstanding island of Aegina as their fatherland, built long ago as a tower for lofty excellence to ascend. My swift tongue has many arrows, to shout the praises of these heroes. And now the city of Aias, Salamis, could testify that she was saved by her sailors in Ares’ confrontation in the destructive storm sent by Zeus, when slaughter poured like hail on countless men. Nevertheless, quench this boast in silence. Zeus dispenses both good and bad, Zeus the master of all. But such honors as these also welcome the joy of triumph, covered with the delicious honey of song. Let a man strive and contend in the games when he has learned from the race of Cleonicus. The long toil of their men is not hidden in blind darkness, nor has thought of the expense fretted away their devotion to their hopes. I praise Pytheas also among limb-subduing pancratiasts, skillful with his hands in guiding straight the course of Phylacidas’ blows, and with a mind to match. Take a garland for him, and bring him a fillet of fine wool, and send along this winged new song.

Isthmian Ode 6 Cite

Just as we mix the second bowl of wine when the men’s symposium is flourishing, here is the second song of the Muses for Lampon’s children and their athletic victories: first in Nemea, Zeus, in your honor they received the choicest of garlands, and now in honor of the lord of the Isthmus and the fifty Nereids, for the victory of the youngest son, Phylacidas. May there be a third libation of honey-voiced songs to pour over Aegina in honor of Zeus Soter of Olympia. For if a man, rejoicing in expense and toil, achieves godly excellence, and a divinity sows the seed of lovely fame in him, then he already casts his anchor on the farthest shore of prosperity, since he is honored by the gods. The son of Cleonicus prays that with such feelings he will meet death and welcome gray old age. And I entreat Clotho, throned on high, and her sister Fates, to hear my friend’s prayers for fame. And as for you, sons of Aeacus with your golden chariots, I say that it is my clearest law to sprinkle you with praises whenever I set foot on this island. Countless continuous roads have been cut a hundred feet wide for your fine deeds, both beyond the springs of the Nile and through the land of the Hyperboreans. There is no city so barbarous or so strange in its speech that it does not know the fame of the hero Peleus, the fortunate in-law of gods, or of Aias and his father Telamon. The son of Alcmena led him in ships to Troy, the toil of heroes, for war that delights in bronze, as an eager ally along with the men of Tiryns because of Laomedon’s wrongdoing. He took Pergamos, and with Telamon’s help he slew the tribes of Meropes, and the herdsman Alcyoneus, huge as a mountain, whom he found at Phlegrae, and he did not keep his hands off the deep-voiced bow-string, not Heracles. But when he came to summon the son of Aeacus to that expedition, he found them feasting. Standing in a lion’s skin, the strong warrior, son of Amphitryon, was asked to pour the first libation of nectar by incomparable Telamon, who lifted up to him the wine-bearing goblet bristling with gold. And Heracles stretched his invincible hands up to heaven and said, “Father Zeus, if you have ever heard my prayers with a willing heart, now, now with divine prayers

I entreat you to grant this man a brave son from Eriboea, a son fated to be my guest-friend. May he have a body as invulnerable as this skin that is now wrapped around me, from the beast whom I killed that day in Nemea as the very first of my labors. And may he have spirit to match.” When he had spoken, the god sent to him the king of birds, a great eagle. He felt thrilled inside with sweet joy, and he spoke like a prophet: “Telamon, you will have the son that you ask for. Name him after the bird that appeared: wide-ruling Aias, awesome in the war-toils of the people.” He spoke, and immediately sat down. But for me it would take a long time to tell the story of all their excellence. For I came, Muse, a steward of victory-songs to Phylacidas and Pytheas and Euthymenes. The story will be told in the Argive manner, very briefly. For those splendid boys and their uncle won three victories in the pancratium—at the Isthmus, and others at Nemea with its fine trees, and they brought to light a great share of praises. With the lovely dew of the Graces they refresh the family of the Psalychids; they have kept upright the house of Themistius, and they live in a city which the gods love. Lampon, “taking care with his work,” honors these words of Hesiod, and he advises his sons with them too, thus bringing a shared adornment to his city. He is loved for his kindness to his guest-friends; he pursues with moderation in his thoughts and restrains with moderation. He does not say one thing and think another. You might say that for athletes he is like the bronze-mastering Naxian whetstone among other stones. I shall give him to drink the pure water of Dirce, which the deep-waisted daughters of golden-robed Mnemosyne brought forth beside the fine-walled gates of Cadmus.

Isthmian Ode 7 Cite

In which of the local glories of the past, divinely blessed Thebe, did you most delight your spirit? Was it when you raised to eminence the one seated beside Demeter of the clashing bronze cymbals, flowing-haired Dionysus? Or when you received, as a snow-shower of gold in the middle of the night, the greatest of the gods, when he stood in the doorway of Amphitryon, and then went in to the wife to beget Heracles? Or did you delight most in the shrewd counsels of Teiresias? Or in the wise horseman Iolaus? Or in the Sown Men, untiring with the spear? Or when you sent Adrastus back from the mighty war-shout, bereft of countless companions, to Argos, home of horses? Or because you stood upright on its feet the Dorian colony of the men of Lacedaemon, and your descendants, the Aegeids, captured Amyclae according to the Pythian oracles? But since ancient grace sleeps, and mortals are forgetful of whatever does not reach the highest bloom of skillful song, joined to glorious streams of words, then begin the victory procession with a sweet-singing hymn for Strepsiades; for he is the victor in the pancratium at the Isthmus, both awesome in his strength and handsome to look at; and he treats excellence as no worse a possession than beauty. He is made radiant by the violet-haired Muses, and he has given a share in his flowering garland to his uncle and namesake, for whom Ares of the bronze shield mixed the cup of destiny; but honor is laid up as recompense for good men. For let him know clearly, whoever, in this cloud of war, wards off the hailstorm of blood in defense of his dear fatherland by bringing destruction to the enemy host, that he is causing the greatest glory to grow for the race of his fellow-citizens, in both his life and his death. And you, son of Diodotus, emulating the warrior Meleager, emulating Hector and Amphiaraus, breathed out your blossoming youth

in the front ranks, where the best men sustained the strife of war at the limit of their hopes. They endured unspeakable sorrow; but now the holder of the earth has sent me calm after the storm. I shall sing entwining my hair with garlands. May the envy of the immortals not disturb whatever delight I pursue from day to day as I peacefully make my way towards old age and the allotted span of my life. For we die all alike, but our fates are diverse. If a man looks to things far away, he is too short to reach the bronze-floored home of the gods; winged Pegasus threw his master Bellerophon, who wanted to go to the dwelling-places of heaven and the company of Zeus. A thing that is sweet beyond measure is awaited by a most bitter end. But grant to us, Loxias, luxuriant with your golden hair, a blossoming garland also from your contests at Pytho.

Isthmian Ode 8 Cite

Young men! One of you go, in honor of Cleandros and his youth, to the splendid doorway of his father Telesarchus, and awake the victory-song, glorious recompense for his troubles, as a reward for his victory at the Isthmus, and because he found strength in the Nemean games. Therefore I too, though grieving in my heart, am asked to invoke the golden Muse. Released from great sorrows, let us not fall into bereavement of garlands; do not nurse your pain. Having ceased from insurmountable troubles, we will sing something sweet for the people, even after toil. Since one of the gods has turned aside for us the stone of Tantalus above our heads, an unbearable hardship for Greece. But as for me, the passing away of terror has stopped my mighty worry. It is always better to look at what lies before one’s foot, in every case. For a treacherous lifetime hangs over men’s heads, twisting around the path of life. Yet even this may be healed for mortals, if only they have freedom. It is right for a man to take to heart good hope; and it is right for a man raised in seven-gated Thebes to offer the choicest bloom of the Graces to Aegina. For as twin daughters they were born to the same father, the youngest of Asopus’ children, and they were pleasing to Zeus the king. He caused one of them to dwell beside the beautiful stream of Dirce, to lead a chariot-loving city; but he carried you to the island Oenopia and slept with you there, where you bore Aeacus, the dearest of all men on earth to the loud-thundering father. Aeacus settled disputes even for the gods. His god-like sons and their sons, devoted to war, were the best in manliness, engaged in the brazen battle-throng that causes groans, and they were wise and prudent in spirit. All this was remembered even by the assembly of the blessed gods, when Zeus and splendid Poseidon contended for marriage with Thetis, each of them wanting her to be his lovely bride; for desire possessed them. But the immortal minds of the gods did not accomplish that marriage for them, when they heard the divine prophecies. Wise Themis spoke in their midst and said that it was fated that the sea-goddess should bear a princely son, stronger than his father, who would wield another weapon in his hand more powerful than the thunderbolt or the irresistible trident, if she lay with Zeus or one of his brothers. “No, cease from this. Let her accept a mortal’s bed, and see her son die in battle, a son who is like Ares in the strength of his hands and like lightning in the swift prime of his feet. My counsel is to bestow this god-granted honor of marriage on Peleus son of Aeacus, who is said to be the most pious man living on the plain of Iolcus.

Let the message be sent at once to Cheiron’s immortal cave, right away, and let the daughter of Nereus never again place the leaves of strife in our hands. On the evening of the full moon let her loosen the lovely bridle of her virginity for that hero.” So the goddess spoke, addressing the sons of Cronus, and they nodded assent with their immortal brows. The fruit of her words did not perish, for they say that Zeus shared the common concern even for the marriage of Thetis. And the voices of poets made known the youthful excellence of Achilles to those who had been unaware of it—Achilles, who stained the vine-covered plain of Mysia, spattering it with the dark blood of Telephus, and bridged a homecoming for the Atreids, and freed Helen, cutting with his spear the sinews of Troy, which had once tried to keep him from marshalling on the plain the work of man-slaying war—he cut down the high-spirited strength of Memnon, and Hector, and other excellent heroes. Achilles, champion of the sons of Aeacus, showed them the way to the house of Persephone, and thus brought fame to Aegina and to his race. Even when he was dead songs did not forsake him; beside his pyre and tomb the Muses of Helicon stood, and poured over him the many-voiced dirge. It proved to be the will of the immortals to make a noble man, even when dead, a theme for the hymns of goddesses; and even now this brings up a subject for words, and the Muses’ chariot rushes forward to shout praises in memory of Nicocles the boxer. Honor him, who won the garland of wild Dorian celery in the Isthmian valley; since he too was once victorious over all that lived around him, battering them with his inescapable hands. He is not dishonored by the offspring of his father’s distinguished brother. Therefore let another young man weave for Cleandros a garland of tender myrtle in honor of the pancratium, since the contest of Alcathous and the young men of Epidaurus welcomed him before in his success. A good man may praise him, for he did not restrain his youth, keeping it hidden in his pocket and ignorant of fine deeds.

Contents — 45 sections

1. Book 1, Part 1
2. Book 1, Part 2
3. Book 1, Part 3
4. Book 1, Part 4
5. Book 1, Part 5
6. Book 1, Part 6
7. Book 1, Part 7
8. Book 1, Part 8
9. Book 1, Part 9
10. Book 2, Part 1
11. Book 2, Part 2
12. Book 2, Part 3
13. Book 2, Part 4
14. Book 2, Part 5
15. Book 2, Part 6
16. Book 2, Part 7
17. Book 2, Part 8
18. Book 2, Part 9
19. Book 3, Part 1
20. Book 3, Part 2
21. Book 3, Part 3
22. Book 3, Part 4
23. Book 3, Part 5
24. Book 3, Part 6
25. Book 3, Part 7
26. Book 3, Part 8
27. Book 3, Part 9
28. Book 4, Part 1
29. Book 4, Part 2
30. Book 4, Part 3
31. Book 4, Part 4
32. Book 4, Part 5
33. Book 4, Part 6
34. Book 4, Part 7
35. Book 4, Part 8
36. Book 4, Part 9
37. Book 5, Part 1
38. Book 5, Part 2
39. Book 5, Part 3
40. Book 5, Part 4
41. Book 5, Part 5
42. Book 5, Part 6
43. Book 5, Part 7
44. Book 5, Part 8
45. Book 5, Part 9

Book 1, Part 1 Cite

On the Greek mainland facing the Cyclades Islands and the Aegean Sea the Sunium promontory stands out from the Attic land. When you have rounded the promontory you see a harbor and a temple to Athena of Sunium on the peak of the promontory. Farther on is Laurium, where once the Athenians had silver mines, and a small uninhabited island called the Island of Patroclus. For a fortification was built on it and a palisade constructed by Patroclus, who was admiral in command of the Egyptian men-of-war sent by Ptolemy, son of Ptolemy, son of Lagus, to help the Athenians, when Antigonus, son of Demetrius, was ravaging their country, which he had invaded with an army, and at the same time was blockading them by sea with a fleet.

The Peiraeus was a parish from early times, though it was not a port before Themistocles became an archon of the Athenians. Their port was Phalerum, for at this place the sea comes nearest to Athens, and from here men say that Menestheus set sail with his fleet for Troy, and before him Theseus, when he went to give satisfaction to Minos for the death of Androgeos. But when Themistocles became archon, since he thought that the Peiraeus was more conveniently situated for mariners, and had three harbors as against one at Phalerum, he made it the Athenian port. Even up to my time there were docks there, and near the largest harbor is the grave of Themistocles. For it is said that the Athenians repented of their treatment of Themistocles, and that his relations took up his bones and brought them from Magnesia. And the children of Themistocles certainly returned and set up in the Parthenon a painting, on which is a portrait of Themistocles.

The most noteworthy sight in the Peiraeus is a precinct of Athena and Zeus. Both their images are of bronze; Zeus holds a staff and a Victory, Athena a spear. Here is a portrait of Leosthenes and of his sons, painted by Arcesilaus. This Leosthenes at the head of the Athenians and the united Greeks defeated the Macedonians in Boeotia and again outside Thermopylae forced them into Lamia over against Oeta, and shut them up there. The portrait is in the long portico, where stands a market-place for those living near the sea—those farther away from the harbor have another—but behind the portico near the sea stand a Zeus and a Demos, the work of Leochares. And by the sea Conon built a sanctuary of Aphrodite, after he had crushed the Lacedaemonian warships off Cnidus in the Carian peninsula. For the Cnidians hold Aphrodite in very great honor, and they have sanctuaries of the goddess; the oldest is to her as Doritis (Bountiful), the next in age as Acraea (Of the Height), while the newest is to the Aphrodite called Cnidian by men generally, but Euploia (Fair Voyage) by the Cnidians themselves.

The Athenians have also another harbor, at Munychia, with a temple of Artemis of Munychia, and yet another at Phalerum, as I have already stated, and near it is a sanctuary of Demeter. Here there is also a temple of Athena Sciras, and one of Zeus some distance away, and altars of the gods named Unknown, and of heroes, and of the children of Theseus and Phalerus; for this Phalerus is said by the Athenians to have sailed with Jason to Colchis. There is also an altar of Androgeos, son of Minos, though it is called that of Heros; those, however, who pay special attention to the study of their country's antiquities know that it belongs to Androgeos.

Twenty stades away is the Coliad promontory; on to it, when the Persian fleet was destroyed, the wrecks were carried down by the waves. There is here an image of the Coliad Aphrodite, with the goddesses Genetyllides (Goddesses of Birth), as they are called. And I am of opinion that the goddesses of the Phocaeans in Ionia, whom they call Gennaides, are the same as those at Colias. On the way from Phalerum to Athens there is a temple of Hera with neither doors nor roof. Men say that Mardonius, son of Gobryas, burnt it. But the image there to-day is, as report goes, the work of Alcamenes So that this, at any rate, cannot have been damaged by the Persians.

On entering the city there is a monument to Antiope the Amazon. This Antiope, Pindar says, was carried of by Peirithous and Theseus, but Hegias of Troezen gives the following account of her. Heracles was besieging Themiscyra on the Thermodon, but could not take it, but Antiope, falling in love with Theseus, who was aiding Heracles in his campaign, surrendered the stronghold. Such is the account of Hegias. But the Athenians assert that when the Amazons came, Antiope was shot by Molpadia, while Molpadia was killed by Theseus. To Molpadia also there is a monument among the Athenians.

As you go up from the Peiraeus you see the ruins of the walls which Conon restored after the naval battle off Cnidus. For those built by Themistocles after the retreat of the Persians were destroyed during the rule of those named the Thirty. Along the road are very famous graves, that of Menander, son of Diopeithes, and a cenotaph of Euripides. He him self went to King Archelaus and lies buried in Macedonia; as to the manner of his death (many have described it), let it be as they say.

So even in his time poets lived at the courts of kings, as earlier still Anacreon consorted with Polycrates, despot of Samos, and Aeschylus and Simonides journeyed to Hiero at Syracuse. Dionysius, afterwards despot in Sicily had Philoxenus at his court, and Antigonus, ruler of Macedonia, had Antagoras of Rhodes and Aratus of Soli. But Hesiod and Homer either failed to win the society of kings or else purposely despised it, Hesiod through boorishness and reluctance to travel, while Homer, having gone very far abroad, depreciated the help afforded by despots in the acquisition of wealth in comparison with his reputation among ordinary men. And yet Homer, too, in his poem makes Demodocus live at the court of Alcinous, and Agamemnon leave a poet with his wife. Not far from the gates is a grave, on which is mounted a soldier standing by a horse. Who it is I do not know, but both horse and soldier were carved by Praxiteles.

On entering the city there is a building for the preparation of the processions, which are held in some cases every year, in others at longer intervals. Hard by is a temple of Demeter, with images of the goddess herself and of her daughter, and of Iacchus holding a torch. On the wall, in Attic characters, is written that they are works of Praxiteles. Not far from the temple is Poseidon on horseback, hurling a spear against the giant Polybotes, concerning whom is prevalent among the Coans the story about the promontory of Chelone. But the inscription of our time assigns the statue to another, and not to Poseidon. From the gate to the Cerameicus there are porticoes, and in front of them brazen statues of such as had some title to fame, both men and women.

One of the porticoes contains shrines of gods, and a gymnasium called that of Hermes. In it is the house of Pulytion, at which it is said that a mystic rite was performed by the most notable Athenians, parodying the Eleusinian mysteries. But in my time it was devoted to the worship of Dionysus. This Dionysus they call Melpomenus (Minstrel), on the same principle as they call Apollo Musegetes (Leader of the Muses). Here there are images of Athena Paeonia (Healer), of Zeus, of Mnemosyne (Memory) and of the Muses, an Apollo, the votive offering and work of Eubulides, and Acratus, a daemon attendant upon Apollo; it is only a face of him worked into the wall. After the precinct of Apollo is a building that contains earthen ware images, Amphictyon, king of Athens, feasting Dionysus and other gods. Here also is Pegasus of Eleutherae, who introduced the god to the Athenians. Herein he was helped by the oracle at Delphi, which called to mind that the god once dwelt in Athens in the days of Icarius.

Amphictyon won the kingdom thus. It is said that Actaeus was the first king of what is now Attica. When he died, Cecrops, the son-in-law of Actaeus, received the kingdom, and there were born to him daughters, Herse, Aglaurus and Pandrosus, and a son Erysichthon. This son did not become king of the Athenians, but happened to die while his father lived, and the kingdom of Cecrops fell to Cranaus, the most powerful of the Athenians. They say that Cranaus had daughters, and among them Atthis; and from her they call the country Attica, which before was named Actaea. And Amphictyon, rising up against Cranaus, although he had his daughter to wife, deposed him from power. Afterwards he himself was banished by Erichthonius and his fellow rebels. Men say that Erichthonius had no human father, but that his parents were Hephaestus and Earth.

The district of the Cerameicus has its name from the hero Ceramus, he too being the reputed son of Dionysus and Ariadne. First on the right is what is called the Royal Portico, where sits the king when holding the yearly office called the kingship. On the tiling of this portico are images of baked earthenware, Theseus throwing Sciron into the sea and Day carrying away Cephalus, who they say was very beautiful and was ravished by Day, who was in love with him. His son was Phaethon, [afterwards ravished by Aphrodite]. . . and made a guardian of her temple. Such is the tale told by Hesiod, among others, in his poem on women.

Near the portico stand Conon, Timotheus his son and Evagoras King of Cyprus, who caused the Phoenician men-of-war to be given to Conon by King Artaxerxes. This he did as an Athenian whose ancestry connected him with Salamis, for he traced his pedigree back to Teucer and the daughter of Cinyras. Here stands Zeus, called Zeus of Freedom, and the Emperor Hadrian, a benefactor to all his subjects and especially to the city of the Athenians.

A portico is built behind with pictures of the gods called the Twelve. On the wall opposite are painted Theseus, Democracy and Demos. The picture represents Theseus as the one who gave the Athenians political equality. By other means also has the report spread among men that Theseus bestowed sovereignty upon the people, and that from his time they continued under a democratical government, until Peisistratus rose up and became despot. But there are many false beliefs current among the mass of mankind, since they are ignorant of historical science and consider trustworthy whatever they have heard from childhood in choruses and tragedies; one of these is about Theseus, who in fact himself became king, and afterwards, when Menestheus was dead, the descendants of Theseus remained rulers even to the fourth generation. But if I cared about tracing the pedigree I should have included in the list, besides these, the kings from Melanthus to Cleidicus the son of Aesimides.

Here is a picture of the exploit, near Mantinea, of the Athenians who were sent to help the Lacedaemonians. Xenophon among others has written a history of the whole war—the taking of the Cadmea, the defeat of the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, how the Boeotians invaded the Peloponnesus,and the contingent sent to the Lacedacmonians from the Athenians. In the picture is a cavalry battle, in which the most famous men are, among the Athenians, Grylus the son of Xenophon, and in the Boeotian cavalry, Epaminondas the Theban. These pictures were painted for the Athenians by Euphranor, and he also wrought the Apollo surnamed Patrous (Paternal) in the temple hard by. And in front of the temple is one Apollo made by Leochares; the other Apollo, called Averter of evil, was made by Calamis. They say that the god received this name because by an oracle from Delphi he stayed the pestilence which afflicted the Athenians at the time of the Peloponnesian War.

Here is built also a sanctuary of the Mother of the gods; the image is by Pheidias. Hard by is the council chamber of those called the Five Hundred, who are the Athenian councillors for a year. In it are a wooden figure of Zeus Counsellor and an Apollo, the work of Peisias, and a Demos by Lyson. The thesmothetae (lawgivers) were painted by Protogenes the Caunian, and Olbiades portrayed Callippus, who led the Athenians to Thermopylae to stop the incursion of the Gauls into Greece.

These Gauls inhabit the most remote portion of Europe, near a great sea that is not navigable to its extremities, and possesses ebb and flow and creatures quite unlike those of other seas. Through their country flows the river Eridanus, on the bank of which the daughters of Helius (Sun) are supposed to lament the fate that befell their brother Phaethon. It was late before the name “Gauls” came into vogue; for anciently they were called Celts both amongst themselves and by others. An army of them mustered and turned towards the Ionian Sea, dispossessed the Illyrian people, all who dwelt as far as Macedonia with the Macedonians themselves, and overran Thessaly. And when they drew near to Thermopylae, the Greeks in general made no move to prevent the inroad of the barbarians, since previously they had been severely defeated by Alexander and Philip. Further, Antipater and Cassander afterwards crushed the Greeks, so that through weakness each state thought no shame of itself taking no part in the defence of the country.

But the Athenians, although they were more exhausted than any of the Greeks by the long Macedonian war, and had been generally unsuccessful in their battles, nevertheless set forth to Thermopylae with such Greeks as joined them, having made the Callippus I mentioned their general. Occupying the pass where it was narrowest, they tried to keep the foreigners from entering Greece; but the Celts, having discovered the path by which Ephialtes of Trachis once led the Persians, over whelmed the Phocians stationed there and crossed Oeta unperceived by the Greeks.

Then it was that the Athenians put the Greeks under the greatest obligation, and although outflanked offered resistance to the foreigners on two sides. But the Athenians on the fleet suffered most, for the Lamian gulf is a swamp near Thermopylae—the reason being, I think, the hot water that here runs into the sea. These then were more distressed; for taking the Greeks on board they were forced to sail through the mud weighted as they were by arms and men.

So they tried to save Greece in the way described, but the Gauls, now south of the Gates, cared not at all to capture the other towns, but were very eager to sack Delphi and the treasures of the god. They were opposed by the Delphians themselves and the Phocians of the cities around Parnassus; a force of Aetolians also joined the defenders, for the Aetolians at this time were pre-eminent for their vigorous activity. When the forces engaged, not only were thunderbolts and rocks broken off from Parnassus hurled against the Gauls, but terrible shapes as armed warriors haunted the foreigners. They say that two of them, Hyperochus and Amadocus, came from the Hyperboreans, and that the third was Pyrrhus son of Achilles. Because of this help in battle the Delphians sacrifice to Pyrrhus as to a hero, although formerly they held even his tomb in dishonor, as being that of an enemy.

The greater number of the Gauls crossed over to Asia by ship and plundered its coasts. Some time after, the inhabitants of Pergamus, that was called of old Teuthrania, drove the Gauls into it from the sea. Now this people occupied the country on the farther side of the river Sangarius capturing Ancyra, a city of the Phrygians, which Midas son of Gordius had founded in former time. And the anchor, which Midas found, was even as late as my time in the sanctuary of Zeus, as well as a spring called the Spring of Midas, water from which they say Midas mixed with wine to capture Silenus. Well then, the Pergameni took Ancyra and Pessinus which lies under Mount Agdistis, where they say that Attis lies buried.

They have spoils from the Gauls, and a painting which portrays their deed against them. The land they dwell in was, they say, in ancient times sacred to the Cabeiri, and they claim that they are themselves Arcadians, being of those who crossed into Asia with Telephus. Of the wars that they have waged no account has been published to the world, except that they have accomplished three most notable achievements; the subjection of the coast region of Asia, the expulsion of the Gauls therefrom, and the exploit of Telephus against the followers of Agamemnon, at a time when the Greeks after missing Troy, were plundering the Meian plain thinking it Trojan territory. Now I will return from my digression.

Near to the Council Chamber of the Five Hundred is what is called Tholos (Round House); here the presidents sacrifice, and there are a few small statues made of silver. Farther up stand statues of heroes, from whom afterwards the Athenian tribes received their names. Who the man was who established ten tribes instead of four, and changed their old names to new ones—all this is told by Herodotus.

The eponymoi—this is the name given to them—are Hippothoon son of Poseidon and Alope daughter of Cercyon, Antiochus, one of the children of Heracles borne to him by Meda daughter of Phylas, thirdly, Ajax son of Telamon, and to the Athenians belongs Leos, who is said to have given up his daughters, at the command of the oracle, for the safety of the commonwealth. Among the eponymoi is Erechtheus, who conquered the Eleusinians in battle, and killed their general, Immaradus the son of Eumolpus. There is Aegeus also and Oeneus the bastard son of Pandion, and Acamas, one of the children of Theseus.

I saw also among the eponymoi statues of Cecrops and Pandion, but I do not know who of those names are thus honored. For there was an earlier ruler Cecrops who took to wife the daughter of Actaeus, and a later—he it was who migrated to Euboea—son of Erechtheus, son of Pandion, son of Erichthonius. And there was a king Pandion who was son of Erichthonius, and another who was son of Cecrops the second. This man was deposed from his kingdom by the Metionidae, and when he fled to Megara—for he had to wife the daughter of Pylas king of Megara—his children were banished with him. And Pandion is said to have fallen ill there and died, and on the coast of the Megarid is his tomb, on the rock called the rock of Athena the Gannet.

But his children expelled the Metionidae, and returned from banishment at Megara, and Aegeus, as the eldest, became king of the Athenians. But in rearing daughters Pandion was unlucky, nor did they leave any sons to avenge him. And yet it was for the sake of power that he made the marriage alliance with the king of Thrace. But there is no way for a mortal to overstep what the deity thinks fit to send. They say that Tereus, though wedded to Procne, dishonored Philomela, thereby transgressing Greek custom, and further, having mangled the body of the damsel, constrained the women to avenge her. There is another statue, well worth seeing, of Pandion on the Acropolis.

These are the Athenian eponymoi who belong to the ancients. And of later date than these they have tribes named after the following, Attalus the Mysian and Ptolemy the Egyptian, and within my own time the emperor Hadrian, who was extremely religious in the respect he paid to the deity and contributed very much to the happiness of his various subjects. He never voluntarily entered upon a war, but he reduced the Hebrews beyond Syria, who had rebelled. As for the sanctuaries of the gods that in some cases he built from the beginning, in others adorned with offerings and furniture, and the bounties he gave to Greek cities, and sometimes even to foreigners who asked him, all these acts are inscribed in his honor in the sanctuary at Athens common to all the gods.

But as to the history of Attalus and Ptolemy, it is more ancient in point of time, so that tradition no longer remains, and those who lived with these kings for the purpose of chronicling their deeds fell into neglect even before tradition failed. Where fore it occurred to me to narrate their deeds also, and how the sovereignty of Egypt, of the Mysians and of the neighboring peoples fell into the hands of their fathers.

The Macedonians consider Ptolemy to be the son of Philip, the son of Amyntas, though putatively the son of Lagus, asserting that his mother was with child when she was married to Lagus by Philip. And among the distinguished acts of Ptolemy in Asia they mention that it was he who, of Alexander's companions, was foremost in succoring him when in danger among the Oxydracae. After the death of Alexander, by withstanding those who would have conferred all his empire upon Aridaeus, the son of Philip, he became chiefly responsible for the division of the various nations into the kingdoms.

He crossed over to Egypt in person, and killed Cleomenes, whom Alexander had appointed satrap of that country, considering him a friend of Perdiccas, and therefore not faithful to himself; and the Macedonians who had been entrusted with the task of carrying the corpse of Alexander to Aegae, he persuaded to hand it over to him. And he proceeded to bury it with Macedonian rites in Memphis, but, knowing that Perdiccas would make war, he kept Egypt garrisoned. And Perdiccas took Aridaeus, son of Philip, and the boy Alexander, whom Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes, had borne to Alexander, to lend color to the campaign, but really he was plotting to take from Ptolemy his kingdom in Egypt. But being expelled from Egypt, and having lost his reputation as a soldier, and being in other respects unpopular with the Macedonians, he was put to death by his body guard.

The death of Perdiccas immediately raised Ptolemy to power, who both reduced the Syrians and Phoenicia, and also welcomed Seleucus, son of Antiochus, who was in exile, having been expelled by Antigonus; he further himself prepared to attack Antigonus. He prevailed on Cassander, son of Anti pater, and Lysimachus, who was king in Thrace, to join in the war, urging that Seleucus was in exile and that the growth of the power of Antigonus was dangerous to them all.

For a time Antigonus pre pared for war, and was by no means confident of the issue; but on learning that the revolt of Cyrene had called Ptolemy to Libya, he immediately reduced the Syrians and Phoenicians by a sudden inroad, handed them over to Demetrius, his son, a man who for all his youth had already a reputation for good sense, and went down to the Hellespont. But he led his army back without crossing, on hearing that Demetrius had been overcome by Ptolemy in battle. But Demetrius had not altogether evacuated the country before Ptolemy, and having surprised a body of Egyptians, killed a few of them. Then on the arrival of Antigonus Ptolemy did not wait for him but returned to Egypt.

When the winter was over, Demetrius sailed to Cyprus and overcame in a naval action Menelaus, the satrap of Ptolemy, and afterwards Ptolemy him self, who had crossed to bring help. Ptolemy fled to Egypt, where he was besieged by Antigonus on land and by Demetrius with a fleet. In spite of his extreme peril Ptolemy saved his empire by making a stand with an army at Pelusium while offering resistance with warships from the river. Antigonus now abandoned all hope of reducing Egypt in the circumstances, and dispatched Demetrius against the Rhodians with a fleet and a large army, hoping, if the island were won, to use it as a base against the Egyptians. But the Rhodians displayed daring and ingenuity in the face of the besiegers, while Ptolemy helped them with all the forces he could muster.

Antigonus thus failed to reduce Egypt or, later, Rhodes, and shortly afterwards he offered battle to Lysimachus, and to Cassander and the army of Seleucus, lost most of his forces, and was himself killed, having suffered most by reason of the length of the war with Eumenes. Of the kings who put down Antigonus I hold that the most wicked was Cassander, who although he had recovered the throne of Macedonia with the aid of Antigonus, nevertheless came to fight against a benefactor.

After the death of Antigonus, Ptolemy again reduced the Syrians and Cyprus, and also restored Pyrrhus to Thesprotia on the mainland. Cyrene rebelled; but Magas, the son of Berenice (who was at this time married to Ptolemy) captured Cyrene in the fifth year of the rebellion. If this Ptolemy really was the son of Philip, son of Amyntas, he must have inherited from his father his passion for women, for, while wedded to Eurydice, the daughter of Antipater, although he had children he took a fancy to Berenice, whom Antipater had sent to Egypt with Eurydice. He fell in love with this woman and had children by her, and when his end drew near he left the kingdom of Egypt to Ptolemy (from whom the Athenians name their tribe) being the son of Berenice and not of the daughter of Antipater.

This Ptolemy fell in love with Arsinoe, his full sister, and married her, violating herein Macedonian custom, but following that of his Egyptian subjects. Secondly he put to death his brother Argaeus, who was, it is said, plotting against him; and he it was who brought down from Memphis the corpse of Alexander. He put to death another brother also, son of Eurydice, on discovering that he was creating disaffection among the Cyprians. Then Magas, the half-brother of Ptolemy, who had been entrusted with the governorship of Cyrene by his mother Berenice—she had borne him to Philip, a Macedonians but of no note and of lowly origin—induced the people of Cyrene to revolt from Ptolemy and marched against Egypt.

Ptolemy fortified the entrance into Egypt and awaited the attack of the Cyrenians. But while on the march Magas was in formed that the Marmaridae,a tribe of Libyan nomads, had revolted, and thereupon fell back upon Cyrene. Ptolemy resolved to pursue, but was checked owing to the following circumstance. When he was preparing to meet the attack of Magas, he engaged mercenaries, including some four thousand Gauls. Discovering that they were plotting to seize Egypt, he led them through the river to a deserted island. There they perished at one another's hands or by famine.

Magas, who was married to Apame, daughter of Antiochus, son of Seleucus, persuaded Antiochus to break the treaty which his father Seleucus had made with Ptolemy and to attack Egypt. When Antiochus resolved to attack, Ptolemy dispatched forces against all the subjects of Antiochus, freebooters to overrun the lands of the weaker, and an army to hold back the stronger, so that Antiochus never had an opportunity of attacking Egypt. I have already stated how this Ptolemy sent a fleet to help the Athenians against Antigonus and the Macedonians, but it did very little to save Athens. His children were by Arsinoe, not his sister, but the daughter of Lysimachus. His sister who had wedded him happened to die before this, leaving no issue, and there is in Egypt a district called Arsinoites after her.

Book 1, Part 2 Cite

It is pertinent to add here an account of Attalus, because he too is one of the Athenian eponymoi. A Macedonian of the name of Docimus, a general of Antigonus, who afterwards surrendered both himself and his property to Lysimachus, had a Paphlagonian eunuch called Philetaerus. All that Philetaerus did to further the revolt from Lysimachus, and how he won over Seleucus, will form an episode in my account of Lysimachus. Attalus, however, son of Attalus and nephew of Philetaerus, received the kingdom from his cousin Eumenes, who handed it over. The greatest of his achievements was his forcing the Gauls to retire from the sea into the country which they still hold.

After the statues of the eponymoi come statues of gods, Amphiaraus, and Eirene (Peace) carrying the boy Plutus (Wealth). Here stands a bronze figure of Lycurgus, son of Lycophron, and of Callias, who, as most of the Athenians say, brought about the peace between the Greeks and Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes. Here also is Demosthenes, whom the Athenians forced to retire to Calauria, the island off Troezen, and then, after receiving him back, banished again after the disaster at Lamia.

Exiled for the second time Demosthenes crossed once more to Calauria, and committed suicide there by taking poison, being the only Greek exile whom Archias failed to bring back to Antipater and the Macedonians. This Archias was a Thurian who undertook the abominable task of bringing to Antipater for punishment those who had opposed the Macedonians before the Greeks met with their defeat in Thessaly. Such was Demosthenes' reward for his great devotion to Athens. I heartily agree with the remark that no man who has unsparingly thrown himself into politics trusting in the loyalty of the democracy has ever met with a happy death.

Near the statue of Demosthenes is a sanctuary of Ares, where are placed two images of Aphrodite, one of Ares made by Alcamenes, and one of Athena made by a Parian of the name of Locrus. There is also an image of Enyo, made by the sons of Praxiteles. About the temple stand images of Heracles, Theseus, Apollo binding his hair with a fillet, and statues of Calades, who it is said framed laws for the Athenians, and of Pindar, the statue being one of the rewards the Athenians gave him for praising them in an ode.

Hard by stand statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton, who killed Hipparchus. The reason of this act and the method of its execution have been related by others; of the figures some were made by Critius, the old ones being the work of Antenor. When Xerxes took Athens after the Athenians had abandoned the city he took away these statues also among the spoils, but they were afterwards restored to the Athenians by Antiochus.

Before the entrance of the theater which they call the Odeum (Music Hall) are statues of Egyptian kings. They are all alike called Ptolemy, but each has his own surname. For they call one Philometor, and another Philadelphus, while the son of Lagus is called Soter, a name given him by the Rhodians. Of these, Philadelphus is he whom I have mentioned before among the eponymoi, and near him is a statue of his sister Arsinoe.

The one called Philometor is eighth in descent from Ptolemy son of Lagus, and his surname was given him in sarcastic mockery, for we know of none of the kings who was so hated by his mother. Although he was the eldest of her children she would not allow him to be called to the throne, but prevailed on his father before the call came to send him to Cyprus. Among the reasons assigned for Cleopatra's enmity towards her son is her expectation that Alexander the younger of her sons would prove more subservient, and this consideration induced her to urge the Egyptians to choose Alexander as king.

When the people offered opposition, she dispatched Alexander for the second time to Cyprus, ostensibly as general, but really because she wished by his means to make Ptolemy more afraid of her. Finally she covered with wounds those eunuchs she thought best disposed, and presented them to the people, making out that she was the victim of Ptolemy's machinations, and that he had treated the eunuchs in such a fashion. The people of Alexandria rushed to kill Ptolemy, and when he escaped on board a ship, made Alexander, who returned from Cyprus, their king.

Retribution for the exile of Ptolemy came upon Cleopatra, for she was put to death by Alexander, whom she herself had made to be king of the Egyptians. When the deed was discovered, and Alexander fled in fear of the citizens, Ptolemy returned and for the second time assumed control of Egypt. He made war against the Thebans, who had revolted, reduced them two years after the revolt, and treated them so cruelly that they were left not even a memorial of their former prosperity, which had so grown that they surpassed in wealth the richest of the Greeks, the sanctuary of Delphi and the Orchomenians. Shortly after this Ptolemy met with his appointed fate, and the Athenians, who had been benefited by him in many ways which I need not stop to relate, set up a bronze likeness of him and of Berenice, his only legitimate child.

After the Egyptians come statues of Philip and of his son Alexander. The events of their lives were too important to form a mere digression in another story. Now the Egyptians had their honors bestowed upon them out of genuine respect and because they were benefactors, but it was rather the sycophancy of the people that gave them to Philip and Alexander, since they set up a statue to Lysimachus also not so much out of goodwill as because they thought to serve their immediate ends.

This Lysimachus was a Macedonian by birth and one of Alexander's body-guards, whom Alexander once in anger shut up in a chamber with a lion, and afterwards found that he had overpowered the brute. Henceforth he always treated him with respect, and honored him as much as the noblest Macedonians. After the death of Alexander, Lysimachus ruled such of the Thracians, who are neighbors of the Macedonians, as had been under the sway of Alexander and before him of Philip. These would comprise but a small part of Thrace. If race be compared with race no nation of men except the Celts are more numerous than the Thracians taken all together, and for this reason no one before the Romans reduced the whole Thracian population. But the Romans have subdued all Thrace, and they also hold such Celtic territory as is worth possessing, but they have intentionally overlooked the parts that they consider useless through excessive cold or barrenness.

Then Lysimachus made war against his neighbours, first the Odrysae, secondly the Getae and Dromichaetes. Engaging with men not unversed in warfare and far his superiors in number, he himself escaped from a position of extreme danger, but his son Agathocles, who was serving with him then for the first time, was taken prisoner by the Getae. Lysimachus met with other reverses afterwards, and attaching great importance to the capture of his son made peace with Dromicliaetes, yielding to the Getic king the parts of his empire beyond the Ister, and, chiefly under compulsion, giving him his daughter in marriage. Others say that not Agathocles but Lysimachus himself was taken prisoner, regaining his liberty when Agathocles treated with the Getic king on his behalf. On his return he married to Agathocles Lysandra, the daughter of Ptolemy, son of Lagus, and of Eurydice.

He also crossed with a fleet to Asia and helped to overthrow the empire of Antigonus. He founded also the modern city of Ephesus as far as the coast, bringing to it as settlers people of Lebedos and Colophon, after destroying their cities, so that the iambic poet Phoenix com posed a lament for the capture of Colophon. Mermesianax, the elegiac writer, was, I think, no longer living, otherwise he too would certainly have been moved by the taking of Colophon to write a dirge. Lysimachus also went to war with Pyrrhus, son of Aeacides. Waiting for his departure from Epeirus (Pyrrhus was of a very roving disposition) he ravaged Epeirus until he reached the royal tombs.

The next part of the story is incredible to me, but Hieronymus the Cardian relates that he destroyed the tombs and cast out the bones of the dead. But this Hieronymus has a reputation generally of being biased against all the kings except Antigonus, and of being unfairly partial towards him. As to the treatment of the Epeirot graves, it is perfectly plain that it was malice that made him record that a Macedonian desecrated the tombs of the dead. Besides, Lysimachus was surely aware that they were the ancestors not of Pyrrhus only but also of Alexander. In fact Alexander was an Epeirot and an Aeacid on his mother's side, and the subsequent alliance between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus proves that even as enemies they were not irreconcilable. Possibly Hieronymus had grievances against Lysimachus, especially his destroying the city of the Cardians and founding Lysimachea in its stead on the isthmus of the Thracian Chersonesus.

As long as Aridaeus reigned, and after him Cassander and his sons, friendly relations continued between Lysimachus and Macedon. But when the kingdom devolved upon Demetrius, son of Antigonus, Lysimachus, henceforth expecting that war would be declared upon him by Demetrius, resolved to take aggressive action. He was aware that Demetrius inherited a tendency to aggrandise, and he also knew that he visited Macedonia at the summons of Alexander and Cassander, and on his arrival murdered Alexander himself and ruled the Macedonians in his stead.

Therefore encountering Demetrius at Amphipolis he came near to being expelled from Thrace, but on Pyrrhus' coming to his aid he mastered Thrace and afterwards extended his empire at the expense of the Nestians and Macedonians. The greater part of Macedonia was under the control of Pyrrhus himself, who came from Epeirus with an army and was at that time on friendly terms with Lysimachus. When however Demetrius crossed over into Asia and made war on Seleucus, the alliance between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus lasted only as long as Demetrius continued hostilities; when Demetrius submitted to Seleucus, the friendship between Lysimachus and Pyrrhus was broken, and when war broke out Lysimachus fought against Antigonus son of Demetrius and against Pyrrhus himself, had much the better of the struggle, conquered Macedonia and forced Pyrrhus to retreat to Epeirus.

Love is wont to bring many calamities upon men. Lysimachus, although by this time of mature age and considered happy in respect of his children, and although Agathocles had children by Lysandra, nevertheless married Lysandra's sister Arsinoe. This Arsinoe, fearing for her children, lest on the death of Lysimachus they should fall into the hands of Agathocles, is said for this reason to have plotted against Agathocles. Historians have already related how Arsinoe fell in love with Agathocles, and being unsuccessful they say that she plotted against his life. They say also that Lysimachus discovered later his wife's machinations, but was by this time powerless, having lost all his friends.

Since Lysimachus, then, overlooked Arsinoe's murder of Agathocles, Lysandra fled to Seleucus, taking with her her children and her brothers, who were taking refuge with Ptolemy and finally adopted this course. They were accompanied on their flight to Seleucus by Alexander who was the son of Lysimachus by an Odrysian woman. So they going up to Babylon entreated Seleucus to make war on Lysimachus. And at the same time Philetaerus, to whom the property of Lysimachus had been entrusted, aggrieved at the death of Agathocles and suspicious of the treatment he would receive at the hands of Arsinoe, seized Pergamus on the Caicus, and sending a herald offered both the property and himself to Seleucus.

Lysimachus hearing of all these things lost no time in crossing into Asia, and assuming the initiative met Seleucus, suffered a severe defeat and was killed. Alexander, his son by the Odrysian woman, after interceding long with Lysandra, won his body and afterwards carried it to the Chersonesus and buried it, where his grave is still to be seen between the village of Cardia and Pactye.

Such was the history of Lysimachus. The Athenians have also a statue of Pyrrhus. This Pyrrhus was not related to Alexander, except by ancestry. Pyrrhus was son of Aeacides, son of Arybbas, but Alexander was son of Olympias, daughter of Neoptolemus, and the father of Neoptolemus and Aryblas was Alcetas, son of Tharypus. And from Tharypus to Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, are fifteen generations. Now Pyrrhus was the first who after the capture of Troy disdained to return to Thessaly, but sailing to Epeirus dwelt there because of the oracles of Helenus. By Hermione Pyrrhus had no child, but by Andromache he had Molossus, Pielus, and Pergamus, who was the youngest. Helenus also had a son, Cestrinus, being married to Andromache after the murder of Pyrrhus at Delphi.

Helenus on his death passed on the kingdom to Molossus, son of Pyrrhus, so that Cestrinus with volunteers from the Epeirots took possession of the region beyond the river Thyamis, while Pergamus crossed into Asia and killed Areius, despot in Teuthrania, who fought with him in single combat for his kingdom, and gave his name to the city which is still called after him. To Andromache, who accompanied him, there is still a shrine in the city. Pielus remained behind in Epeirus, and to him as ancestor Pyrrhus, the son of Aeacides, and his fathers traced their descent, and not to Molossus.

Down to Alcetas, son of Tharypus, Epeirus too was under one king. But the sons of Alcetas after a quarrel agreed to rule with equal authority, remaining faithful to their compact; and afterwards, when Alexander, son of Neoptolemus, died among the Leucani, and Olympias returned to Epeirus through fear of Antipater, Aeacides, son of Arybbas, continued in allegiance to Olympias and joined in her campaign against Aridaeus and the Macedonians, although the Epeirots refused to accompany him.

Olympias on her victory behaved wickedly in the matter of the death of Aridaeus, and much more wickedly to certain Macedonians, and for this reason was considered to have deserved her subsequent treatment at the hands of Cassander; so Aeacides at first was not received even by the Epeirots because of their hatred of Olympias, and when after wards they forgave him, his return to Epeirus was next opposed by Cassander. When a battle occurred at Oeneadae between Philip, brother of Cassander, and Aeacides, Aeacides was wounded and shortly after met his fate.

The Epeirots accepted Alcetas as their king, being the son of Arybbas and the elder brother of Aeacides, but of an uncontrollable temper and on this account banished by his father. Immediately on his arrival he began to vent his fury on the Epeirots, until they rose up and put him and his children to death at night. After killing him they brought back Pyrrhus, son of Aeacides. No sooner had he arrived than Cassander made war upon him, while he was young in years and before he had consolidated his empire. When the Macedonians attacked him, Pyrrhus went to Ptolemy, son of Lagus, in Egypt. Ptolemy gave him to wife the half-sister of his children, and restored him by an Egyptian force.

The first Greeks that Pyrrhus attacked on becoming king were the Corcyraeans. He saw that the island lay off his own territory, and he did not wish others to have a base from which to attack him. My account of Lysimachus has already related how he fared, after taking Corcyra, in his war with Lysimachus, how he expelled Demetrius and ruled Macedonia until he was in turn expelled by Lysimachus, the most important of his achievements until he waged war against the Romans,

being the first Greek we know of to do so. For no further battle, it is said, took place between Aeneas and Diomedes with his Argives. One of the many ambitions of the Athenians was to reduce all Italy, but the disaster at Syracuse prevented their trying conclusions with the Romans. Alexander, son of Neoptolemus, of the same family as Pyrrhus but older, died among the Leucani before he could meet the Romans in battle.

So Pyrrhus was the first to cross the Ionian Sea from Greece to attack the Romans. And even he crossed on the invitation of the Tarentines. For they were already involved in a war with the Romans, but were no match for them unaided. Pyrrhus was already in their debt, because they had sent a fleet to help him in his war with Corcyra, but the most cogent arguments of the Tarentine envoys were their accounts of Italy, how its prosperity was equal to that of the whole of Greece, and their plea that it was wicked to dismiss them when they had come as friends and suppliants in their hour of need. When the envoys urged these considerations, Pyrrhus remembered the capture of Troy, which he took to be an omen of his success in the war, as he was a descendant of Achilles making war upon a colony of Trojans.

Pleased with this proposal, and being a man who never lost time when once he had made up his mind, he immediately proceeded to man war ships and to prepare transports to carry horses and men-at-arms. There are books written by men of no renown as historians, entitled “Memoirs.” When I read these I marvelled greatly both at the personal bravery of Pyrrhus in battle, and also at the forethought he displayed whenever a contest was imminent. So on this occasion also when crossing to Italy with a fleet he eluded the observation of the Romans, and for some time after his arrival they were unaware of his presence; it was only when the Romans made an attack upon the Tarentines that he appeared on the scene with his army, and his unexpected assault naturally threw his enemies into confusion.

And being perfectly aware that he was no match for the Romans, he prepared to let loose against them his elephants. The first European to acquire elephants was Alexander, after subduing Porus and the power of the Indians; after his death others of the kings got them but Antigonus more than any; Pyrrhus captured his beasts in the battle with Demetrius. When on this occasion they came in sight the Romans were seized with panic, and did not believe they were animals.

For although the use of ivory in arts and crafts all men obviously have known from of old, the actual beasts, before the Macedonians crossed into Asia, nobody had seen at all except the Indians themselves, the Libyans, and their neighbours. This is proved by Homer, who describes the couches and houses of the more prosperous kings as ornamented with ivory, but never mentions the beast; but if he had seen or heard about it he would, in my opinion have been much more likely to speak of it than of the battle between the Dwarf-men and cranes.

Pyrrhus was brought over to Sicily by an embassy of the Syracusans. The Carthaginians had crossed over and were destroying the Greek cities, and had sat down to invest Syracuse, the only one now remaining. When Pyrrhus heard this from the envoys he abandoned Tarentum and the Italiots on the coast, and crossing into Sicily forced the Carthaginians to raise the siege of Syracuse. In his self-conceit, although the Carthaginians, being Phoenicians of Tyre by ancient descent, were more experienced sea men than any other non-Greek people of that day, Pyrrhus was nevertheless encouraged to meet them in a naval battle, employing the Epeirots, the majority of whom, even after the capture of Troy, knew no thing of the sea nor even as yet how to use salt. Witness the words of Homer in the Odyssey:—Nothing they know of ocean, and mix not saltwith their victuals.

Worsted on this occasion Pyrrhus put back with the remainder of his vessels to Tarentum. Here he met with a serious reverse, and his retirement, for he knew that the Romans would not let him depart without striking a blow, he contrived in the following manner. On his return from Sicily and his defeat, he first sent various dispatches to Asia and to Antigonus, asking some of the kings for troops, some for money, and Antigonus for both. When the envoys returned and their dispatches were delivered, he summoned those in authority, whether Epeirot or Tarentine, and without reading any of the dispatches declared that reinforcements would come. A report spread quickly even to the Romans that Macedonians and Asiatic tribes also were crossing to the aid of Pyrrhus. The Romans, on hearing this, made no move, but Pyrrhus on the approach of that very night crossed to the headlands of the mountains called Ceraunian.

After the defeat in Italy Pyrrhus gave his forces a rest and then declared war on Antigonus, his chief ground of complaint being the failure to send reinforcements to Italy. Overpowering the native troops of Antigonus an his Gallic mercenaries he pursued them to the coast cities, and himself reduced upper Macedonia and the Thessalians. The extent of the fighting and the decisive character of the victory of Pyrrhus are shown best by the Celtic armour dedicated in the sanctuary of Itonian Athena between Pherae and Larisa, with this inscription on them:—Pyrrhus the Molossian hung these shields

taken from the bold Gauls as a gift to ItonianAthena, when he had destroyed all the hostof Antigonus. 'Tis no great marvel. TheAeacidae are warriors now, even as they wereof old.These shields then are here, but the bucklers of the Macedonians themselves he dedicated to Dodonian Zeus. They too have an inscription:—These once ravaged golden Asia, and broughtslavery upon the Greeks. Now ownerlessthey lie by the pillars of the temple of Zeus,spoils of boastful Macedonia.Pyrrhus came very near to reducing Macedonia entirely, but,

being usually readier to do what came first to hand, he was prevented by Cleonymus. This Cleonymus, who persuaded Pyrrhus to abandon his Macedonian adventure and to go to the Peloponnesus, was a Lacedaemonian who led an hostile army into the Lacedaemonian territory for a reason which I will relate after giving the descent of Cleonymus. Pausanias, who was in command of the Greeks at Plataea, was the father of Pleistoanax, he of Pausanias, and he of Cleombrotus, who was killed at Leuctra fighting against Epaminondas and the Thebans. Cleombrotus was the father of Agesipolis and Cleomenes, and, Agesipolis dying without issue, Cleomenes ascended the throne.

Cleomenes had two sons, the elder being Acrotatus and the younger Cleonymus. Now Acrotatus died first; and when afterwards Cleomenes died, a claim to the throne was put forward by Areus son of Acrotatus, and Cleonymus took steps to induce Pyrrhus to enter the country. Before the battle of Leuctra the Lacedaemonians had suffered no disaster, so that they even refused to admit that they had yet been worsted in a land battle. For Leonidas, they said, had won the victory, but his followers were insufficient for the entire destruction of the Persians; the achievement of Demosthenes and the Athenians on the island of Sphacteria was no victory, but only a trick in war.

Their first reverse took place in Boeotia, and they afterwards suffered a severe defeat at the hands of Antipater and the Macedonians. Thirdly the war with Demetrius came as an unexpected misfortune to their land. Invaded by Pyrrhus and seeing a hostile army for the fourth time, they arrayed themselves to meet it along with the Argives and Messenians who had come as their allies. Pyrrhus won the day, and came near to capturing Sparta without further fighting, but desisted for a while after ravaging the land and carrying off plunder. The citizens prepared for a siege, and Sparta even before this in the war with Demetrius had been fortified with deep trenches and strong stakes, and at the most vulnerable points with buildings as well.

Just about this time, while the Laconian war was dragging on, Antigonus, having recovered the Macedonian cities, hastened to the Peloponnesus being well aware that if Pyrrhus were to reduce Lacedaemon and the greater part of the Peloponnesus, he would not return to Epeirus but to Macedonia to make war there again. When Antigonus was about to lead his army from Argos into Laconia, Pyrrhus himself reached Argos. Victorious once more he dashed into the city along with the fugitives, and his formation not unnaturally was broken up.

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When the fighting was now taking place by sanctuaries and houses, and in the narrow lanes, between detached bodies in different parts of the town, Pyrrhus left by himself was wounded in the head. It is said that his death was caused by a blow from a tile thrown by a woman. The Argives however declare that it was not a woman who killed him but Demeter in the likeness of a woman. This is what the Argives themselves relate about his end, and Lyceas, the guide for the neighborhood, has written a poem which confirms the story. They have a sanctuary of Demeter, built at the command of the oracle, on the spot where Pyrrhus died, and in it Pyrrhus is buried.

I consider it remarkable that of those styled Aeacidae three met their end by similar heaven-sent means; if, as Homer says, Achilles was killed by Alexander, son of Priam, and by Apollo, if the Delphians were bidden by the Pythia to slay Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, and if the end of the son of Aeacides was such as the Argives say and Lyceas has described in his poem. The account, how ever, given by Hieronymus the Cardian is different, for a man who associates with royalty cannot help being a partial historian. If Philistus was justified in suppressing the most wicked deeds of Dionysius, because he expected his return to Syracuse, surely Hieronymus may be fully forgiven for writing to please Antigonus.

So ended the period of Epeirot ascendancy. When you have entered the Odeum at Athens you meet, among other objects, a figure of Dionysus worth seeing. Hard by is a spring called Enneacrunos (Nine Jets), embellished as you see it by Peisistratus. There are cisterns all over the city, but this is the only fountain. Above the spring are two temples, one to Demeter and the Maid, while in that of Triptolemus is a statue of him. The accounts given of Triptolemus I shall write, omitting from the story as much as relates to Deiope.

The Greeks who dispute most the Athenian claim to antiquity and the gifts they say they have received from the gods are the Argives, just as among those who are not Greeks the Egyptians compete with the Phrygians. It is said, then, that when Demeter came to Argos she was received by Pelasgus into his home, and that Chrysanthis, knowing about the rape of the Maid, related the story to her. Afterwards Trochilus, the priest of the mysteries, fled, they say, from Argos because of the enmity of Agenor, came to Attica and married a woman of Eleusis, by whom he had two children, Eubuleus and Triptolemus. That is the account given by the Argives. But the Athenians and those who with them. . . know that Triptolemus, son of Celeus, was the first to sow seed for cultivation.

Some extant verses of Musaeus, if indeed they are to be included among his works, say that Triptolemus was the son of Oceanus and Earth; while those ascribed to Orpheus (though in my opinion the received authorship is again incorrect) say that Eubuleus and Triptolemus were sons of Dysaules, and that because they gave Demeter information about her daughter the sowing of seed was her reward to them. But Choerilus, an Athenian, who wrote a play called Alope, says that Cercyon and Triptolemus were brothers, that their mother was the daughter of Amphictyon, while the father of Triptolemus was Rarus, of Cercyon, Poseidon. After I had intended to go further into this story, and to describe the contents of the sanctuary at Athens, called the Eleusinium, I was stayed by a vision in a dream. I shall therefore turn to those things it is lawful to write of to all men.

In front of this temple, where is also the statue of Triptolemus, is a bronze bull being led as it were to sacrifice, and there is a sitting figure of Epimenides of Cnossus, who they say entered a cave in the country and slept. And the sleep did not leave him before the fortieth year, and afterwards he wrote verses and purified Athens and other cities. But Thales who stayed the plague for the Lacedaemonians was not related to Epimenides in any way, and belonged to a different city. The latter was from Cnossus, but Thales was from Gortyn, according to Polymnastus of Colophon, who com posed a poem about him for the Lacedaemonians.

Still farther of is a temple to Glory, this too being a thank-offering for the victory over the Persians, who had landed at Marathon. This is the victory of which I am of opinion the Athenians were proudest; while Aeschylus, who had won such renown for his poetry and for his share in the naval battles before Artemisium and at Salamis, recorded at the prospect of death nothing else, and merely wrote his name, his father's name, and the name of his city, and added that he had witnesses to his valor in the grove at Marathon and in the Persians who landed there.

Above the Cerameicus and the portico called the King's Portico is a temple of Hephaestus. I was not surprised that by it stands a statue of Athena, be cause I knew the story about Erichthonius. But when I saw that the statue of Athena had blue eyes I found out that the legend about them is Libyan. For the Libyans have a saying that the Goddess is the daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis, and for this reason has blue eyes like Poseidon.

Hard by is a sanctuary of the Heavenly Aphrodite; the first men to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live at Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera. Among the Athenians the cult was established by Aegeus, who thought that he was childless (he had, in fact, no children at the time) and that his sisters had suffered their misfortune because of the wrath of Heavenly Aphrodite. The statue still extant is of Parian marble and is the work of Pheidias. One of the Athenian parishes is that of the Athmoneis, who say that Porphyrion, an earlier king than Actaeus, founded their sanctuary of the Heavenly One. But the traditions current among the Parishes often differ altogether from those of the city.

As you go to the portico which they call painted, because of its pictures, there is a bronze statue of Hermes of the Market-place, and near it a gate. On it is a trophy erected by the Athenians, who in a cavalry action overcame Pleistarchus, to whose command his brother Cassander had entrusted his cavalry and mercenaries. This portico contains, first, the Athenians arrayed against the Lacedaemonians at Oenoe in the Argive territory. What is depicted is not the crisis of the battle nor when the action had advanced as far as the display of deeds of valor, but the beginning of the fight when the combatants were about to close.

On the middle wall are the Athenians and Theseus fighting with the Amazons. So, it seems, only the women did not lose through their defeats their reckless courage in the face of danger; Themiscyra was taken by Heracles, and afterwards the army which they dispatched to Athens was destroyed, but nevertheless they came to Troy to fight all the Greeks as well as the Athenians them selves. After the Amazons come the Greeks when they have taken Troy, and the kings assembled on account of the outrage committed by Ajax against Cassandra. The picture includes Ajax himself, Cassandra and other captive women.

At the end of the painting are those who fought at Marathon; the Boeotians of Plataea and the Attic contingent are coming to blows with the foreigners. In this place neither side has the better, but the center of the fighting shows the foreigners in flight and pushing one another into the morass, while at the end of the painting are the Phoenician ships, and the Greeks killing the foreigners who are scrambling into them. Here is also a portrait of the hero Marathon, after whom the plain is named, of Theseus represented as coming up from the under-world, of Athena and of Heracles. The Marathonians, according to their own account, were the first to regard Heracles as a god. Of the fighters the most conspicuous figures in the painting are Callimachus, who had been elected commander-in-chief by the Athenians, Miltiades, one of the generals, and a hero called Echetlus, of whom I shall make mention later.

Here are dedicated brazen shields, and some have an inscription that they are taken from the Scioneans and their allies, while others, smeared with pitch lest they should be worn by age and rust, are said to be those of the Lacedaemonians who were taken prisoners in the island of Sphacteria.

Here are placed bronze statues, one, in front of the portico, of Solon, who composed the laws for the Athenians, and, a little farther away, one of Seleucus, whose future prosperity was foreshadowed by unmistakable signs. When he was about to set forth from Macedonia with Alexander, and was sacrificing at Pella to Zeus, the wood that lay on the altar advanced of its own accord to the image and caught fire without the application of a light. On the death of Alexander, Seleucus, in fear of Antigonus, who had arrived at Babylon, fled to Ptolemy, son of Lagus, and then returned again to Babylon. On his return he overcame the army of Antigonus and killed Antigonus himself, afterwards capturing Demetrius, son of Antigonus, who had advanced with an army.

After these successes, which were shortly followed by the fall of Lysimachus, he entrusted to his son Antiochus all his empire in Asia, and himself proceeded rapidly towards Macedonia, having with him an army both of Greeks and of foreigners. But Ptolemy, brother of Lysandra, had taken refuge with him from Lysimachus; this man, an adventurous character named for this reason the Thunderbolt, when the army of Seleucus had advanced as far as Lysimachea, assassinated Seleucus, allowed the kings to seize his wealth, and ruled over Macedonia until, being the first of the kings to my knowledge to dare to meet the Gauls in battle, he was killed by the foreigners. The empire was recovered by Antigonus, son of Demetrius.

I am persuaded that Seleucus was the most righteous, and in particular the most religious of the kings. Firstly, it was Seleucus who sent back to Branchidae for the Milesians the bronze Apollo that had been carried by Xerxes to Ecbatana in Persia. Secondly, when he founded Seleucea on the river Tigris and brought to it Babylonian colonists he spared the wall of Babylon as well as the sanctuary of Bel, near which he permitted the Chaldeans to live.

In the Athenian market-place among the objects not generally known is an altar to Mercy, of all divinities the most useful in the life of mortals and in the vicissitudes of fortune, but honored by the Athenians alone among the Greeks. And they are conspicuous not only for their humanity but also for their devotion to religion. They have an altar to Shamefastness, one to Rumour and one to Effort. It is quite obvious that those who excel in piety are correspondingly rewarded by good fortune.

In the gymnasium not far from the market-place, called Ptolemy's from the founder, are stone Hermae well worth seeing and a likeness in bronze of Ptolemy. Here also is Juba the Libyan and Chrysippus of Soli.Hard by the gymnasium is a sanctuary of Theseus, where are pictures of Athenians fighting Amazons. This war they have also represented on the shield of their Athena and upon the pedestal of the Olympian Zeus. In the sanctuary of Theseus is also a painting of the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapithae. Theseus has already killed a Centaur, but elsewhere the fighting is still undecided.

The painting on the third wall is not intelligible to those unfamiliar with the traditions, partly through age and partly because Micon has not represented in the picture the whole of the legend. When Minos was taking Theseus and the rest of the company of young folk to Crete he fell in love with Periboea, and on meeting with determined opposition from Theseus, hurled insults at him and denied that he was a son of Poseidon, since he could not recover for him the signet-ring, which he happened to be wearing, if he threw it into the sea. With these words Minos is said to have thrown the ring, but they say that Theseus came up from the sea with that ring and also with a gold crown that Amphitrite gave him.

The accounts of the end of Theseus are many and inconsistent. They say he was kept a prisoner until Heracles restored him to the light of day, but the most plausible account I have heard is this. Theseus invaded Thesprotia to carry off the wife of the Thesprotian king, and in this way lost the greater part of his army, and both he and Peirithous (he too was taking part in the expedition, being eager for the marriage) were taken captive. The Thesprotian king kept them prisoners at Cichyrus.

Among the sights of Thesprotia are a sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona and an oak sacred to the god. Near Cichyrus is a lake called Acherusia, and a river called Acheron. There is also Cocytus, a most unlovely stream. I believe it was because Homer had seen these places that he made bold to describe in his poems the regions of Hades, and gave to the rivers there the names of those in Thesprotia. While Theseus was thus kept in bonds, the sons of Tyndareus marched against Aphidna, captured it and restored Menestheus to the kingdom.

Now Menestheus took no account of the children of Theseus, who had secretly withdrawn to Elephenor in Euboea, but he was aware that Theseus, if ever he returned from Thesprotia, would be a doughty antagonist, and so curried favour with his subjects that Theseus on re covering afterwards his liberty was expelled. So Theseus set out to Deucalion in Crete. Being carried out of his course by winds to the island of Scyros he was treated with marked honor by the inhabitants, both for the fame of his family and for the reputation of his own achievements. Accordingly Lycomedes contrived his death. His close was built at Athens after the Persians landed at Marathon, when Cimon, son of Miltiades, ravaged Scyros, thus avenging Theseus' death, and carried his bones to Athens.

The sanctuary of the Dioscuri is ancient. They them selves are represented as standing, while their sons are seated on horses. Here Polygnotus has painted the marriage of the daughters of Leucippus, was a part of the gods' history, but Micon those who sailed with Jason to the Colchians, and he has concentrated his attention upon Acastus and his horses.

Above the sanctuary of the Dioscuri is a sacred enclosure of Aglaurus. It was to Aglaurus and her sisters, Herse and Pandrosus, that they say Athena gave Erichthonius, whom she had hidden in a chest, forbidding them to pry curiously into what was entrusted to their charge. Pandrosus, they say, obeyed, but the other two (for they opened the chest) went mad when they saw Erichthonius, and threw themselves down the steepest part of the Acropolis. Here it was that the Persians climbed and killed the Athenians who thought that they understood the oracle better than did Themistocles, and fortified the Acropolis with logs and stakes.

Hard by is the Prytaneum (Town-hall), in which the laws of Solon are inscribed, and figures are placed of the goddesses Peace and Hestia (Hearth), while among the statues is Autolycus the pancratiast. For the likenesses of Miltiades and Themistocles have had their titles changed to a Roman and a Thracian.

As you descend from here to the lower part of the city, is a sanctuary of Serapis, whose worship the Athenians introduced from Ptolemy. Of the Egyptian sanctuaries of Serapis the most famous is at Alexandria, the oldest at Memphis. Into this neither stranger nor priest may enter, until they bury Apis. Not far from the sanctuary of Serapis is the place where they say that Peirithous and Theseus made their pact before setting forth to Lacedaemon and afterwards to Thesprotia.

Hard by is built a temple of Eileithyia, who they say came from the Hyperboreans to Delos and helped Leto in her labour; and from Delos the name spread to other peoples. The Delians sacrifice to Eileithyia and sing a hymn of Olen. But the Cretans suppose that Eileithyia was born at Auunisus in the Cnossian territory, and that Hera was her mother. Only among the Athenians are the wooden figures of Eileithyia draped to the feet. The women told me that two are Cretan, being offerings of Phaedra, and that the third, which is the oldest, Erysichthon brought from Delos.

Before the entrance to the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus—Hadrian the Roman emperor dedicated the temple and the statue, one worth seeing, which in size exceeds all other statues save the colossi at Rhodes and Rome, and is made of ivory and gold with an artistic skill which is remarkable when the size is taken into account—before the entrance, I say, stand statues of Hadrian, two of Thasian stone, two of Egyptian. Before the pillars stand bronze statues which the Athenians call “colonies.” The whole circumference of the precincts is about four stades, and they are full of statues; for every city has dedicated a likeness of the emperor Hadrian, and the Athenians have surpassed them in dedicating, behind the temple, the remarkable colossus.

Within the precincts are antiquities: a bronze Zeus, a temple of Cronus and Rhea and an enclosure of Earth surnamed Olympian. Here the floor opens to the width of a cubit, and they say that along this bed flowed off the water after the deluge that occurred in the time of Deucalion, and into it they cast every year wheat meal mixed with honey.

On a pillar is a statue of Isocrates, whose memory is remarkable for three things: his diligence in continuing to teach to the end of his ninety-eight years, his self-restraint in keeping aloof from politics and from interfering with public affairs, and his love of liberty in dying a voluntary death, distressed at the news of the battle at Chaeronea. There are also statues in Phrygian marble of Persians supporting a bronze tripod; both the figures and the tripod are worth seeing. The ancient sanctuary of Olympian Zeus the Athenians say was built by Deucalion, and they cite as evidence that Deucalion lived at Athens a grave which is not far from the present temple.

Hadrian constructed other buildings also for the Athenians: a temple of Hera and Zeus Panellenios (Common to all Greeks), a sanctuary common to all the gods, and, most famous of all, a hundred pillars of Phrygian marble. The walls too are constructed of the same material as the cloisters. And there are rooms there adorned with a gilded roof and with alabaster stone, as well as with statues and paintings. In them are kept books. There is also a gymnasium named after Hadrian; of this too the pillars are a hundred in number from the Libyan quarries.

Close to the temple of Olympian Zeus is a statue of the Pythian Apollo. There is further a sanctuary of Apollo surnamed Delphinius. The story has it that when the temple was finished with the exception of the roof Theseus arrived in the city, a stranger as yet to everybody. When he came to the temple of the Delphinian, wearing a tunic that reached to his feet and with his hair neatly plaited, those who were building the roof mockingly inquired what a marriageable virgin was doing wandering about by herself. The only answer that Theseus made was to loose, it is said, the oxen from the cart hard by, and to throw them higher than the roof of the temple they were building.

Concerning the district called The Gardens, and the temple of Aphrodite, there is no story that is told by them, nor yet about the Aphrodite which stands near the temple. Now the shape of it is square, like that of the Hermae, and the inscription declares that the Heavenly Aphrodite is the oldest of those called Fates. But the statue of Aphrodite in the Gardens is the work of Alcamenes, and one of the most note worthy things in Athens.

There is also the place called Cynosarges, sacred to Heracles; the story of the white dog may be known by reading the oracle. There are altars of Heracles and Hebe, who they think is the daughter of Zeus and wife to Heracles. An altar has been built to Alcmena and to Iolaus, who shared with Heracles most of his labours. The Lyceum has its name from Lycus, the son of Pandion, but it was considered sacred to Apollo from the be ginning down to my time, and here was the god first named Lyceus. There is a legend that the Termilae also, to whom Lycus came when he fled from Aegeus, were called Lycii after him.

Behind the Lyceum is a monument of Nisus, who was killed while king of Megara by Minos, and the Athenians carried him here and buried him. About this Nisus there is a legend. His hair, they say, was red, and it was fated that he should die on its being cut off. When the Cretans attacked the country, they captured the other cities of the Megarid by assault, but Nisaea, in which Nisus had taken refuge, they beleaguered. The story says how the daughter of Nisus, falling in love here with Minos, cut off her father's hair.

Such is the legend.The rivers that flow through Athenian territory are the Ilisus and its tributary the Eridanus, whose name is the same as that of the Celtic river. This Ilisus is the river by which Oreithyia was playing when, according to the story, she was carried off by the North Wind. With Oreithyia he lived in wedlock, and be cause of the tie between him and the Athenians he helped them by destroying most of the foreigners' warships. The Athenians hold that the Ilisus is sacred to other deities as well, and on its bank is an altar of the Ilisian Muses. The place too is pointed out where the Peloponnesians killed Codrus, son of Melanthus and king of Athens.

Across the Ilisus is a district called Agrae and a temple of Artemis Agrotera (the Huntress). They say that Artemis first hunted here when she came from Delos, and for this reason the statue carries a bow. A marvel to the eyes, though not so impressive to hear of, is a race-course of white marble, the size of which can best be estimated from the fact that beginning in a crescent on the heights above the Ilisus it descends in two straight lines to the river bank. This was built by Herodes, an Athenian, and the greater part of the Pentelic quarry was exhausted in its construction.

Leading from the prytaneum is a road called Tripods. The place takes its name from the shrines, large enough to hold the tripods which stand upon them, of bronze, but containing very remarkable works of art, including a Satyr, of which Praxiteles is said to have been very proud. Phryne once asked of him the most beautiful of his works, and the story goes that lover-like he agreed to give it, but refused to say which he thought the most beautiful. So a slave of Phryne rushed in saying that a fire had broken out in the studio of Praxiteles, and the greater number of his works were lost, though not all were destroyed.

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Praxiteles at once started to rush through the door crying that his labour was all wasted if indeed the flames had caught his Satyr and his Love. But Phryne bade him stay and be of good courage, for he had suffered no grievous loss, but had been trapped into confessing which were the most beautiful of his works. So Phryne chose the statue of Love; while a Satyr is in the temple of Dionysus hard by, a boy holding out a cup. The Love standing with him and the Dionysus were made by Thymilus.

The oldest sanctuary of Dionysus is near the theater. Within the precincts are two temples and two statues of Dionysus, the Eleuthereus (Deliverer) and the one Alcamenes made of ivory and gold. There are paintings here—Dionysus bringing Hephaestus up to heaven. One of the Greek legends is that Hephaestus, when he was born, was thrown down by Hera. In revenge he sent as a gift a golden chair with invisible fetters. When Hera sat down she was held fast, and Hephaestus refused to listen to any other of the gods save Dionysus—in him he reposed the fullest trust—and after making him drunk Dionysus brought him to heaven. Besides this picture there are also represented Pentheus and Lycurgus paying the penalty of their insolence to Dionysus, Ariadne asleep, Theseus putting out to sea, and Dionysus on his arrival to carry off Ariadne.

Near the sanctuary of Dionysus and the theater is a structure, which is said to be a copy of Xerxes' tent. It has been rebuilt, for the old building was burnt by the Roman general Sulla when he took Athens. The cause of the war was this. Mithridates was king over the foreigners around the Euxine. Now the grounds on which he made war against the Romans, how he crossed into Asia, and the cities he took by force of arms or made his friends, I must leave for those to find out who wish to know the history of Mithridates, and I shall confine my narrative to the capture of Athens.

There was an Athenian, Aristion, whom Mithridates employed as his envoy to the Greek cities. He induced the Athenians to join Mithridates rather than the Romans, although he did not induce all, but only the lower orders, and only the turbulent among them. The respectable Athenians fled to the Romans of their own accord. In the engagement that ensued the Romans won a decisive victory; Aristion and the Athenians they drove in flight into the city, Archelaus and the foreigners into the Peiraeus. This Archelaus was another general of Mithridates, whom earlier than this the Magnetes, who inhabit Sipylus, wounded when he raided their territory, killing most of the foreigners as well. So Athens was invested.

Taxilus, a general of Mithridates, was at the time besieging Elatea in Phocis, but on receiving the news he withdrew his troops towards Attica. Learning this, the Roman general entrusted the siege of Athens to a portion of his army, and with the greater part of his forces advanced in person to meet Taxilus in Boeotia. On the third day from this, news came to both the Roman armies; Sulla heard that the Athenian fortifications had been stormed, and the besieging force learnt that Taxilus had been defeated in battle near Chaeronea. When Sulla returned to Attica he imprisoned in the Cerameicus the Athenians who had opposed him, and one chosen by lot out of every ten he ordered to be led to execution.

Sulla abated nothing of his wrath against the Athenians, and so a few effected an escape to Delphi, and asked if the time were now come when it was fated for Athens also to be made desolate, receiving from the Pythia the response about the wine skin. Afterwards Sulla was smitten with the disease which I learn attacked Pherecydes the Syrian. Although Sulla's treatment of the Athenian people was so savage as to be unworthy of a Roman, I do not think that this was the cause of his calamity, but rather the vengeance of the suppliants' Protector, for he had dragged Aristion from the sanctuary of Athena, where he had taken refuge, and killed him.Such wise was Athens sorely afflicted by the war with Rome, but she flourished again when Hadrian was emperor.

In the theater the Athenians have portrait statues of poets, both tragic and comic, but they are mostly of undistinguished persons. With the exception of Menander no poet of comedy represented here won a reputation, but tragedy has two illustrious representatives, Euripides and Sophocles. There is a legend that after the death of Sophocles the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica, and their commander saw in a vision Dionysus, who bade him honor, with all the customary honors of the dead, the new Siren. He interpreted the dream as referring to Sophocles and his poetry, and down to the present day men are wont to liken to a Siren whatever is charming in both poetry and prose.

The likeness of Aeschylus is, I think, much later than his death and than the painting which depicts the action at Marathon Aeschylus himself said that when a youth he slept while watching grapes in a field, and that Dionysus appeared and bade him write tragedy. When day came, in obedience to the vision, he made an attempt and hereafter found composing quite easy.

Such were his words. On the South wall, as it is called, of the Acropolis, which faces the theater, there is dedicated a gilded head of Medusa the Gorgon, and round it is wrought an aegis. At the top of the theater is a cave in the rocks under the Acropolis. This also has a tripod over it, wherein are Apollo and Artemis slaying the children of Niobe. This Niobe I myself saw when I had gone up to Mount Sipylus. When you are near it is a beetling crag, with not the slightest resemblance to a woman, mourning or otherwise; but if you go further away you will think you see a woman in tears, with head bowed down.

On the way to the Athenian Acropolis from the theater is the tomb of Calos. Daedalus murdered this Calos, who was his sister's son and a student of his craft, and therefore he fled to Crete; afterwards he escaped to Cocalus in Sicily. The sanctuary of Asclepius is worth seeing both for its paintings and for the statues of the god and his children. In it there is a spring, by which they say that Poseidon's son Halirrhothius deflowered Alcippe the daughter of Ares, who killed the ravisher and was the first to be put on his trial for the shedding of blood.

Among the votive offerings there is a Sauromatic breast plate. On seeing this a man will say that no less than Greeks are foreigners skilled in the arts. For the Sauromatae have no iron, neither mined by them selves nor yet imported. They have, in fact, no dealings at all with the foreigners around them. To meet this deficiency they have contrived inventions. In place of iron they use bone for their spear-blades, and cornel-wood for their bows and arrows, with bone points for the arrows. They throw a lasso round any enemy they meet, and then turning round their horses upset the enemy caught in the lasso.

Their breastplates they make in the following fashion. Each man keeps many mares, since the land is not divided into private allotments, nor does it bear any thing except wild trees, as the people are nomads. These mares they not only use for war, but also sacrifice them to the local gods and eat them for food. Their hoofs they collect, clean, split, and make from them as it were python scales. Whoever has never seen a python must at least have seen a pine-cone still green. He will not be mistaken if he liken the product from the hoof to the segments that are seen on the pine-cone. These pieces they bore and stitch together with the sinews of horses and oxen, and then use them as breastplates that are as handsome and strong as those of the Greeks. For they can withstand blows of missiles and those struck in close combat.

Linen breastplates are not so useful to fighters, for they let the iron pass through, if the blow be a violent one. They aid hunters, how ever, for the teeth of lions or leopards break off in them. You may see linen breastplates dedicated in other sanctuaries, notably in that at Gryneum, where there is a most beautiful grove of Apollo, with cultivated trees, and all those which, although they bear no fruit, are pleasing to smell or look upon.

After the sanctuary of Asclepius, as you go by this way towards the Acropolis, there is a temple of Themis. Before it is raised a sepulchral mound to Hippolytus. The end of his life, they say, came from curses. Everybody, even a foreigner who has learnt Greek, knows about the love of Phaedra and the wickedness the nurse dared commit to serve her. The Troezenians too have a grave of Hippolytus, and their legend about it is this.

When Theseus was about to marry Phaedra, not wishing, should he have children, Hippolytus either to be their subject or to be king in their stead, sent him to Pittheus to be brought up and to be the future king of Troezen. Afterwards Pallas and his sons rebelled against Theseus. After putting them to death he went to Troezen for purification, and Phaedra first saw Hippolytus there. Falling in love with him she contrived the plot for his death. The Troezenians have a myrtle with every one of its leaves pierced; they say that it did not grow originally in this fashion, the holes being due to Phaedra's disgust with love and to the pin which she wore in her hair.

When Theseus had united into one state the many Athenian parishes, he established the cults of Aphrodite Pandemos (Common) and of Persuasion. The old statues no longer existed in my time, but those I saw were the work of no inferior artists. There is also a sanctuary of Earth, Nurse of Youth, and of Demeter Chloe (Green). You can learn all about their names by conversing with the priests.

There is but one entry to the Acropolis. It affords no other, being precipitous throughout and having a strong wall. The gateway has a roof of white marble, and down to the present day it is unrivalled for the beauty and size of its stones. Now as to the statues of the horsemen, I cannot tell for certain whether they are the sons of Xenophon or whether they were made merely to beautify the place. On the right of the gateway is a temple of Wingless Victory. From this point the sea is visible, and here it was that, according to legend, Aegeus threw him self down to his death.

For the ship that carried the young people to Crete began her voyage with black sails; but Theseus, who was sailing on an adventure against the bull of Minos, as it is called, had told his father beforehand that he would use white sails if he should sail back victorious over the bull. But the loss of Ariadne made him forget the signal. Then Aegeus, when from this eminence he saw the vessel borne by black sails, thinking that his son was dead, threw himself down to destruction. There is at Athens a sanctuary dedicated to him, and called the hero-shrine of Aegeus.

On the left of the gateway is a building with pictures. Among those not effaced by time I found Diomedes taking the Athena from Troy, and Odysseus in Lemnos taking away the bow of Philoctetes. There in the pictures is Orestes killing Aegisthus, and Pylades killing the sons of Nauplius who had come to bring Aegisthus succor. And there is Polyxena about to be sacrificed near the grave of Achilles. Homer did well in passing by this barbarous act. I think too that he showed poetic insight in making Achilles capture Scyros, differing entirely from those who say that Achilles lived in Scyros with the maidens, as Polygnotus has re presented in his picture. He also painted Odysseus coming upon the women washing clothes with Nausicaa at the river, just like the description in Homer. There are other pictures, including a portrait of Alcibiades,

and in the picture are emblems of the victory his horses won at Nemea. There is also Perseus journeying to Seriphos, and carrying to Polydectes the head of Medusa, the legend about whom I am unwilling to relate in my description of Attica. Included among the paintings—I omit the boy carrying the water-jars and the wrestler of Timaenetus—is Musaeus. I have read verse in which Musaeus receives from the North Wind the gift of flight, but, in my opinion, Onomacritus wrote them, and there are no certainly genuine works of Musaeus except a hymn to Demeter written for the Lycomidae.

Right at the very entrance to the Acropolis are a Hermes (called Hermes of the Gateway) and figures of Graces, which tradition says were sculptured by Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, who the Pythia testified was the wisest of men, a title she refused to Anacharsis, although he desired it and came to Delphi to win it.

Among the sayings of the Greeks is one that there were seven wise men. Two of them were the despot of Lesbos and Periander the son of Cypselus. And yet Peisistratus and his son Hippias were more humane than Periander, wiser too in war fare and in statecraft, until, on account of the murder of Hipparchus, Hippias vented his passion against all and sundry, including a woman named Leaena (Lioness).

What I am about to say has never before been committed to writing, but is generally credited among the Athenians. When Hipparchus died, Hippias tortured Leaena to death, because he knew she was the mistress of Aristogeiton, and therefore could not possibly, he held, be in ignorance of the plot. As a recompense, when the tyranny of the Peisistratidae was at an end, the Athenians put up a bronze lioness in memory of the woman, which they say Callias dedicated and Calamis made.

Hard by is a bronze statue of Diitrephes shot through by arrows. Among the acts reported of this Diitrephes by the Athenians is his leading back home the Thracian mercenaries who arrived too late to take part in the expedition of Demosthenes against Syracuse. He also put into the Chalcidic Euripus, where the Boeotians had an inland town Mycalessus, marched up to this town from the coast and took it. Of the inhabitants the Thracians put to the sword not only the combatants but also the women and children. I have evidence to bring. All the Boeotian towns which the Thebans sacked were inhabited in my time, as the people escaped just before the capture; so if the foreigners had not exterminated the Mycalessians the survivors would have afterwards reoccupied the town.

I was greatly surprised to see the statue of Diitrephes pierced with arrows, because the only Greeks whose custom it is to use that weapon are the Cretans. For the Opuntian Locrians, whom Homer represents as coming to Troy with bows and slings, we know were armed as heavy infantry by the time of the Persian wars. Neither indeed did the Malians continue the practice of the bow; in fact, I believe that they did not know it before the time of Philoctetes, and gave it up soon after. Near the statue of Diitrephes—I do not wish to write of the less distinguished portraits—are figures of gods; of Health, whom legend calls daughter of Asclepius, and of Athena, also surnamed Health.

There is also a smallish stone, just large enough to serve as a seat to a little man. On it legend says Silenus rested when Dionysus came to the land. The oldest of the Satyrs they call Sileni. Wishing to know better than most people who the Satyrs are I have inquired from many about this very point. Euphemus the Carian said that on a voyage to Italy he was driven out of his course by winds and was carried into the outer sea, beyond the course of seamen. He affirmed that there were many uninhabited islands, while in others lived wild men. The sailors did not wish to put in at the latter,

because, having put in before, they had some experience of the inhabitants, but on this occasion they had no choice in the matter. The islands were called Satyrides by the sailors, and the inhabitants were red haired, and had upon their flanks tails not much smaller than those of horses. As soon as they caught sight of their visitors, they ran down to the ship with out uttering a cry and assaulted the women in the ship. At last the sailors in fear cast a foreign woman on to the island. Her the Satyrs outraged not only in the usual way, but also in a most shocking manner.

I remember looking at other things also on the Athenian Acropolis, a bronze boy holding the sprinkler, by Lycius son of Myron, and Myron's Perseus after beheading Medusa. There is also a sanctuary of Brauronian Artemis; the image is the work of Praxiteles, but the goddess derives her name from the parish of Brauron. The old wooden image is in Brauron, the Tauric Artemis as she is called.

There is the horse called Wooden set up in bronze. That the work of Epeius was a contrivance to make a breach in the Trojan wall is known to everybody who does not attribute utter silliness to the Phrygians. But legend says of that horse that it contained the most valiant of the Greeks, and the design of the bronze figure fits in well with this story. Menestheus and Teucer are peeping out of it, and so are the sons of Theseus.

Of the statues that stand after the horse, the likeness of Epicharinus who practised the race in armour was made by Critius, while Oenobius performed a kind service for Thucydides the son of Olorus. He succeeded in getting a decree passed for the return of Thucydides to Athens, who was treacherously murdered as he was returning, and there is a monument to him not far from the Melitid gate.

The stories of Hermolycus the pancratiast and Phormio the son of Asopichus I omit, as others have told them. About Phormio, however, I have a detail to add. Quite one of the best men at Athens and distinguished for the fame of his ancestors he chanced to be heavily in debt. So he withdrew to the parish Paeania and lived there until the Athenians elected him to command a naval expedition. But he refused the office on the ground that before his debts were discharged he lacked the spirit to face his troops. So the Athenians, who were absolutely determined to have Phormio as their commander, paid all his creditors.

In this place is a statue of Athena striking Marsyas the Silenus for taking up the flutes that the goddess wished to be cast away for good. Opposite these I have mentioned is represented the fight which legend says Theseus fought with the so-called Bull of Minos, whether this was a man or a beast of the nature he is said to have been in the accepted story. For even in our time women have given birth to far more extraordinary monsters than this.

There is also a statue of Phrixus the son of Athamas carried ashore to the Colchians by the ram. Having sacrificed the animal to some god or other, presumably to the one called by the Orchomenians Laphystius, he has cut out the thighs in accordance with Greek custom and is watching them as they burn. Next come other statues, including one of Heracles strangling the serpents as the legend describes. There is Athena too coming up out of the head of Zeus, and also a bull dedicated by the Council of the Areopagus on some occasion or other, about which, if one cared, one could make many conjectures.

I have already stated that the Athenians are far more devoted to religion than other men. They were the first to surname Athena Ergane (Worker); they were the first to set up limbless Hermae, and the temple of their goddess is shared by the Spirit of Good men. Those who prefer artistic workmanship to mere antiquity may look at the following: a man wearing a helmet, by Cleoetas, whose nails the artist has made of silver, and an image of Earth beseeching Zeus to rain upon her; perhaps the Athenians them selves needed showers, or may be all the Greeks had been plagued with a drought. There also are set up Timotheus the son of Conon and Conon himself; Procne too, who has already made up her mind about the boy, and Itys as well—a group dedicated by Alcamenes. Athena is represented displaying the olive plant, and Poseidon the wave,

and there are statues of Zeus, one made by Leochares and one called Polieus (Urban), the customary mode of sacrificing to whom I will give without adding the traditional reason thereof. Upon the altar of Zeus Polieus they place barley mixed with wheat and leave it unguarded. The ox, which they keep already prepared for sacrifice, goes to the altar and partakes of the grain. One of the priests they call the ox-slayer, who kills the ox and then, casting aside the axe here according to the ritual runs away. The others bring the axe to trial, as though they know not the man who did the deed.

Their ritual, then, is such as I have described. As you enter the temple that they name the Parthenon, all the sculptures you see on what is called the pediment refer to the birth of Athena, those on the rear pediment represent the contest for the land between Athena and Poseidon. The statue itself is made of ivory and gold. On the middle of her helmet is placed a likeness of the Sphinx—the tale of the Sphinx I will give when I come to my description of Boeotia—and on either side of the helmet are griffins in relief.

These griffins, Aristeas of Proconnesus says in his poem, fight for the gold with the Arimaspi beyond the Issedones. The gold which the griffins guard, he says, comes out of the earth; the Arimaspi are men all born with one eye; griffins are beasts like lions, but with the beak and wings of an eagle. I will say no more about the griffins.

The statue of Athena is upright, with a tunic reaching to the feet, and on her breast the head of Medusa is worked in ivory. She holds a statue of Victory about four cubits high, and in the other hand a spear; at her feet lies a shield and near the spear is a serpent. This serpent would be Erichthonius. On the pedestal is the birth of Pandora in relief. Hesiod and others have sung how this Pandora was the first woman; before Pandora was born there was as yet no womankind. The only portrait statue I remember seeing here is one of the emperor Hadrian, and at the entrance one of Iphicrates, who accomplished many remarkable achievements.

Book 1, Part 5 Cite

Opposite the temple is a bronze Apollo, said to be the work of Pheidias. They call it the Locust God, because once when locusts were devastating the land the god said that he would drive them from Attica. That he did drive them away they know, but they do not say how. I myself know that locusts have been destroyed three times in the past on Mount Sipylus, and not in the same way. Once a gale arose and swept them away; on another occasion violent heat came on after rain and destroyed them; the third time sudden cold caught them and they died.

Such were the fates I saw befall the locusts. On the Athenian Acropolis is a statue of Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, and one of Xanthippus him self, who fought against the Persians at the naval battle of Mycale. But that of Pericles stands apart, while near Xanthippus stands Anacreon of Teos, the first poet after Sappho of Lesbos to devote himself to love songs, and his posture is as it were that of a man singing when he is drunk. Deinomenes made the two female figures which stand near, Io, the daughter of Inachus, and Callisto, the daughter of Lycaon, of both of whom exactly the same story is told, to wit, love of Zeus, wrath of Hera, and metamorphosis, Io becoming a cow and Callisto a bear.

By the south wall are represented the legendary war with the giants, who once dwelt about Thrace and on the isthmus of Pallene, the battle between the Athenians and the Amazons, the engagement with the Persians at Marathon and the destruction of the Gauls in Mysia. Each is about two cubits, and all were dedicated by Attalus. There stands too Olympiodorus, who won fame for the greatness of his achievements, especially in the crisis when he displayed a brave confidence among men who had met with continuous reverses, and were therefore in despair of winning a single success in the days to come.

For the disaster at Chaeronea was the beginning of misfortune for all the Greeks, and especially did it enslave those who had been blind to thedanger and such as had sided with Macedon. Most of their cities Philip captured; with Athens he nominally came to terms, but really imposed the severest penalties upon her, taking away the islands and putting an end to her maritime empire. For a time the Athenians remained passive, during the reign of Philip and subsequently of Alexander. But when on the death of Alexander the Macedonians chose Aridaeus to be their king, though the whole empire had been entrusted to Antipater, the Athenians now thought it intolerable if Greece should be for ever under the Macedonians, and themselves embarked on war besides inciting others to join them.

The cities that took part were, of the Peloponnesians, Argos, Epidaurus, Sicyon, Troezen, the Eleans, the Phliasians, Messene; on the other side of the Corinthian isthmus the Locrians, the Phocians, the Thessalians, Carystus, the Acarnanians belonging to the Aetolian League. The Boeotians, who occupied the Thebaid territory now that there were no Thebans left to dwell there, in fear lest the Athenians should injure them by founding a settlement on the site of Thebes, refused to join the alliance and lent all their forces to furthering the Macedonian cause.

Each city ranged under the alliance had its own general, but as commander-in-chief was chosen the Athenian Leosthenes, both because of the fame of his city and also because he had the reputation of being an experienced soldier. He had already proved himself a general benefactor of Greece. All the Greeks that were serving as mercenaries in the armies of Darius and his satraps Alexander had wished to deport to Persia, but Leosthenes was too quick for him, and brought them by sea to Europe. On this occasion too his brilliant actions surpassed expectation, and his death produced a general despair which was chiefly responsible for the defeat. A Macedonian garrison was set over the Athenians, and occupied first Munychia and afterwards Peiraeus also and the Long Walls.

On the death of Antipater Olympias came over from Epeirus, killed Aridaeus, and for a time occupied the throne; but shortly afterwards she was besieged by Cassander, taken and delivered up to the people. Of the acts of Cassander when he came to the throne my narrative will deal only with such as concern the Athenians. He seized the fort of Panactum in Attica and also Salamis, and established as tyrant in Athens Demetrius the son of Phanostratus, a man who had won a reputation for wisdom. This tyrant was put down by Demetrius the son of Antigonus, a young man of strong Greek sympathies.

But Cassander, inspired by a deep hatred of the Athenians, made a friend of Lachares, who up to now had been the popular champion, and induced him also to arrange a tyranny. We know no tyrant who proved so cruel to man and so impious to the gods. Although Demetrius the son of Antigonus was now at variance with the Athenian people, he notwithstanding deposed Lachares too from his tyranny, who, on the capture of the fortifications, escaped to Boeotia. Lachares took golden shields from the Acropolis, and stripped even the statue of Athena of its removable ornament; he was accordingly suspected of being a very wealthy man,

and was murdered by some men of Coronea for the sake of this wealth. After freeing the Athenians from tyrants Demetrius the son of Antigonus did not restore the Peiraeus to them immediately after the flight of Lachares, but subsequently overcame them and brought a garrison even into the upper city, fortifying the place called the Museum. This is a hill right opposite the Acropolis within the old city boundaries, where legend says Musaeus used to sing, and, dying of old age, was buried. Afterwards a monument also was erected here to a Syrian. At the time to which I refer Demetrius fortified and held it.

But afterwards a few men called to mind their forefathers, and the contrast between their present position and the ancient glory of Athens, and without more ado forth with elected Olympiodorus to be their general. He led them against the Macedonians, both the old men and the youths, and trusted for military success more to enthusiasm than to strength. The Macedonians came out to meet him, but he over came them, pursued them to the Museum, and captured the position.

So Athens was delivered from the Macedonians, and though all the Athenians fought memorably, Leocritus the son of Protarchus is said to have displayed most daring in the engagement. For he was the first to scale the fortification, and the first to rush into the Museum; and when he fell fighting, the Athenians did him great honor, dedicating his shield to Zeus of Freedom and in scribing on it the name of Leocritus and his exploit.

This is the greatest achievement of Olympiodorus, not to mention his success in recovering Peiraeus and Munychia; and again, when the Macedonians were raiding Eleusis he collected a force of Eleusinians and defeated the invaders. Still earlier than this, when Cassander had invaded Attica, Olympiodorus sailed to Aetolia and induced the Aetolians to help. This allied force was the main reason why the Athenians escaped war with Cassander. Olympiodorus has not only honors at Athens, both on the Acropolis and in the town hall but also a portrait at Eleusis. The Phocians too of Elatea dedicated at Delphi a bronze statue of Olympiodorus for help in their revolt from Cassander.

Near the statue of Olympiodorus stands a bronze image of Artemis surnamed Leucophryne, dedicated by the sons of Themistocles; for the Magnesians, whose city the King had given him to rule, hold Artemis Leucophryne in honor.But my narrative must not loiter, as my task is a general description of all Greece. Endoeus was an Athenian by birth and a pupil of Daedalus, who also, when Daedalus was in exile because of the death of Calos, followed him to Crete. Made by him is a statue of Athena seated, with an inscription that Callias dedicated the image, but Endoeus made it.

There is also a building called the Erechtheum. Before the entrance is an altar of Zeus the Most High, on which they never sacrifice a living creature but offer cakes, not being wont to use any wine either. Inside the entrance are altars, one to Poseidon, on which in obedience to an oracle they sacrifice also to Erechtheus, the second to the hero Butes, and the third to Hephaestus. On the walls are paintings representing members of the clan Butadae; there is also inside—the building is double—sea-water in a cistern. This is no great marvel, for other inland regions have similar wells, in particular Aphrodisias in Caria. But this cistern is remarkable for the noise of waves it sends forth when a south wind blows. On the rock is the outline of a trident. Legend says that these appeared as evidence in support of Poseidon's claim to the land.

Both the city and the whole of the land are alike sacred to Athena; for even those who in their parishes have an established worship of other gods nevertheless hold Athena in honor. But the most holy symbol, that was so considered by all many years before the unification of the parishes, is the image of Athena which is on what is now called the Acropolis, but in early days the Polis (City). A legend concerning it says that it fell from heaven; whether this is true or not I shall not discuss. A golden lamp for the goddess was made by Callimachus

Having filled the lamp with oil, they wait until the same day next year, and the oil is sufficient for the lamp during the interval, although it is alight both day and night. The wick in it is of Carpasian flax, the only kind of flax which is fire-proof, and a bronze palm above the lamp reaches to the roof and draws off the smoke. The Callimachus who made the lamp, although not of the first rank of artists, was yet of unparalleled cleverness, so that he was the first to drill holes through stones, and gave himself the title of Refiner of Art, or perhaps others gave the title and he adopted it as his.

In the temple of Athena Polias (Of the City) is a wooden Hermes, said to have been dedicated by Cecrops, but not visible because of myrtle boughs. The votive offerings worth noting are, of the old ones, a folding chair made by Daedalus, Persian spoils, namely the breastplate of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Now Masistius I know was killed by the Athenian cavalry. But Mardonius was opposed by the Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan; so the Athenians could not have taken the scimitar to begin with, and furthermore the Lacedaemonians would scarcely have suffered them to carry it off.

About the olive they have nothing to say except that it was testimony the goddess produced when she contended for their land. Legend also says that when the Persians fired Athens the olive was burnt down, but on the very day it was burnt it grew again to the height of two cubits.Adjoining the temple of Athena is the temple of Pandrosus, the only one of the sisters to be faithful to the trust.

I was much amazed at something which is not generally known, and so I will describe the circumstances. Two maidens dwell not far from the temple of Athena Polias, called by the Athenians Bearers of the Sacred Offerings. For a time they live with the goddess, but when the festival comes round they perform at night the following rites. Having placed on their heads what the priestess of Athena gives them to carry—neither she who gives nor they who carry have any knowledge what it is—the maidens descend by the natural underground passage that goes across the adjacent precincts, within the city, of Aphrodite in the Gardens. They leave down below what they carry and receive something else which they bring back covered up. These maidens they henceforth let go free, and take up to the Acropolis others in their place.

By the temple of Athena is .... an old woman about a cubit high, the inscription calling her a handmaid of Lysimache, and large bronze figures of men facing each other for a fight, one of whom they call Erechtheus, the other Eumolpus; and yet those Athenians who are acquainted with antiquity must surely know that this victim of Erechtheus was Immaradus, the son of Eumolpus.

On the pedestal are also statues of Theaenetus, who was seer to Tolmides, and of Tolmides himself, who when in command of the Athenian fleet inflicted severe damage upon the enemy, especially upon the Peloponnesians who dwell along the coast, burnt the dock-yards at Gythium and captured Boeae, belonging to the “provincials,” and the island of Cythera. He made a descent on Sicyonia, and, attacked by the citizens as he was laying waste the country, he put them to flight and chased them to the city. Returning afterwards to Athens, he conducted Athenian colonists to Euboea and Naxos and invaded Boeotia with an army. Having ravaged the greater part of the land and reduced Chaeronea by a siege, he advanced into the territory of Haliartus,where he was killed in battle and all his army worsted. Such was the history of Tolmides that I learnt.

There are also old figures of Athena, no limbs of which indeed are missing, but they are rather black and too fragile to bear a blow. For they too were caught by the flames when the Athenians had gone on board their ships and the King captured the city emptied of its able-bodied inhabitants. There is also a boar-hunt (I do not know for certain whether it is the Calydonian boar) and Cycnus fighting with Heracles. This Cycnus is said to have killed, among others, Lycus a Thracian, a prize having been proposed for the winner of the duel, but near the river Peneius he was himself killed by Heracles.

One of the Troezenian legends about Theseus is the following. When Heracles visited Pittheus at Troezen, he laid aside his lion's skin to eat his dinner, and there came in to see him some Troezenian children with Theseus, then about seven years of age. The story goes that when they saw the skin the other children ran away, but Theseus slipped out not much afraid, seized an axe from the servants and straightway attacked the skin in earnest, thinking it to be a lion.

This is the first Troezenian legend about Theseus. The next is that Aegeus placed boots and a sword under a rock as tokens for the child, and then sailed away to Athens; Theseus, when sixteen years old, pushed the rock away and departed, taking what Aegeus had deposited. There is a representation of this legend on the Acropolis, everything in bronze except the rock.

Another deed of Theseus they have represented in an offering, and the story about it is as follows:—The land of the Cretans and especially that by the river Tethris was ravaged by a bull. It would seem that in the days of old the beasts were much more formidable to men, for example the Nemean lion, the lion of Parnassus, the serpents in many parts of Greece, and the boars of Calydon, Eryrmanthus and Crommyon in the land of Corinth, so that it was said that some were sent up by the earth, that others were sacred to the gods, while others had been let loose to punish mankind. And so the Cretans say that this bull was sent by Poseidon to their land because, although Minos was lord of the Greek Sea, he did not worship Poseidon more than any other god.

They say that this bull crossed from Crete to the Peloponnesus, and came to be one of what are called the Twelve Labours of Heracles. When he was let loose on the Argive plain he fled through the isthmus of Corinth, into the land of Attica as far as the Attic parish of Marathon, killing all he met, including Androgeos, son of Minos. Minos sailed against Athens with a fleet, not believing that the Athenians were innocent of the death of Androgeos, and sorely harassed them until it was agreed that he should take seven maidens and seven boys for the Minotaur that was said to dwell in the Labyrinth at Cnossus. But the bull at Marathon Theseus is said to have driven afterwards to the Acropolis and to have sacrificed to the goddess; the offering commemorating this deed was dedicated by the parish of Marathon.

Why they set up a bronze statue of Cylon in spite of his plotting a tyranny, I cannot say for certain; but I infer that it was because he was very beautiful to look upon, and of no undistinguished fame, having won an Olympian victory in the double foot-race, while he had married the daughter of Theagenes, tyrant of Megara.

In addition to the works I have mentioned, there are two tithes dedicated by the Athenians after wars. There is first a bronze Athena, tithe from the Persians who landed at Marathon. It is the work of Pheidias, but the reliefs upon the shield, including the fight between Centaurs and Lapithae, are said to be from the chisel of Mys, for whom they say Parrhasius the son of Evenor, designed this and the rest of his works. The point of the spear of this Athena and the crest of her helmet are visible to those sailing to Athens, as soon as Sunium is passed. Then there is a bronze chariot, tithe from the Boeotians and the Chalcidians in Euboea. There are two other offerings, a statue of Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, and the best worth seeing of the works of Pheidias, the statue of Athena called Lemnian after those who dedicated it.

All the Acropolis is surrounded by a wall; a part was constructed by Cimon, son of Miltiades, but all the rest is said to have been built round it by the Pelasgians, who once lived under the Acropolis. The builders, they say, were Agrolas and Hyperbius. On inquiring who they were I could discover nothing except that they were Sicilians originally who emigrated to Acarnania.

On descending, not to the lower city, but to just beneath the Gateway, you see a fountain and near it a sanctuary of Apollo in a cave. It is here that Apollo is believed to have met Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus.... when the Persians had landed in Attica Philippides was sent to carry the tidings to Lacedaemon. On his return he said that the Lacedacmonians had postponed their departure, because it was their custom not to go out to fight before the moon was full. Philippides went on to say that near Mount Parthenius he had been met by Pan, who told him that he was friendly to the Athenians and would come to Marathon to fight for them. This deity, then, has been honored for this announcement.

There is also the Hill of Ares, so named because Ares was the first to be tried here; my narrative has already told that he killed Halirrhothius, and what were his grounds for this act. Afterwards, they say, Orestes was tried for killing his mother, and there is an altar to Athena Areia (Warlike), which he dedicated on being acquitted. The unhewn stones on which stand the defendants and the prosecutors, they call the stone of Outrage and the stone of Ruthlessness.

Hard by is a sanctuary of the goddesses which the Athenians call the August, but Hesiod in the Theogony calls them Erinyes (Furies). It was Aeschylus who first represented them with snakes in their hair. But on the images neither of these nor of any of the under-world deities is there anything terrible. There are images of Pluto, Hermes, and Earth, by which sacrifice those who have received an acquittal on the Hill of Ares; sacrifices are also offered on other occasions by both citizens and aliens.

Within the precincts is a monument to Oedipus, whose bones, after diligent inquiry, I found were brought from Thebes. The account of the death of Oedipus in the drama of Sophocles I am prevented from believing by Homer, who says that after the death of Oedipus Mecisteus came to Thebes and took part in the funeral games.

The Athenians have other law courts as well, which are not so famous. We have the Parabystum (Thrust aside) and the Triangle; the former is in an obscure part of the city, and in it the most trivial cases are tried; the latter is named from its shape. The names of Green Court and Red Court, due to their colors, have lasted down to the present day. The largest court, to which the greatest numbers come, is called Heliaea. One of the other courts that deal with bloodshed is called “At Palladium,” into which are brought cases of involuntary homicide. All are agreed that Demophon was the first to be tried there, but as to the nature of the charge accounts differ.

It is reported that after the capture of Troy Diomedes was returning home with his fleet when night overtook them as in their voyage they were off Phalerum. The Argives landed, under the impression that it was hostile territory, the darkness preventing them from seeing that it was Attica. Thereupon they say that Demophon, he too being unaware of the facts and ignorant that those who had landed were Argives, attacked them and, having killed a number of them, went off with the Palladium. An Athenian, however, not seeing before him in the dark, was knocked over by the horse of Demophon, trampled upon and killed. Whereupon Demophon was brought to trial, some say by the relatives of the man who was trampled upon, others say by the Argive commonwealth.

At Delphinium are tried those who claim that they have committed justifiable homicide, the plea put forward by Theseus when he was acquitted, after having killed Pallas, who had risen in revolt against him, and his sons. Before Theseus was acquitted it was the established custom among all men for the shedder of blood to go into exile, or, if he remained, to be put to a similar death. The Court in the Prytaneum, as it is called, where they try iron and all similar inanimate things, had its origin, I believe, in the following incident. It was when Erechtheus was king of Athens that the ox-slayer first killed an ox at the altar of Zeus Polieus. Leaving the axe where it lay he went out of the land into exile, and the axe was forthwith tried and acquitted, and the trial has been repeated year by year down to the present.

Furthermore, it is also said that inanimate objects have on occasion of their own accord inflicted righteous retribution upon men, of this the scimitar of Cambyses affords the best and most famous instance. Near the sea at the Peiraeus is Phreattys. Here it is that men in exile, when a further charge has been brought against them in their absence, make their defense on a ship while the judges listen on land. The legend is that Teucer first defended himself in this way before Telamon, urging that he was guiltless in the matter of the death of Ajax. Let this account suffice for those who are interested to learn about the law courts.

Near the Hill of Ares is shown a ship built for the procession of the Panathenaea. This ship, I suppose, has been surpassed in size by others, but I know of no builder who has beaten the vessel at Delos, with its nine banks of oars below the deck.

Book 1, Part 6 Cite

Outside the city, too, in the parishes and on the roads, the Athenians have sanctuaries of the gods, and graves of heroes and of men. The nearest is the Academy, once the property of a private individual, but in my time a gymnasium. As you go down to it you come to a precinct of Artemis, and wooden images of Ariste (Best) and Calliste (Fairest). In my opinion, which is supported by the poems of Pamphos, these are surnames of Artemis. There is another account of them, which I know but shall omit. Then there is a small temple, into which every year on fixed days they carry the image of Dionysus Eleuthereus.

Such are their sanctuaries here, and of the graves the first is that of Thrasybulus son of Lycus, in all respects the greatest of all famous Athenians, whether they lived before him or after him. The greater number of his achievements I shall pass by, but the following facts will suffice to bear out my assertion. He put down what is known as the tyranny of the Thirty, setting out from Thebes with a force amounting at first to sixty men; he also persuaded the Athenians, who were torn by factions, to be reconciled, and to abide by their compact. His is the first grave, and after it come those of Pericles, Chabrias and Phormio.

There is also a monument for all the Athenians whose fate it has been to fall in battle, whether at sea or on land, except such of them as fought at Marathon. These, for their valor, have their graves on the field of battle, but the others lie along the road to the Academy, and on their graves stand slabs bearing the name and parish of each. First were buried those who in Thrace, after a victorious advance as far as Drabescus, were unexpectedly attacked by the Edonians and slaughtered. There is also a legend that they were struck by lightning.

Among the generals were Leagrus, to whom was entrusted chief command of the army, and Sophanes of Decelea, who killed when he came to the help of the Aeginetans Eurybates the Argive, who won the prize in the pentathlon at the Nemean games. This was the third expedition which the Athenians dispatched out of Greece. For against Priam and the Trojans war was made with one accord by all the Greeks; but by them selves the Athenians sent armies, first with Iolaus to Sardinia, secondly to what is now Ionia, and thirdly on the present occasion to Thrace.

Before the monument is a slab on which are horsemen fighting. Their names are Melanopus and Macartatus, who met their death fighting against the Lacedaemonians and Boeotians on the borders of Eleon and Tanagra. There is also a grave of Thessalian horsemen who, by reason of an old alliance, came when the Peloponnesians with Archidamus invaded Attica with an army for the first time, and hard by that of Cretan bowmen. Again there are monuments to Athenians: to Cleisthenes, who invented the system of the tribes at present existing, and to horsemen who died when the Thessalians shared the fortune of war with the Athenians.

Here too lie the men of Cleone, who came with the Argives into Attica; the occasion whereof I shall set forth when in the course of my narrative I come to the Argives. There is also the grave of the Athenians who fought against the Aeginetans before the Persian invasion. It was surely a just decree even for a democracy when the Athenians actually allowed slaves a public funeral, and to have their names inscribed on a slab, which declares that in the war they proved good men and true to their masters. There are also monuments of other men, their fields of battle lying in various regions. Here lie the most renowned of those who went against Olynthus, and Melesander who sailed with a fleet along the Maeander into upper Caria;

also those who died in the war with Cassander, and the Argives who once fought as the allies of Athens. It is said that the alliance between the two peoples was brought about thus. Sparta was once shaken by an earthquake, and the Helots seceded to Ithome. After the secession the Lacedaemonians sent for help to various places, including Athens, which dispatched picked troops under the command of Cimon, the son of Miltiades. These the Lacedaemonians dismissed, because they suspected them.

The Athenians regarded the insult as intolerable, and on their way back made an alliance with the Argives, the immemorial enemies of the Lacedaemonians. Afterwards, when a battle was imminent at Tanagra, the Athenians opposing the Boeotians and Lacedaemonians, the Argives reinforced the Athenians. For a time the Argives had the better, but night came on and took from them the assurance of their victory, and on the next day the Lacedaemonians had the better, as the Thessalians betrayed the Athenians.

It occurred to me to tell of the following men also, firstly Apollodorus, commander of the mercenaries, who was an Athenian dispatched by Arsites, satrap of Phrygia by the Hellespont, and saved their city for the Perinthians when Philip had invaded their territory with an army. He, then, is buried here, and also Eubulus the son of Spintharus, along with men who though brave were not attended by good fortune; some attacked Lachares when he was tyrant, others planned the capture of the Peiraeus when in the hands of a Macedonian garrison, but before the deed could be accomplished were betrayed by their accomplices and put to death.

Here also lie those who fell near Corinth. Heaven showed most distinctly here and again at Leuctra that those whom the Greeks call brave are as nothing if Good Fortune be not with them, seeing that the Lacedaemonians, who had on this occasion overcome Corinthians and Athenians, and furthermore Argives and Boeotians, were afterwards at Leuctra so utterly overthrown by the Boeotians alone. After those who were killed at Corinth, we come across elegiac verses declaring that one and the same slab has been erected to those who died in Euboea and Chios, and to those who perished in the remote parts of the continent of Asia, or in Sicily.

The names of the generals are inscribed with the exception of Nicias, and among the private soldiers are included the Plataeans along with the Athenians. This is the reason why Nicias was passed over, and my account is identical with that of Philistus, who says that while Demosthenes made a truce for the others and excluded himself, attempting to commit suicide when taken prisoner, Nicias voluntarily submitted to the surrender. For this reason Nicias had not his name inscribed on the slab, being condemned as a voluntary prisoner and an unworthy soldier.

On another slab are the names of those who fought in the region of Thrace and at Megara, and when Alcibiades persuaded the Arcadians in Mantinea and the Eleans to revolt from the Lacedaemonians, and of those who were victorious over the Syracusans before Demosthenes arrived in Sicily. Here were buried also those who fought in the sea-fights near the Hellespont, those who opposed the Macedonians at Charonea, those who were killed at Delium in the territory of Tanagra, the men Leosthenes led into Thessaly, those who sailed with Cimon to Cyprus, and of those who with Olympiodorus expelled the garrison not more than thirteen men.

The Athenians declare that when the Romans were waging a border war they sent a small force to help them, and later on five Attic warships assisted the Romans in a naval action against the Carthaginians. Accordingly these men also have their grave here. The achievements of Tolmides and his men, and the manner of their death, I have already set forth, and any who are interested may take note that they are buried along this road. Here lie too those who with Cimon achieved the great feat of winning a land and naval victory on one and the same day.

Here also are buried Conon and Timotheus, father and son, the second pair thus related to accomplish illustrious deeds, Miltiades and Cimon being the first; Zeno too, the son of Mnaseas and Chrysippus of Soli, Nicias the son of Nicomedes, the best painter from life of all his contemporaries, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who killed Hipparchus, the son of Peisistratus; there are also two orators, Ephialtes, who was chiefly responsible for the abolition of the privileges of the Areopagus, and Lycurgus, the son of Lycophron;

Lycurgus provided for the state-treasury six thousand five hundred talents more than Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, collected, and furnished for the procession of the Goddess golden figures of Victory and ornaments for a hundred maidens; for war he provided arms and missiles, besides increasing the fleet to four hundred warships. As for buildings, he completed the theater that others had begun, while during his political life he built dockyards in the Peiraeus and the gymnasium near what is called the Lyceum. Everything made of silver or gold became part of the plunder Lachares made away with when he became tyrant, but the buildings remained to my time.

Before the entrance to the Academy is an altar to Love, with an inscription that Charmus was the first Athenian to dedicate an altar to that god. The altar within the city called the altar of Anteros (Love Avenged) they say was dedicated by resident aliens, because the Athenian Meles, spurning the love of Timagoras, a resident alien, bade him ascend to the highest point of the rock and cast himself down. Now Timagoras took no account of his life, and was ready to gratify the youth in any of his requests, so he went and cast himself down. When Meles saw that Timagoras was dead, he suffered such pangs of remorse that he threw himself from the same rock and so died. From this time the resident aliens worshipped as Anteros the avenging spirit of Timagoras.

In the Academy is an altar to Prometheus, and from it they run to the city carrying burning torches. The contest is while running to keep the torch still alight; if the torch of the first runner goes out, he has no longer any claim to victory, but the second runner has. If his torch also goes out, then the third man is the victor. If all the torches go out, no one is left to be winner. There is an altar to the Muses, and another to Hermes, and one within to Athena, and they have built one to Heracles. There is also an olive tree, accounted to be the second that appeared.

Not far from the Academy is the monument of Plato, to whom heaven foretold that he would be the prince of philosophers. The manner of the foretelling was this. On the night before Plato was to become his pupil Socrates in a dream saw a swan fly into his bosom. Now the swan is a bird with a reputation for music, because, they say, a musician of the name of Swan became king of the Ligyes on the other side of the Eridanus beyond the Celtic territory, and after his death by the will of Apollo he was changed into the bird. I am ready to believe that a musician became king of the Ligyes, but I cannot believe that a bird grew out of a man.

In this part of the country is seen the tower of Timon, the only man to see that there is no way to be happy except to shun other men. There is also pointed out a place called the Hill of Horses, the first point in Attica, they say, that Oedipus reached—this account too differs from that given by Homer, but it is nevertheless current tradition—and an altar to Poseidon, Horse God, and to Athena, Horse Goddess, and a chapel to the heroes Peirithous and Theseus, Oedipus and Adrastus. The grove and temple of Poseidon were burnt by Antigonus when he invaded Attica, who at other times also ravaged the land of the Athenians.

The small parishes of Attica, which were founded severally as chance would have it, presented the following noteworthy features. At Alimus is a sanctuary of Demeter Lawgiver and of the Maid, and at Zoster (Girdle) on the coast is an altar to Athena, as well as to Apollo, to Artemis and to Leto. The story is that Leto did not give birth to her children here, but loosened her girdle with a view to her delivery, and the place received its name from this incident. Prospalta has also a sanctuary of the Maid and Demeter, and Anagyrus a sanctuary of the Mother of the gods. At Cephale the chief cult is that of the Dioscuri, for the in habitants call them the Great gods.

At Prasiae is a temple of Apollo. Hither they say are sent the first-fruits of the Hyperboreans, and the Hyperboreans are said to hand them over to the Arimaspi, the Arimaspi to the Issedones, from these the Scythians bring them to Sinope, thence they are carried by Greeks to Prasiae, and the Athenians take them to Delos. The first-fruits are hidden in wheat straw, and they are known of none. There is at Prasiae a monument to Erysichthon, who died on the voyage home from Delos, after the sacred mission thither.

How Amphictyon banished Cranaus, his kinsman by marriage and king of Athens, I have already related. They say that fleeing with his supporters to the parish of Lamptrae he died and was buried there, and at the present day there is a monument to Cranaus at Lamptrae. At Potami in Attica is also the grave of Ion the son of Xuthus—for he too dwelt among the Athenians and was their commander-in-chief in the war with Eleusis.

Such is the legend. Phlya and Myrrhinus have altars of Apollo Dionysodotus, Artemis Light-bearer, Dionysus Flower-god, the Ismenian nymphs and Earth, whom they name the Great goddess; a second temple contains altars of Demeter Anesidora (Sender-up of Gifts), Zeus Ctesius (God of Gain), Tithrone Athena, the Maid First-born and the goddesses styled August. The wooden image at Myrrhinus is of Colaenis.

Athmonia worships Artemis Amarysia. On inquiry I discovered that the guides knew nothing about these deities, so I give my own conjecture. Amarynthus is a town in Euboea, the inhabitants of which worship Amarysia, while the festival of Amarysia which the Athenians celebrate is no less splendid than the Euboean. The name of the goddess, I think, came to Athmonia in this fashion and the Colaenis in Myrrhinus is called after Colaenus. I have already written that many of the inhabitants of the parishes say that they were ruled by kings even before the reign of Cecrops. Now Colaenus, say the Myrrhinusians, is the name of a man who ruled before Cecrops became king.

There is a parish called Acharnae, where they worship Apollo Agyieus (God of Streets) and Heracles, and there is an altar of Athena Health. And they call upon the name of Athena Horse-goddess and Dionysus Singer and Dionysus Ivy, saying that the plant ivy first appeared there.

The Attic mountains are Pentelicus, where there are quarries, Parnes, where there is hunting of wild boars and of bears, and Hymettus, which grows the most suitable pasture for bees, except that of the Alazones. For these people have actually bees ranging free, tamely following the other creatures when they go to pasture. These bees are not kept shut up in hives, and they work in any part of the land they happen to visit. They produce a solid mass from which you cannot separate either wax or honey. Such then is its nature.

The Athenians have also statues of gods on their mountains. On Pentelicus is a statue of Athena, on Hymettus one of Zeus Hymettius. There are altars both of Zeus Rain-god and of Apollo Foreseer. On Parnes is a bronze Zeus Parnethius, and an altar to Zeus Semaleus (Sign-giving). There is on Parnes another altar, and on it they make sacrifice, calling Zeus sometimes Rain-god, sometimes Averter of Ills. Anchesmus is a mountain of no great size, with an image of Zeus Anchesmius.

Before turning to a description of the islands, I must again proceed with my account of the parishes. There is a parish called Marathon, equally distant from Athens and Carystus in Euboea. It was at this pointin Attica that the foreigners landed, were defeated in battle, and lost some of their vessels as they were putting off from the land. On the plain is the grave of the Athenians, and upon it are slabs giving the names of the killed according to their tribes; and there is another grave for the Boeotian Plataeans and for the slaves, for slaves fought then for the first time by the side of their masters.

here is also a separate monument to one man, Miltiades, the son of Cimon, although his end came later, after he had failed to take Paros and for this reason had been brought to trial by the Athenians. At Marathon every night you can hear horses neighing and men fighting. No one who has expressly set himself to behold this vision has ever got any good from it, but the spirits are not wroth with such as in ignorance chance to be spectators. The Marathonians worship both those who died in the fighting, calling them heroes, and secondly Marathon, from whom the parish derives its name, and then Heracles, saying that they were the first among the Greeks to acknowledge him as a god.

They say too that there chanced to be present in the battle a man of rustic appearance and dress. Having slaughtered many of the foreigners with a plough he was seen no more after the engagement. When the Athenians made enquiries at the oracle the god merely ordered them to honor Echetlaeus (He of the Plough-tail) as a hero. A trophy too of white marble has been erected. Although the Athenians assert that they buried the Persians, because in every case the divine law applies that a corpse should be laid under the earth, yet I could find no grave. There was neither mound nor other trace to be seen, as the dead were carried to a trench and thrown in anyhow.

In Marathon is a spring called Macaria with the following legend. When Heracles left Tiryns, fleeing from Eurystheus, he went to live with his friend Ceyx, who was king of Trachis. But when Heracles departed this life Eurystheus demanded his children; whereupon the king of Trachis sent them to Athens, saying that he was weak but Theseus had power enough to succor them. The arrival of the children as suppliants caused for the first time war between Peloponnesians and Athenians, Theseus refusing to give up the refugees at the demand of Eurystheus. The story says that an oracle was given the Athenians that one of the children of Heracles must die a voluntary death, or else victory could not be theirs. Thereupon Macaria, daughter of Deianeira and Heracles, slew herself and gave to the Athenians victory in the war and to the spring her own name.

There is at Marathon a lake which for the most part is marshy. Into this ignorance of the roads made the foreigners fall in their flight, and it is said that this accident was the cause of their great losses. Above the lake are the stone stables of Artaphernes' horses, and marks of his tent on the rocks. Out of the lake flows a river, affording near the lake itself water suitable for cattle, but near its mouth it becomes salt and full of sea fish. A little beyond the plain is the Hill of Pan and a remarkable Cave of Pan. The entrance to it is narrow, but farther in are chambers and baths and the so-called “Pan's herd of goats,” which are rocks shaped in most respects like to goats.

At some distance from Marathon is Brauron, where, according to the legend, Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, landed with the image of Artemis when she fled from the Tauri; leaving the image there she came to Athens also and afterwards to Argos. There is indeed an old wooden image of Artemis here, but who in my opinion have the one taken from the foreigners I will set forth in another place.

About sixty stades from Marathon as you go along the road by the sea to Oropus stands Rhamnus. The dwelling houses are on the coast, but a little way inland is a sanctuary of Nemesis, the most implacable deity to men of violence. It is thought that the wrath of this goddess fell also upon the foreigners who landed at Marathon. For thinking in their pride that nothing stood in the way of their taking Athens, they were bringing a piece of Parian marble to make a trophy, convinced that their task was already finished.

Of this marble Pheidias made a statue of Nemesis, and on the head of the goddess is a crown with deer and small images of Victory. In her left hand she holds an apple branch, in her right hand a cup on which are wrought Aethiopians. As to the Aethiopians, I could hazard no guess myself, nor could I accept the statement of those who are convinced that the Aethiopians have been carved upon the cup be cause of the river Ocean. For the Aethiopians, they say, dwell near it, and Ocean is the father of Nemesis.

It is not the river Ocean, but the farthest part of the sea navigated by man, near which dwell the Iberians and the Celts, and Ocean surrounds the island of Britain. But of the Aethiopians beyond Syene, those who live farthest in the direction of the Red Sea are the Ichthyophagi (Fish-eaters), and the gulf round which they live is called after them. The most righteous of them inhabit the city Meroe and what is called the Aethiopian plain. These are they who show the Table of the Sun, and they have neither sea nor river except the Nile.

There are other Aethiopians who are neighbours of the Mauri and extend as far as the Nasamones. For the Nasamones, whom Herodotus calls the Atlantes, and those who profess to know the measurements of the earth name the Lixitae, are the Libyans who live the farthest close to Mount Atlas, and they do not till the ground at all, but live on wild vines. But neither these Aethiopians nor yet the Nasamones have any river. For the water near Atlas, which provides a beginning to three streams, does not make any of the streams a river, as the sand swallows it all up at once. So the Aethiopians dwell near no river Ocean.

The water from Atlas is muddy,and near the source were crocodiles of not less than two cubits, which when the men approached dashed down into the spring. The thought has occurred to many that it is the reappearance of this water out of the sand which gives the Nile to Egypt. Mount Atlas is so high that its peaks are said to touch heaven, but is inaccessible because of the water and the presence everywhere of trees. Its region indeed near the Nasamones is known, but we know of nobody yet who has sailed along the parts facing the sea. I must now resume.

Book 1, Part 7 Cite

Neither this nor any other ancient statue of Nemesis has wings, for not even the holiest wooden images of the Smyrnaeans have them, but later artists, convinced that the goddess manifests herself most as a consequence of love, give wings to Nemesis as they do to Love. I will now go onto describe what is figured on the pedestal of the statue, having made this preface for the sake of clearness. The Greeks say that Nemesis was the mother of Helen, while Leda suckled and nursed her. The father of Helen the Greeks like everybody else hold to be not Tyndareus but Zeus.

Having heard this legend Pheidias has represented Helen as being led to Nemesis by Leda, and he has represented Tyndareus and his children with a man Hippeus by name standing by with a horse. There are Agamemnon and Menelaus and Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles and first husband of Hermione, the daughter of Helen. Orestes was passed over because of his crime against his mother, yet Hermione stayed by his side in everything and bore him a child. Next upon the pedestal is one called Epochus and another youth; the only thing I heard about them was that they were brothers of Oenoe, from whom the parish has its name.

The land of Oropus, between Attica and the land of Tanagra, which originally belonged to Boeotia, in our time belongs to the Athenians, who always fought for it but never won secure pos session until Philip gave it to them after taking Thebes. The city is on the coast and affords nothing remarkable to record. About twelve stades from the city is a sanctuary of Amphiaraus.

Legend says that when Amphiaraus was exiled from Thebes the earth opened and swallowed both him and his chariot. Only they say that the incident did not happen here, the place called the Chariot being on the road from Thebes to Chalcis. The divinity of Amphiaraus was first established among the Oropians, from whom afterwards all the Greeks received the cult. I can enumerate other men also born at this time who are worshipped among the Greeks as gods; some even have cities dedicated to them, such as Eleus in Chersonnesus dedicated to Protesilaus, and Lebadea of the Boeotians dedicated to Trophonius. The Oropians have both a temple and a white marble statue of Amphiaraus.

The altar shows parts. One part is to Heracles, Zeus, and Apollo Healer, another is given up to heroes and to wives of heroes, the third is to Hestia and Hermes and Amphiaraus and the children of Amphilochus. But Alcmaeon, because of his treatment of Eriphyle, is honored neither in the temple of Amphiaraus nor yet with Amphilochus. The fourth portion of the altar is to Aphrodite and Panacea, and further to Iaso, Health and Athena Healer. The fifth is dedicated to the nymphs and to Pan, and to the rivers Achelous and Cephisus. The Athenians too have an altar to Amphilochus in the city, and there is at Mallus in Cilicia an oracle of his which is the most trustworthy of my day.

The Oropians have near the temple a spring, which they call the Spring of Amphiaraus; they neither sacrifice into it nor are wont to use it for purifications or for lustral water. But when a man has been cured of a disease through a response the custom is to throw silver and coined gold into the spring, for by this way they say that Amphiaraus rose up after he had become a god. Iophon the Cnossian, a guide, produced responses in hexameter verse, saying that Amphiaraus gave them to the Argives who were sent against Thebes. These verses unrestrainedly appealed to popular taste. Except those whom they say Apollo inspired of old none of the seers uttered oracles, but they were good at explaining dreams and interpreting the flights of birds and the entrails of victims.

My opinion is that Amphiaraus devoted him self most to the exposition of dreams. It is manifest that, when his divinity was established, it was a dream oracle that he set up. One who has come to consult Amphiaraus is wont first to purify himself. The mode of purification is to sacrifice to the god, and they sacrifice not only to him but also to all those whose names are on the altar. And when all these things have been first done, they sacrifice a ram, and, spreading the skin under them, go to sleep and await enlightenment in a dream.

There are islands not far from Attica. Of the one called the Island of Patroclus I have already given an account. There is another when you have sailed past Sunium with Attica on the left. On this they say that Helen landed after the capture of Troy,

and for this reason the name of the island is Helene. Salamis lies over against Eleusis, and stretches as far as the territory of Megara. It is said that the first to give this name to the island was Cychreus, who called it after his mother Salamis, the daughter of Asopus, and afterwards it was colonized by the Aeginetans with Telamon. Philaeus, the son of Eurysaces, the son of Ajax, is said to have handed the island over to the Athenians, having been made an Athenian by them. Many years afterwards the Athenians drove out all the Salaminians, having discovered that they had been guilty of treachery in the war with Cassander, and mainly of set purpose had surrendered to the Macedonians. They sentenced to death Aeschetades, who on this occasion had been elected general for Salamis, and they swore never to forget the treachery of the Salaminians.

There are still the remains of a market-place, a temple of Ajax and his statue in ebony. Even at the present day the Athenians pay honors to Ajax himself and to Eurysaces, for there is an altar of Eurysaces also at Athens. In Salamis is shown a stone not far from the harbor, on which they say that Telamon sat when he gazed at the ship in which his children were sailing away to Aulis to take part in the joint expedition of the Greeks.

Those who dwell about Salamis say that it was when Ajax died that the flower first appeared in their country. It is white and tinged with red, both flower and leaves being smaller than those of the lily; there are letters on it like to those on the iris. About the judgment concerning the armour I heard a story of the Aeolians who afterwards settled at Ilium, to the effect that when Odysseus suffered shipwreck the armour was cast ashore near the grave of Ajax. As to the hero's size, a Mysian was my informant.

He said that the sea flooded the side of the grave facing the beach and made it easy a enter the tomb, and he bade me form an estimate of the size of the corpse in the following way. The bones on his knees, called by doctors the knee-pan, were in the case of Ajax as big as the quoit of a boy in the pentathlon. I saw nothing to wonder at in the stature of those Celts who live farthest of on the borders of the land which is uninhabited because of the cold; these people, the Cabares, are no bigger than Egyptian corpses. But I will relate all that appeared to me worth seeing.

For the Magnesians on the Lethaeus, Protophanes, one of the citizens, won at Olympia in one day victories in the pancration and in wrestling. Into the grave of this man robbers entered, thinking to gain some advantage, and after the robbers people came in to see the corpse, which had ribs not separated but joined together from the shoulders to the smallest ribs, those called by doctors bastard. Before the city of the Milesians is an island called Lade, and from it certain islets are detached. One of these they call the islet of Asterius, and say that Asterius was buried in it, and that Asterius was the son of Anax, and Anax the son of Earth. Now the corpse is not less than ten cubits.

But what really caused me surprise is this. There is a small city of upper Lydia called The Doors of Temenus. There a crest broke away in a storm, and there appeared bones the shape of which led one to suppose that they were human, but from their size one would never have thought it. At once the story spread among the multitude that it was the corpse of Geryon, the son of Chrysaor, and that the seat also was his. For there is a man's seat carved on a rocky spur of the mountain. And a torrent they called the river Ocean, and they said that men ploughing met with the horns of cattle, for the story is that Geryon reared excellent cows.

And when I criticized the account and pointed out to them that Geryon is at Gadeira, where there is, not his tomb, but a tree showing different shapes, the guides of the Lydians related the true story, that the corpse is that of Hyllus, a son of Earth, from whom the river is named. They also said that Heracles from his sojourning with Omphale called his son Hyllus after the river.

But I will return to my subject. In Salamis is a sanctuary of Artemis, and also a trophy erected in honor of the victory which Themistocles the son of Neocles won for the Greeks. There is also a sanctuary of Cychreus. When the Athenians were fighting the Persians at sea, a serpent is said to have appeared in the fleet, and the god in an oracle told the Athenians that it was Cychreus the hero.

Before Salamis there is an island called Psyttalea. Here they say that about four hundred of the Persians landed, and when the fleet of Xerxes was defeated, these also were killed after the Greeks had crossed over to Psyttalea. The island has no artistic statue, only some roughly carved wooden images of Pan.

As you go to Eleusis from Athens along what the Athenians call the Sacred Way you see the tomb of Anthemocritus. The Megarians committed against him a most wicked deed, for when he had come as a herald to forbid them to encroach upon the land in future they put him to death. For this act the wrath of the Two Goddesses lies upon them even to this day, for they are the only Greeks that not even the emperor Hadrian could make more prosperous.

After the tombstone of Anthemocritus comes the grave of Molottus, who was deemed worthy of commanding the Athenians when they crossed into Euboea to reinforce Plutarch, and also a place called Scirum, which received its name for the following reason. The Eleusinians were making war against Erechtheus when there came from Dodona a seer called Scirus, who also set up at Phalerum the ancient sanctuary of Athena Sciras. When he fell in the fighting the Elusinians buried him near a torrent, and the hero has given his name to both place and torrent.

Hard by is the tomb of Cephisodorus, who was champion of the people and opposed to the utmost Philip, the son of Demetrius, king of Macedon. Cephisodorus induced to become allies of Athens two kings, Attalus the Mysian and Ptolemy the Egyptian, and, of the self-governing peoples, the Aetolians with the Rhodians and the Cretans among the islanders.

As the reinforcements from Egypt, Mysia, and Crete were for the most part too late, and the Rhodians, whose strength lay only in their fleet, were of little help against the Macedonian men-at-arms, Cephisodorus sailed with other Athenians to Italy and begged aid of the Romans. They sent a force and a general, who so reduced Philip and the Macedonians that afterwards Perseus, the son of Philip, lost his throne and was himself taken prisoner to Italy. This Philip was the son of Demetrius. Demetrius was the first of this house to hold the throne of Macedon, having put to death Alexander, son of Cassander, as I have related in a former part of my account.

After the tomb of Cephisodorus is the grave of Heliodorus Halis. A portrait of this man is also to be seen in the great temple of Athena. Here too is the grave of Themistocles, son of Poliarchus, and grandson of the Themistocles who fought the sea fight against Xerxes and the Persians. Of the later descendants I shall mention none except Acestium. She, her father Xenocles, his father Sophocles, and his father Leon, all of them up to her great-grandfather Leon won the honor of being torch-bearer, and in her own lifetime she saw as torch-bearers, first her brother Sophocles, after him her husband Themistocles, and after his death her son Theophrastus. Such was the fortune, they say, that happened to her.

A little way past the grave of Themistocles is a precinct sacred to Lacius, a hero, a parish called after him Laciadae, and the tomb of Nicocles of Tarentum, who won a unique reputation as a harpist. There is also an altar of Zephyrus and a sanctuary of Demeter and her daughter. With them Athena and Poseidon are worshipped. There is a legend that in this place Phytalus welcomed Demeter in his home, for which act the goddess gave him the fig tree. This story is borne out by the inscription on the grave of Phytalus:—Hero and king, Phytalus here welcome gave to Demeter,August goddess, when first she created fruit of the harvest;Sacred fig is the name which mortal men have assigned it.Whence Phytalus and his race have gotten honours immortal.

Before you cross the Cephisus you come to the tomb of Theodorus, the best tragic actor of his day. By the river is a statue of Mnesimache, and a votive statue of her son cutting his hair as a gift for Cephisus. That this habit has existed from ancient times among all the Greeks may be inferred from the poetry of Homer, who makes Peleus vow that on the safe return of Achilles from Troy he will cut off the young man's hair as a gift for the Spercheus.

Across the Cephisus is an ancient altar of Zeus Meilichius (Gracious). At this altar Theseus obtained purification at the hands of the descendants of Phytalus after killing brigands, including Sinis who was related to him through Pittheus. Here is the grave of Theodectes of Phaselis, and also that of Mnesitheus. They say that he was a skilful physician and dedicated statues, among which is a representation of Iacchus. On the road stands a small temple called that of Cyamites. I cannot state for certain whether he was the first to sow beans, or whether they gave this name to a hero because they may not attribute to Demeter the discovery of beans. Whoever has been initiated at Eleusis or has read what are called the Orphica knows what I mean.

Of the tombs, the largest and most beautiful are that of a Rhodian who settled at Athens, and the one made by the Macedonian Harpalus, who ran away from Alexander and crossed with a fleet from Asia to Europe. On his arrival at Athens he was arrested by the citizens, but ran away after bribing among others the friends of Alexander. But before this he married Pythonice, whose family I do not know, but she was a courtesan at Athens and at Corinth. His love for her was so great that when she died he made her a tomb which is the most noteworthy of all the old Greek tombs.

There is a sanctuary in which are set statues of Demeter, her daughter, Athena, and Apollo. At the first it was built in honor of Apollo only. For legend says that Cephalus, the son of Deion, having helped Amphitryon to destroy the Teleboans, was the first to dwell in that island which now is called after him Cephallenia, and that he resided till that time at Thebes, exiled from Athens because he had killed his wife Procris. In the tenth generation afterwards Chalcinus and Daetus, descendants of Cephalus, sailed to Delphi and asked the god for permission to return to Athens.

He ordered them first to sacrifice to Apollo in that spot in Attica where they should see a man-of-war running on the land. When they reached the mountain called the Many-colored Mountain a snake was seen hurrying into its hole. In this place they sacrificed to Apollo; afterwards they came to Athens and the Athenians made them citizens. After this is a temple of Aphrodite, before which is a note worthy wall of unwrought stone.

The streams called Rheiti are rivers only in so far as they are currents, for their water is sea water. It is a reasonable belief that they flow beneath the ground from the Euripus of the Chalcidians, and fall into a sea of a lower level. They are said to be sacred to the Maid and to Demeter, and only the priests of these goddesses are permitted to catch the fish in them. Anciently, I learn, these streams were the boundaries between the land of the Eleusinians and that of the other Athenians,

and the first to dwell on the other side of the Rheiti was Crocon, where at the present day is what is called the palace of Crocon. This Crocon the Athenians say married Saesara, daughter of Celeus. Not all of them say this, but only those who belong to the parish of Scambonidae. I could not find the grave of Crocon, but Eleusinians and Athenians agreed in identifying the tomb of Eumolpus. This Eumolpus they say came from Thrace, being the son of Poseidon and Chione. Chione they say was the daughter of the wind Boreas and of Oreithyia. Homer says nothing about the family of Eumolpus, but in his poems styles him “manly.”

When the Eleusinians fought with the Athenians, Erechtheus, king of the Athenians, was killed, as was also Immaradus, son of Eumolpus. These were the terms on which they concluded the war: the Eleusinians were to have in dependent control of the mysteries, but in all things else were to be subject to the Athenians. The ministers of the Two Goddesses were Eumolpus and the daughters of Celeus, whom Pamphos and Homer agree in naming Diogenia, Pammerope, and the third Saesara. Eumolpus was survived by Ceryx, the younger of his sons whom the Ceryces themselves say was a son of Aglaurus, daughter of Cecrops, and of Hermes, not of Eumolpus.

There is also a shrine of the hero Hippothoon, after whom the tribe is named, and hard by one of Zarex. The latter they say learned music from Apollo, but my opinion is that he was a Lacedaemonian who came as a stranger to the land, and that after him is named Zarax, a town in the Laconian territory near the sea. If there is a native Athenian hero called Zarex, I have nothing to say concerning him.

At Eleusis flows a Cephisus which is more violent than the Cephisus I mentioned above, and by the side of it is the place they call Erineus, saying that Pluto descended there to the lower world after carrying off the Maid. Near this Cephisus Theseus killed a brigand named Polypemon and surnamed Procrustes.

The Eleusinians have a temple of Triptolemus, of Artemis of the Portal, and of Poseidon Father, and a well called Callichorum (Lovely dance), where first the women of the Eleusinians danced and sang in praise of the goddess. They say that the plain called Rharium was the first to be sown and the first to grow crops, and for this reason it is the custom to use sacrificial barley and to make cakes for the sacrifices from its produce. Here there is shown a threshing-floor called that of Triptolemus and an altar.

My dream forbade the description of the things within the wall of the sanctuary, and the uninitiated are of course not permitted to learn that which they are prevented from seeing. The hero Eleusis, after whom the city is named, some assert to be a son of Hermes and of Daeira, daughter of Ocean; there are poets, however, who have made Ogygus father of Eleusis. Ancient legends, deprived of the help of poetry, have given rise to many fictions, especially concerning the pedigrees of heroes.

When you have turned from Eleusis to Boeotia you come to the Plataean land, which borders on Attica. Formerly Eleutherae formed the boundary on the side towards Attica, but when it came over to the Athenians henceforth the boundary of Boeotia was Cithaeron. The reason why the people of Eleutherae came over was not because they were reduced by war, but because they desired to share Athenian citizenship and hated the Thebans. In this plain is a temple of Dionysus, from which the old wooden image was carried off to Athens. The image at Eleutherae at the present day is a copy of the old one.

A little farther on is a small cave, and beside it is a spring of cold water. The legend about the cave is that Antiope after her labour placed her babies into it; as to the spring, it is said that the shepherd who found the babies washed them there for the first time, taking off their swaddling clothes. Of Eleutherae there were still left the ruins of the wall and of the houses. From these it is clear that the city was built a little above the plain close to Cithaeron.

There is another road from Eleusis, which leads to Megara. As you go along this road you come to a well called Anthium (Flowery Well). Pamphos in his poems describes how Demeter in the likeness of an old woman sat at this well after the rape of her daughter, how the daughters of Celeus thence took her as an Argive woman to their mother, and how Metaneira thereupon entrusted to her the rearing of her son.

Book 1, Part 8 Cite

A little farther on from the well is a sanctuary of Metaneira, and after it are graves of those who went against Thebes. For Creon, who at that time ruled in Thebes as guardian of Laodamas the son of Eteocles, refused to allow the relatives to take up and bury their dead. But Adrastus having supplicated Theseus, the Athenians fought with the Boeotians, and Theseus being victorious in the fight carried the dead to the Eleusinian territory and buried them here. The Thebans, however, say that they voluntarily gave up the dead for burial and deny that they engaged in battle.

After the graves of the Argives is the tomb of Alope, who, legend says, being mother of Hippothoon by Poseidon was on this spot put to death by her father Cercyon. He is said to have treated strangers wickedly, especially in wrestling with them against their will. So even to my day this place is called the Wrestling Ground of Cercyon, being a little way from the grave of Alope. Cercyon is said to have killed all those who tried a bout with him except Theseus, who out matched him mainly by his skill. For Theseus was the first to discover the art of wrestling, and through him afterwards was established the teaching of the art. Before him men used in wrestling only size and strength of body.Such in my opinion are the most famous legends and sights among the Athenians, and from the beginning my narrative has picked out of much material the things that deserve to be recorded.

Next to Eleusis is the district called Megaris. This too belonged to Athens in ancient times, Pylas the king having left it to Pandion. My evidence is this; in the land is the grave of Pandion, and Nisus, while giving up the rule over the Athenians to Aegeus, the eldest of all the family, was himself made king of Megara and of the territory as far as Corinth. Even at the present day the port of the Megarians is called Nisaea after him. Subsequently in the reign of Codrus the Peloponnesians made an expedition against Athens. Having accomplished nothing brilliant, on their way home they took Megara from the Athenians, and gave it as a dwelling-place to such of the Corinthians and of their other allies as wished to go there.

In this way the Megarians changed their customs and dialect and became Dorians, and they say that the city received its name when Car the son of Phoroneus was king in this land. It was then they say that sanctuaries of Demeter were first made by them, and then that men used the name Megara (Chambers). This is their history according to the Megarians themselves. But the Boeotians declare that Megareus, son of Poseidon, who dwelt in Onchestus, came with an army of Boeotians to help Nisus wage the war against Minos; that falling in the battle he was buried on the spot, and the city was named Megara from him, having previously been called Nisa.

In the twelfth generation after Car the son of Phoroneus the Megarians say that Lelex arrived from Egypt and became king, and that in his reign the tribe Leleges received its name. Lelex they say begat Cleson, Cleson Pylas and Pylas Sciron, who married the daughter of Pandion and afterwards disputed with Nisus, the son of Pandion, about the throne, the dispute being settled by Aeacus, who gave the kingship to Nisus and his descendants, and to Sciron the leadership in war. They say further that Nisus was succeeded by Megareus, the son of Poseidon, who married Iphinoe, the daughter of Nisus, but they ignore altogether the Cretan war and the capture of the city in the reign of Nisus.

There is in the city a fountain, which was built for the citizens by Theagenes, whom I have mentioned previously as having given his daughter in marriage to Cylon the Athenian. This Theagenes upon becoming tyrant built the fountain, which is noteworthy for its size, beauty and the number of its pillars. Water flows into it called the water of the Sithnid nymphs. The Megarians say that the Sithnid nymphs are native, and that one of them mated with Zeus; that Megarus, a son of Zeus and of this nymph, escaped the flood in the time of Deucalion, and made his escape to the heights of Gerania. The mountain had not yet received this name, but was then named Gerania (Crane Hill) because cranes were flying and Megarus swam towards the cry of the birds.

Not far from this fountain is an ancient sanctuary, and in our day likenesses stand in it of Roman emperors, and a bronze image is there of Artemis surnamed Saviour. There is a story that a detachment of the army of Mardonius, having over run Megaris, wished to return to Mardonius at Thebes, but that by the will of Artemis night came on them as they marched, and missing their way they turned into the hilly region. Trying to find out whether there was a hostile force near they shot some missiles. The rock near groaned when struck, and they shot again with greater eagerness,

until at last they used up all their arrows thinking that they were shooting at the enemy. When the day broke, the Megarians attacked, and being men in armour fighting against men without armour who no longer had even a supply of missiles, they killed the greater number of their opponents. For this reason they had an image made of Artemis Saviour. Here are also images of the gods named the Twelve, said to be the work of Praxiteles. But the image of Artemis herself was made by Strongylion.

After this when you have entered the precinct of Zeus called the Olympieum you see a note worthy temple. But the image of Zeus was not finished, for the work was interrupted by the war of the Peloponnesians against the Athenians, in which the Athenians every year ravaged the land of the Megarians with a fleet and an army, damaging public revenues and bringing private families to dire distress. The face of the image of Zeus is of ivory and gold, the other parts are of clay and gypsum. The artist is said to have been Theocosmus, a native, helped by Pheidias. Above the head of Zeus are the Seasons and Fates, and all may see that he is the only god obeyed by Destiny, and that he apportions the seasons as is due. Behind the temple lie half-worked pieces of wood, which Theocosmus intended to overlay with ivory and gold in order a complete the image of Zeus.

In the temple itself is dedicated a bronze ram of a galley. This ship they say that they captured off Salamis in a naval action with the Athenians. The Athenians too admit that for a time they evacuated the island before the Megarians, saying that after wards Solon wrote elegiac poems and encouraged them, and that thereupon the Athenians challenged their enemies, won the war and recovered Salamis. But the Megarians say that exiles from themselves, whom they call Dorycleans, reached the colonists in Salamis and betrayed the island to the Athenians.

After the precinct of Zeus, when you have ascended the citadel, which even at the present day is called Caria from Car, son of Phoroneus, you see a temple of Dionysus Nyctelius (Nocturnal), a sanctuary built to Aphrodite Epistrophia (She who turns men to love), an oracle called that of Night and a temple of Zeus Conius (Dusty) without a roof. The image of Asclepius and also that of Health were made by Bryaxis. Here too is what is called the Chamber of Demeter, built, they say, by Car when he was king.

On coming down from the citadel, where the ground turns northwards, is the tomb of Alcmena, near the Olympieum. They say that as she was walking from Argos to Thebes she died on the way at Megara, and that the Heracleidae fell to disputing, some wishing to carry the corpse of Alcmena back to Argos, others wishing to take it to Thebes, as in Thebes were buried Amphitryon and the children of Heracles by Megara. But the god in Delphi gave them an oracle that it was better for them to bury Alcmena in Megara.

From this place the local guide took us to a place which he said was named Rhus (Stream), for that water once flowed here from the mountains above the city. But Theagenes, who was tyrant at that time, turned the water into another direction and made here an altar to Achelous. Hard by is the tomb of Hyllus, son of Heracles, who fought a duel with an Arcadian, Echemus the son of Aeropus. Who the Echemus was who killed Hyllus I will tell in another part of my narrative, but Hyllus also is buried at Megara. These events might correctly be called an expedition of the Heracleidae into the Peloponnesus in the reign of Orestes.

Not far from the tomb of Hyllus is a temple of Isis, and beside it one of Apollo and of Artemis. They say that Alcathous made it after killing the lion called Cithaeronian. By this lion they say many were slain, including Euippus, the son of Megareus their king, whose elder son Timalcus had before this been killed by Theseus while on a campaign with the Dioscuri against Aphidna. Megareus they say promised that he who killed the Cithaeronian lion should marry his daughter and succeed him in the kingdom. Alcathous therefore, son of Pelops, attacked the beast and overcame it, and when he came to the throne he built this sanctuary, surnaming Artemis Agrotera (Huntress) and Apollo Agraeus (Hunter).

Such is the account of the Megarians; but although I wish my account to agree with theirs, yet I cannot accept everything they say. I am ready to believe that a lion was killed by Alcathous on Cithaeron, but what historian has re corded that Timalcus the son of Megareus came with the Dioscuri to Aphidna? And supposing he had gone there, how could one hold that he had been killed by Theseus, when Alcman wrote a poem on the Dioscuri, in which he says that they captured Athens and carried into captivity the mother of Theseus, but Theseus himself was absent?

Pindar in his poems agrees with this account, saying that Theseus, wishing to be related to the Dioscuri, carried off Helen and kept her until he departed to carry out with Peirithous the marriage that they tell of. Whoever has studied genealogy finds the Megarians guilty of great silliness, since Theseus was a descendant of Pelops. The fact is that the Megarians know the true story but conceal it, not wishing it to be thought that their city was captured in the reign of Nisus, but that both Megareus, the son-in-law of Nisus, and Alcathous, the son-in-law of Megareus, succeeded their respective fathers-in-law as king.

It is evident that Alcathous arrived from Elis just at the time when Nisus had died and the Megarians had lost everything. Witness to the truth of my statements the fact that he built the wall afresh from the beginning, the old one round the city having been destroyed by the Cretans.Let so much suffice for Alcathous and for the lion, whether it was on Cithaeron or elsewhere that the killing took place that caused him to make a temple to Artemis Agrotera and Apollo Agraeus. On going down from this sanctuary you see the shrine of the hero Pandion. My narrative has already told how Pandion was buried on what is called the Rock of Athena Aethyia (Gannet). He receives honors from the Megarians in the city as well.

Near the shrine of the hero Pandion is the tomb of Hippolyte. I will record the account the Megarians give of her. When the Amazons, having marched against the Athenians because of Antiope, were over come by Theseus, most of them met their death in the fight, but Hippolyte, the sister of Antiope and on this occasion the leader of the women, escaped with a few others to Megara. Having suffered such a military disaster, being in despair at her present situation and even more hopeless of reaching her home in Themiscyra, she died of a broken heart, and the Megarians gave her burial. The shape of her tomb is like an Amazonian shield.

Not far from this is the grave of Tereus, who married Procne the daughter of Pandion. The Megarians say that Tereus was king of the region around what is called Pagae (Springs) of Megaris, but my opinion, which is confirmed by extant evidence, is that he ruled over Daulis beyond Chaeronea, for in ancient times the greater part of what is now called Greece was inhabited by foreigners. When Tereus did what he did to Philomela and Itys suffered at the hands of the women, Tereus found himself unable to seize them.

He committed suicide in Megara, and the Megarians forthwith raised him a barrow, and every year sacrifice to him, using in the sacrifice gravel instead of barley meal; they say that the bird called the hoopoe appeared here for the first time. The women came to Athens, and while lamenting their sufferings and their revenge, perished through their tears; their reported metamorphosis into a nightingale and a swallow is due, I think, to the fact that the note of these birds is plaintive and like a lamentation.

The Megarians have another citadel, which is named after Alcathous. As you ascend this citadel you see on the right the tomb of Megareus, who at the time of the Cretan invasion came as an ally from Onchestus. There is also shown a hearth of the gods called Prodomeis (Builders before). They say that Alcathous was the first to sacrifice to them, at the time when he was about to begin the building of the wall.

Near this hearth is a stone, on which they say Apollo laid his lyre when he was helping Alcathous in the building. I am confirmed in my view that the Megarians used to be tributary to the Athenians by the fact that Alcathous appears to have sent his daughter Periboea with Theseus to Crete in payment of the tribute. On the occasion of his building the wall, the Megarians say, Apollo helped him and placed his lyre on the stone; and if you happen to hit it with a pebble it sounds just as a lyre does when struck.

This made me marvel, but the colossus in Egypt made me marvel far more than anything else. In Egyptian Thebes, on crossing the Nile to the so called Pipes, I saw a statue, still sitting, which gave out a sound. The many call it Memnon, who they say from Aethiopia overran Egypt and as far as Susa. The Thebans, however, say that it is a statue, not of Memnon, but of a native named Phamenoph, and I have heard some say that it is Sesostris. This statue was broken in two by Cambyses, and at the present day from head to middle it is thrown down; but the rest is seated, and every day at the rising of the sun it makes a noise, and the sound one could best liken to that of a harp or lyre when a string has been broken.

The Megarians have a council chamber which once, they say, was the grave of Timalcus, who just now I said was not killed by Theseus. On the top of the citadel is built a temple of Athena, with an image gilt except the hands and feet; these and the face are of ivory. There is another sanctuary built here, of Athena Victory, and yet a third of Athena Aeantis (Ajacian). About the last the Megarian guides have omitted to record anything, but I will write what I take to be the facts. Telamon the son of Aeacus married Periboea the daughter of Alcathous; so my opinion is that Ajax, who succeeded to the throne of Alcathous, made the statue of Athena.

The ancient temple of Apollo was of brick, but the emperor Hadrian afterwards built it of white marble. The Apollo called Pythian and the one called Decatephorus (Bringer of Tithes) are very like the Egyptian wooden images, but the one surnamed Archegetes (Founder) resembles Aeginetan works. They are all alike made of ebony. I have heard a man of Cyprus, who was skilled at sorting herbs for medicinal purposes, say that the ebony does not grow leaves or bear fruit, or even appear in the sunlight at all, but consists of underground roots which are dug up by the Aethiopians, who have men skilled at finding ebony.

There is also a sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophorus (Lawgiver). On going down from it you see the tomb of Callipolis, son of Alcathous. Alcathous had also an elder son, Ischepolis, whom his father sent to help Meleager to destroy the wild beast in Aetolia. There he died, and Callipolis was the first to hear of his death. Running up to the citadel, at the moment when his father was preparing a fire to sacrifice to Apollo, he flung the logs from the altar. Alcathous, who had not yet heard of the fate of Ischepolis, judged that Callipolis was guilty of impiety, and forthwith, angry as he was, killed him by striking his head with one of the logs that had been flung from the altar.

On the road to the Town-hall is the shrine of the heroine Ino, about which is a fencing of stones, and beside it grow olives. The Megarians are the only Greeks who say that the corpse of Ino was cast up on their coast, that Cleso and Tauropolis, the daughters of Cleson, son of Lelex, found and buried it, and they say that among them first was she named Leucothea, and that every year they offer her sacrifice.

They say that there is also a shrine of the heroine Iphigenia; for she too according to them died in Megara. Now I have heard another account of Iphigenia that is given by Arcadians and I know that Hesiod, in his poem A Catalogue of Women, says that Iphigenia did not die, but by the will of Artemis is Hecate. With this agrees the account of Herodotus, that the Tauri near Scythia sacrifice castaways to a maiden who they say is Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon. Adrastus also is honored among the Megarians, who say that he too died among them when he was leading back his army after taking Thebes, and that his death was caused by old age and the fate of Aegialeus. A sanctuary of Artemis was made by Agamemnon when he came to persuade Calchas, who dwelt in Megara, to accompany him to Troy.

In the Town-hall are buried, they say, Euippus the son of Megareus and Ischepolis the son of Alcathous. Near the Town-hall is a rock. They name it Anaclethris (Recall), because Demeter (if the story be credible) here too called her daughter back when she was wandering in search of her. Even in our day the Megarian women hold a performance that is a mimic representation of the legend.

In the city are graves of Megarians. They made one for those who died in the Persian invasion, and what is called the Aesymnium (Shrine of Aesymnus) was also a tomb of heroes. When Agamemnon's son Hyperion, the last king of Megara, was killed by Sandion for his greed and violence, they resolved no longer to be ruled by one king, but to have elected magistrates and to obey one another in turn. Then Aesymnus, who had a reputation second to none among the Megarians, came to the god in Delphi and asked in what way they could be prosperous. The oracle in its reply said that they would fare well if they took counsel with the majority. This utterance they took to refer to the dead, and built a council chamber in this place in order that the grave of their heroes might be within it.

Between this and the hero-shrine of Alcathous, which in my day the Megarians used as a record office, was the tomb, they said, of Pyrgo, the wife of Alcathous before he married Euaechme, the daughter of Megareus, and the tomb of Iphinoe, the daughter of Alcathous; she died, they say, a maid. It is customary for the girls to bring libations to the tomb of Iphiaoe and to offer a lock of their hair before their wedding, just as the daughters of the Delians once cut their hair for Hecaerge and Opis.

Beside the entrance to the sanctuary of Dionysus is the grave of Astycratea and Manto. They were daughters of Polyidus, son of Coeranus, son of Abas, son of Melampus, who came to Megara to purify Alcathous when he had killed his son Callipolis. Polyidus also built the sanctuary of Dionysus, and dedicated a wooden image that in our day is covered up except the face, which alone is exposed. By the side of it is a Satyr of Parian marble made by Praxiteles. This Dionysus they call Patrous (Paternal); but the image of another, that they surname Dasyllius, they say was dedicated by Euchenor, son of Coeranus, son of Polyidus.

After the sanctuary of Dionysus is a temple of Aphrodite, with an ivory image of Aphrodite surnamed Praxis (Action). This is the oldest object in the temple. There is also Persuasion and another goddess, whom they name Consoler, works of Praxiteles. By Scopas are Love and Desire and Yearning, if indeed their functions are as different as their names. Near the temple of Aphrodite is a sanctuary of Fortune, the image being one of the works of Praxiteles. In the temple hard by are Muses and a bronze Zeus by Lysippus.

The Megarians have also the grave of Coroebus. The poetical story of him, although it equally concerns Argos, I will relate here. They say that in the reign of Crotopus at Argos, Psamathe, the daughter of Crotopus, bore a son to Apollo, and being in dire terror of her father, exposed the child. He was found and destroyed by sheepdogs of Crotopus, and Apollo sent Vengeance to the city to punish the Argives. They say that she used to snatch the children from their mothers, until Coroebus to please the Argives slew Vengeance. Whereat as a second punishment plague fell upon them and stayed not. So Coroebus of his own accord went to Delphi to submit to the punishment of the god for having slain Vengeance.

The Pythia would not allow Coroebus to return to Argos, but ordered him to take up a tripod and carry it out of the sanctuary, and where the tripod should fall from his hands, there he was to build a temple of Apollo and to dwell himself. At Mount Gerania the tripod slipped and fell unawares. Here he dwelt in the village called the Little Tripods. The grave of Coroebus is in the market-place of the Megarians. The story of Psamathe and of Coroebus himself is carved on it in elegiac verses and further, upon the top of the grave is represented Coroebus slaying Vengeance. These are the oldest stone images I am aware of having seen among the Greeks.

Near Coroebus is buried Orsippus who won the footrace at Olympia by running naked when all his competitors wore girdles according to ancient custom. They say also that Orsippus when general afterwards annexed some of the neighboring territory. My own opinion is that at Olympia he intentionally let the girdle slip off him, realizing that a naked man can run more easily than one girt.

As you go down from the market-place you see on the right of the street called Straight a sanctuary of Apollo Prostaterius (Protecting). You must turn a little aside from the road to discover it. In it is a noteworthy Apollo, Artemis also, and Leto, and other statues, made by Praxiteles. In the old gymnasium near the gate called the Gate of the Nymphs is a stone of the shape of a small pyramid. This they name Apollo Carinus, and here there is a sanctuary of the Eileithyiae.Such are the sights that the city had to show.

When you have gone down to the port, which to the present day is called Nisaea, you see a sanctuary of Demeter Malophorus (Sheep-bearer or Apple-bearer). One of the accounts given of the surname is that those who first reared sheep in the land named Demeter Malophorus. The roof of the temple one might conclude has fallen in through age. There is a citadel here, which also is called Nisaea. Below the citadel near the sea is the tomb of Lelex, who they say arrived from Egypt and became king, being the son of Poseidon and of Libya, daughter of Epphus. Parallel to Nisaea lies the small island of Minoa, where in the war against Nisus anchored the fleet of the Cretans.

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The hilly part of Megaris borders upon Boeotia, and in it the Megarians have built the city Pagae and another one called Aegosthena. As you go to Pagae, on turning a little aside from the highway, you are shown a rock with arrows stuck all over it, into which the Persians once shot in the night. In Pagae a noteworthy relic is a bronze image of Artemis surnamed Saviour, in size equal to that at Megara and exactly like it in shape. There is also a hero-shrine of Aegialeus, son of Adrastus. When the Argives made their second attack on Thebes he died at Glisas early in the first battle, and his relatives carried him to Pagae in Megaris and buried him, the shrine being still called the Aegialeum.

In Aegosthena is a sanctuary of Melampus, son of Amythaon, and a small figure of a man carved upon a slab. To Melampus they sacrifice and hold a festival every year. They say that he divines neither by dreams nor in any other way. Here is something else that I heard in Erenea, a village of the Megarians. Autonoe, daughter of Cadmus, left Thebes to live here owing to her great grief at the death of Actaeon, the manner of which is told in legend, and at the general misfortune of her father's house. The tomb of Autonoe is in this village.

On the road from Megara to Corinth are graves, including that of the Samian flute-player Telephanes, said to have been made by Cleopatra, daughter of Philip, son of Amyntas. There is also the tomb of Car, son of Phoroneus, which was originally a mound of earth, but afterwards, at the command of the oracle, it was adorned with mussel stone. The Megarians are the only Greeks to possess this stone, and in the city also they have made many things out of it. It is very white, and softer than other stone; in it throughout are sea mussels. Such is the nature of the stone. The road called Scironian to this day and named after Sciron, was made by him when he was war minister of the Megarians, and originally they say was constructed for the use of active men. But the emperor Hadrian broadened it, and made it suitable even for chariots to pass each other in opposite directions.

There are legends about the rocks, which rise especially at the narrow part of the road. As to the Molurian, it is said that from it Ino flung her self into the sea with Melicertes, the younger of her children. Learchus, the elder of them, had been killed by his father. One account is that Athamas did this in a fit of madness; another is that he vented on Ino and her children unbridled rage when he learned that the famine which befell the Orchomenians and the supposed death of Phrixus were not accidents from heaven, but that Ino, the step-mother, had intrigued for all these things.

Then it was that she fled to the sea and cast herself and her son from the Molurian Rock. The son, they say, was landed on the Corinthian Isthmus by a dolphin, and honors were offered to Melicertes, then renamed Palaemon, including the celebration of the Isthmian games. The Molurian dock they thought sacred to Leucothea and Palaemon; but those after it they consider accursed, in that Sciron, who dwelt by them, used to cast into the sea all the strangers he met. A tortoise used to swim under the rocks to seize those that fell in. Sea tortoises are like land tortoises except in size and for their feet, which are like those of seals. Retribution for these deeds overtook Sciron, for he was cast into the same sea by Theseus.

On the top of the mountain is a temple of Zeus surnamed Aphesius (Releaser). It is said that on the occasion of the drought that once afflicted the Greeks Aeacus in obedience to an oracular utterance sacrificed in Aegina to Zeus God of all the Greeks, and Zeus rained and ended the drought, gaining thus the name Aphesius. Here there are also images of Aphrodite, Apollo, and Pan.

Farther on is the tomb of Eurystheus. The story is that he fled from Attica after the battle with the Heracleidae and was killed here by Iolaus. When you have gone down from this road you see a sanctuary of Apollo Latous, after which is the boundary between Megara and Corinth, where legend says that Hyllus, son of Heracles, fought a duel with the Arcadian Echemus.

Book 2, Part 1 Cite

The Corinthian land is a portion of the Argive, and is named after Corinthus. That Corinthus was a son of Zeus I have never known anybody say seriously except the majority of the Corinthians. Eumelus, the son of Amphilytus, of the family called Bacchidae, who is said to have composed the epic poem, says in his Corinthian History (if indeed the history be his) that Ephyra, the daughter of Oceanus, dwelt first in this land; that afterwards Marathon, the son of Epopeus, the son of Aloeus, the son of Helius (Sun), fleeing from the lawless violence of his father migrated to the sea coast of Attica; that on the death of Epopeus he came to Peloponnesus, divided his kingdom among his sons, and returned to Attica; and that Asopia was renamed after Sicyon, and Ephyraea after Corinthus.

Corinth is no longer inhabited by any of the old Corinthians, but by colonists sent out by the Romans. This change is due to the Achaean League. The Corinthians, being members of it, joined in the war against the Romans, which Critolaus, when appointed general of the Achaeans, brought about by persuading to revolt both the Achaeans and the majority of the Greeks outside the Peloponnesus. When the Romans won the war, they carried out a general disarmament of the Greeks and dismantled the walls of such cities as were fortified. Corinth was laid waste by Mummius, who at that time commanded the Romans in the field, and it is said that it was afterwards refounded by Caesar, who was the author of the present constitution of Rome. Carthage, too, they say, was refounded in his reign.

In the Corinthian territory is also the place called Cromyon from Cromus the son of Poseidon. Here they say that Phaea was bred; overcoming this sow was one of the traditional achievements of Theseus. Farther on the pine still grew by the shore at the time of my visit, and there was an altar of Melicertes. At this place, they say, the boy was brought ashore by a dolphin; Sisyphus found him lying and gave him burial on the Isthmus, establishing the Isthmian games in his honor.

At the beginning of the Isthmus is the place where the brigand Sinis used to take hold of pine trees and draw them down. All those whom he overcame in fight he used to tie to the trees, and then allow them to swing up again. Thereupon each of the pines used to drag to itself the bound man, and as the bond gave way in neither direction but was stretched equally in both, he was torn in two. This was the way in which Sinis himself was slain by Theseus. For Theseus rid of evildoers the road from Troezen to Athens, killing those whom I have enumerated and, in sacred Epidaurus, Periphetes, thought to be the son of Hephaestus, who used to fight with a bronze club.

The Corinthian Isthmus stretches on the one hand to the sea at Cenchreae, and on the other to the sea at Lechaeum. For this is what makes the region to the south mainland. He who tried to make the Peloponnesus an island gave up before digging through the Isthmus. Where they began to dig is still to be seen, but into the rock they did not advance at all. So it still is mainland as its nature is to be. Alexander the son of Philip wished to dig through Mimas, and his attempt to do this was his only unsuccessful project. The Cnidians began to dig through their isthmus, but the Pythian priestess stopped them. So difficult it is for man to alter by violence what Heaven has made.

A legend of the Corinthians about their land is not peculiar to them, for I believe that the Athenians were the first to relate a similar story to glorify Attica. The Corinthians say that Poseidon had a dispute with Helius (Sun) about the land, and that Briareos arbitrated between them, assigning to Poseidon the Isthmus and the parts adjoining, and giving to Helius the height above the city.Ever since, they say, the Isthmus has belonged to Poseidon.

Worth seeing here are a theater and a white-marble race-course. Within the sanctuary of the god stand on the one side portrait statues of athletes who have won victories at the Isthmian games, on the other side pine trees growing in a row, the greater number of them rising up straight. On the temple, which is not very large, stand bronze Tritons. In the fore-temple are images, two of Poseidon, a third of Amphitrite, and a Sea, which also is of bronze. The offerings inside were dedicated in our time by Herodes the Athenian, four horses, gilded except for the hoofs, which are of ivory,

and two gold Tritons beside the horses, with the parts below the waist of ivory. On the car stand Amphitrite and Poseidon, and there is the boy Palaemon upright upon a dolphin. These too are made of ivory and gold. On the middle of the base on which the car is has been wrought a Sea holding up the young Aphrodite, and on either side are the nymphs called Nereids. I know that there are altars to these in other parts of Greece, and that some Greeks have even dedicated to them precincts by shores, where honors are also paid to Achilles. In Gabala is a holy sanctuary of Doto, where there was still remaining the robe by which the Greeks say that Eriphyle was bribed to wrong her son Alcmaeon.

Among the reliefs on the base of the statue of Poseidon are the sons of Tyndareus, because these too are saviours of ships and of sea-faring men. The other offerings are images of Calm and of Sea, a horse like a whale from the breast onward, Ino and Bellerophontes, and the horse Pegasus.

Within the enclosure is on the left a temple of Palaemon, with images in it of Poseidon, Leucothea and Palaemon himself. There is also what is called his Holy of Holies, and an underground descent to it, where they say that Palaemon is concealed. Whosoever, whether Corinthian or stranger, swears falsely here, can by no means escape from his oath. There is also an ancient sanctuary called the altar of the Cyclopes, and they sacrifice to the Cyclopes upon it.

The graves of Sisyphus and of Neleus—for they say that Neleus came to Corinth, died of disease, and was buried near the Isthmus—I do not think that anyone would look for after reading Eumelus. For he says that not even to Nestor did Sisyphus show the tomb of Neleus, because it must be kept unknown to everybody alike, and that Sisyphus is indeed buried on the Isthmus, but that few Corinthians, even those of his own day, knew where the grave was. The Isthmian games were not interrupted even when Corinth had been laid waste by Mummius, but so long as it lay deserted the celebration of the games was entrusted to the Sicyonians, and when it was rebuilt the honor was restored to the present inhabitants.

The names of the Corinthian harbors were given them by Leches and Cenchrias, said to be the children of Poseidon and Peirene the daughter of Achelous, though in the poem called The Great Eoeae Peirene is said to be a daughter of Oebalus. In Lechaeum are a sanctuary and a bronze image of Poseidon, and on the road leading from the Isthmus to Cenchreae a temple and ancient wooden image of Artemis. In Cenchreae are a temple and a stone statue of Aphrodite, after it on the mole running into the sea a bronze image of Poseidon, and at the other end of the harbor sanctuaries of Asclepius and of Isis. Right opposite Cenchreae is Helen's Bath. It is a large stream of salt, tepid water, flowing from a rock into the sea.

As one goes up to Corinth are tombs, and by the gate is buried Diogenes of Sinope, whom the Greeks surname the Dog. Before the city is a grove of cypresses called Craneum. Here are a precinct of Bellerophontes, a temple of Aphrodite Melaenis and the grave of Lais, upon which is set a lioness holding a ram in her fore-paws.

There is in Thessaly another tomb which claims to be that of Lais, for she went to that country also when she fell in love with Hippostratus. The story is that originally she was of Hycara in Sicily. Taken captive while yet a girl by Nicias and the Athenians, she was sold and brought to Corinth, where she surpassed in beauty the courtesans of her time, and so won the admiration of the Corinthians that even now they claim Lais as their own.

The things worthy of mention in the city include the extant remains of antiquity, but the greater number of them belong to the period of its second ascendancy. On the market-place, where most of the sanctuaries are, stand Artemis surnamed Ephesian and wooden images of Dionysus, which are covered with gold with the exception of their faces; these are ornamented with red paint. They are called Lysius and Baccheus,

and I too give the story told about them. They say that Pentheus treated Dionysus despitefully, his crowning outrage being that he went to Cithaeron, to spy upon the women, and climbing up a tree beheld what was done. When the women detected Pentheus, they immediately dragged him down, and joined in tearing him, living as he was, limb from limb. Afterwards, as the Corinthians say, the Pythian priestess commanded them by an oracle to discover that tree and to worship it equally with the god. For this reason they have made these images from the tree.

There is also a temple of Fortune, with a standing image of Parian marble. Beside it is a sanctuary for all the gods. Hard by is built a fountain, on which is a bronze Poseidon; under the feet of Poseidon is a dolphin spouting water. There is also a bronze Apollo surnamed Clarius and a statue of Aphrodite made by Hermogenes of Cythera. There are two bronze, standing images of Hermes, for one of which a temple has been made. The images of Zeus also are in the open; one had not a surname, another they call Chthonius (of the Lower World) and the third Most High.

In the middle of the market-place is a bronze Athena, on the pedestal of which are wrought in relief figures of the Muses. Above the market-place is a temple of Octavia the sister of Augustus, who was emperor of the Romans after Caesar, the founder of the modern Corinth.

On leaving the market-place along the road to Lechaeum you come to a gateway, on which are two gilded chariots, one carrying Phaethon the son of Helius (Sun), the other Helius himself. A little farther away from the gateway, on the right as you go in, is a bronze Heracles. After this is the entrance to the water of Peirene. The legend about Peirene is that she was a woman who became a spring because of her tears shed in lamentation for her son Cenchrias, who was unintentionally killed by Artemis.

The spring is ornamented with white marble, and there have been made chambers like caves, out of which the water flows into an open-air well. It Is pleasant to drink, and they say that the Corinthian bronze, when red-hot, is tempered by this water, since bronze . . . the Corinthians have not. Moreover near Peirene are an image and a sacred enclosure of Apollo; in the latter is a painting of the exploit of Odysseus against the suitors.

Proceeding on the direct road to Lechaeum we see a bronze image of a seated Hermes. By him stands a ram, for Hermes is the god who is thought most to care for and to increase flocks, as Homer puts it in the Iliad:—Son was he of Phorbas, the dearest of Trojans to Hermes,Rich in flocks, for the god vouchsafed him wealth in abundance.The story told at the mysteries of the Mother about Hermes and the ram I know but do not relate. After the image of Hermes come Poseidon, Leucothea, and Palaemon on a dolphin.

The Corinthians have baths in many parts of the city, some put up at the public charge and one by the emperor Hadrian. The most famous of them is near the Poseidon. It was made by the Spartan Eurycles, who beautified it with various kinds of stone, especially the one quarried at Croceae in Laconia. On the left of the entrance stands a Poseidon, and after him Artemis hunting. Throughout the city are many wells, for the Corinthians have a copious supply of flowing water, besides the water which the emperor Hadrian brought from Lake Stymphalus, but the most noteworthy is the one by the side of the image of Artemis. Over it is a Bellerophontes, and the water flows through the hoof of the horse Pegasus.

As you go along another road from the market-place, which leads to Sicyon, you can see on the right of the road a temple and bronze image of Apollo, and a little farther on a well called the Well of Glauce. Into this they say she threw herself in the belief that the water would be a cure for the drugs of Medea. Above this well has been built what is called the Odeum (Music Hall), beside which is the tomb of Medea's children. Their names were Mermerus and Pheres, and they are said to have been stoned to death by the Corinthians owing to the gifts which legend says they brought to Glauce.

But as their death was violent and illegal, the young babies of the Corinthians were destroyed by them until, at the command of the oracle, yearly sacrifices were established in their honor and a figure of Terror was set up. This figure still exists, being the likeness of a woman frightful to look upon but after Corinth was laid waste by the Romans and the old Corinthians were wiped out, the new settlers broke the custom of offering those sacrifices to the sons of Medea, nor do their children cut their hair for them or wear black clothes.

On the occasion referred to Medea went to Athens and married Aegeus, but subsequently she was detected plotting against Theseus and fled from Athens also; coming to the land then called Aria she caused its inhabitants to be named after her Medes. The son, whom she brought with her in her flight to the Arii, they say she had by Aegeus, and that his name was Medus. Hellanicus, however, calls him Polyxenus and says that his father was Jason.

The Greeks have an epic poem called Naupactia. In this Jason is represented as having removed his home after the death of Pelias from Iolcus to Corcyra, and Mermerus, the elder of his children, to have been killed by a lioness while hunting on the mainland opposite. Of Pheres is recorded nothing. But Cinaethon of Lacedaemon, another writer of pedigrees in verse, said that Jason's children by Medea were a son Medeus and a daughter Eriopis; he too, however, gives no further information about these children.

Eumelus said that Helius (Sun) gave the Asopian land to Aloeus and Epliyraea to Aeetes. When Aeetes was departing for Colchis he entrusted his land to Bunus, the son of Hermes and Alcidamea, and when Bunus died Epopeus the son of Aloeus extended his kingdom to include the Ephyraeans. Afterwards, when Corinthus, the son of Marathon, died childless, the Corinthians sent for Medea from Iolcus and bestowed upon her the kingdom.

Through her Jason was king in Corinth, and Medea, as her children were born, carried each to the sanctuary of Hera and concealed them, doing so in the belief that so they would be immortal. At last she learned that her hopes were vain, and at the same time she was detected by Jason. When she begged for pardon he refused it, and sailed away to Iolcus. For these reasons Medea too departed, and handed over the kingdom to Sisyphus.

This is the account that I read, and not far from the tomb is the temple of Athena Chalinitis (Bridler). For Athena, they say, was the divinity who gave most help to Bellerophontes, and she delivered to him Pegasus, having herself broken in and bridled him. The image of her is of wood, but face, hands and feet are of white marble.

That Bellerophontes was not an absolute king, but was subject to Proetus and the Argives is the belief of myself and of all who have read carefully the Homeric poems. When Bellerophontes migrated to Lycia it is clear that the Corinthians none the less were subject to the despots at Argos or Mycenae. By themselves they provided no leader for the campaign against Troy, but shared in the expedition as part of the forces, Mycenaean and other, led by Agamemnon.

Sisyphus had other sons besides Glaucus, the father of Bellerophontes a second was Ornytion, and besides him there were Thersander and Almus. Ornytion had a son Phocus, reputed to have been begotten by Poseidon. He migrated to Tithorea in what is now called Phocis, but Thoas, the younger son of Ornytion, remained behind at Corinth. Thoas begat Damophon, Damophon begat Propodas, and Propodas begat Doridas and Hyanthidas. While these were kings the Dorians took the field against Corinth, their leader being Aletes, the son of Hippotas, the son of Phylas, the son of Antiochus, the son of Heracles. So Doridas and Hyanthidas gave up the kingship to Aletes and remained at Corinth, but the Corinthian people were conquered in battle and expelled by the Dorians.

Aletes himself and his descendants reigned for five generations to Bacchis, the son of Prumnis, and, named after him, the Bacchidae reigned for five more generations to Telestes, the son of Aristodemus. Telestes was killed in hate by Arieus and Perantas, and there were no more kings, but Prytanes (Presidents) taken from the Bacchidae and ruling for one year, until Cypselus, the son of Eetion, became tyrant and expelled the Bacchidae. Cypselus was a descendant of Melas, the son of Antasus. Melas from Gonussa above Sicyon joined the Dorians in the expedition against Corinth. When the god expressed disapproval Aletes at first ordered Melas to withdraw to other Greeks, but afterwards, mistaking the oracle, he received him as a settler.Such I found to be the history of the Corinthian kings.

Now the sanctuary of Athena Chalinitis is by their theater, and near is a naked wooden image of Heracles, said to be a work of Daedalus. All the works of this artist, although rather uncouth to look at, are nevertheless distinguished by a kind of inspiration. Above the theater is a sanctuary of Zeus surnamed in the Latin tongue Capitolinus, which might be rendered into Greek “Coryphaeos”. Not far from this theater is the ancient gymnasium, and a spring called Lerna. Pillars stand around it, and seats have been made to refresh in summer time those who have entered it. By this gymnasium are temples of Zeus and Asclepius. The images of Asclepius and of Health are of white marble, that of Zeus is of bronze.

The Acrocorinthus is a mountain peak above the city, assigned to Helius by Briareos when he acted as adjudicator, and handed over, the Corinthians say, by Helius to Aphrodite. As you go up this Acrocorinthus you see two precincts of Isis, one if Isis surnamed Pelagian (Marine) and the other of Egyptian Isis, and two of Serapis, one of them being of Serapis called “in Canopus.” After these are altars to Helius, and a sanctuary of Necessity and Force, into which it is not customary to enter.

Above it are a temple of the Mother of the gods and a throne; the image and the throne are made of stone. The temple of the Fates and that of Demeter and the Maid have images that are not exposed to view. Here, too, is the temple of Hera Bunaea set up by Bunus the son of Hermes. It is for this reason that the goddess is called Bunaea.

On the summit of the Acrocorinthus is a temple of Aphrodite. The images are Aphrodite armed, Helius, and Eros with a bow. The spring, which is behind the temple, they say was the gift of Asopus to Sisyphus. The latter knew, so runs the legend, that Zeus had ravished Aegina, the daughter of Asopus, but refused to give information to the seeker before he had a spring given him on the Acrocorinthus. When Asopus granted this request Sisyphus turned informer, and on this account he receives—if anyone believes the story—punishment in Hades. I have heard people say that this spring and Peirene are the same, the water in the city flowing hence under-ground.

This Asopus rises in the Phliasian territory, flows through the Sicyonian, and empties itself into the sea here. His daughters, say the Phliasians, were Corcyra, Aegina, and Thebe. Corcyra and Aegina gave new names to the islands called Scheria and Oenone, while from Thebe is named the city below the Cadmea. The Thebans do not agree, but say that Thebe was the daughter of the Boeotian, and not of the Phliasian, Asopus.

The other stories about the river are current among both the Phliasians and the Sicyonians, for instance that its water is foreign and not native, in that the Maeander, descending from Celaenae through Phrygia and Caria, and emptying itself into the sea at Miletus, goes to the Peloponnesus and forms the Asopus. I remember hearing a similar story from the Delians, that the stream which they call Inopus comes to them from the Nile. Further, there is a story that the Nile itself is the Euphrates, which disappears into a marsh, rises again beyond Aethiopia and becomes the Nile.

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Such is the account I heard of the Asopus. When you have turned from the Acrocorinthus into the mountain road you see the Teneatic gate and a sanctuary of Eilethyia. The town called Tenea is just about sixty stades distant. The inhabitants say that they are Trojans who were taken prisoners in Tenedos by the Greeks, and were permitted by Agamemnon to dwell in their present home. For this reason they honor Apollo more than any other god.

As you go from Corinth, not into the interior but along the road to Sicyon, there is on the left not far from the city a burnt temple. There have, of course, been many wars carried on in Corinthian territory, and naturally houses and sanctuaries outside the wall have been fired. But this temple, they say, was Apollo's, and Pyrrhus the son of Achilles burned it down. Subsequently I heard another account, that the Corinthians built the temple for Olympian Zeus, and that suddenly fire from some quarter fell on it and destroyed it.

The Sicyonians, the neighbours of the Corinthians at this part of the border, say about their own land that Aegialeus was its first and aboriginal inhabitant, that the district of the Peloponnesus still called Aegialus was named after him because he reigned over it, and that he founded the city Aegialea on the plain. Their citadel, they say, was where is now their sanctuary of Athena; further, that Aegialeus begat Europs, Europs Telchis, and Telchis Apis.

This Apis reached such a height of power before Pelops came to Olympia that all the territory south of the Isthmus was called after him Apia. Apis begat Thelxion, Thelxion Aegyrus, the Thurimachus, and Thurimachus Leucippus. Leucippus had no male issue, only a daughter Calchinia. There is a story that this Calchinia mated with Poseidon; her child was reared by Leucippus, who at his death handed over to him the kingdom. His name was Peratus.

What is reported of Plemnaeus, the son of Peratus, seemed to me very wonderful. All the children borne to him by his wife died the very first time they wailed. At last Demeter took pity on Plemnaeus, came to Aegialea in the guise of a strange woman, and reared for Plemnaeus his son Orthopolis. Orthopolis had a daughter Chrysorthe, who is thought to have borne a son named Coronus to Apollo. Coronus had two sons, Corax and a younger one Lamedon.

Corax died without issue, and at about this time came Epopeus from Thessaly and took the kingdom. In his reign the first hostile army is said to have invaded the land, which before this had enjoyed unbroken peace. The reason was this. Antiope, the daughter of Nycteus, had a name among the Greeks for beauty, and there was also a report that her father was not Nycteus but Asopus, the river that separates the territories of Thebes and Plataea.

This woman Epopeus carried off but I do not know whether he asked for her hand or adopted a bolder policy from the beginning. The Thebans came against him in arms, and in the battle Nycteus was wounded. Epopeus also was wounded, but won the day. Nycteus they carried back ill to Thebes, and when he was about to die he appointed to be regent of Thebes his brother Lycus for Labdacus, the son of Polydorus, the son of Cadmus, being still a child, was the ward of Nycteus, who on this occasion entrusted the office of guardian to Lycus. He also besought him to attack Aegialea with a larger army and bring vengeance upon Epopeus; Antiope herself, if taken, was to be punished.

As to Epopeus, he forthwith offered sacrifice for his victory and began a temple of Athena, and when this was complete he prayed the goddess to make known whether the temple was finished to her liking, and after the prayer they say that olive oil flowed before the temple. Afterwards Epopeus also died of his wound, which he had neglected at first, so that Lycus had now no need to wage war. For Lamedon, the son of Coronus, who became king after Epopeus, gave up Antiope. As she was being taken to Thebes by way of Eleutherae, she was delivered there on the road.

On this matter Asius the son of Amphiptolemus says in his poem:—Zethus and Amphion had Antiope for their mother,Daughter of Asopus, the swift, deep-eddying river,Having conceived of Zeus and Epopeus, shepherd of peoples. Homer traces their descent to the more august side of their family, and says that they were the first founders of Thebes, in my opinion distinguishing the lower city from the Cadmea.

When Lamedon became king he took to wife an Athenian woman, Pheno, the daughter of Clytius. Afterwards also, when war had arisen between him and Archander and Architeles, the sons of Achaeus, he brought in as his ally Sicyon from Attica, and gave him Zeuxippe his daughter to wife. This man became king, and the land was named after him Sicyonia, and the city Sicyon instead of Aegiale. But they say that Sicyon was not the son of Marathon, the son of Epopeus, but of Metion the son of Erechtheus. Asius confirms their statement, while Hesiod makes Sicyon the son of Erechtheus, and Ibycus says that his father was Pelops.

Sicyon had a daughter Chthonophyle, and they say that she and Hermes were the parents of Polybus. Afterwards she married Phlias, the son of Dionysus, and gave birth to Androdamas. Polybus gave his daughter Lysianassa to Talaus the son of Bias, king of the Argives; and when Adrastus fled from Argos he came to Polybus at Sicyon, and afterwards on the death of Polybus he became king at Sicyon. When Adrastus returned to Argos, Ianiscus, a descendant of Clytius the father-in-law of Lamedon, came from Attica and was made king, and when Ianiscus died he was succeeded by Phaestus, said to have been one of the children of Heracles.

After Phaestus in obedience to an oracle migrated to Crete, the next king is said to have been Zeuxippus, the son of Apollo and the nymph Syllis. On the death of Zeuxippus, Agamemnon led an army against Sicyon and king Hippolytus, the son of Rhopalus, the son of Phaestus. In terror of the army that was attacking him, Hippolytus agreed to become subject to Agamemnon and the Mycenaeans. This Hippolytus was the father of Lacestades. Phalces the son of Temenus, with the Dorians, surprised Sicyon by night, but did Lacestades no harm, because he too was one of the Heracleidae, and made him partner in the kingdom.

From that time the Sicyonians became Dorians and their land a part of the Argive territory. The city built by Aegialeus on the plain was destroyed by Demetrius the son of Antigonus, who founded the modern city near what was once the ancient citadel. The reason why the Sicyonians grew weak it would be wrong to seek; we must be content with Homer's saying about Zeus:—Many, indeed, are the cities of which he has levelled the strongholds.When they had lost their power there came upon them an earthquake, which almost depopulated their city and took from them many of their famous sights. It damaged also the cities of Caria and Lycia, and the island of Rhodes was very violently shaken, so that it was thought that the Sibyl had had her utterance about Rhodes fulfilled.

When you have come from the Corinthian to the Sicyonian territory you see the tomb of Lycus the Messenian, whoever this Lycus may be; for I can discover no Messenian Lycus who practised the pentathlon or won a victory at Olympia. This tomb is a mound of earth, but the Sicyonians themselves usually bury their dead in a uniform manner. They cover the body in the ground, and over it they build a basement of stone upon which they set pillars. Above these they put something very like the pediment of a temple. They add no inscription, except that they give the dead man's name without that of his father and bid him farewell.

After the tomb of Lycus, but on the other side of the Asopus, there is on the right the Olympium, and a little farther on, to the left of the road, the grave of Eupolis, the Athenian comic poet. Farther on, if you turn in the direction of the city, you see the tomb of Xenodice, who died in childbirth. It has not been made after the native fashion, but so as to harmonize best with the painting, which is very well worth seeing.

Farther on from here is the grave of the Sicyonians who were killed at Pellene, at Dyme of the Achaeans, in Megalopolis and at Sellasia. Their story I will relate more fully presently. By the gate they have a spring in a cave, the water of which does not rise out of the earth, but flows down from the roof of the cave. For this reason it is called the Dripping Spring.

On the modern citadel is a sanctuary of Fortune of the Height, and after it one of the Dioscuri. Their images and that of Fortune are of wood. On the stage of the theater built under the citadel is a statue of a man with a shield, who they say is Aratus, the son of Cleinias. After the theater is a temple of Dionysus. The god is of gold and ivory, and by his side are Bacchanals of white marble. These women they say are sacred to Dionysus and maddened by his inspiration. The Sicyonians have also some images which are kept secret. These one night in each year they carry to the temple of Dionysus from what they call the Cosmeterium (Tiring-room), and they do so with lighted torches and native hymns.

The first is the one named Baccheus, set up by Androdamas, the son of Phlias, and this is followed by the one called Lysius (Deliverer), brought from Thebes by the Theban Phanes at the command of the Pythian priestess. Phanes came to Sicyon when Aristomachus, the son of Cleodaeus, failed to understand the oracle given him, and therefore failed to return to the Peloponnesus. As you walk from the temple of Dionysus to the market-place you see on the right a temple of Artemis of the lake. A look shows that the roof has fallen in, but the inhabitants cannot tell whether the image has been removed or how it was destroyed on the spot.

Within the market-place is a sanctuary of Persuasion; this too has no image. The worship of Persuasion was established among them for the following reason. When Apollo and Artemis had killed Pytho they came to Aegialea to obtain purification. Dread coming upon them at the place now named Fear, they turned aside to Carmanor in Crete, and the people of Aegialea were smitten by a plague. When the seers bade them propitiate Apollo and Artemis,

they sent seven boys and seven maidens as suppliants to the river Sythas. They say that the deities, persuaded by these, came to what was then the citadel, and the place that they reached first is the sanctuary of Persuasion. Conformable with this story is the ceremony they perform at the present day; the children go to the Sythas at the feast of Apollo, and having brought, as they pretend, the deities to the sanctuary of Persuasion, they say that they take them back again to the temple of Apollo. The temple stands in the modern market-place, and was originally, it is said, made by Proetus, because in this place his daughters recovered from their madness.

It is also said that in this temple Meleager dedicated the spear with which he slew the boar. There is also a story that the flutes of Marsyas are dedicated here. When the Silenus met with his disaster, the river Marsyas carried the flutes to the Maeander; reappearing in the Asopus they were cast ashore in the Sicyonian territory and given to Apollo by the shepherd who found them. I found none of these offerings still in existence, for they were destroyed by fire when the temple was burnt. The temple that I saw, and its image, were dedicated by Pythocles.

The precinct near the sanctuary of Persuasion that is devoted to Roman emperors was once the house of the tyrant Cleon. He became tyrant in the modern city there was another tyranny while the Sicyonians still lived in the lower city, that of Cleisthenes, the son of Aristonymus, the son of Myron. Before this house is a hero-shrine of Aratus, whose achievements eclipsed those of all contemporary Greeks. His history is as follows.

After the despotism of Cleon, many of those in authority were seized with such an ungovernable passion for tyranny that two actually became tyrants together, Euthydemus and Timocleidas. These were expelled by the people, who made Cleinias, the father of Aratus, their champion. A few years afterwards Abantidas became tyrant. Before this time Cleinias had met his death, and Aratus went into exile, either of his own accord or because he was compelled to do so by Abantidas. Now Abantidas was killed by some natives, and his father Paseas immediately became tyrant.

He was killed by Nicocles, who succeeded him. This Nicocles was attacked by Aratus with a force of Sicyonian exiles and Argive mercenaries. Making his attempt by night, he eluded some of the defenders in the darkness; the others he overcame, and forced his way within the wall. Day was now breaking, and taking the populace with him he hastened to the tyrant's house. This he easily captured, but Nicocles himself succeeded in making his escape. Aratus restored equality of political rights to the Sicyonians, striking a bargain for those in exile; he restored to them their houses and all their other possessions which had been sold, compensating the buyers out of his own purse.

Moreover, as all the Greeks were afraid of the Macedonians and of Antigonus, the guardian of Philip, the son of Demetrius, he induced the Sicyonians, who were Dorians, to join the Achaean League. He was immediately elected general by the Achaeans, and leading them against the Locrians of Amphissa and into the land of the Aetolians, their enemies, he ravaged their territory. Corinth was held by Antigonus, and there was a Macedonian garrison in the city, but he threw them into a panic by the suddenness of his assault, winning a battle and killing among others Persaeus, the commander of the garrison, who had studied philosophy under Zeno, the son of Mnaseas.

When Aratus had liberated Corinth, the League was joined by the Epidaurians and Troezenians inhabiting Argolian Acte, and by the Megarians among those beyond the Isthmus, while Ptolemy made an alliance with the Achaeans. The Lacedaemonians and king Agis, the son of Eudamidas, surprised and took Pellene by a sudden onslaught, but when Aratus and his army arrived they were defeated in an engagement, evacuated Pellene, and returned home under a truce.

After his success in the Peloponnesus, Aratus thought it a shame to allow the Macedonians to hold unchallenged Peiraeus, Munychia, Salamis, and Sunium; but not expecting to be able to take them by force he bribed Diogenes, the commander of the garrisons, to give up the positions for a hundred and fifty talents, himself helping the Athenians by contributing a sixth part of the sum. He induced Aristomachus also, the tyrant of Argos, to restore to the Argives their democracy and to join the Achaean League; he captured Mantinea from the Lacedaemonians who held it. But no man finds all his plans turn out according to his liking, and even Aratus was compelled to become an ally of the Macedonians and Antigonus in the following way.

Cleomenes, the son of Leonidas, the son of Cleonymus, having succeeded to the kingship at Sparta, resembled Pausanias in being dissatisfied with the established constitution and in aiming at a tyranny. A more fiery man than Pausanias, and no coward, he quickly succeeded by spirit and daring in accomplishing all his ambition. He poisoned Eurydamidas, the king of the other royal house, while yet a boy, raised to the throne by means of the ephors his brother Epicleidas, destroyed the power of the senate, and appointed in its stead a nominal Council of Fathers. Ambitious for greater things and for supremacy over the Greeks, he first attacked the Achaeans, hoping if successful to have them as allies, and especially wishing that they should not hinder his activities.

Engaging them at Dyme beyond Patrae, Aratus being still leader of the Achaeans, he won the victory. In fear for the Achaeans and for Sicyon itself, Aratus was forced by this defeat to bring in Antigouus as an ally. Cleomenes had violated the peace which he had made with Antigonus and had openly acted in many ways contrary to treaty, especially in laying waste Megalopolis. So Antigonus crossed into the Peloponnesus and the Achaeans met Cleomenes at Sellasia. The Achaeans were victorious, the people of Sellasia were sold into slavery, and Lacedaemon itself was captured. Antigonus and the Achaeans restored to the Lacedaemonians the constitution of their fathers;

but of the children of Leonidas, Epicleidas was killed in the battle, and Cleomenes fled to Egypt. Held in the highest honor by Ptolemy, he came to be cast into prison, being convicted of inciting Egyptians to rebel against their king. He made his escape from prison and began a riot among the Alexandrians, but at last, on being captured, he fell by his own hand. The Lacedaemonians, glad to be rid of Cleomenes, refused to be ruled by kings any longer, but the rest of their ancient constitution they have kept to the present day. Antigonus remained a constant friend of Aratus, looking upon him as a benefactor who hid helped him to accomplish brilliant deeds.

But when Philip succeeded to the throne, since Aratus did not approve of his violent treatment of his subjects, and in some cases even opposed the accomplishment of his purposes, he killed Aratus by giving him secretly a dose of poison. This fate came upon Aratus at Aegium, from which place he was carried to Sicyon and buried, and there is still in that city the hero-shrine of Aratus. Philip treated two Athenians, Eurycleides and Micon, in a similar way. These men also, who were orators enjoying the confidence of the people, he killed by poison.

After all, Philip himself in his turn was fated to suffer disaster through the fatal cup. Philip's son, Demetrius, was poisoned by Perseus, his younger son, and grief at the murder brought the father also to his grave. I mention the incident in passing, with my mind turned to the inspired words of the poet Hesiod, that he who plots mischief against his neighbor directs it first to himself.

After the hero-shrine of Aratus is an altar to Isthmian Poseidon, and also a Zeus Meilichius (Gracious) and an Artemis named Patroa (Paternal), both of them very inartistic works. The Meilichius is like a pyramid, the Artemis like a pillar. Here too stand their council-chamber and a portico called Cleisthenean from the name of him who built it. It was built from spoils by Cleisthenes, who helped the Amphictyons in the war at Cirrha. In the market-place under the open sky is a bronze Zeus, a work of Lysippus, and by the side of it a gilded Artemis.

Hard by is a sanctuary of Apollo Lycius (Wolf-god), now fallen into ruins and not worth any attention. For wolves once so preyed upon their flocks that there was no longer any profit therefrom, and the god, mentioning a certain place where lay a dry log, gave an oracle that the bark of this log mixed with meat was to be set out for the beasts to eat. As soon as they tasted it the bark killed them, and that log lay in my time in the sanctuary of the Wolf-god, but not even the guides of the Sicyonians knew what kind of tree it was.

Next after this are bronze portrait statues, said to be the daughters of Proetus, but the inscription I found referred to other women. Here there is a bronze Heracles, made by Lysippus the Sicyonian, and hard by stands Hermes of the Market-place.

In the gymnasium not far from the market-place is dedicated a stone Heracles made by Scopas. There is also in another place a sanctuary of Heracles. The whole of the enclosure here they name Paedize; in the middle of the enclosure is the sanctuary, and in it is an old wooden figure carved by Laphaes the Phliasian. I will now describe the ritual at the festival. The story is that on coming to the Sicyonian land Phaestus found the people giving offerings to Heracles as to a hero. Phaestus then refused to do anything of the kind, but insisted on sacrificing to him as to a god. Even at the present day the Sicyonians, after slaying a lamb and burning the thighs upon the altar, eat some of the meat as part of a victim given to a god, while the rest they offer as to a hero. The first day of the festival in honor of Heracles they name . . . ; the second they call Heraclea.

From here is a way to a sanctuary of Asclepius. On passing into the enclosure you see on the left a building with two rooms. In the outer room lies a figure of Sleep, of which nothing remains now except the head. The inner room is given over to the Carnean Apollo; into it none may enter except the priests. In the portico lies a huge bone of a sea-monster, and after it an image of the Dream-god and Sleep, surnamed Epidotes (Bountiful), lulling to sleep a lion. Within the sanctuary on either side of the entrance is an image, on the one hand Pan seated, on the other Artemis standing.

When you have entered you see the god, a beardless figure of gold and ivory made by Calamis. He holds a staff in one hand, and a cone of the cultivated pine in the other. The Sicyonians say that the god was carried to them from Epidaurus on a carriage drawn by two mules, that he was in the likeness of a serpent, and that he was brought by Nicagora of Sicyon, the mother of Agasicles and the wife of Echetimus. Here are small figures hanging from the roof. She who is on the serpent they say is Aristodama, the mother of Aratus, whom they hold to be a son of Asclepius.

Book 2, Part 3 Cite

Such are the noteworthy things that this enclosure presented to me, and opposite is another enclosure, sacred to Aphrodite. The first thing inside is a statue of Antiope. They say that her sons were Sicyonians, and because of them the Sicyonians will have it that Antiope herself is related to themselves. After this is the sanctuary of Aphrodite, into which enter only a female verger, who after her appointment may not have intercourse with a man, and a virgin, called the Bath-bearer, holding her sacred office for a year. All others are wont to behold the goddess from the entrance, and to pray from that place.

The image, which is seated, was made by the Sicyonian Canachus, who also fashioned the Apollo at Didyma of the Milesians, and the Ismenian Apollo for the Thebans. It is made of gold and ivory, having on its head a polos, and carrying in one hand a poppy and in the other an apple. They offer the thighs of the victims, excepting pigs; the other parts they burn for the goddess with juniper wood, but as the thighs are burning they add to the offering a leaf of the paideros.

This is a plant in the open parts of the enclosure, and it grows nowhere else either in Sicyonia or in any other land. Its leaves are smaller than those of the esculent oak, but larger than those of the holm; the shape is similar to that of the oak-leaf. One side is of a dark color, the other is white. You might best compare the color to that of white-poplar leaves.

Ascending from here to the gymnasium you see in the right a sanctuary of Artemis Pheraea. It is said that the wooden image was brought from Pherae. This gymnasium was built for the Sicyonians by Cleinias, and they still train the youths here. White marble images are here, an Artemis wrought only to the waist, and a Heracles whose lower parts are similar to the square Hermae.

Turning away from here towards the gate called Holy you see, not far from the gate, a temple of Athena. Dedicated long ago by Epopeus, it surpassed all its contemporaries in size and splendor. Yet the memory of even this was doomed to perish through lapse of time—it was burnt down by lightning—but the altar there, which escaped injury, remains down to the present day as Epopeus made it. Before the altar a barrow has been raised for Epopeus himself, and near the grave are the gods Averters of evil. Near them the Greeks perform such rites as they are wont to do in order to avert misfortunes. They say that the neighboring sanctuary of Artemis and Apollo was also made by Epopeus, and that of Hera after it by Adrastus. I found no images remaining in either. Behind the sanctuary of Hera he built an altar to Pan, and one to Helius (Sun) made of white marble.

On the way down to the plain is a sanctuary of Demeter, said to have been founded by Plemnaeis as a thank-offering to the goddess for the rearing of his son. A little farther away from the sanctuary of Hera founded by Adrastus is a temple of the Carnean Apollo. Only the pillars are standing in it; you will no longer find there walls or roof, nor yet in that of Hera Pioneer. This temple was founded by Phalces, son of Temenus, who asserted that Hera guided him on the road to Sicyon.

On the direct road from Sicyon to Phlius, on the left of the road and just about ten stades from it, is a grove called Pyraea, and in it a sanctuary of HeraDemeter Protectress and the Maid. Here the men celebrate a festival by themselves, giving up to the women the temple called Nymphon for the purposes of their festival. In the Nymphon are images of Dionysus, Demeter, and the Maid, with only their faces exposed. The road to Titane is sixty stades long, and too narrow to be used by carriages drawn by a yoke.

At a distance along it, in my opinion, of twenty stades, to the left on the other side of the Asopus, is a grove of holm oaks and a temple of the goddesses named by the Athenians the August, and by the Sicyonians the Kindly Ones. On one day in each year they celebrate a festival to them and offer sheep big with young as a burnt offering, and they are accustomed to use a libation of honey and water, and flowers instead of garlands. They practise similar rites at the altar of the Fates; it is in an open space in the grove.

On turning back to the road, and having crossed the Asopus again and reached the summit of the hill, you come to the place where the natives say that Titan first dwelt. They add that he was the brother of Helius (Sun), and that after him the place got the name Titane. My own view is that he proved clever at observing the seasons of the year and the times when the sun increases and ripens seeds and fruits, and for this reason was held to be the brother of Helius. Afterwards Alexanor, the son of Machaon, the son of Asclepius, came to Sicyonia and built the sanctuary of Asclepius at Titane.

The neighbors are chiefly servants of the god, and within the enclosure are old cypress trees. One cannot learn of what wood or metal the image is, nor do they know the name of the maker, though one or two attribute it to Alexanor himself. Of the image can be seen only the face, hands, and feet, for it has about it a tunic of white wool and a cloak. There is a similar image of Health; this, too, one cannot see easily because it is so surrounded with the locks of women, who cut them off and offer them to the goddess, and with strips of Babylonian raiment. With whichever of these a votary here is willing to propitiate heaven, the same instructions have been given to him, to worship this image which they are pleased to call Health.

There are images also of Alexanor and of Euamerion; to the former they give offerings as to a hero after the setting of the sun; to Euamerion, as being a god, they give burnt sacrifices. If I conjecture aright, the Pergamenes, in accordance with an oracle, call this Euamerion Telesphorus (Accomplisher) while the Epidaurians call him Acesis (Cure). There is also a wooden image of Coronis, but it has no fixed position anywhere in the temple. While to the god are being sacrificed a bull, a lamb, and a pig, they remove Coronis to the sanctuary of Athena and honor her there. The parts of the victims which they offer as a burnt sacrifice, and they are not content with cutting out the thighs, they burn on the ground, except the birds, which they burn on the altar.

In the gable at the ends are figures of Heracles and of Victories. In the portico are dedicated images of Dionysus and Hecate, with Aphrodite, the Mother of the gods, and Fortune. These are wooden, but Asclepius, surnamed Gortynian, is of stone. They are unwilling to enter among the sacred serpents through fear, but they place their food before the entrance and take no further trouble. Within the enclosure is a bronze statue of a Sicyonian named Granianus, who won the following victories at Olympia: the pentathlon twice, the foot-race, the double-course foot-race twice, once without and once with the shield.

In Titane there is also a sanctuary of Athena, into which they bring up the image of Coronis. In it is an old wooden figure of Athena, and I was told that it, too, was struck by lightning. The sanctuary is built upon a hill, at the bottom of which is an Altar of the Winds, and on it the priest sacrifices to the winds one night in every year. He also performs other secret rites at four pits, taming the fierceness of the blasts, and he is said to chant as well charms of Medea.

On reaching Sicyon from Titane, as you go down to the shore you see on the left of the road a temple of Hera having now neither image nor roof. They say that its founder was Proetus, the son of Abas. When you have gone down to the harbor called the Sicyonians' and turned towards Aristonautae, the Port of Pellene, you see a little above the road on the left hand a sanctuary of Poseidon. Farther along the highway is a river called the Helisson, and after it the Sythas, both emptying themselves into the sea.

Phliasia borders on Sicyonia. The city is just about forty stades distant from Titane, and there is a straight road to it from Sicyon. That the Phliasians are in no way related to the Arcadians is shown by the passage in Homer that deals with the list of the Arcadians, in which the Sicyonians are not included among the Arcadian confederates. As my narrative progresses it will become clear that they were Argive originally, and became Dorian later after the return of the Heracleidae to the Peloponnesus. I know that most of the traditions concerning the Phliasians are contradictory, but I shall make use of those which have been most generally accepted.

They say that the first man in this land was Aras, who sprang from the soil. He founded a city around that hillock which even down to our day is called the Arantine Hill, not far distant from a second hill on which the Phliasians have their citadel and their sanctuary of Hebe. Here, then, he founded a city, and after him in ancient times both the land and the city were called Arantia. While he was king, Asopus, said to be the son of Celusa and Poseidon, discovered for him the water of the river which the present inhabitants call after him Asopus. The tomb of Aras is in the place called Celeae, where they say is also buried Dysaules of Eleusis.

Aras had a son Aoris and a daughter Araethyrea, who, the Phliasians say, were experienced hunters and brave warriors. Araethyrea died first, and Aoris, in memory of his sister, changed the name of the land to Araethyrea. This is why Homer, in making a list of Agamemnon's subjects, has the verse:Orneae was their home and Araethyrea the delightful.The graves of the children of Aras are, in my opinion, on the Arantine Hill and not in any other part of the land. On the top of them are far-seen gravestones, and before the celebration of the mysteries of Demeter the people look at these tombs and call Aras and his children to the libations.

The Argives say that Phlias, who has given the land its third name, was the son of Ceisus, the son of Temenus. This account I can by no means accept, but I know that he is called a son of Dionysus, and that he is said to have been one of those who sailed on the Argo. The verses of the Rhodian poet confirm me in my opinion:—Came after these Phlias from Araethyrea to the muster;Here did he dwell and prosper, because Dionysus his fatherCared for him well, and his home was near to the springs of Asopus.The account goes on to say that the mother of Phlias was Araethyrea and not Chthonophyle. The latter was his wife and bore him Androdamas.

On the return of the Heracleidae disturbances took place throughout the whole of the Peloponnesus except Arcadia, so that many of the cities received additional settlers from the Dorian race, and their inhabitants suffered yet more revolutions. The history of Phlius is as follows. The Dorian Rhegnidas, the son of Phalces, the son of Temenus, attacked it from Argos and Sicyonia. Some of the Phliasians were inclined to accept the offer of Rhegnidas, which was that they should remain on their own estates and receive Rhegnidas as their king, giving the Dorians with him a share in the land.

Hippasus and his party, on the other hand, urged the citizens to defend themselves, and not to give up many advantages to the Dorians without striking a blow. The people, however, accepted the opposite policy, and so Hippasus and any others who wished fled to Samos. Great-grandson of this Hippasus was Pythagoras, the celebrated sage. For Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus, the son of Euphranor, the son of Hippasus. This is the account the Phliasians give about themselves, and the Sicyonians in general agree with them.

I will now add an account of the most remarkable of their famous sights. On the Phliasian citadel is a grove of cypress trees and a sanctuary which from ancient times has been held to be peculiarly holy. The earliest Phliasians named the goddess to whom the sanctuary belongs Ganymeda; but later authorities call her Hebe, whom Homer mentions in the duel between Menelaus and Alexander, saying that she was the cup-bearer of the gods; and again he says, in the descent of Odysseus to Hell, that she was the wife of Heracles. Olen, in his hymn to Hera, says that Hera was reared by the Seasons, and that her children were Ares and Hebe. Of the honors that the Phliasians pay to this goddess the greatest is the pardoning of suppliants.

All those who seek sanctuary here receive full forgiveness, and prisoners, when set free, dedicate their fetters on the trees in the grove. The Phliasians also celebrate a yearly festival which they call Ivy-cutters. There is no image, either kept in secret or openly displayed, and the reason for this is set forth in a sacred legend of theirs though on the left as you go out is a temple of Hera with an image of Parian marble.

On the citadel is another enclosure, which is sacred to Demeter, and in it are a temple and statue of Demeter and her daughter. Here there is also a bronze statue of Artemis, which appeared to me to be ancient. As you go down from the citadel you see on the right a temple of Asclepius with an image of the god as a beardless youth. Below this temple is built a theater. Not far from it is a sanctuary of Demeter and old, seated images.

On the market-place is a votive offering, a bronze she-goat for the most part covered with gold. The following is the reason why it has received honors among the Phliasians. The constellation which they call the Goat on its rising causes continual damage to the vines. In order that they may suffer nothing unpleasant from it, the Phliasians pay honors to the bronze goat on the market-place and adorn the image with gold. Here also is the tomb of Aristias, the son of Pratinas. This Aristias and his father Pratinas composed satyric plays more popular than any save those of Aeschylus.

Behind the market-place is a building which the Phliasians name the House of Divination. Into it Amphiaraus entered, slept the night there, and then first, say the Phliasians, began to divine. According to their account Amphiaraus was for a time an ordinary person and no diviner. Ever since that time the building has been shut up. Not far away is what is called the Omphalos (Navel), the center of all the Peloponnesus, if they speak the truth about it. Farther on from the Omphalos they have an old sanctuary of Dionysus, a sanctuary of Apollo, and one of Isis. The image of Dionysus is visible to all, and so also is that of Apollo, but the image of Isis only the priests may behold.

The Phliasians tell also the following legend. When Heracles came back safe from Libya, bringing the apples of the Hesperides, as they were called, he visited Phlius on some private matter. While he was staying there Oeneus came to him from Aetolia. He had already allied himself to the family of Heracles, and after his arrival on this occasion either he entertained Heracles or Heracles entertained him. Be this as it may, displeased with the drink given him Heracles struck on the head with one of his fingers the boy Cyathus, the cup-bearer of Oeneus, who died on the spot from the blow. A chapel keeps the memory of the deed fresh among the Phliasians; it is built by the side of the sanctuary of Apollo, and it contains statues made of stone representing Cyathus holding out a cup to Heracles.

Celeae is some five stades distant from the city, and here they celebrate the mysteries in honor of Demeter, not every year but every fourth year. The initiating priest is not appointed for life, but at each celebration they elect a fresh one, who takes, if he cares to do so, a wife. In this respect their custom differs from that at Eleusis, but the actual celebration is modelled on the Eleusinian rites. The Phliasians themselves admit that they copy the “performance” at Eleusis.

They say that it was Dysaules, the brother of Celeus, who came to their land and established the mysteries, and that he had been expelled from Eleusis by Ion, when Ion, the son of Xuthus, was chosen by the Athenians to be commander-in-chief in the Eleusinian war. Now I cannot possibly agree with the Phliasians in supposing that an Eleusinian was conquered in battle and driven away into exile, for the war terminated in a treaty before it was fought out, and Eumolpus himself remained at Eleusis.

But it is possible that Dysaules came to Phlius for some other reason than that given by the Phliasians. I do not believe either that he was related to Celeus, or that he was in any way distinguished at Eleusis, otherwise Homer would never have passed him by in his poems. For Homer is one of those who have written in honor of Demeter, and when he is making a list of those to whom the goddess taught the mysteries he knows nothing of an Eleusinian named Dysaules. These are the verses:—She to Triptolemus taught, and to Diocles, driver of horses,Also to mighty Eumolpus, to Celeus, leader of peoples,Cult of the holy rites, to them all her mystery telling.

At all events, this Dysaules, according to the Phliasians, established the mysteries here, and he it was who gave to the place the name Celeae. I have already said that the tomb of Dysaules is here. So the grave of Aras was made earlier, for according to the account of the Phliasians Dysaules did not arrive in the reign of Aras, but later. For Aras, they say, was a contemporary of Prometheus, the son of Iapetus, and three generations of men older than Pelasgus the son of Arcas and those called at Athens aboriginals. On the roof of what is called the Anactorum they say is dedicated the chariot of Pelops.

These are the things that I found most worthy of mention among the Phliasians. On the road from Corinth to Argos is a small city Cleonae. They say that Cleones was a son of Pelops, though there are some who say that Cleone was one of the daughters of Asopus, that flows by the side of Sicyon. Be this as it may, one or other of these two accounts for the name of the city. Here there is a sanctuary of Athena, and the image is a work of Scyllis and Dipoenus. Some hold them to have been the pupils of Daedalus, but others will have it that Daedalus took a wife from Gortyn, and that Dipoenus and Scyllis were his sons by this woman. Cleonae possesses this sanctuary and the tomb of Eurytus and Cteatus. The story is that as they were going as ambassadors from Elis to the Isthmian contest they were here shot by Heracles, who charged them with being his adversaries in the war against Augeas.

From Cleonae to Argos are two roads; one is direct and only for active men, the other goes along the pass called Tretus (Pierced), is narrow like the other, being surrounded by mountains, but is nevertheless more suitable for carriages. In these mountains is still shown the cave of the famous lion, and the place Nemea is distant some fifteen stades. In Nemea is a noteworthy temple of Nemean Zeus, but I found that the roof had fallen in and that there was no longer remaining any image. Around the temple is a grove of cypress trees, and here it is, they say, that Opheltes was placed by his nurse in the grass and killed by the serpent.

The Argives offer burnt sacrifices to Zeus in Nemea also, and elect a priest of Nemean Zeus; moreover they offer a prize for a race in armour at the winter celebration of the Nemean games. In this place is the grave of Opheltes; around it is a fence of stones, and within the enclosure are altars. There is also a mound of earth which is the tomb of Lycurgus, the father of Opheltes. The spring they call Adrastea for some reason or other, perhaps because Adrastus found it. The land was named, they say, after Nemea, who was another daughter of Asopus. Above Nemea is Mount Apesas, where they say that Perseus first sacrificed to Zeus of Apesas.

Ascending to Tretus, and again going along the road to Argos, you see on the left the ruins of Mycenae. The Greeks are aware that the founder of Mycenae was Perseus, so I will narrate the cause of its foundation and the reason why the Argives afterwards laid Mycenae waste. The oldest tradition in the region now called Argolis is that when Inachus was king he named the river after himself and sacrificed to Hera.

There is also another legend which says that Phoroneus was the first inhabitant of this land, and that Inachus, the father of Phoroneus, was not a man but the river. This river, with the rivers Cephisus and Asterion, judged concerning the land between Poseidon and Hera. They decided that the land belonged to Hera, and so Poseidon made their waters disappear. For this reason neither Inachus nor either of the other rivers I have mentioned provides any water except after rain. In summer their streams are dry except those at Lerna. Phoroneus, the son of Inachus, was the first to gather together the inhabitants, who up to that time had been scattered and living as isolated families. The place into which they were first gathered was named the City of Phoroneus.

Argus, the grandson of Phoroneus, succeeding to the throne after Phoroneus, gave his name to the land. Argus begat Peirasus and Phorbas, Phorbas begat Triopas, and Triopas begat Iasus and Agenor. Io, the daughter of Iasus, went to Egypt, whether the circumstances be as Herodotus records or as the Greeks say. After Iasus, Crotopus, the son of Agenor, came to the throne and begat Sthenelas, but Danaus sailed from Egypt against Gelanor, the son of Sthenelas, and stayed the succession to the kingdom of the descendants of Agenor. What followed is known to all alike: the crime the daughters of Danaus committed against their cousins, and how, on the death of Danaus, Lynceus succeeded him.

But the sons of Abas, the son of Lynceus, divided the kingdom between themselves; Acrisius remained where he was at Argos, and Proetus took over the Heraeum, Mideia, Tiryns, and the Argive coast region. Traces of the residence of Proetus in Tiryns remain to the present day. Afterwards Acrisius, learning that Perseus himself was not only alive but accomplishing great achievements, retired to Larisa on the Peneus. And Perseus, wishing at all costs to see the father of his mother and to greet him with fair words and deeds, visited him at Larisa. Being in the prime of life and proud of his inventing the quoit, he gave displays before all, and Acrisius, as luck would have it, stepped unnoticed into the path of the quoit.

So the prediction of the god to Acrisius found its fulfillment, nor was his fate prevented by his precautions against his daughter and grandson. Perseus, ashamed because of the gossip about the homicide, on his return to Argos induced Megapenthes, the son of Proetus, to make an exchange of kingdoms; taking over himself that of Megapenthes, he founded Mycenae. For on its site the cap (myces) fell from his scabbard, and he regarded this as a sign to found a city. I have also heard the following account. He was thirsty, and the thought occurred to him to pick up a mushroom (myces) from the ground. Drinking with joy water that flowed from it, he gave to the place the name of Mycenae.

Book 2, Part 4 Cite

Homer in the Odyssey mentions a woman Mycene in the following verse:—Tyro and Alcmene and the fair-crowned lady Mycene.. She is said to have been the daughter of Inachus and the wife of Arestor in the poem which the Greeks call the Great Eoeae. So they say that this lady has given her name to the city. But the account which is attributed to Acusilaus, that Myceneus was the son of Sparton, and Sparton of Phoroneus, I cannot accept, because the Lacedaemonians themselves do not accept it either. For the Lacedaemonians have at Amyclae a portrait statue of a woman named Sparte, but they would be amazed at the mere mention of a Sparton, son of Phoroneus.

It was jealousy which caused the Argives to destroy Mycenae. For at the time of the Persian invasion the Argives made no move, but the Mycenaeans sent eighty men to Thermopylae who shared in the achievement of the Lacedaemonians. This eagerness for distinction brought ruin upon them by exasperating the Argives. There still remain, however, parts of the city wall, including the gate, upon which stand lions. These, too, are said to be the work of the Cyclopes, who made for Proetus the wall at Tiryns.

In the ruins of Mycenae is a fountain called Persea; there are also underground chambers of Atreus and his children, in which were stored their treasures. There is the grave of Atreus, along with the graves of such as returned with Agamemnon from Troy, and were murdered by Aegisthus after he had given them a banquet. As for the tomb of Cassandra, it is claimed by the Lacedaemonians who dwell around Amyclae. Agamemnon has his tomb, and so has Eurymedon the charioteer, while another is shared by Teledamus and Pelops, twin sons, they say, of Cassandra,

whom while yet babies Aegisthus slew after their parents. Electra has her tomb, for Orestes married her to Pylades. Hellanicus adds that the children of Pylades by Electra were Medon and Strophius. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus were buried at some little distance from the wall. They were thought unworthy of a place within it, where lay Agamemnon himself and those who were murdered with him.

Fifteen stades distant from Mycenae is on the left the Heraeum. Beside the road flows the brook called Water of Freedom. The priestesses use it in purifications and for such sacrifices as are secret. The sanctuary itself is on a lower part of Euboea. Euboea is the name they give to the hill here, saying that Asterion the river had three daughters, Euboea, Prosymna, and Acraea, and that they were nurses of Hera.

The hill opposite the Heraeum they name after Acraea, the environs of the sanctuary they name after Euboea, and the land beneath the Heraeum after Prosymna. This Asterion flows above the Heraeum, and falling into a cleft disappears. On its banks grows a plant, which also is called asterion. They offer the plant itself to Hera, and from its leaves weave her garlands.

It is said that the architect of the temple was Eupolemus, an Argive. The sculptures carved above the pillars refer either to the birth of Zeus and the battle between the gods and the giants, or to the Trojan war and the capture of Ilium. Before the entrance stand statues of women who have been priestesses to Hera and of various heroes, including Orestes. They say that Orestes is the one with the inscription, that it represents the Emperor Augustus. In the fore-temple are on the one side ancient statues of the Graces, and on the right a couch of Hera and a votive offering, the shield which Menelaus once took from Euphorbus at Troy.

The statue of Hera is seated on a throne; it is huge, made of gold and ivory, and is a work of Polycleitus. She is wearing a crown with Graces and Seasons worked upon it, and in one hand she carries a pomegranate and in the other a sceptre. About the pomegranate I must say nothing, for its story is somewhat of a holy mystery. The presence of a cuckoo seated on the sceptre they explain by the story that when Zeus was in love with Hera in her maidenhood he changed himself into this bird, and she caught it to be her pet. This tale and similar legends about the gods I relate without believing them, but I relate them nevertheless.

By the side of Hera stands what is said to be an image of Hebe fashioned by Naucydes; it, too, is of ivory and gold. By its side is an old image of Hera on a pillar. The oldest image is made of wild-pear wood, and was dedicated in Tiryns by Peirasus, son of Argus, and when the Argives destroyed Tiryns they carried it away to the Heraeum. I myself saw it, a small, seated image.

Of the votive offerings the following are noteworthy. There is an altar upon which is wrought in relief the fabled marriage of Hebe and Heracles. This is of silver, but the peacock dedicated by the Emperor Hadrian is of gold and gleaming stones. He dedicated it because they hold the bird to be sacred to Hera. There lie here a golden crown and a purple robe, offerings of Nero.

Above this temple are the foundations of the earlier temple and such parts of it as were spared by the flames. It was burnt down because sleep overpowered Chryseis, the priestess of Hera, when the lamp before the wreaths set fire to them. Chryseis went to Tegea and supplicated Athena Alea. Although so great a disaster had befallen them the Argives did not take down the statue of Chryseis; it is still in position in front of the burnt temple.

By the side of the road from Mycenae to Argos there is on the left hand a hero-shrine of Perseus. The neighboring folk, then, pay him honors here, but the greatest honors are paid to him in Seriphus and among the Athenians, who have a precinct sacred to Perseus and an altar of Dictys and Clymene, who are called the saviours of Perseus. Advancing a little way in the Argive territory from this hero-shrine one sees on the right the grave of Thyestes. On it is a stone ram, because Thyestes obtained the golden lamb after debauching his brother's wife. But Atreus was not restrained by prudence from retaliating, but contrived the slaughter of the children of Thyestes and the banquet of which the poets tell us.

But as to what followed, I cannot say for certain whether Aegisthus began the sin or whether Agamemnon sinned first in murdering Tantalus, the son of Thyestes. It is said that Tantalus had received Clytaemnestra in marriage from Tyndareus when she was still a virgin. I myself do not wish to condemn them of having been wicked by nature; but if the pollution of Pelops and the avenging spirit of Myirtilus dogged their steps so long, it was after all only consistent that the Pythian priestess said to the Spartan Glaucus, the son of Epicydes, who consulted her about breaking his oath, that the punishment for this also comes upon the descendants of the sinner.

A little beyond the Rams—this is the name they give to the tomb of Thyestes—there is on the left a place called Mysia and a sanctuary of Mysian Demeter, so named from a man Mysius who, say the Argives, was one of those who entertained Demeter. Now this sanctuary has no roof, but in it is another temple, built of burnt brick, and wooden images of the Maid, Pluto and Demeter. Farther on is a river called Inachus, and on the other side of it an altar of Helius (the Sun). After this you will come to a gate named after the sanctuary near it. This sanctuary belongs to Eileithyia.

The Argives are the only Greeks that I know of who have been divided into three kingdoms. For in the reign of Anaxagoras, son of Argeus, son of Megapenthes, the women were smitten with madness, and straying from their homes they roamed about the country, until Melampus the son of Amythaon cured them of the plague on condition that he himself and his brother Bias had a share of the kingdom equal to that of Anaxagoras. Now descended from Bias five men, Neleids on their mother's side, occupied the throne for four generations down to Cyanippus, son of Aegialeus, and descended from Melampus six men in six generations down to Amphilochus, son of Amphiaraus.

But the native house of the family of Anaxagoras ruled longer than the other two. For Iphis, son of Alector, son of Anaxagoras, left the throne to Sthenelus, son of Capaneus his brother. After the capture of Troy, Amphilochus migrated to the people now called the Amphilochians, and, Cyanippus having died without issue, Cylarabes, son of Sthenelus, became sole king. However, he too left no offspring, and Argos was seized by Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who was a neighbor. Besides his ancestral dominion, he had extended his rule over the greater part of Arcadia and had succeeded to the throne of Sparta; he also had a contingent of Phocian allies always ready to help him.

When Orestes became king of the Lacedaemonians, they themselves consented to accept him for they considered that the sons of the daughter of Tyndareus had a claim to the throne prior to that of Nicostratus and Megapenthes, who were sons of Menelaus by a slave woman. On the death of Orestes, there succeeded to the throne Tisamenus, the son of Orestes and of Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus. The mother of Penthilus, the bastard son of Orestes, was, according to the poet Cinaethon, Erigone, the daughter of Aegisthus.

It was in the reign of this Tisamenus that the Heracleidae returned to the Peloponnesus; they were Temenus and Cresphontes, the sons of Aristomachus, together with the sons of the third brother, Aristodemus, who had died. Their claim to Argos and to the throne of Argos was, in my opinion, most just, because Tisamenus was descended from Pelops, but the Heracleidae were descendants of Perseus. Tyndareus himself, they made out, had been expelled by Hippocoon, and they said that Heracles, having killed Hippocoon and his sons, had given the land in trust to Tyndareus. They gave the same kind of account about Messenia also, that it had been given in trust to Nestor by Heracles after he had taken Pylus.

So they expelled Tisamenus from Lacedaemon and Argos, and the descendants of Nestor from Messenia, namely Alcmaeon, son of Sillus, son of Thrasymedes, Peisistratus, son of Peisistratus, and the sons of Paeon, son of Antilochus, and with them Melanthus, son of Andropompus, son of Borus, son of Penthilus, son of Periclymenus. So Tisamenus and his sons went with his army to the land that is now Achaia.

To what people Peisistratus retreated I do not know, but the rest of the Neleidae went to Athens, and the clans of the Paeonidae and of the Alcmaeonidae were named after them. Melanthus even came to the throne, having deposed Thymoetes the son of Oxyntes; for Thymoetes was the last Athenian king descended from Theseus.

It is not to my purpose that I should set forth here the history of Cresphontes and of the sons of Aristodemus. But Temenus openly employed, instead of his sons, Delphontes, son of Antimachus, son of Thrasyanor, son of Ctesippus, son of Heracles, as general in war and as adviser on all occasions. Even before this he had made him his son-in-law, while Hyrnetho was his favorite daughter; he was accordingly suspected of intending to divert the throne to her and Delphontes. For this reason his sons plotted against him, and Ceisus, the eldest of them, seized the kingdom.

But from the earliest times the Argives have loved freedom and self-government, and they limited to the utmost the authority of their kings, so that to Medon, the son of Ceisus, and to his descendants was left a kingdom that was such only in name. Meltas, the son of Lacedas, the tenth descendant of Medon, was condemned by the people and deposed altogether from the kingship.

The most famous building in the city of Argos is the sanctuary of Apollo Lycius (Wolf-god). The modern image was made by the Athenian Attalus, but the original temple and wooden image were the offering of Danaus. I am of opinion that in those days all images, especially Egyptian images, were made of wood. The reason why Danaus founded a sanctuary of Apollo Lycius was this. On coming to Argos he claimed the kingdom against Gelanor, the son of Sthenelas. Many plausible arguments were brought forward by both parties, and those of Sthenelas were considered as fair as those of his opponent; so the people, who were sitting in judgment, put off, they say, the decision to the following day.

At dawn a wolf fell upon a herd of oxen that was pasturing before the wall, and attacked and fought with the bull that was the leader of the herd. It occurred to the Argives that Gelanor was like the bull and Danaus like the wolf, for as the wolf will not live with men, so Danaus up to that time had not lived with them. It was because the wolf overcame the bull that Danaus won the kingdom. Accordingly, believing that Apollo had brought the wolf on the herd, he founded a sanctuary of Apollo Lycius.

Here is dedicated the throne of Danaus, and here Is placed a statue of Biton, in the form of a man carrying a bull on his shoulders. According to the poet Lyceas, when the Argives were holding a sacrifice to Zeus at Nemea, Biton by sheer physical strength took up a bull and carried it there. Next to this statue is a fire which they keep burning, calling it the fire of Phoroneus. For they do not admit that fire was given to mankind by Prometheus, but insist in assigning the discovery of fire to Phoroneus.

As to the wooden images of Aphrodite and Hermes, the one they say was made by Epeus, while the other is a votive offering of Hypermnestra. She was the only one of the daughters of Danaus who neglected his command, and was accordingly brought to justice by him, because be considered that his life was in danger so long as Lynceus was at large, and that the refusal to share in the crime of her sisters increased the disgrace of the contriver of the deed. On her trial she was acquitted by the Argives, and to commemorate her escape she dedicated an image of Aphrodite, the Bringer of Victory.

Within the temple is a statue of Ladas, the swiftest runner of his time, and one of Hermes with a tortoise which he has caught to make a lyre. Before the temple is a pit with a relief representing a fight between a bull and a wolf, and with them a maiden throwing a rock at the bull. The maiden is thought to be Artemis. Danaus dedicated these, and some pillars hard by and wooden images of Zeus and Artemis.

Here are graves; one is that of Linus, the son of Apollo by Psamathe, the daughter of Crotopus; the other, they say, is that of Linus the poet. The story of the latter Linus is more appropriate to another part of my narrative, and so I omit it here, while I have already given the history of the son of Psamathe in my account of Megara. After these is an image of Apollo, God of Streets, and an altar of Zeus, God of Rain, where those who were helping Polyneices in his efforts to be restored to Thebes swore an oath together that they would either capture Thebes or die. As to the tomb of Prometheus, their account seems to me to be less probable than that of the Opuntians, but they hold to it nevertheless.

Passing over a statue of Creugas, a boxer, and a trophy that was set up to celebrate a victory over the Corinthians, you come to a seated image of Zeus Meilichius (Gracious), made of white marble by Polycleitus. I discovered that it was made for the following reason. Ever since the Lacedaemonians began to make war upon the Argives there was no cessation of hostilities until Philip, the son of Amyntas, forced them to stay within the original boundaries of their territories. Before this, if the Lacedaemonians were not engaged on some business outside the Peloponnesus, they were always trying to annex a piece of Argive territory; or if they were busied with a war beyond their borders it was the turn of the Argives to retaliate.

When the hatred of both sides was at its height, the Argives resolved to maintain a thousand picked men. The commander appointed over them was the Argive Bryas. His general behavior to the men of the people was violent, and a maiden who was being taken to the bridegroom he seized from those who were escorting her and ravished. When night came on, the girl waited until he was asleep and put out his eyes. Detected in the morning, she took refuge as a suppliant with the people. When they did not give her up to the Thousand for punishment both sides took up arms; the people won the day, and in their anger left none of their opponents alive. Subsequently they had recourse to purifications for shedding kindred blood; among other things they dedicated an image of Zeus Meilichius.

Hard by are Cleobis and Biton carved in relief on stone, themselves drawing the carriage and taking in it their mother to the sanctuary of Hera. Opposite them is a sanctuary of Nemean Zeus, and an upright bronze statue of the god made by Lysippus. Going forward from this you see on the right the grave of Phoroneus, to whom even in our time they bring offerings as to a hero. Over against the Nemean Zeus is a temple of Fortune, which must be very old if it be the one in which Palamedes dedicated the dice that he had invented.

The tomb near this they call that of the maenad Chorea, saying that she was one of the women who joined Dionysus in his expedition against Argos, and that Perseus, being victorious in the battle, put most of the women to the sword. To the rest they gave a common grave, but to Chorea they gave burial apart because of her high rank.

A little farther on is a sanctuary of the Seasons. On coming back from here you see statues of Polyneices, the son of Oedipus, and of all the chieftains who with him were killed in battle at the wall of Thebes. These men Aeschylus has reduced to the number of seven only, although there were more chiefs than this in the expedition, from Argos, from Messene, with some even from Arcadia. But the Argives have adopted the number seven from the drama of Aeschylus, and near to their statues are the statues of those who took Thebes: Aegialeus, son of Adrastus; Promachus, son of Parthenopaeus, son of Talaus; Polydorus, son of Hippomedon; Thersander; Alcmaeon and Amphilochus, the sons of Amphiaraus; Diomedes, and Sthenelus. Among their company were also Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, and Adrastus and Timeas, sons of Polyneices.

Not far from the statues are shown the tomb of Danaus and a cenotaph of the Argives who met their death at Troy or on the journey home. Here there is also a sanctuary of Zeus the Saviour. Beyond it is a building where the Argive women bewail Adonis. On the right of the entrance is the sanctuary of Cephisus. It is said that the water of this river was not utterly destroyed by Poseidon, but that just in this place, where the sanctuary is, it can be heard flowing under the earth.

Beside the sanctuary of Cephisus is a head of Medusa made of stone, which is said to be another of the works of the Cyclopes. The ground behind it is called even at the present time the Place of Judgment, because it was here that they say Hypermnestra was brought to judgment by Danaus. Not far from this is a theater. In it are some noteworthy sights, including a representation of a man killing another, namely the Argive Perilaus, the son of Alcenor, killing the Spartan Othryadas. Before this, Perilaus had succeeded in winning the prize for wrestling at the Nemean games.

Above the theater is a sanctuary of Aphrodite, and before the image is a slab with a representation wrought on it in relief of Telesilla, the lyric poetess. Her books lie scattered at her feet, and she herself holds in her hand an helmet, which she is looking at and is about to place on her head. Telesilla was a distinguished woman who was especially renowned for her poetry. It happened that the Argives had suffered an awful defeat at the hands of Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandrides, and the Lacedaemonians. Some fell in the actual fighting; others, who had fled to the grove of Argus, also perished. At first they left sanctuary under an agreement, which was treacherously broken, and the survivors, when they realized this, were burnt to death in the grove. So when Cleomenes led his troops to Argos there were no men to defend it.

But Telesilla mounted on the wall all the slaves and such as were incapable of bearing arms through youth or old age, and she herself, collecting the arms in the sanctuaries and those that were left in the houses, armed the women of vigorous age, and then posted them where she knew the enemy would attack. When the Lacedaemonians came on, the women were not dismayed at their battle-cry, but stood their ground and fought valiantly. Then the Lacedaemonians, realizing that to destroy the women would be an invidious success while defeat would mean a shameful disaster, gave way before the women.

This fight had been foretold by the Pythian priestess in the oracle quoted by Herodotus, who perhaps understood to what it referred and perhaps did not:—But when the time shall come that the female conquers in battle,Driving away the male, and wins great glory in Argos,Many an Argive woman will tear both cheeks in her sorrow.Such are the words of the oracle referring to the exploit of the women.

Book 2, Part 5 Cite

Having descended thence, and having turned again to the market-place, we come to the tomb of Cerdo, the wife of Phoroneus, and to a temple of Asclepius. The sanctuary of Artemis, surnamed Persuasion, is another offering of Hypermnestra after winning the trial to which she was brought by her father because of Lynceus. Here there is also a bronze statue of Aeneas, and a place called Delta. I intentionally do not discuss the origin of the name, because I could not accept the traditional accounts.

In front of it stands an altar of Zeus Phyxius (God of Fight), and near is the tomb of Hypermnestra, the mother of Amphiaraus, the other tomb being that of Hypermnestra, the daughter of Danaus, with whom is also buried Lynceus. Opposite these is the grave of Talaus, the son of Bias; the history of Bias and his descendants I have already given.

A sanctuary of Athena Trumpet they say was founded by Hegeleos. This Hegeleos, according to the story, was the son of Tyrsenus, and Tyrsenus was the son of Heracles and the Lydian woman; Tyrsenus invented the trumpet, and Hegeleos, the son of Tyrsenus, taught the Dorians with Temenus how to play the instrument, and for this reason gave Athena the surname Trumpet. Before the temple of Athena is, they say, the grave of Epimenides. The Argive story is that the Lacedaemonians made war upon the Cnossians and took Epimenides alive; they then put him to death for not prophesying good luck to them, and the Argives taking his body buried it here.

The building of white marble in just about the middle of the marketplace is not, as the Argives declare, a trophy in honor of a victory over Pyrrhus of Epeirus, but it can be shown that his body was burnt here, and that this is his monument, on which are carved in relief the elephants and his other instruments of warfare. This building then was set up where the pyre stood, but the bones of Pyrrhus lie in the sanctuary of Demeter, beside which, as I have shown in my account of Attica, his death occurred. At the entrance to this sanctuary of Demeter you can see a bronze shield of Pyrrhus hanging dedicated over the door.

Not far from the building in the market-place of Argos is a mound of earth, in which they say lies the head of the Gorgon Medusa. I omit the miraculous, but give the rational parts of the story about her. After the death of her father, Phorcus, she reigned over those living around Lake Tritonis, going out hunting and leading the Libyans to battle. On one such occasion, when she was encamped with an army over against the forces of Perseus, who was followed by picked troops from the Peloponnesus, she was assassinated by night. Perseus, admiring her beauty even in death, cut off her head and carried it to show the Greeks.

But Procles, the son of Eucrates, a Carthaginian, thought a different account more plausible than the preceding. It is as follows. Among the incredible monsters to be found in the Libyan desert are wild men and wild women. Procles affirmed that he had seen a man from them who had been brought to Rome. So he guessed that a woman wandered from them, reached Lake Tritonis, and harried the neighbours until Perseus killed her; Athena was supposed to have helped him in this exploit, because the people who live around Lake Tritonis are sacred to her.

In Argos, by the side of this monument of the Gorgon, is the grave of Gorgophone (Gorgon-kilIer), the daughter of Perseus. As soon as you hear the name you can understand the reason why it was given her. On the death of her husband, Perieres, the son of Aeolus, whom she married when a virgin, she married Oebalus, being the first woman, they say, to marry a second time; for before this wives were wont, on the death of their husbands, to live as widows.

In front of the grave is a trophy of stone made to commemorate a victory over an Argive Laphaes. When this man was tyrant I write what the Argives themselves say concerning themselves—the people rose up against him and cast him out. He fled to Sparta, and the Lacedaemonians tried to restore him to power, but were defeated by the Argives, who killed the greater part of them and Laphaes as well.Not far from the trophy is the sanctuary of Leto; the image is a work of Praxiteles.

The statue of the maiden beside the goddess they call Chloris (Pale), saying that she was a daughter of Niobe, and that she was called Meliboea at the first. When the children of Amphion were destroyed by Apollo and Arternis, she alone of her sisters, along with Amyclas, escaped; their escape was due to their prayers to Leto. Meliboea was struck so pale by her fright, not only at the time but also for the rest of her life, that even her name was accordingly changed from Meliboea to Chloris.

Now the Argives say that these two built originally the temple to Leto, but I think that none of Niobe's children survived, for I place more reliance than others on the poetry of Homer, one of whose verses bears out my view:—Though they were only two, yet they gave all to destruction.So Homer knows that the house of Amphion was utterly overthrown.

The temple of Hera Anthea (Flowery) is on the right of the sanctuary of Leto, and before it is a grave of women. They were killed in a battle against the Argives under Perseus, having come from the Aegean Islands to help Dionysus in war; for which reason they are surnamed Haliae (Women of the Sea). Facing the tomb of the women is a sanctuary of Demeter, surnamed Pelasgian from Pelasgus, son of Triopas, its founder, and not far from the sanctuary is the grave of Pelasgus.

Opposite the grave is a small bronze vessel supporting ancient images of Artemis, Zeus, and Athena. Now Lyceas in his poem says that the image is of Zeus Mechaneus (Contriver), and that here the Argives who set out against Troy swore to hold out in the war until they either took Troy or met their end fighting. Others have said that in the bronze vessel lie the bones of Tantalus.

Now that the Tantalus is buried here who was the son of Thyestes or Broteas (both accounts are given) and married Clytaemnestra before Agamemnon did, I will not gainsay; but the grave of him who legend says was son of Zeus and Pluto—it is worth seeing—is on Mount Sipylus. I know because I saw it. Moreover, no constraint came upon him to flee from Sipylus, such as afterwards forced Pelops to run away when Ilus the Phrygian launched an army against him.But I must pursue the inquiry no further. The ritual performed at the pit hard by they say was instituted by Nicostratus, a native. Even at the present day they throw into the pit burning torches in honor of the Maid who is daughter of Demeter.

Here is a sanctuary of Poseidon, surnamed Prosclystius (Flooder), for they say that Poseidon inundated the greater part of the country because Inachus and his assessors decided that the land belonged to Hera and not to him. Now it was Hera who induced Poseidon to send the sea back, but the Argives made a sanctuary to Poseidon Prosclystius at the spot where the tide ebbed.

Going on a little further you see the grave of Argus, reputed to be the son of Zeus and Niobe, daughter of Phoroneus. After these comes a temple of the Dioscuri. The images represent the Dioscuri themselves and their sons, Anaxis and Mnasinous, and with them are their mothers, Hilaeira and Phoebe. They are of ebony wood, and were made by Dipoenus and Scyllis. The horses, too, are mostly of ebony, but there is a little ivory also in their construction.

Near the Lords is a sanctuary of Eilethyia, dedicated by Helen when, Theseus having gone away with Peirithous to Thesprotia, Aphidna had been captured by the Dioscuri and Helen was being brought to Lacedaemon. For it is said that she was with child, was delivered In Argos, and founded there the sanctuary of Eilethyia, giving the daughter she bore to Clytaemnestra, who was already wedded to Agamemnon, while she herself subsequently married Menelaus.

And on this matter the poets Euphorion of Chalcis and Alexander of Pleuron, and even before them, Stesichorus of Himera, agree with the Argives in asserting that Iphigenia was the daughter of Theseus. Over against the sanctuary of Eilethyia is a temple of Hecate, and the image is a work of Scopas. This one is of stone, while the bronze images opposite, also of Hecate, were made respectively by Polycleitus and his brother Naucydes, son of Mothon.

As you go along a straight road to a gymnasium, called Cylarabis after the son of Sthenelus, you come to the grave of Licymnius, the son of Electryon, who, Homer says, was killed by Tleptolemus, the son of Heracles for which homicide Tleptolemus was banished from Argos. On turning a little aside from the road to Cylarabis and to the gate there, you come to the tomb of Sacadas, who was the first to play at Delphi the Pythian flute-tune;

the hostility of Apollo to flute-players, which had lasted ever since the rivalry of Marsyas the Silenus, is supposed to have stayed because of this Sacadas. In the gymnasium of Cylarabes is an Athena called Pania; they show also the graves of Sthenelus and of Cylarabes himself. Not far from the gymnasium has been built a common grave of those Argives who sailed with the Athenians to enslave Syracuse and Sicily.

As you go from here along a road called Hollow there is on the right a temple of Dionysus; the image, they say, is from Euboea. For when the Greeks, as they were returning from Troy, met with the shipwreck at Caphereus, those of the Argives who were able to escape to land suffered from cold and hunger. Having prayed that someone of the gods should prove himself a saviour in their present distress, straightway as they advanced they came upon a cave of Dionysus; in the cave was an image of the god, and on this occasion wild she-goats had gathered there to escape from the storm. These the Argives killed, using the flesh as food and the skins as raiment. When the storm was over and the Argives, having refitted their ships, were returning home, they took with them the wooden image from the cave, and continue to honor it to the present day.

Very near to the temple of Dionysus you will see the house of Adrastus, farther on a sanctuary of Amphiaraus, and opposite the sanctuary the tomb of Eriphyle. Next to these is a precinct of Asclepius, and after them a sanctuary of Baton. Now Baton belonged to the same family as Amphiaraus, to the Melampodidae, and served as his charioteer when he went forth to battle. When the rout took place at the wall of Thebes, the earth opened and received Amphiaraus and his chariot, swallowing up this Baton at the same time.

Returning from Hollow Street, you see what they say is the grave of Hyrnetho. If they allow that it is merely a cenotaph erected to the memory of the lady, their account is likely enough but if they believe that the corpse lies here I cannot credit it, and leave anyone to do so who has not learnt the history of Epidaurus.

The most famous sanctuary of Asclepius at Argos contains at the present day a white-marble image of the god seated, and by his side stands Health. There are also seated figures of Xenophilus and Straton, who made the images. The original founder of the sanctuary was Sphyrus, son of Machaon and brother of the Alexanor who is honored among the Sicyonians in Titane.

The Argives, like the Athenians and Sicyorians, worship Artemis Pheraea, and they, too, assert that the image of the goddess was brought from Pherae in Thessaly. But I cannot agree with them when they say that in Argos are the tombs of Deianeira, the daughter of Oeneus, and of Helenus, son of Priam, and that there is among them the image of Athena that was brought from Troy, thus causing the capture of that city. For the Palladium, as it is called, was manifestly brought to Italy by Aeneas. As to Deianeira, we know that her death took place near Trachis and not in Argos, and her grave is near Heraclea, at the foot of Mount Oeta.

The story of Helenus, son of Priam, I have already given: that he went to Epeirus with Pyrrhus, the son of. Achilles; that, wedded to Andromache, he was guardian to the children of Pyrrhus and that the district called Cestrine received its name from Cestrinus, son of Helenus. Now even the guides of the Argives themselves are aware that their account is not entirely correct. Nevertheless they hold to their opinion, for it is not easy to make the multitude change their views. The Argives have other things worth seeing;

for instance, an underground building over which was the bronze chamber which Acrisius once made to guard his daughter. Perilaus, however, when he became tyrant, pulled it down. Besides this building there is the tomb of Crotopus and a temple of Cretan Dionysus. For they say that the god, having made war on Perseus, afterwards laid aside his enmity, and received great honors at the hands of the Argives, including this precinct set specially apart for himself.

It was afterwards called the precinct of the Cretan god, because, when Ariadne died, Dionysus buried her here. But Lyceas says that when the temple was being rebuilt an earthenware coffin was found, and that it was Ariadne's. He also said that both he himself and other Argives had seen it. Near the temple of Dionysus is a temple of Heavenly Aphrodite.

The citadel they call Larisa, after the daughter of Pelasgus. After her were also named two of the cities in Thessaly, the one by the sea and the one on the Peneus. As you go up the citadel you come to the sanctuary of Hera of the Height, and also a temple of Apollo, which is said to have been first built by Pythaeus when he came from Delphi. The present image is a bronze standing figure called Apollo Deiradiotes, because this place, too, is called Deiras (Ridge). Oracular responses are still given here, and the oracle acts in the following way. There is a woman who prophesies, being debarred from intercourse with a man. Every month a lamb is sacrificed at night, and the woman, after tasting the blood, becomes inspired by the god.

Adjoining the temple of Apollo Deiradiotes is a sanctuary of Athena Oxyderces (Sharp-sighted), dedicated by Diomedes, because once when he was fighting at Troy the goddess removed the mist from his eyes. Adjoining it is the race-course, in which they hold the games in honor of Nemean Zeus and the festival of Hera. As you go to the citadel there is on the left of the road another tomb of the children of Aegyptus. For here are the heads apart from the bodies, which are at Lerna. For it was at Lerna that the youths were murdered, and when they were dead their wives cut off their heads, to prove to their father that they had done the dreadful deed.

On the top of Larisa is a temple of Zeus, surnamed Larisaean, which has no roof; the wooden image I found no longer standing upon its pedestal. There is also a temple of Athena worth seeing. Here are placed votive offerings, including a wooden image of Zeus, which has two eyes in the natural place and a third on its forehead. This Zeus, they say, was a paternal god of Priam, the son of Laomedon, set up in the uncovered part of his court, and when Troy was taken by the Greeks Priam took sanctuary at the altar of this god. When the spoils were divided, Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus, received the image, and for this reason it has been dedicated here.

The reason for its three eyes one might infer to be this. That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men. As for him who is said to rule under the earth, there is a verse of Homer which calls him, too, Zeus:—Zeus of the Underworld, and the august Persephonea.The god in the sea, also, is called Zeus by Aeschylus, the son of Euphorion. So whoever made the image made it with three eyes, as signifying that this same god rules in all the three “allotments” of the Universe, as they are called.

From Argos are roads to various parts of the Peloponnesus, including one to Teges on the side towards Arcadia. On the right is Mount Lycone, which has trees on it, chiefly cypresses. On the top of the mountain is built a sanctuary of Artemis Orthia (of the Steep), and there have been made white-marble images of Apollo, Leto, and Artemis, which they say are works of Polycleitus. On descending again from the mountain you see on the left of the highway a temple of Artemis.

A little farther on there is on the right of the road a mountain called Chaon. At its foot grow cultivated trees, and here the water of the Erasinus rises to the surface. Up to this point it flows from Stymphalus in Arcadia, just as the Rheiti, near the sea at Eleusis, flow from the Euripus. At the places where the Erasinus gushes forth from the mountain they sacrifice to Dionysus and to Pan, and to Dionysus they also hold a festival called Tyrbe (Throng).

On returning to the road that leads to Tegea you see Cenchreae on the right of what is called the Wheel. Why the place received this name they do not say. Perhaps in this case also it was Cenchrias, son of Peirene, that caused it to be so called. Here are common graves of the Argives who conquered the Lacedaemonians in battle at Hysiae. This fight took place, I discovered, when Peisistratus was archon at Athens, in the fourth year of the twenty-seventh Olympiad, in which the Athenian, Eurybotus, won the foot-race. On coming down to a lower level you reach the ruins of Hysiae, which once was a city in Argolis, and here it is that they say the Lacedaemonians suffered their reverse.

The road from Argos to Mantinea is not the same as that to Tegea, but begins from the gate at the Ridge. On this road is a sanctuary built with two rooms, having an entrance on the west side and another on the east. At the latter is a wooden image of Aphrodite, and at the west entrance one of Ares. They say that the images are votive offerings of Polyneices and of the Argives who joined him in the campaign to redress his wrongs.

Farther on from here, across the torrent called Charadrus (Gully), is Oenoe, named, the Argives say, after Oeneus. The story is that Oeneus, who was king in Aetolia, on being driven from his throne by the sons of Agrius, took refuge with Diomedes at Argos, who aided him by an expedition into Calydonia, but said that he could not remain with him, and urged Oeneus to accompany him, if he wished, to Argos. When he came, he gave him all the attention that it was right to give a father's father, and on his death buried him here. After him the Argives name the place Oenoe.

Above Oenoe is Mount Artemisius, with a sanctuary of Artemis on the top. On this mountain are also the springs of the river Inachus. For it really has springs, though the water does not run far.

Here I found nothing else that is worth seeing. There is another road, that leads to Lyrcea from the gate at the Ridge. The story is that to this place came Lynceus, being the only one of the fifty brothers to escape death, and that on his escape he raised a beacon here. Now to raise the beacon was the signal he had agreed with Hypermnestra to give if he should escape Danaus and reach a place of safety. She also, they say, lighted a beacon on Larisa as a sign that she too was now out of danger. For this reason the Argives hold every year a beacon festival.

Book 2, Part 6 Cite

At the first the place was called Lyncea; its present name is derived from Lyrcus, a bastard son of Abas, who afterwards dwelt there. Among the ruins are several things not worth mentioning, besides a figure of Lyrcus upon a slab. The distance from Argos to Lyrcea is about sixty stades, and the distance from Lyrcea to Orneae is the same. Homer in the Catalogue makes no mention of the city Lyrcea, because at the time of the Greek expedition against Troy it already lay deserted; Omeae, however, was inhabited, and in his poem he places it on the list before Phlius and Sicyon, which order corresponds to the position of the towns in the Argive territory.

The name is derived from Orneus, the son of Erechtheus. This Orneus begat Peteos, and Peteos begat Menestheus, who, with a body of Athenians, helped Agamemnon to destroy the kingdom of Priam. From him then did Omeae get its name, and afterwards the Argives removed all its citizens, who thereupon came to live at Argos. At Orneae are a sanctuary and an upright wooden image of Artemis; there is besides a temple devoted to all the gods in common. On the further side of Orneae are Sicyonia and Phliasia.

On the way from Argos to Epidauria there is on the right a building made very like a pyramid, and on it in relief are wrought shields of the Argive shape. Here took place a fight for the throne between Proetus and Acrisius; the contest, they say, ended in a draw, and a reconciliation resulted afterwards, as neither could gain a decisive victory. The story is that they and their hosts were armed with shields, which were first used in this battle. For those that fell on either side was built here a common tomb, as they were fellow citizens and kinsmen.

Going on from here and turning to the right, you come to the ruins of Tiryns. The Tirynthians also were removed by the Argives, who wished to make Argos more powerful by adding to the population. The hero Tiryns, from whom the city derived its name, is said to have been a son of Argus, a son of Zeus. The wall, which is the only part of the ruins still remaining, is a work of the Cyclopes made of unwrought stones, each stone being so big that a pair of mules could not move the smallest from its place to the slightest degree. Long ago small stones were so inserted that each of them binds the large blocks firmly together.

Going down seawards, you come to the chambers of the daughters of Proetus. On returning to the highway you will reach Medea on the left hand. They say that Electryon, the father of Alcmena, was king of Medea, but in my time nothing was left of it except the foundations.

On the straight road to Epidaurus is a village Lessa, in which is a temple of Athena with a wooden image exactly like the one on the citadel Larisa. Above Lessa is Mount Arachnaeus, which long ago, in the time of Inachus, was named Sapyselaton. On it are altars to Zeus and Hera. When rain is needed they sacrifice to them here.

At Lessa the Argive territory joins that of Epidaurus. But before you reach Epidaurus itself you will come to the sanctuary of Asclepius. Who dwelt in this land before Epidaurus came to it I do not know, nor could I discover from the natives the descendants of Epidaurus either. But the last king before the Dorians arrived in the Peloponnesus was, they say, Pityreus, a descendant of Ion, son of Xuthus, and they relate that he handed over the land to Deiphontes and the Argives without a struggle.

He went to Athens with his people and dwelt there, while Deiphontes and the Argives took possession of Epidauria. These on the death of Temenus seceded from the other Argives; Deiphontes and Hyrnetho through hatred of the sons of Temenus, and the army with them, because it respected Deiphontes and Hyrnetho more than Ceisus and his brothers. Epidaurus, who gave the land its name, was, the Eleans say, a son of Pelops but, according to Argive opinion and the poem the Great Eoeae, the father of Epidaurus was Argus, son of Zeus, while the Epidaurians maintain that Epidaurus was the child of Apollo.

That the land is especially sacred to Asclepius is due to the following reason. The Epidaurians say that Phlegyas came to the Peloponnesus, ostensibly to see the land, but really to spy out the number of the inhabitants, and whether the greater part of them was warlike. For Phlegyas was the greatest soldier of his time, and making forays in all directions he carried off the crops and lifted the cattle.

When he went to the Peloponnesus, he was accompanied by his daughter, who all along had kept hidden from her father that she was with child by Apollo. In the country of the Epidaurians she bore a son, and exposed him on the mountain called Nipple at the present day, but then named Myrtium. As the child lay exposed he was given milk by one of the goats that pastured about the mountain, and was guarded by the watch-dog of the herd. And when Aresthanas (for this was the herdsman's name)

discovered that the tale of the goats was not full, and that the watch-dog also was absent from the herd, he left, they say, no stone unturned, and on finding the child desired to take him up. As he drew near he saw lightning that flashed from the child, and, thinking that it was something divine, as in fact it was, he turned away. Presently it was reported over every land and sea that Asclepius was discovering everything he wished to heal the sick, and that he was raising dead men to life.

There is also another tradition concerning him. Coronis, they say, when with child with Asclepius, had intercourse with Ischys, son of Elatus. She was killed by Artemis to punish her for the insult done to Apollo, but when the pyre was already lighted Hermes is said to have snatched the child from the flames.

The third account is, in my opinion, the farthest from the truth; it makes Asclepius to be the son of Arsinoe, the daughter of Leucippus. For when Apollophanes the Arcadian, came to Delphi and asked the god if Asclepius was the son of Arsinoe and therefore a Messenian, the Pythian priestess gave this response:—0 Asclepius, born to bestow great joy upon mortals,Pledge of the mutual love I enjoyed with Phlegyas' daughter,Lovely Coronis, who bare thee in rugged land Epidaurus.. This oracle makes it quite certain that Asclepius was not a son of Arsinoe, and that the story was a fiction invented by Hesiod, or by one of Hesiod's interpolators, just to please the Messenians.

There is other evidence that the god was born in Epidaurus for I find that the most famous sanctuaries of Asclepius had their origin from Epidaurus. In the first place, the Athenians, who say that they gave a share of their mystic rites to Asclepius, call this day of the festival Epidauria, and they allege that their worship of Asclepius dates from then. Again, when Archias, son of Aristaechmus, was healed in Epidauria after spraining himself while hunting about Pindasus, he brought the cult to Pergamus.

From the one at Pergamus has been built in our own day the sanctuary of Asclepius by the sea at Smyrna. Further, at Balagrae of the Cyreneans there is an Asclepius called Healer, who like the others came from Epidaurus. From the one at Cyrene was founded the sanctuary of Asclepius at Lebene, in Crete. There is this difference between the Cyreneans and the Epidaurians, that whereas the former sacrifice goats, it is against the custom of the Epidaurians to do so.

That Asclepius was considered a god from the first, and did not receive the title only in course of time, I infer from several signs, including the evidence of Homer, who makes Agamemnon say about Machaon:—Talthybius, with all speed go summon me hither Machaon,Mortal son of Asclepius.As who should say, “human son of a god.”

The sacred grove of Asclepius is surrounded on all sides by boundary marks. No death or birth takes place within the enclosure the same custom prevails also in the island of Delos. All the offerings, whether the offerer be one of the Epidaurians themselves or a stranger, are entirely consumed within the bounds. At Titane too, I know, there is the same rule.

The image of Asclepius is, in size, half as big as the Olympian Zeus at Athens, and is made of ivory and gold. An inscription tells us that the artist was Thrasymedes, a Parian, son of Arignotus. The god is sitting on a seat grasping a staff; the other hand he is holding above the head of the serpent; there is also a figure of a dog lying by his side. On the seat are wrought in relief the exploits of Argive heroes, that of Bellerophontes against the Chimaera, and Perseus, who has cut off the head of Medusa. Over against the temple is the place where the suppliants of the god sleep.

Near has been built a circular building of white marble, called Tholos (Round House), which is worth seeing. In it is a picture by Pausias representing Love, who has cast aside his bow and arrows, and is carrying instead of them a lyre that he has taken up. Here there is also another work of Pausias, Drunkenness drinking out of a crystal cup. You can see even in the painting a crystal cup and a woman's face through it. Within the enclosure stood slabs; in my time six remained, but of old there were more. On them are inscribed the names of both the men and the women who have been healed by Asclepius, the disease also from which each suffered, and the means of cure. The dialect is Doric.

Apart from the others is an old slab, which declares that Hippolytus dedicated twenty horses to the god. The Aricians tell a tale that agrees with the inscription on this slab, that when Hippolytus was killed, owing to the curses of Theseus, Asclepius raised him from the dead. On coming to life again he refused to forgive his father rejecting his prayers, he went to the Aricians in Italy. There he became king and devoted a precinct to Artemis, where down to my time the prize for the victor in single combat was the priesthood of the goddess. The contest was open to no freeman, but only to slaves who had run away from their masters.

The Epidaurians have a theater within the sanctuary, in my opinion very well worth seeing. For while the Roman theaters are far superior to those anywhere else in their splendor, and the Arcadian theater at Megalopolis is unequalled for size, what architect could seriously rival Polycleitus in symmetry and beauty? For it was Polycleitus who built both this theater and the circular building. Within the grove are a temple of Artemis, an image of Epione, a sanctuary of Aphrodite and Themis, a race-course consisting, like most Greek race-courses, of a bank of earth, and a fountain worth seeing for its roof and general splendour.

A Roman senator, Antoninus, made in our own day a bath of Asclepius and a sanctuary of the gods they call Bountiful. He made also a temple to Health, Asclepius, and Apollo, the last two surnamed Egyptian. He moreover restored the portico that was named the Portico of Cotys, which, as the brick of which it was made had been unburnt, had fallen into utter ruin after it had lost its roof. As the Epidaurians about the sanctuary were in great distress, because their women had no shelter in which to be delivered and the sick breathed their last in the open, he provided a dwelling, so that these grievances also were redressed. Here at last was a place in which without sin a human being could die and a woman be delivered.

Above the grove are the Nipple and another mountain called Cynortium; on the latter is a sanctuary of Maleatian Apollo. The sanctuary itself is an ancient one, but among the things Antoninus made for the Epidaurians are various appurtenances for the sanctuary of the Maleatian, including a reservoir into which the rain-water collects for their use.

The serpents, including a peculiar kind of a yellowish color, are considered sacred to Asclepius, and are tame with men. These are peculiar to Epidauria, and I have noticed that other lands have their peculiar animals. For in Libya only are to be found land crocodiles at least two cubits long; from India alone are brought, among other creatures, parrots. But the big snakes that grow to more than thirty cubits, such as are found in India and in Libya, are said by the Epidaurians not to be serpents, but some other kind of creature.

As you go up to Mount Coryphum you see by the road an olive tree called Twisted. It was Heracles who gave it this shape by bending it round with his hand, but I cannot say whether he set it to be a boundary mark against the Asinaeans in Argolis, since in no land, which has been depopulated, is it easy to discover the truth about the boundaries. On the Top of the mountain there is a sanctuary of Artemis Coryphaea (of the Peak), of which Telesilla made mention in an ode.

On going down to the city of the Epidaurians, you come to a place where wild olives grow; they call it Hyrnethium. I will relate the story of it, which is probable enough, as given by the Epidaurians. Ceisus and the other sons of Temenus knew that they would grieve Deiphontes most if they could find a way to part him and Hyrnetho. So Cerynes and Phalces (for Agraeus, the youngest, disapproved of their plan) came to Epidaurus. Staying their chariot under the wall, they sent a herald to their sister, pretending that they wished to parley with her.

When she obeyed their summons, the young men began to make many accusations against Deiphontes, and besought her much that she would return to Argos, promising, among other things, to give her to a husband in every respect better than Deiphontes, one who ruled over more subjects and a more prosperous country. But Hyrnetho, pained at their words, gave as good as she had received, retorting that Deiphontes was a dear husband to her, and had shown himself a blameless son-in-law to Temenus; as for them, they ought to be called the murderers of Temenus rather than his sons.

Without further reply the youths seized her, placed her in the chariot, and drove away. An Epidaurian told Deiphontes that Cerynes and Phalces had gone, taking with them Hyrnetho against her will; he himself rushed to the rescue with all speed, and as the Epidaurians learned the news they reinforced him. On overtaking the runaways, Deiphontes shot Cerynes and killed him, but he was afraid to shoot at Phalces, who was holding Hyrnetho, lest he should miss him and become the slayer of his wife; so he closed with them and tried to get her away. But Phalces, holding on and dragging her with greater violence, killed her, as she was with child.

Realizing what he had done to his sister, he began to drive the chariot more recklessly, as he was anxious to gain a start before all the Epidaurians could gather against him. Deiphontes and his children—for before this children had been born to him, Antimenes, Xanthippus, and Argeus, and a daughter, Orsobia, who, they say, after-wards married Pamphylus, son of Aegimius—took up the dead body of Hyrnetho and carried it to this place, which in course of time was named Hyrnethium.

They built for her a hero-shrine, and bestowed upon her various honors; in particular, the custom was established that nobody should carry home, or use for any purpose, the pieces that break off the olive trees, or any other trees, that grow there; these are left there on the spot to be sacred to Hyrnetho.

Not far from the city is the tomb of Melissa, who married Periander, the son of Cypselus, and another of Procles, the father of Melissa. He, too, was tyrant of Epidaurus, as Periander, his son-in-law, was tyrant of Corinth.

The most noteworthy things which I found the city of Epidaurus itself had to show are these. There is, of course, a precinct of Asclepius, with images of the god himself and of Epione. Epione, they say, was the wife of Asclepius. These are of Parian marble, and are set up in the open. There is also in the city a temple of Dionysus and one of Artemis. The figure of Artemis one might take to be the goddess hunting. There is also a sanctuary of Aphrodite, while the one at the harbor, on a height that juts out into the sea, they say is Hera's. The Athena on the citadel, a wooden image worth seeing, they surname Cissaea (Ivy Goddess).

The Aeginetans dwell in the island over against Epidauria. It is said that in the beginning there were no men in it; but after Zeus brought to it, when uninhabited, Aegina, daughter of Asopus, its name was changed from Oenone to Aegina; and when Aeacus, on growing up, asked Zeus for settlers, the god, they say, raised up the inhabitants out of the earth. They can mention no king of the island except Aeacus, since we know of none even of the sons of Aeacus who stayed there; for to Peleus and Telamon befell exile for the murder of Phocus, while the sons of Phocus made their home about Parnassus, in the land that is now called Phocis.

This name had already been given to the land, at the time when Phocus, son of Ornytion, came to it a generation previously. In the time, then, of this Phocus only the district about Tithorea and Parnassus was called Phocis, but in the time of Aeacus the name spread to all from the borders of the Minyae at Orchomenos to Scarphea among the Locri.

From Peleus sprang the kings in Epeirus; but as for the sons of Telamon, the family of Ajax is undistinguished, because he was a man who lived a private life; though Miltiades, who led the Athenians to Marathon, and Cimon, the son of Miltiades, achieved renown; but the family of Teucer continued to be the royal house in Cyprus down to the time of Evagoras. Asius the epic poet says that to Phocus were born Panopeus and Crisus. To Panopeus was born Epeus, who made, according to Homer, the wooden horse; and the grandson of Crisus was Pylades, whose father was Strophius, son of Crisus, while his mother was Anaxibi ,sister of Agamemnon. Such was the pedigree of the Aeacidae (family of. Aeacus), as they are called, but they departed from the beginning to other lands.

Subsequently a division of the Argives who, under Deiphontes, had seized Epidaurus, crossed to Aegina, and, settling among the old Aeginetans, established in the island Dorian manners and the Dorian dialect. Although the Aeginetans rose to great power, so that their navy was superior to that of Athens, and in the Persian war supplied more ships than any state except Athens, yet their prosperity was not permanent but when the island was depopulated by the Athenians, they took up their abode at Thyrea, in Argolis, which the Lacedaemonians gave them to dwell in. They recovered their island when the Athenian warships were captured in the Hellespont, yet it was never given them to rise again to their old wealth or power.

Of the Greek islands, Aegina is the most difficult of access, for it is surrounded by sunken rocks and reefs which rise up. The story is that Aeacus devised this feature of set purpose, because he feared piratical raids by sea, and wished the approach to be perilous to enemies. Near the harbor in which vessels mostly anchor is a temple of Aphrodite, and in the most conspicuous part of the city what is called the shrine of Aeacus, a quadrangular enclosure of white marble.

Wrought in relief at the entrance are the envoys whom the Greeks once dispatched to Aeacus. The reason for the embassy given by the Aeginetans is the same as that which the other Greeks assign. A drought had for some time afflicted Greece, and no rain fell either beyond the Isthmus or in the Peloponnesus, until at last they sent envoys to Delphi to ask what was the cause and to beg for deliverance from the evil. The Pythian priestess bade them propitiate Zeus, saying that he would not listen to them unless the one to supplicate him were Aeacus.

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And so envoys came with a request to Aeacus from each city. By sacrifice and prayer to Zeus, God of all the Greeks (Panellenios), he caused rain to fall upon the earth, and the Aeginetans made these likenesses of those who came to him. Within the enclosure are olive trees that have grown there from of old, and there is an altar which is raised but a little from the ground. That this altar is also the tomb of Aeacus is told as a holy secret.

Beside the shrine of Aeacus is the grave of Phocus, a barrow surrounded by a basement, and on it lies a rough stone. When Telamon and Peleus had induced Phocus to compete at the pentathlon, and it was now the turn of Peleus to hurl the stone, which they were using for a quoit, he intentionally hit Phocus. The act was done to please their mother; for, while they were both born of the daughter of Sciron, Phocus was not, being, if indeed the report of the Greeks be true, the son of a sister of Thetis. I believe it was for this reason, and not only out of friendship for Orestes, that Pylades plotted the murder of Neoptolemus.

When this blow of the quoit killed Phocus, the sons of Endeis boarded a ship and fled. Afterwards Telamon sent a herald denying that he had plotted the death of Phocus. Aeacus, however, refused to allow him to land on the island, and bade him make his defence standing on board ship, or if he wished, from a mole raised in the sea. So he sailed into the harbor called Secret, and proceeded to make a mole by night. This was finished, and still remains at the present day. But Telamon, being condemned as implicated in the murder of Phocus, sailed away a second time and came to Salamis.

Not far from the Secret Harbor is a theater worth seeing; it is very similar to the one at Epidaurus, both in size and in style. Behind it is built one side of a race-course, which not only itself holds up the theater, but also in turn uses it as a support.

There are three temples close together, one of Apollo, one of Artemis, and a third of Dionysus. Apollo has a naked wooden image of native workmanship, but Artemis is dressed, and so, too, is Dionysus, who is, moreover, represented with a beard. The sanctuary of Asclepius is not here, but in another place, and his image is of stone, and seated.

Of the gods, the Aeginetans worship most Hecate, in whose honor every year they celebrate mystic rites which, they say, Orpheus the Thracian established among them. Within the enclosure is a temple; its wooden image is the work of Myron, and it has one face and one body. It was Alcamenes, in my opinion, who first made three images of Hecate attached to one another, a figure called by the Athenians Epipurgidia (on the Tower); it stands beside the temple of the Wingless Victory.

In Aegina, as you go towards the mountain of Zeus, God of all the Greeks, you reach a sanctuary of Aphaea, in whose honor Pindar composed an ode for the Aeginetans. The Cretans say (the story of Aphaea is Cretan) that Carmanor, who purified Apollo after he had killed Pytho, was the father of Eubulus, and that the daughter of Zeus and of Carme, the daughter of Eubulus, was Britomartis. She took delight, they say, in running and in the chase, and was very dear to Artemis. Fleeing from Minos, who had fallen in love with her, she threw herself into nets which had been cast (aphemena) for a draught of fishes. She was made a goddess by Artemis, and she is worshipped, not only by the Cretans, but also by the Aeginetans, who say that Britomartis shows herself in their island. Her surname among the Aeginetans is Aphaea; in Crete it is Dictynna (Goddess of Nets).

The Mount of all the Greeks, except for the sanctuary of Zeus, has, I found, nothing else worthy of mention. This sanctuary, they say, was made for Zeus by Aeacus. The story of Auxesia and Damia, how the Epidaurians suffered from drought, how in obedience to an oracle they had these wooden images made of olive wood that they received from the Athenians, how the Epidaurians left off paying to the Athenians what they had agreed to pay, on the ground that the Aeginetans had the images, how the Athenians perished who crossed over to Aegina to fetch them—all this, as Herodotus has described it accurately and in detail, I have no intention of relating, because the story has been well told already; but I will add that I saw the images, and sacrificed to them in the same way as it is customary to sacrifice at Eleusis.

So much I must relate about Aegina, for the sake of Aeacus and his exploits. Bordering on Epidauria are the Troezenians, unrivalled glorifiers of their own country. They say that Orus was the first to be born in their land. Now, in my opinion, Orus is an Egyptian name and utterly un-Greek; but they assert that he became their king, and that the land was called Oraea after him and that Althepus, the son of Poseidon and of Leis, the daughter of Orus, inheriting the kingdom after Orus, named the land Althepia.

During his reign, they say, Athena and Poseidon disputed about the land, and after disputing held it in common, as Zeus commanded them to do. For this reason they worship both Athena, whom they name both Polias (Urban) and Sthenias (Strong), and also Poseidon, under the surname of King. And moreover their old coins have as device a trident and a face of Athena.

After Althepus, Saron became king. They said that this man built the sanctuary for Saronian Artemis by a sea which is marshy and shallow, so that for this reason it was called the Phoebaean lagoon. Now Saron was very fond of hunting. As he was chasing a doe, it so chanced that it dashed into the sea and he dashed in alter it. The doe swam further and further from the shore, and Saron kept close to his prey, until his ardor brought him to the open ocean. Here his strength failed, and he was drowned in the waves. The body was cast ashore at the grove of Artemis by the Phoebaean lagoon, and they buried it within the sacred enclosure, and after him they named the sea in these parts the Saronic instead of the Phoebaean lagoon.

They know nothing of the later kings down to Hyperes and Anthas. These they assert to be sons of Poseidon and of Alcyone, daughter of Atlas, adding that they founded in the country the cities of Hyperea and Anthea; Aetius, however, the son of Anthas, on inheriting the kingdoms of his father and of his uncle, named one of the cities Poseidonias. When Troezen and Pittheus came to Aetius there were three kings instead of one, but the sons of Pelops enjoyed the balance of power.

Here is evidence of it. When Troezen died, Pittheus gathered the inhabitants together, incorporating both Hyperea and Anthea into the modern city, which he named Troezen after his brother. Many years afterwards the descendants of Aetius, son of Anthas, were dispatched as colonists from Troezen, and founded Halicarnassus and Myndus in Caria. Anaphlystus and Sphettus, sons of Troezen, migrated to Attica, and the parishes are named after them. As my readers know it already, I shall not relate the story of Theseus, the grandson of Pittheus. There is, however, one incident that I must add.

On the return of the Heracleidae, the Troezenians too received Dorian settlers from Argos. They had been subject at even an earlier date to the Argives; Homer, too, in the Catalogue, says that their commander was Diomedes. For Diomedes and Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, who were guardians of the boy Cyanippus, son of Aegialeus, led the Argives to Troy. Sthenelus, as I have related above, came of a more illustrious family, called the Anaxagoridae, and he had the best claim to the Kingdom of Argos. Such is the story of the Troezenians, with the exception of the cities that claim to be their colonies. I will now proceed to describe the appointments of their sanctuaries and the remarkable sights of their country.

In the market-place of Troezen is a temple of Artemis Saviour, with images of the goddess. It was said that the temple was founded and the name Saviour given by Theseus when he returned from Crete after overcoming Asterion the son of Minos. This victory he considered the most noteworthy of his achievements, not so much, in my opinion, because Asterion was the bravest of those killed by Theseus, but because his success in unravelling the difficult Maze and in escaping unnoticed after the exploit made credible the saying that it was divine providence that brought Theseus and his company back in safety.

In this temple are altars to the gods said to rule under the earth. It is here that they say Semele was brought out of Hell by Dionysus, and that Heracles dragged up the Hound of Hell. But I cannot bring myself to believe even that Semele died at all, seeing that she was the wife of Zeus; while, as for the so-called Hound of Hell, I will give my views in another place.

Behind the temple is the tomb of Pittheus, on which are placed three seats of white marble. On them they say that Pittheus and two men with him used to sit in judgment. Not far off is a sanctuary of the Muses, made, they told me, by Ardalus, son of Hephaestus. This Ardalus they hold to have invented the flute, and after him they name the Muses Ardalides. Here, they say, Pittheus taught the art of rhetoric, and I have myself read a book purporting to be a treatise by Pittheus, published by a citizen of Epidaurus. Not far from the Muses' Hall is an old altar, which also, according to report, was dedicated by Ardalus. Upon it they sacrifice to the Muses and to Sleep, saying that Sleep is the god that is dearest to the Muses.

Near the theater a temple of Artemis Lycea (Wolfish) was made by Hippolytus. About this surname I could learn nothing from the local guides, but I gathered that either Hippolytus destroyed wolves that were ravaging the land of Troezen, or else that Lycea is a surname of Artemis among the Amazons, from whom he was descended through his mother. Perhaps there may be another explanation that I am unaware of. The stone in front of the temple, called the Sacred Stone, they say is that on which nine men of Troezen once purified Orestes from the stain of matricide.

Not far from Artemis Lycea are altars close to one another. The first of them is to Dionysus, surnamed, in accordance with an oracle, Saotes (Saviour); the second is named the altar of the Themides (Laws), and was dedicated, they say, by Pittheus. They had every reason, it seems to me, for making an altar to Helius Eleutherius (Sun, God of Freedom), seeing that they escaped being enslaved by Xerxes and the Persians.

The sanctuary of Thearian Apollo, they told me, was set up by Pittheus; it is the oldest I know of. Now the Phocaeans, too, in Ionia have an old temple of Athena, which was once burnt by Harpagus the Persian, and the Samians also have an old one of Pythian Apollo; these, however, were built much later than the sanctuary at Troezen. The modern image was dedicated by Auliscus, and made by Hermon of Troezen. This Hermon made also the wooden images of the Dioscuri.

Under a portico in the market-place are set up women; both they and their children are of stone. They are the women and children whom the Athenians gave to the Troezenians to be kept safe, when they had resolved to evacuate Athens and not to await the attack of the Persians by land. They are said to have dedicated likenesses, not of all the women—for, as a matter of fact, the statues are not many—but only of those who were of high rank.

In front of the sanctuary of Apollo is a building called the Booth of Orestes. For before he was cleansed for shedding his mother's blood, no citizen of Troezen would receive him into his home; so they lodged him here and gave him entertainment while they cleansed him, until they had finished the purification. Down to the present day the descendants of those who cleansed Orestes dine here on appointed days. A little way from the booth were buried, they say, the means of cleansing, and from them grew up a bay tree, which, indeed, still remains, being the one before this booth.

Among the means of cleansing which they say they used to cleanse Orestes was water from Hippocrene (Horse's Fount) for the Troezenians too have a fountain called the Horse's, and the legend about it does not differ from the one which prevails in Boeotia. For they, too, say that the earth sent up the water when the horse Pegasus struck the ground with his hoof, and that Bellerophontes came to Troezen to ask Pittheus to give him Aethra to wife, but before the marriage took place he was banished from Corinth.

Here there is also a Hermes called Polygius. Against this image, they say, Heracles leaned his club. Now this club, which was of wild olive, taking root in the earth (if anyone cares to believe the story), grew up again and is still alive; Heracles, they say, discovering the wild olive by the Saronic Sea, cut a club from it. There is also a sanctuary of Zeus surnamed Saviour, which, they say, was made by Aetius, the son of Anthas, when he was king. To a water they give the name River of Gold. They say that when the land was afflicted with a drought for nine years, during which no rain fell, all the other waters dried up, but this River of Gold even then continued to flow as before.

To Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, is devoted a very famous precinct, in which is a temple with an old image. Diomedes, they say, made these, and, moreover, was the first to sacrifice to Hippolytus. The Troezenians have a priest of Hippolytus, who holds his sacred office for life, and annual sacrifices have been established. They also observe the following custom. Every maiden before marriage cuts off a lock for Hippolytus, and, having cut it, she brings it to the temple and dedicates it. They will not have it that he was dragged to death by his horses, and, though they know his grave, they do not show it. But they believe that what is called the Charioteer in the sky is the Hippolytus of the legend, such being the honor he enjoys from the gods.

Within this enclosure is a temple of Apollo Seafaring, an offering of Diomedes for having weathered the storm that came upon the Greeks as they were returning from Troy. They say that Diomedes was also the first to hold the Pythian games in honor of Apollo. Of Damia and Auxesia (for the Troezenians, too, share in their worship) they do not give the same account as the Epidaurians and Aeginetans, but say that they were maidens who came from Crete. A general insurrection having arisen in the city, these too, they say, were stoned to death by the opposite party; and they hold a festival in their honor that they call Stoning.

In the other part of the enclosure is a race-course called that of Hippolytus, and above it a temple of Aphrodite Spy. For from here, whenever Hippolytus practised his exercises, Phaedra, who was in love with him, used to gaze upon him. Here there still grew the myrtle, with its leaves, as I have described above, pierced with holes. When Phaedra was in despair and could find no relief for her passion, she used to vent her spleen upon the leaves of this myrtle.

There is also the grave of Phaedra, not far from the tomb of Hippolytus, which is a barrow near the myrtle. The image of Asclepius was made by Timotheus, but the Troezenians say that it is not Asclepius, but a likeness of Hippolytus. I remember, too, seeing the house of Hippolytus; before it is what is called the Fountain of Heracles, for Heracles, say the Troezenians, discovered the water.

On the citadel is a temple of Athena, called Sthenias. The wooden image itself of the goddess I was made by CalIon, of Aegina. Callon was a pupil of Tectaeus and Angelion, who made the image of Apollo for the Delians. Angelion and Tectaeus were trained in the school of Dipoenus and Scyllis.

On going down from here you come to a sanctuary of Pan Lyterius (Releasing), so named because he showed to the Troezenian magistrates dreams which supplied a cure for the epidemic that had afflicted Troezenia, and the Athenians more than any other people. Having crossed the sanctuary, you can see a temple of Isis, and above it one of Aphrodite of the Height. The temple of Isis was made by the Halicarnassians in Troezen, because this is their mother-city, but the image of Isis was dedicated by the people of Troezen.

On the road that leads through the mountains to Hermione is a spring of the river Hyllicus, originally called Taurius (Bull-like), and a rock called the Rock of Theseus; when Theseus took up the boots and sword of Aegeus under it, it, too, changed its name, for before it was called the altar of Zeus Sthenius (Strong). Near the rock is a sanctuary of Aphrodite Nymphia (Bridal), made by Theseus when he took Helen to wife.

Outside the wall there is also a sanctuary of Poseidon Nurturer (Phytalmios). For they say that, being wroth with them, Poseidon smote the land with barrenness, brine (halme) reaching the seeds and the roots of the plants (phyta), until, appeased by sacrifices and prayers, he ceased to send up the brine upon the earth. Above the temple of Poseidon is Demeter Lawbringer (Thesmophoros), set up, they say, by Althepus.

On going down to the harbor at what is called Celenderis, you come to a place called Birthplace (Genethlion), where Theseus is said to have been born. Before this place is a temple of Ares, for here also did Theseus conquer the Amazons in battle. These must have belonged to the army that strove in Attica against Theseus and the Athenians.

As you make your way to the Psiphaean Sea you see a wild olive growing, which they call the Bent Rhacos. The Troezenians call rhacos every kind of barren olive—cotinos, phylia, or elaios—and this tree they call Bent because it was when the reins caught in it that the chariot of Hippolytus was upset. Not far from this stands the sanctuary of Saronian Artemis, and I have already given an account of it. I must add that every year they hold in honor of Artemis a festival called Saronia.

The Troezenians possess islands, one of which is near the mainland, and it is possible to wade across the channel. This was formerly called Sphaeria, but its name was changed to Sacred Island for the following reason. In it is the tomb of Sphaerus, who, they say, was charioteer to Pelops. In obedience forsooth to a dream from Athena, Aethra crossed over into the island with libations for Sphaerus. After she had crossed, Poseidon is said to have had intercourse with her here. So for this reason Aethra set up here a temple of Athena Apaturia, and changed the name from Sphaeria to Sacred Island. She also established a custom for the Troezenian maidens of dedicating their girdles before wedlock to Athena Apaturia.

Calaurea, they say, was sacred to Apollo of old, at the time when Delphi was sacred to Poseidon. Legend adds that the two gods exchanged the two places. They still say this, and quote an oracle:—Delos and Calaurea alike thou lovest to dwell in,Pytho, too, the holy, and Taenarum swept by the high winds.. At any rate, there is a holy sanctuary of Poseidon here, and it is served by a maiden priestess until she reaches an age fit for marriage.

Within the enclosure is also the tomb of Demosthenes. His fate, and that of Homer before him, have, in my opinion, showed most plainly how spiteful the deity is; for Homer, after losing his sight, was, in addition to this great affliction, cursed with a second—a poverty which drove him in beggary to every land; while to Demosthenes it befell to experience exile in his old age and to meet with such a violent end. Now, although concerning him, not only others, but Demosthenes himself, have again and again declared that assuredly he took no part of the money that Harpalus brought from Asia,

yet I must relate the circumstances of the statement made subsequently. Shortly after Harpalus ran away from Athens and crossed with a squadron to Crete, he was put to death by the servants who were attending him, though some assert that he was assassinated by Pausanias, a Macedonian. The steward of his money fled to Rhodes, and was arrested by a Macedonian, Philoxenus, who also had demanded Harpalus from the Athenians. Having this slave in his power, he proceeded to examine him, until he learned everything about such as had allowed themselves to accept a bribe from Harpalus. On obtaining this information he sent a dispatch to Athens,

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in which he gave a list of such as had taken a bribe from Harpalus, both their names and the sums each had received. Demosthenes, however, he never mentioned at all, although Alexander held him in bitter hatred, and he himself had a private quarrel with him.So Demosthenes is honored in many parts of Greece, and especially by the dwellers in Calaurea.

Stretching out far into the sea from Troezenia is a peninsula, on the coast of which has been founded a little town called Methana. Here there is a sanctuary of Isis, and on the market-place is an image of Hermes, and also one of Heracles. Some thirty stades distant from the town are hot baths. They say that it was when Antigonus, son of Demetrius, was king of Macedon that the water first appeared, and that what appeared at once was not water, but fire that gushed in great volume from the ground, and when this died down the water flowed; indeed, even at the present day it wells up hot and exceedingly salt. A bather here finds no cold water at hand, and if he dives into the sea his swim is full of danger. For wild creatures live in it, and it swarms with sharks.

I will also relate what astonished me most in Methana. The wind called Lips, striking the budding vines from the Saronic Gulf, blights their buds. So while the wind is still rushing on, two men cut in two a cock whose feathers are all white, and run round the vines in opposite directions, each carrying half of the cock. When they meet at their starting place, they bury the pieces there.

Such are the means they have devised against the Lips. The islets, nine in number, lying off the land are called the Isles of Pelops, and they say that when it rains one of them is not touched. If this be the case I do not know, though the people around Methana said that it was true, and I have seen before now men trying to keep off hail by sacrifices and spells.

Methana, then, is a peninsula of the Peloponnesus. Within it, bordering on the land of Troezen, is Hermione. The founder of the old city, the Hermionians say, was Hermion, the son of Europs. Now Europs, whose father was certainly Phoroneus, Herophanes of Troezen said was an illegitimate child. For surely the kingdom of Argos would never have devolved upon Argus, Niobe's son, the grandchild of Phoroneus, in the presence of a legitimate son.

But even supposing that Europs was a legitimate child who died before Phoroneus, I am quite sure that his son was not likely to stand a fair chance against Niobe's child, whose father was supposed to be Zeus. Subsequently the Dorians from Argos settled, among other places, at Hermion, but I do not think there was war between the two peoples, or it would have been spoken of by the Argives.

There is a road from Troezen to Hermion by way of the rock which aforetime was called the altar of Zeus Sthenius (Strong) but afterwards Theseus took up the tokens, and people now call it the Rock of Theseus. As you go, then, along a mountain road by way of this rock, you reach a temple of Apollo surnamed Platanistius (God of the Plane-tree Grove), and a place called Eilei, where are sanctuaries of Demeter and of her daughter Core (Maid). Seawards, on the borders of Hermionis, is a sanctuary of Demeter surnamed Thermasia (Warmth).

Just about eighty stades away is a headland Scyllaeum, which is named alter the daughter of Nisus. For when, owing to her treachery, Minos had taken Nisaea and Megara, he said that now he would not have her to wife, and ordered his Cretans to throw her from the ship. She was drowned, and the waves cast up her body on this headland. They do not show a grave of her, but say that the sea birds were allowed to tear the corpse to pieces.

As you sail from Scyllaeum in the direction of the city, you reach another headland, called Bucephala (Ox-head), and, after the headland, islands, the first of which is Haliussa (Salt Island). This provides a harbor where there is good anchorage. After it comes Pityussa (Pine Island), and the third they call Aristerae. On sailing past these you come to another headland, Colyergia, jutting out from the mainland, and after it to an island, called Tricrana (Three Heads), and a mountain, projecting into the sea from the Peloponnesus, called Buporthmus (Oxford). On Buporthmus has been built a sanctuary of Demeter and her daughter, as well as one of Athena, surnamed Promachorma (Champion of the Anchorage).

Before Buporthmus lies an island called Aperopia, not far from which is another island, Hydrea. After it the mainland is skirted by a crescent-shaped beach and after the beach there is a spit of land up to a sanctuary of Poseidon, beginning at the sea on the east and extending westwards. It possesses harbors, and is some seven stades in length, and not more than three stades in breadth where it is broadest.

Here the Hermionians had their former city. They still have sanctuaries here: one of Poseidon at the east end of the spit, and a temple of Athena further inland by the side of the latter are the foundations of a race-course, in which legend says the sons of Tyndareus contended. There is also another sanctuary of Athena, of no great size, the roof of which has fallen in. There is a temple to Helius (Sun), another to the Graces, and a third to Serapis and Isis. There are also circuits of large unhewn stones, within which they perform mystic ritual to Demeter.

Such are the possessions of the Hermionians in these parts. The modern city is just about four stades distant from the headland, upon which is the sanctuary of Poseidon, and it lies on a site which is level at first, gently rising up a slope, which presently merges into Pron, for so they name this mountain. A wall stands all round Hermione, a city which I found afforded much to write about, and among the things which I thought I myself must certainly mention are a temple of Aphrodite, surnamed both Pontia (of the Deep Sea) and Limenia (of the Harbor), and a white-marble image of huge size, and worth seeing for its artistic excellence.

There is also another temple of Aphrodite. Among the honors paid her by the Hermionians is this custom: maidens, and widows about to remarry, all sacrifice to her before wedding. Sanctuaries have also been built of Demeter Thermasia (Warmth), one at the border towards Troezenia, as I have stated above, while there is another in Hermione itself.

Near the latter is a temple of Dionysus of the Black Goatskin. In his honor every year they hold a competition in music, and they offer prizes for swimming-races and boat-races. There is also a sanctuary of Artemis surnamed Iphigenia, and a bronze Poseidon with one foot upon a dolphin. Passing by this into the sanctuary of Hestia, we see no image, but only an altar, and they sacrifice to Hestia upon it.

Of Apollo there are three temples and three images. One has no surname; the second they call Pythaeus, and the third Horius (of the Borders). The name Pythaeus they have learned from the Argives, for Telesilla tells us that they were the first Greeks to whose country came Pythaeus, who was a son of Apollo. I cannot say for certain why they call the third Horius, but I conjecture that they won a victory, either in war or by arbitration, in a dispute concerning the borders (horoi) of their land, and for this reason paid honors to Apollo Horius.

The sanctuary of Fortune is said by the Hermionians to be the newest in their city; a colossus of Parian marble stands there. Of their wells, one is very old; nobody can see the water flowing into it, but it would never run dry, even if everybody descended and drew water from it. Another well they made in our own day, and the name of the place from which the water flows into it is Leimon (Meadow).

The object most worthy of mention is a sanctuary of Demeter on Pron. This sanctuary is said by the Hermionians to have been founded by Clymenus, son of Phoroneus, and Chthonia, sister of Clymenus. But the Argive account is that when Demeter came to Argolis, while Atheras and Mysius afforded hospitality to the goddess, Colontas neither received her into his home nor paid her any other mark of respect. His daughter Chthoia disapproved of this conduct. They say that Colontas was punished by being burnt up along with his house, while Chthonia was brought to Hermion by Demeter, and made the sanctuary for the Hermionians.

At any rate, the goddess herself is called Chthonia, and Chthonia is the name of the festival they hold in the summer of every year. The manner of it is this. The procession is headed by the priests of the gods and by all those who hold the annual magistracies; these are followed by both men and women. It is now a custom that some who are still children should honor the goddess in the procession. These are dressed in white, and wear wreaths upon their heads. Their wreaths are woven of the flower called by the natives cosmosandalon, which, from its size and color, seems to me to be an iris; it even has inscribed upon it the same letters of mourning.

Those who form the procession are followed by men leading from the herd a full-grown cow, fastened with ropes, and still untamed and frisky. Having driven the cow to the temple, some loose her from the ropes that she may rush into the sanctuary, others, who hitherto have been holding the doors open, when they see the cow within the temple, close the doors.

Four old women, left behind inside, are they who dispatch the cow. Whichever gets the chance cuts the throat of the cow with a sickle. Afterwards the doors are opened, and those who are appointed drive up a second cow, and a third after that, and yet a fourth. All are dispatched in the same way by the old women, and the sacrifice has yet another strange feature. On whichever of her sides the first cow falls, all the others must fall on the same.

Such is the manner in which the sacrifice is performed by the Hermionians. Before the temple stand a few statues of the women who have served Demeter as her priestess, and on passing inside you see seats on which the old women wait for the cows to be driven in one by one, and images, of no great age, of Athena and Demeter. But the thing itself that they worship more than all else, I never saw, nor yet has any other man, whether stranger or Hermionian. The old women may keep their knowledge of its nature to themselves.

There is also another temple, all round which stand statues. This temple is right opposite that of Chthonia, and is called that of Clymenus, and they sacrifice to Clymenus here. I do not believe that Clymenus was an Argive who came to Hermion “Clymenus” is the surname of the god, whoever legend says is king in the underworld.

Beside this temple is another; it is of Ares, and has an image of the god, while to the right of the sanctuary of Chthonia is a portico, called by the natives the Portico of Echo. It is such that if a man speaks it reverberates at least three times. Behind the temple of Chthonia are three places which the Hermionians call that of Clymenus, that of Pluto, and the Acherusian Lake. All are surrounded by fences of stones, while in the place of Clymenus there is also a chasm in the earth. Through this, according to the legend of the Hermionians, Heracles brought up the Hound of Hell.

At the gate through which there is a straight road leading to Mases, there is a sanctuary of Eileithyia within the wall. Every day, both with sacrifices and with incense, they magnificently propitiate the goddess, and, moreover, there is a vast number of votive gifts offered to Eileithyia. But the image no one may see, except, perhaps, the priestesses.

Proceeding about seven stades along the straight road to Mases, you reach, on turning to the left, a road to Halice. At the present day Halice is deserted, but once it, too, had inhabitants, and there is mention made of citizens of Halice on the Epidaurian slabs on which are inscribed the cures of Asclepius. I know, however, no other authentic document in which mention is made either of the city Halice or of its citizens. Well, to this city also there is a road, which lies midway between Pron and another mountain, called in old days Thornax; but they say that the name was changed because, according to legend, it was here that the transformation of Zeus into a cuckoo took place.

Even to the present day there are sanctuaries on the tops of the mountains: on Mount Cuckoo one of Zeus, on Pron one of Hera. At the foot of Mount Cuckoo is a temple, but there are no doors standing, and I found it without a roof or an image inside. The temple was said to be Apollo's. by the side of it runs a road to Mases for those who have turned aside from the straight road. Mases was in old days a city, even as Homer represents it in the catalogue of the Argives, but in my time the Hermionians were using it as a seaport.

From Mases there is a road on the right to a headland called Struthus (Sparrow Peak). From this headland by way of the summits of the mountains the distance to the place called Philanorium and to the Boleoi is two hundred and fifty stades. These Boleoi are heaps of unhewn stones. Another place, called Twins, is twenty stades distant from here. There is here a sanctuary of Apollo, a sanctuary of Poseidon, and in addition one of Demeter. The images are of white marble, and are upright.

Next comes a district, belonging to the Argives, that once was called Asinaea, and by the sea are ruins of Asine. When the Lacedaemonians and their king Nicander, son of Charillus, son of Polydectes, son of Eunomus, son of Prytanis, son of Eurypon, invaded Argolis with an army, the Asinaeans joined in the invasion, and with them ravaged the land of the Argives. When the Lacedaemonian expedition departed home, the Argives under their king Eratus attacked Asine.

For a time the Asinaeans defended themselves from their wall, and killed among others Lysistratus, one of the most notable men of Argos. But when the wall was lost, the citizens put their wives and children on board their vessels and abandoned their own country; the Argives, while levelling Asine to the ground and annexing its territory to their own, left the sanctuary of Apollo Pythaeus, which is still visible, and by it they buried Lysistratus.

Distant from Argos forty stades and no more is the sea at Lerna. On the way down to Lerna the first thing on the road is the Erasinus, which empties itself into the Phrixus, and the Phrixus into the sea between Temenium and Lerna. About eight stades to the left from the Erasinus is a sanctuary of the Lords Dioscuri (Sons of Zeus). Their wooden images have been made similar to those in the city.

On returning to the straight road, you will cross the Erasinus and reach the river Cheimarrus (Winter-torrent). Near it is a circuit of stones, and they say that Pluto, after carrying off, according to the story, Core, the daughter of Demeter, descended here to his fabled kingdom underground. Lerna is, I have already stated, by the sea, and here they celebrate mysteries in honor of Lernaean Demeter.

There is a sacred grove beginning on the mountain they call Pontinus. Now Mount Pontinus does not let the rain-water flow away, but absorbs it into itself. From it flows a river, also called Pontinus. Upon the top of the mountain is a sanctuary of Athena Saitis, now merely a ruin; there are also the foundations of a house of Hippomedon, who went to Thebes to redress the wrongs of Polyneices, son of Oedipus.

At this mountain begins the grove, which consists chiefly of plane trees, and reaches down to the sea. Its boundaries are, on the one side the river Pantinus, on the other side another river, called Amymane, after the daughter of Danaus. Within the grave are images of Demeter Prosymne and of Dionysus. Of Demeter there is a seated image of no great size.

Both are of stone, but in another temple is a seated wooden image of Dionysus Saotes (Savior), while by the sea is a stone image of Aphrodite. They say that the daughters of Danaus dedicated it, while Danaus himself made the sanctuary of Athena by the Pontinus. The mysteries of the Lernaeans were established, they say, by Philammon. Now the words which accompany the ritual are evidently of no antiquity

and the inscription also, which I have heard is written on the heart made of orichalcum, was shown not to be Philammon's by Arriphon, an Aetolian of Triconium by descent, who now enjoys a reputation second to none among the Lycians; excellent at original research, he found the clue to this problem in the following way: the verses, and the prose interspersed among the verses, are all written in Doric. But before the return of the Heracleidae to the Peloponnesus the Argives spoke the same dialect as the Athenians, and in Philammon's day I do not suppose that even the name Dorians was familiar to all Greek ears.

All this was proved in the demonstration. At the source of the Amymone grows a plane tree, beneath which, they say, the hydra (water-snake) grew. I am ready to believe that this beast was superior in size to other water-snakes, and that its poison had something in it so deadly that Heracles treated the points of his arrows with its gall. It had, however, in my opinion, one head, and not several. It was Peisander of Camirus who, in order that the beast might appear more frightful and his poetry might be more remarkable, represented the hydra with its many heads.

I saw also what is called the Spring of Amphiaraus and the Alcyonian Lake, through which the Argives say Dionysus went down to Hell to bring up Semele, adding that the descent here was shown him by Palymnus. There is no limit to the depth of the Alcyonian Lake, and I know of nobody who by any contrivance has been able to reach the bottom of it since not even Nero, who had ropes made several stades long and fastened them together, tying lead to them, and omitting nothing that might help his experiment, was able to discover any limit to its depth.

This, too, I heard. The water of the lake is, to all appearance, calm and quiet but, although it is such to look at, every swimmer who ventures to cross it is dragged down, sucked into the depths, and swept away. The circumference of the lake is not great, being about one-third of a stade. Upon its banks grow grass and rushes. The nocturnal rites performed every year in honor of Dionysus I must not divulge to the world at large.

Book 2, Part 9 Cite

Temenium is in Argive territory, and was named after Temenus, the son of Aristomachus. For, having seized and strengthened the position, he waged therefrom with the Dorians the war against Tisamenus and the Achaeans. On the way to Temenium from Lerna the river Phrixus empties itself into the sea, and in Temenium is built a sanctuary of Poseidon, as well as one of Aphrodite; there is also the tomb of Temenus, which is worshipped by the Dorians in Argos.

Fifty stades, I conjecture, from Temenium is Nauplia, which at the present day is uninhabited; its founder was Nauplius, reputed to be a son of Poseidon and Amymone. Of the walls, too, ruins still remain and in Nauplia are a sanctuary of Poseidon, harbors, and a spring called Canathus. Here, say the Argives, Hera bathes every year and recovers her maidenhood.

This is one of the sayings told as a holy secret at the mysteries which they celebrate in honor of Hera. The story told by the people in Nauplia about the ass, how by nibbling down the shoots of a vine he caused a more plenteous crop of grapes in the future, and how for this reason they have carved an ass on a rock, because he taught the pruning of vines—all this I pass over as trivial.

From Lerna there is also another road, which skirts the sea and leads to a place called Genesium. By the sea is a small sanctuary of Poseidon Genesius. Next to this is another place, called Apobathmi (Steps). The story is that this is the first place in Argolis where Danaus landed with his daughters. From here we pass through what is called Anigraea, along a narrow and difficult road, until we reach a tract on the left which stretches down to the sea;

it is fertile in trees, especially the olive. As you go up inland from this is a place where three hundred picked Argives fought for this land with an equal number of specially chosen Lacedaemonian warriors. All were killed except one Spartan and two Argives, and here were raised the graves for the dead. But the Lacedaemonians, having fought against the Argives with all their forces, won a decisive victory; at first they themselves enjoyed the fruits of the land, but afterwards they assigned it to the Aeginetans, when they were expelled from their island by the Athenians. In my time Thyreatis was inhabited by the Argives, who say that they recovered it by the award of an arbitration

As you go from these common graves you come to Athene, where Aeginetans once made their home, another village Neris, and a third Eua, the largest of the villages, in which there is a sanctuary of Polemocrates. This Polemocrates is one of the sons of Machaon, and the brother of Alexanor; he cures the people of the district, and receives honors from the neighbours.

Above the villages extends Mount Parnon, on which the Lacedaemonian border meets the borders of the Argives and Tegeatae. On the borders stand stone figures of Hermes, from which the name of the place is derived. A river called Tanaus, which is the only one descending from Mount Parnon, flows through the Argive territory and empties itself into the Gulf of Thyrea.

Book 3, Part 1 Cite

After the figures of Hermes we reach Laconia on the west. According to the tradition of the Lacedaemonians themselves, Lelex, an aboriginal was the first king in this land, after whom his subjects were named Leleges. Lelex had a son Myles, and a younger one Polycaon. Polycaon retired into exile, the place of this retirement and its reason I will set forth elsewhere. On the death of Myles his son Eurotas succeeded to the throne. He led down to the sea by means of a trench the stagnant water on the plain, and when it had flowed away, as what was left formed a river-stream, he named it Eurotas.

Having no male issue, he left the kingdom to Lacedaemon, whose mother was Taygete, after whom the mountain was named, while according to report his father was none other than Zeus. Lacedaemon was wedded to Sparta, a daughter of Eurotas. When he came to the throne, he first changed the names of the land and its inhabitants, calling them after himself, and next he founded and named after his wife a city, which even down to our own day has been called Sparta.

Amyclas, too, son of Lacedaemon, wished to leave some memorial behind him, and built a town in Laconia. Hyacinthus, the youngest and most beautiful of his sons, died before his father, and his tomb is in Amyclae below the image of Apollo. On the death of Amyclas the empire came to Aigalus, the eldest of his sons, and afterwards, when Aigalus died, to Cynortas. Cynortas had a son Oebalus.

He took a wife from Argos, Gorgophone the daughter of Perseus, and begat a son Tyndareus, with whom Hippocoon disputed about the kingship, claiming the throne on the ground of being the eldest. With the end of Icarius and his partisans he had surpassed Tyndareus in power, and forced him to retire in fear; the Lacedaemonians say that he went to Pellana, but a Messenian legend about him is that he fled to Aphareus in Messenia, Aphareus being the son of Perieres and the brother of Tyndareus on his mother's side. The story goes on to say that he settled at Thalamae in Messenia, and that his children were born to him when he was living there.

Subsequently Tyndareus was brought back by Heracles and recovered his throne. His sons too became kings, as did Menelaus the son of Atreus and son-in-law of Tyndareus, and Orestes the husband of Hermione the daughter of Menelaus. On the return of the Heracleidae in the reign of Tisamenus, son of Orestes, both districts, Messene and Argos, had kings put over them; Argos had Temenus and Messene Cresphontes. In Lacedaemon, as the sons of Aristodemus were twins, there arose two royal houses; for they say that the Pythian priestess approved.

Tradition has it that Aristodemus himself died at Delphi before the Dorians returned to the Peloponnesus, but those who glorify his fate assert that he was shot by Apollo for not going to the oracle, having learned from Heracles, who met him before he arrived there, that the Dorians would make this return to the Peloponnesus. But the more correct account is that Aristodemus was murdered by the sons of Pylades and Electra, who were cousins of Tisamenus son of Orestes.

The names given to the sons of Aristodemus were Procles and Eurysthenes, and although they were twins they were bitter enemies. Their enmity reached a high pitch, but nevertheless they combined to help Theras, the son of Autesion and the brother of their mother Argeia and their guardian as well, to found a colony. This colony Theras was dispatching to the island that was then called Calliste, and he hoped that the descendants of Membliarus would of their own accord give up the kingship to him. This as a matter of fact they did,

taking into account that the family of Theras went back to Cadmus himself, while they were only descendants of Membliarus, who was a man of the people whom Cadmus left in the island to be the leader of the settlers. And Theras changed the name of the island, renaming it after himself, and even at the present day the people of Thera every year offer to him as their founder the sacrifices that are given to a hero. Procles and Eurysthenes were of one mind in their eagerness to serve Theras; but in all else their purposes were always widely different.

Even if they had agreed together, I should never have ventured to include their descendants in a common list; for they did not altogether coincide in respect of age, so that cousins, cousins' children, and later generations were not born so as to make the steps in one pedigree coincide with those of the other. So I shall give the history of each house by itself separately, instead of combining them both in one narrative.

Eurysthenes, the elder of the sons of Aristodemus, had, they say, a son Agis, after. whom the family of Eurysthenes is called the Agiadae. In his time, when Patreus the son of Preugenes was founding in Achaea a city which even at the present day is called Patrae from this Patreus, the Lacedaemonians took part in the settlement. They also joined in an expedition oversea to found a colony. Gras the son of Echelas the son of Penthilus the son of Orestes was the leader, who was destined to occupy the land between Ionia and Mysia, called at the present day Aeolis; his ancestor Penthilus had even before this seized the island of Lesbos that lies over against this part of the mainland.

When Echestratus, son of Agis, was king at Sparta, the Lacedaemonians removed all the Cynurians of military age, alleging as a reason that freebooters from the Cynurian territory were harrying Argolis, the Argives being their kinsmen, and that the Cynurians themselves openly made forays into the land. The Cynurians are said to be Argives by descent, and tradition has it that their founder was Cynurus, son of Perseus.

Not many years afterwards Labotas, son of Echestratus, became king in Sparta. This Labotas Herodotus, in his history of Croesus, says was in his childhood the ward of Lycurgus the lawgiver, but he calls him Leobotes and not Labotas. It was then that the Lacedaemonians first resolved to make war upon the Argives, bringing as charges against them that they were annexing the Cynurian territory which they themselves had captured, and were causing revolts among their subjects the Perioeci (Dwellers around). On this occasion neither of the belligerents, according to the account, achieved anything worthy of mention,

and the next kings of this house, Doryssus, son of Labotas, and Agesilaus, son of Doryssus, were soon both killed. Lycurgus too laid down their laws for the Lacedaemonians in the reign of Artesilaus; some say that he was taught how to do this by the Pythian priestess, others that he introduced Cretan institutions. The Cretans say that these laws of theirs were laid down by Minos, and that Minos was not without divine aid in his deliberations concerning them. Homer too, I think, refers in riddling words to the legislation of Minos in the following verses:—Cnossus too, great city, among them, where Minos for nine yearsRuled as king, and enjoyed familiar converse with great Zeus.

Of Lycurgus I shall make further mention later. Agesilaus had a son Archelaus. In his reign the Lacedaemonians took by force of arms Aegys, a city of the Perioeci, and sold the inhabitants into slavery, suspecting them of Arcadian sympathies. Charilaus, the king of the other house, helped Archelaus to destroy Aegys, but the exploits he achieved when leading the Lacedaemonians by himself, these too I shall relate when my narrative comes to treat of those called the Eurypontidae.

Archelaus had a son Teleclus. In his reign the Lacedaemonians conquered in war and reduced Amyclae, Pharis, and Geranthrae, cities of the Perioeci, which were still in the possession of the Achaeans. The inhabitants of Pharis and Geranthrae, panic-stricken at the onslaught of the Dorians, made an agreement to retire from the Peloponnesus under a truce, but those of Amyclae were not driven out at the first assault, but only after a long and stubborn resistance, in which they distinguished themselves by glorious achievements. To this heroism the Dorians bore witness by raising a trophy against the Amyclaeans, implying that their success was the most memorable exploit of that time. Not long after this Teleclus was murdered by Messenians in a sanctuary of Artemis. This sanctuary was built on the frontier of Laconia and Messenia, in a place called Limniae (Lakes).

After the death of Teleclus, Alcamenes his son succeeded to the throne, and the Lacedaemonians sent to Crete Charmidas the son of Euthys, who was a distinguished Spartan, to put down the civil strife among the Cretans, to persuade them to abandon the weak, inland towns, and to help them to people instead those that were conveniently situated for the coasting voyage. They also laid waste Helos, an Achaean town on the coast, and won a battle against the Argives who came to give aid to the Helots.

On the death of Alcamenes, Polydorus his son succeeded to the throne, and the Lacedaemonians sent colonies to Croton in Italy and to the Locri by the Western headland. The war called the Messenian reached its height in the reign of this king. As to the causes of the war, the Lacedaemonian version differs from the Messenian.

The accounts given by the belligerents, and the manner in which this war ended, will be set forth later in my narrative. For the present I must state thus much; the chief leader of the Lacedaemonians in the first war against the Messenians was Theopompus the son of Nicander, a king of the other house. When the war against Messene had been fought to a finish, and Messenia was enslaved to the Lacedaemonians, Polydorus, who had a great reputation at Sparta and was very popular with the masses—for he never did a violent act or said an insulting word to anyone, while as a judge he was both upright and humane—

his fame having by this time spread throughout Greece, was murdered by Polemarchus, a member of a distinguished family in Lacedaemon, but, as he showed, a man of an unscrupulous temper. After his death Polydorus received many signal marks of respect from the Lacedaemonians. However, Polemarchus too has a tomb in Sparta; either he had been considered a good man before this murder, or perhaps his relatives buried him secretly.

During the reign of Eurycrates, son of Polydorus, the Messenians submitted to be subjects of the Lacedaemonians, neither did any trouble befall from the Argive people. But in the reign of Anaxander, son of Eurycrates—for destiny was by this time driving the Messenians out of all the Peloponnesus—the Messenians revolted from the Lacedaemonians. For a time they held out by force of arms, but at last they were overcome and retired from the Peloponnesus under a truce. The remnant of them left behind in the land became the slaves of the Lacedaemonians, with the exception of those in the towns on the coast.

The incidents of the war which the Messenians waged after the revolt from the Lacedaemonians it is not pertinent that I should set forth in the present part of my narrative. Anaxander had a son Eurycrates, and this second Eurycrates a son Leon. While these two kings were on the throne the Lacedaemonians were generally unsuccessful in the war with Tegea. But in the reign of Anaxandrides, son of Leon, the Lacedaemonians won the war with Tegea in the following manner. A Lacedaemonian, by name Lichas, came to Tegea when there chanced to be a truce between the cities.

When Lichas arrived the Spartans were seeking the bones of Orestes in accordance with an oracle. Now Lichas inferred that they were buried in a smithy, the reason for this inference being this. Everything that he saw in the smithy he compared with the oracle from Delphi, likening to the winds the bellows, for that they too sent forth a violent blast, the hammer to the “stroke,” the anvil to the “counterstroke” to it, while the iron is naturally a “woe to man,” because already men were using iron in warfare. In the time of those called heroes the god would have called bronze a woe to man.

Similar to the oracle about the bones of Orestes was the one afterwards given to the Athenians, that they were to bring back Theseus from Scyros to Athens otherwise they could not take Scyros. Now the bones of Theseus were discovered by Cimon the son of Miltiades, who displayed similar sharpness of wit, and shortly afterwards took Scyros.

I have evidence that in the heroic age weapons were universally of bronze in the verses of Homer about the axe of Peisander and the arrow of Meriones. My statement is likewise confirmed by the spear of Achilles dedicated in the sanctuary of Athena at Phaselis, and by the sword of Memnon in the Nicomedian temple of Asclepius. The point and butt-spike of the spear and the whole of the sword are made of bronze. The truth of these statements I can vouch for.

Anaxandrides the son of Leon was the only Lacedaemonian to possess at one and the same time two wives and two households. For his first consort, though an excellent wife, had the misfortune to he barren. When the ephors bade him pot her away he firmly refused to do so, but made this concession to them, that he would take another wife in addition to her. The fruit of this union was a son, Cleomenes; and the former wife, who up to this time had not conceived, after the birth of Cieomenes bore Dorieus, then Leonidas, and finally Cleombrotus.

And when Anaxandrides died, the Lacedaemonians, believing Dorieus to be both of a sounder judgment than Cleomenes and a better soldier, much against their will rejected him as their king, and obeyed the laws by giving the throne to the elder claimant Cleomenes.

Now Dorieus could not bear to stay at Lacedaemon and be subject to his brother, and so he went on a colonizing expedition. As soon as he became king, Cleomenes gathered together an army, both of the Lacedaemonians themselves and of their allies, and invaded Argolis. The Argives came out under arms to meet them, but Cleomenes won the day. Near the battlefield was a grove sacred to Argus, son of Niobe, and on being routed some five thousand of the Argives took refuge therein. Cleomenes was subject to fits of mad excitement, and on this occasion he ordered the Helots to set the grove on fire, and the flames spread all over the grove, which, as it burned, burned up the suppliants with it.

He also conducted campaigns against Athens, by the first of which he delivered the Athenians from the sons of Peisistratus and won a good report among the Greeks both for himself personally and for the Lacedaemonians; while the second campaign was to please an Athenian, Isagoras, by helping him to establish a tyranny over Athens. When he was disappointed, and the Athenians fought strenuously for their freedom, Cleomenes devastated the country, including, they say, the district called Orgas, which was sacred to the deities in Eleusis. He advanced as far as Aegina, and proceeded to arrest such influential Aeginetans as had shown Persian sympathies, and had persuaded the citizens to give earth and water to king Dareius, son of Hystaspes.

While Cleomenes was occupied in Aegina, Demaratus, the king of the other house, was slandering him to the Lacedaemonian populace. On his return from Aegina, Cleomenes began to intrigue for the deposition of king Demaratus. He bribed the Pythian prophetess to frame responses about Demaratus according to his instructions, and instigated Leotychides, a man of royal birth and of the same family as Demaratus, to put in a claim to the throne.

Leotychides seized upon the remark that Ariston in his ignorance blurted out when Demaratus was born, denying that he was his child. On the present occasion the Lacedaemonians, according to their wont, referred to the oracle at Delphi the claim against Demaratus, and the prophetess gave them a response which favoured the designs of Cleomenes.

So Demaratus was deposed, not rightfully, but because Cleomenes hated him. Subsequently Cleomenes met his end in a fit of madness for seizing a sword he began to wound himself, and hacked and maimed his body all over. The Argives assert that the manner of his end was a punishment for his treatment of the suppliants of Argus; the Athenians say that it was because he had devastated Orgas; the Delphians put it down to the bribes he gave the Pythian prophetess, persuading her to give lying responses about Demaratus.

It may well be too that the wrath of heroes and the wrath of gods united together to punish Cleomenes since it is a fact that for a personal wrong Protesilaus, a hero not a whit more illustrious than Argus, punished at Elaeus Artayctes, a Persian; while the Megarians never succeeded in propitiating the deities at Eleusis for having encroached upon the sacred land. As to the tampering with the oracle, we know of nobody, with the exception of Cleomenes, who has had the audacity even to attempt it.

Cleomenes had no male issue, and the kingdom devolved on Leonidas, son of Anaxandrides and full brother of Dorieus. At this time Xerxes led his host against Greece, and Leonidas with three hundred Lacedaemonians met him at Thermopylae. Now although the Greeks have waged many wars, and so have foreigners among themselves, yet there are but few that have been made more illustrious by the exceptional valor of one man, in the way that Achilles shed luster on the Trojan war and Miltiades on the engagement at Marathon. But in truth the success of Leonidas surpassed, in my opinion, all later as well as all previous achievements.

For Xerxes, the proudest of all who have reigned over the Medes, or over the Persians who succeeded them, the achiever of such brilliant exploits, was met on his march by Leonidas and the handful of men he led to Thermopylae, and they would have prevented him from even seeing Greece at all, and from ever burning Athens, if the man of Trachis had not guided the army with Hydarnes by the path that stretches across Oeta, and enabled the enemy to surround the Greeks; so Leonidas was overwhelmed and the foreigners passed along into Greece.

Book 3, Part 2 Cite

Pausanias the son of Cleombrotus never became king. For while guardian of Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas, who was a child when his father died, he led the Lacedaemonians to Plataea, and afterwards with their fleet to the Hellespont. I cannot praise too highly the way in which Pausanias treated the Coan lady, who was the daughter of a man of distinction among the Coans, Hegetorides the son of Antagoras, and the unwilling concubine of a Persian, Pharandates the son of Teaspis.

When Mardonius fell in the battle of Plataea, and the foreigners were destroyed, Pausanias sent the lady back to Cos, and she took with her the apparel that the Persian had procured for her as well as the rest of her belongings. Pausanias also refused to dishonor the body of Mardonius, as Lampon the Aeginetan advised him to do.

Shortly after Pleistarchus the son of Leonidas came to the throne he died, and the kingdom devolved on Pleistoanax, son of the Pausanias who commanded at Plataea. Pleistoanax had a son Pausanias; he was the Pausanias who invaded Attica, ostensibly to oppose Thrasybulus and the Athenians, but really to establish firmly the despotism of those to whom the government had been entrusted by Lysander. Although he won a battle against the Athenians holding the Peiraens, yet immediately after the battle he resolved to lead his army back home, and not to bring upon Sparta the most disgraceful of reproaches by increasing the despotic power of wicked men.

When he returned from Athens with only a fruitless battle to his credit, he was brought to trial by his enemies. The court that sat to try a Lacedaemonian king consisted of the senate, “old men” as they were called, twenty eight in number, the members of the ephorate, and in addition the king of the other house. Fourteen senators, along with Agis, the king of the other house, declared that Pausanias was guilty; the rest of the court voted for his acquittal.

Shortly after this the Lacedaemonians gathered an army against Thebes; the reason for so doing will be given in my account of Agesilaus. On this occasion Lysander came to Phocis, took along with him the entire Phocian army, and without any further delay entered Boeotia and began assaults upon the wall of Haliartus, the citizens of which refused to revolt from Thebes. Already a band of Thebans and Athenians had secretly entered the city; these came out and offered battle before the wall, and there fell here several Lacedaemonians, including Lysander himself.

Pausanias was too late for the fight, having been collecting forces from Tegea and Arcadia generally; when he finally reached Boeotia, although he heard of the defeat of the forces with Lysander and of the death of Lysander himself, he nevertheless led his army against Thebes and purposed to take the offensive. Thereupon the Thebans offered battle, and Thrasybulus was reported to be not far away with the Athenians. He was waiting for the Lacedaemonians to take the offensive, on which his intention was to launch an attack himself against their rear.

So Pausanias, fearing lest he should be caught between two enemy forces, made a truce with the Thebans and took up for burial those who had fallen under the wall of Haliartus. The Lacedaemonians disapproved of this decision, but the following reason leads me to approve it. Pausanias was well aware that the disasters of the Lacedaemonians always took place when they had been caught between two enemy forces, and the defeats at Thermopylae and on the island of Sphacteria made him afraid lest he himself should prove the occasion of a third misfortune for them.

But when his fellow citizens charged him with his slowness in this Boeotian campaign, he did not wait to stand his trial, but was received by the people of Tegea as a suppliant of Athena Alea. Now this sanctuary had been respected from early days by all the Peloponnesians, and afforded peculiar safety to its suppliants, as the Lacedaemonians showed in the case of Pausanias and of Leotychides before him, and the Argives in the case of Chrysis; they never wanted even to ask for these refugees, who were sitting as suppliants in the sanctuary, to be given up.

When Pausanias fled, his sons Agesipolis and Cleombrotus were still quite boys, and Aristodemus, their nearest relative, was their guardian. This Aristodemus was in command of the Lacedaemonians when they won their success at Corinth.

When Agesipolis grew up and came to the throne, the first Peloponnesians against whom he waged war were the Argives. When he led his army from the territory of Tegea into that of Argos, the Argives sent a herald to make for them with Agesipolis a certain ancestral truce, which from ancient times had been an established custom between Dorians and Dorians. But Agesipolis did not make the truce with the herald, but advancing with his army proceeded to devastate the land. Then there was an earthquake, but not even so would Agesipolis consent to take away his forces. And yet more than any other Greeks were the Lacedaemonians (in this respect like the Athenians) frightened by signs from heaven.

By the time that he was encamping under the wall of Argos, the earthquakes were still occurring, some of the troops had actually been killed by lightning, and some moreover had been driven out of then senses by the thunder. In this circumstance he reluctantly withdrew from Argive territory, and began another campaign, attacking Olynthus. Victorious in the war, having captured most of the cities in Chalcidice, and hoping to capture Olynthus itself, he was suddenly attacked by a disease which ended in his death.

As Agesipolis died childless, the kingdom devolved upon Cleombrotus, who was general in the battle at Leuctra against the Boeotians. Cleombrotus showed personal bravery, but fell when the battle was only just beginning. In great disasters Providence is peculiarly apt to cut off early the general, just as the Athenians lost Hippocrates the son of Ariphron, who commanded at Delium, and later on Leosthenes in Thessaly.

Agesipolis, the elder of the sons of Cleombrotus, is not a striking figure in history, and was succeeded by his younger brother Cleomenes. His first son was Acrotatus, his second Cleonymus. Acrotatus did not outlive his father, and when Cleomenes afterwards died, there arose a dispute about the throne between Cleonymus the son of Cleomenes and Areus the son of Acrotatus. So the senators acted as arbitrators, and decided that the dignity was the inheritance of Areus the son of Acrotatus, and not of Cleonymus.

Deprived of his kingship Cleonymus became violently angry, and the ephors tried to soothe his feelings by bestowing upon him various honors, especially the leadership of the armies, so as to prevent his becoming one day an enemy of Sparta. But at last he committed many hostile acts against his fatherland, and induced Pyrrhus the son of Aeacides to invade Laconia.

While Areus the son of Acrotatus was king in Sparta, Antigonus the son of Demetrius attacked Athens with an army and a fleet. To the help of the Athenians there came the Egyptian expedition with Patroclus, and every available man of the Lacedaemonians with Areus their king at their head.

Antigonus invested Athens and prevented the Athenian reinforcements from entering the city; so Patroclus dispatched messengers urging Areus and the Lacedaemonians to take the offensive against Antigonus. On their doing so, he would himself, he said, attack the Macedonians in rear; but before such a move it was not fair for Egyptian sailors to attack Macedonians on land. The Lacedaemonians were eager to make the venture, both because of their friendship for Athens and also because they were ambitious to hand down to posterity a famous achievement,

but as their supplies were exhausted Areus led his army back home, thinking that desperate measures should be reserved for one's own advantage and not risked recklessly for the benefit of others. After they had held out as long as they could, Antigonus made peace with the Athenians, on condition that he brought a garrison into the Museum to be a guard over them. After a time Antigonus himself removed the garrison from Athens of his own accord while Areus begat Acrotatus, and Acrotatus Areus, who died of disease when he was just about eight years old.

And as the only male representative of the house of Eurysthenes was Leonidas the son of Cleonymus, by this time a very old man, the Lacedaemonians gave him the throne. Leonidas, it so happened, had a bitter opponent in Lysander, a descendant of Lysander the son of Aristocritus. This Lysander won over to his side Leonidas' son-in-law Cleombrotus. After gaining his support he brought various charges against Leonidas, in particular that when a boy he had sworn to his father Cleonymus to ruin Sparta.

So Leonidas ceased to be king and Cleombrotus came to the throne in his stead. Now if Leonidas had given way to impulse and retired, like Demaratus the son of Ariston, either to the king of Macedonia or to the Egyptian king, he would have profited nothing even by the Spartans changing their minds. But as it was, when the citizens sentenced him to exile, he went to Arcadia, whence not many years later he was recalled by the Lacedaemonians, who made him king again.

Now how Cleomenes the son of Leonidas performed daring feats of valor, and how after him the Spartans ceased to be ruled by kings, I have already shown in my account of Aratus of Sicyon. My narrative also included the manner of his death in Egypt.

So of the family of Eurysthenes, called the Agiadae, Cleomenes the son of Leonidas was the last king in Sparta. I will now relate what I have heard about the other house. Procles the son of Aristodemus called his son Sous, whose son Eurypon they say reached such a pitch of renown that this house, hitherto called the Procleidae, came to be named after him the Eurypontidae.

The son of Eurypon was Prytanis, in whose reign began the enmity of the Lacedaemonians against the Argives, although even before this quarrel they made war against the Cynurians. During the generations immediately succeeding this, while Eunomus the son of Prytanis and Polydectes the son of Eunomus were on the throne, Sparta continued at peace,

but Charillus the son of Polydectes devastated the land of the Argives—for he it was who invaded Argolis—and not many years afterwards, under the leadership of Charillus, took place the campaign of the Spartans against Tegea, when lured on by a deceptive oracle the Lacedaemonians hoped to capture the city and to annex the Tegean plain from Arcadia.

After the death of Charillus, Nicander his son succeeded to the throne, in whose reign the Messenians murdered, in the sanctuary of the Lady of the Lake, Teleclus the king of the other house. Nicander also invaded Argolis with an army, and laid waste the greater part of the land. The Asinaeans took part in this action with the Lacedaemonians, and shortly after were punished by the Argives, who inflicted great destruction on their fatherland and drove out the inhabitants.

About Theopompus, the son of Nicander, who ascended the throne after him, I shall have more to say later on, when I come to the history of Messenia. While Theopompus was still king in Sparta there also took place the struggle of the Lacedaemonians with the Argives for what is called the Thyreatid district. Theopompus personally took no part in the affair, chiefly because of old age and sorrow, for while he was yet alive Archidamus died.

Nevertheless Archidamus did not die childless, but left a son Zeuxidamus, whose son Anaxidamus succeeded to the throne. In his reign the Messenians were expelled from the Peloponnesus, being vanquished for the second time by the Spartans. Anaxidamus begat Archidamus, and Archidamus begat Agesicles. It was the lot of both of these to pass all their lives in peace, undisturbed by any wars.

Ariston, son of Agesicles, married a wife who, they say, was the ugliest maiden in Sparta, but became the most beautiful of her women, because Helen changed her; seven months only after his marriage with her Ariston had born to him a son, Demaratus. As he was sitting in council with the ephors there came to him a servant with the news that a child was born to him. Ariston, forgetting the lines in the Iliad about the birth of Eurystheus, or else never having understood them at all, declared that because of the number of months the child was not his.

Afterwards he repented of his words. Demaratus, a king of good repute at Sparta, particularly for his helping Cleomenes to free Athens from the Peisistratidae, became a private citizen through the thoughtlessness of Ariston and the hatred of Cleomenes. He retired to king Dareius in Persia, and they say that his descendants remained in Asia for a long time.

Leotychides, on coming to the throne in place of Demaratus, took part with the Athenians and the Athenian general Xanthippus, the son of Ariphron, in the engagement of Mycale, and afterwards undertook a campaign against the Aleuadae in Thessaly. Although his uninterrupted victories in the fighting might have enabled him to reduce all Thessaly, he accepted bribes from the Aleuadae.

Or, being brought to trial in Lacedaemon he voluntarily went into exile to Tegea, where he sought sanctuary as a suppliant of Athena Alea. Zeuxidamus, the son of Leotychides, died of disease while Leotychides was still alive and before he retired into exile so his son Archidamus succeeded to the throne after the departure of Leotychides for Tegea. This Archidamus did terrible damage to the land of the Athenians, invading Attica with an army every year, on each occasion carrying destruction from end to end; he also besieged and took Plataea, which was friendly to Athens.

Nevertheless he was not eager that war should be declared between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, but to the utmost of his power tried to keep the truce between them unbroken. It was Sthenelaidas, an influential Spartan who was an ephor at the time, who was chiefly responsible for the war. Greece, that still stood firm, was shaken to its foundations by this war, and afterwards, when the structure had given way and was far from sound, was finally overthrown by Philip the son of Amyntas.

Archidamus left sons when he died, of whom Agis was the elder and inherited the throne instead of Agesilaus. Archidamus had also a daughter, whose name was Cynisca; she was exceedingly ambitious to succeed at the Olympic games, and was the first woman to breed horses and the first to win an Olympic victory. After Cynisca other women, especially women of Lacedaemon, have won Olympic victories, but none of them was more distinguished for their victories than she.

The Spartans seem to me to be of all men the least moved by poetry and the praise of poets. For with the exception of the epigram upon Cynisca, of uncertain authorship, and the still earlier one upon Pausanias that Simonides wrote on the tripod dedicated at Delphi, there is no poetic composition to commemorate the doings of the royal houses of the Lacedaemonians.

In the reign of Agis the son of Archidamus the Lacedaemonians had several grievances against the people of Elis, being especially exasperated because they were debarred from the Olympic games and the sanctuary at Olympia. So they dispatched a herald commanding the people of Elis to grant home-rule to Lepreum and to any other of their neighbors that were subject to them. The people of Elis replied that, when they saw the cities free that were neighbors of Sparta, they would without delay set free their own subjects; whereupon the Lacedaemonians under king Agis invaded the territory of Elis.

Book 3, Part 3 Cite

On this occasion there occurred an earthquake, and the army retired home after advancing as far as Olympia and the Alpheus but in the next year Agis devastated the country and carried off most of the booty. Xenias, a man of Elis who was a personal friend of Agis and the state-friend of the Lacedaemonians, rose up with the rich citizens against the people but before Agis and his army could come to their aid, Thrasydaeus, who at this time championed the interests of the popular party at Elis, overthrew in battle Xenias and his followers and cast them out of the city.

When Agis led back his army, he left behind Lysistratus, a Spartan, with a portion of his forces, along with the Elean refugees, that they might help the Lepreans to ravage the land. In the third year of the war the Lacedaemonians under Agis again prepared to invade the territory of Elis. So Thrasydaeus and the Eleans, reduced to dire extremities, agreed to forgo their supremacy over their neighbors, to dismantle the fortifications of their city, and to allow the Lacedaemonians to sacrifice to the god and to compete in the games at Olympia.

Agis used also to make continual incursions into Attica, and established the fortified post at Decelea to annoy the Athenians. When the Athenian navy was destroyed at Aegospotami, Lysander, the son of Aristocritus, and Agis violated the oaths which the Lacedaemonians as a state had sworn by the gods to the Athenians, and it was on their own initiative, and without the approval of the Spartan state, that they put before their allies the proposal to destroy Athens root and branch.

Such were the most remarkable military achievements of Agis. The rash remark that Ariston made about Demaratus was also made by Agis about his son Leotychides; at the suggestion of some evil spirit he said in the hearing of the ephors that he did not believe Leotychides to be his son. Yet Agis, too, repented afterwards; he was at the time being carried home sick from Arcadia, and when he reached Heraea, he not only called the people to witness that he sincerely believed Leotychides to be his very own son, but also with prayers and tears charged them to take the tidings to the Lacedaemonians.

After the death of Agis, Agesilaus tried to keep Leotychides from the throne, recalling to the minds of the Lacedaemonians what Agis once said about Leotychides. But the Arcadians from Heraea arrived and bore witness for Leotychides, stating what they had heard the dying Agis say.

Yet further fuel for the controversy between Agesilaus and Leotychides was supplied by the oracle that was delivered at Delphi to this effect:—Sparta beware! though haughty, pay heed to the warning I give thee.Never let thy sound limbs give birth to a kingdom that lame is.Too long then shalt thou lie in the clutches of desperate hardships;Turmoil of war shall arise, o'erwhelming men in its billows.

Leotychides on this occasion said that these words pointed to Agesilaus, who was lame in one of his feet, while Agesilaus interpreted them as alluding to the illegitimacy of Leotychides. Although they might have done so, the Lacedaemonians did not refer the disputed point to Delphi; the reason was in my opinion that Lysander, the son of Aristocritus, an active supporter of Agesilaus, would have him king at all costs.

So Agesilaus, son of Archidamus, became king, and the Lacedaemonians resolved to cross with a fleet to Asia in order to put down Artaxerxes, son of Dareius. For they were informed by several of their magistrates, especially by Lysander, that it was not Artaxerxes but Cyrus who had been supplying the pay for the fleet during the war with Athens. Agesilaus, who was appointed to lead the expedition across to Asia and to be in command of the land forces, sent round to all parts of the Peloponnesus, except Argos, and to the Greeks north of the Isthmus, asking for allies.

Now the Corinthians were most eager to take part in the expedition to Asia, but considering it a bad omen that their temple of Zeus surnamed Olympian had been suddenly burnt down, they reluctantly remained behind. The Athenians excused themselves on the ground that their city was returning to its former state of prosperity after the Peloponnesian war and the epidemic of plague, and the news brought by messengers, that Conon, son of Timotheus, had gone up to the Persian king, strongly confirmed them in their policy of inactivity.

The envoy dispatched to Thebes was Aristomelidas, the father of the mother of Agesilaus, a close friend of the Thebans who, when the wall of Plataea had been taken, had been one of the judges voting that the remnant of the garrison should be put to death. Now the Thebans like the Athenians refused, saying that they would give no help. When Agesilaus had assembled his Lacedaemonian forces and those of the allies, and at the same time the fleet was ready, he went to Aulis to sacrifice to Artemis, because Agamemnon too had propitiated the goddess here before leading the expedition to Troy.

Agesilaus, then, claimed to be king of a more prosperous city than was Agamemnon, and to be like him overlord of all Greece, and that it would be a more glorious success to conquer Artaxerxes and acquire the riches of Persia than to destroy the empire of Priam. but even as he was sacrificing armed Thebans came upon him, threw dawn from the altar the still burning thighbones of the victims, and drove him from the sanctuary.

Though vexed that the sacrifice was not completed, Agesilaus nevertheless crossed into Asia and launched an attack against Sardes for Lydia at this period was the most important district of lower Asia, and Sardes, pre-eminent for its wealth and resources, had been assigned as a residence to the satrap of the coast region, just as Susa had been to the king himself.

A battle was fought on the plain of the Hermus with Tissaphernes, satrap of the parts around Ionia, in which Agesilaus conquered the cavalry of the Persians and the infantry, of which the muster on this occasion had been surpassed only in the expedition of Xerxes and in the earlier ones of Dareius against the Scythians and against Athens. The Lacedaemonians, admiring the energy of Agesilaus, added to his command the control of the fleet. But Agesilaus made his brother-in-law, Peisander, admiral, and devoted himself to carrying on the war vigorously by land.

The jealousy of some deity prevented him from bringing his plans to their conclusion. For when Artaxerxes heard of the victories won by Agesilaus, and how, by attending to the task that lay before him, he advanced with his army even further and further, he put Tissaphernes to death in spite of his previous services, and sent down to the sea Tithraustes, a clever schemer who had some grudge against the Lacedaemonians.

On his arrival at Sardes he at once thought out a plan by which to force the Lacedaemonians to recall their army from Asia. He sent Timocrates, a Rhodian, to Greece with money, instructing him to stir up in Greece a war against the Lacedaemonians. Those who shared in this money are said to have been the Argives Cylon and Sodamas, the Thebans Androcleides, Ismenias and Amphithemis, the Athenians Cephalus and Epicrates, with the Corinthians who had Argive sympathies, Polyanthes and Timolaus.

But those who first openly started the war were the Locrians from Amphissa. For there happened to be a piece of land the ownership of which was a matter of dispute between the Locrians and the Phocians. Egged on by Ismenias and his party at Thebes, the Locrians cut the ripe corn in this land and drove off the booty. The Phocians on their side invaded Locris with all their forces, and laid waste the land.

So the Locrians brought in the Thebans as allies, and devastated Phocis. Going to Lacedaemon the Phocians inveighed against the Thebans, and set forth what they had suffered at their hands. The Lacedaemonians determined to make war against Thebes, chief among their grievances being the outrageous way the Thebans behaved towards Agesilaus when he was sacrificing at Aulis.

The Athenians receiving early intimation of the Lacedaemonians' intentions, sent to Sparta begging them to submit their grievances to a court of arbitration instead of appealing to arms, but the Lacedaemonians dismissed the envoys in anger. The sequel, how the Lacedaemonians set forth and how Lysander died, I have already described in my account of Pausanias.

And what was called the Corinthian war, which continually became more serious, had its origin in the expedition of the Lacedaemonians into Boeotia. So these circumstances compelled Agesilaus to lead his army back from Asia. Crossing with his fleet from Abydos to Sestos he passed through Thrace as far as Thessaly, where the Thessalians, to please the Thebans, tried to prevent his further progress; there was also an old friendship between them and Athens.

But Agesilaus put the Thessalian cavalry to flight and passed through Thessaly, and again made his way through Boeotia, winning a victory over Thebes and the allies at Coronea. When the Boeotians were put to flight, certain of them took refuge in the sanctuary of Athena surnamed Itonia. Agesilaus, although suffering from a wound received in the battle, did not sin against the suppliants.

Not long afterwards the Corinthians in exile for pro-Spartan sympathies held the Isthmian games. The Corinthians in the city made no move at the time, through their fear of Agesilaus but when he marched to Sparta, they too celebrated the Isthmian games along with the Argives. Agesilaus again marched with an army against Corinth, and, as the festival Hyacinthia was at hand, he gave the Amycleans leave to go back home and perform the traditional rites in honor of Apollo and Hyacinthus. This battalion was attacked on the way and annihilated by the Athenians under Iphicrates.

Agesilaus went also to Aetolia to give assistance to the Aetolians, who were hard pressed in a war with, the Acarnanians; these he compelled to put an end to the war, although they had come very near capturing Calydon and the other towns of the Aetolians. Afterwards he sailed to Egypt, to succor the Egyptians who had revolted from the king of Persia. Agesilaus performed many noteworthy achievements in Egypt, but, being by this time ah old man, he died on the march. then his dead body was brought home, the Lacedaemonians buried it with greater honors than they had given to any other king.

In the reign of Archidamus, son of Agesilaus, the Phocians seized the sanctuary at Delphi. To help in a war with Thebes the Phocians hired with its wealth independent mercenaries, but they here also aided publicly by the Lacedaemonians and Athenians, the latter calling to mind some old service rendered by the Phocians, the former, too, pretending to be friends when their real reason was, I think, hatred of the Thebans. Theopompus, son of Damasistratus, said that Archidamus himself had a share of the Delphic money, and further that Deinicha the wife of Archidamus, receiving a bribe from the chief men of the Phocians, made Archidamus more ready to bring them reinforcements.

To accept sacred money and to help men who had pillaged the most famous of oracles I do not hold praiseworthy, but the following incident does redound to his praise. The Phocians were contemplating the cruel course of killing the Delphians of vigorous age, enslaving the women and children, and levelling the city itself to the ground; it was due to the intercession of Archidamus that they escaped this fate at the hands of the Phocians.

Archidamus afterwards also crossed over into Italy to help the Tarentines to wage war against their foreign neighbors. Here he was killed by the foreigners, and his corpse missed burial owing to the anger of Apollo. Agis, the elder son of this Archidamus, met his death fighting against Antipater and the Macedonians, but while the younger son, Eudamidas, was king, the Lacedaemonians enjoyed peace. The history of Agis, son of Eudamidas, and of Eurydamidas, son of Agis, my account of Sicyon has already set forth.

On the way from the Hermae the whole of the region is full of oak-trees. The name of the district, Scotitas (Dark), is not due to the unbroken woods but to Zeus surnamed Scotitas, and there is a sanctuary of Zeus Scotitas on the left of the road and about ten stades from it. If you go back from the sanctuary to the road, advance a little and then turn again to the left, you come to an image of Heracles and a trophy, which I was told Heracles raised after killing Hippocoon and his sons.

The third branch from the straight road is on the right, and leads to Caryae (Walnut-trees) and to the sanctuary of Artemis. For Caryae is a region sacred to Artemis and the nymphs, and here stands in the open an image of Artemis Caryatis. Here every year the Lacedaemonian maidens hold chorus-dances, and they have a traditional native dance. On returning, as you go along the highway, you come to the ruins of Sellasia. The people of this city, as I have stated already, were sold into slavery by the Achaeans after they had conquered in battle the Lacedaemonians under their king Cleomenes, the son of Leonidas.

In Thornax, which you will reach as you go along, is an image of Apollo Pythaeus, made after the style of the one at Amyclae; the fashion of it I will describe when I come to speak of the latter. For in the eyes of the Lacedaemonians the cult of the Amyclaean is the more distinguished, so that they spent on adorning the image in Amyclae even the gold which Croesus the Lydian sent for Apollo Pythaeus.

Farther on from Thornax is the city, which was originally named Sparta, but in course of time came to be called Lacedaemon as well, a name which till then belonged to the land. To prevent misconception, I added in my account of Attica that I had not mentioned everything in order, but had made a selection of what was most noteworthy. This I will repeat before beginning my account of Sparta; for from the beginning the plan of my work has been to discard the many trivial stories current among the several communities, and to pick out the things most worthy of mention—an excellent rule which I will never violate.

The Lacedaemonians who live in Sparta have a market-place worth seeing; the council-chamber of the senate, and the offices of the ephors, of the guardians of the laws, and of those called the Bidiaeans, are all in the market-place. The senate is the council which has the supreme control of the Lacedaemonian constitution, the other officials form the executive. Both the ephors and the Bidiaeans are five in number; it is customary for the latter to hold competitions for the lads, particularly the one at the place called Platanistas (Plane-tree Grove), while the ephors transact the most serious business, one of them giving his name to the year, just as at Athens this privilege belongs to one of those called the Nine Archons.

The most striking feature in the marketplace is the portico which they call Persian because it was made from spoils taken in the Persian wars. In course of time they have altered it until it is as large and as splendid as it is now. On the pillars are white-marble figures of Persians, including Mardonius, son of Gobryas. There is also a figure of Artemisia, daughter of Lygdamis and queen of Halicarnassus. It is said that this lady voluntarily joined the expedition of Xerxes against Greece and distinguished herself at the naval engagement off Salamis.

On the market-place are temples; there is one of Caesar, the first Roman to covet monarchy and the first emperor under the present constitution, and also one to his son Augustus, who put the empire on a firmer footing, and became a more famous and a more powerful man than his father. His name “Augustus” means in Greek sebastos (reverend).

At the altar of Augustus they show a bronze statue of Agias. This Agias, they say, by divining for Lysander captured the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami with the exception of ten ships of war. These made their escape to Cyprus; all the rest the Lacedaemonians captured along with their crews. Agias was a son of Agelochus, a son of Tisamenus.

Tisamenus belonged to the family of the Iamidae at Elis, and an oracle was given to him that he should win five most famous contests. So he trained for the pentathlon at Olympia, but came away defeated. And yet he was first in two events, beating Hieronymus of Andros in running and in jumping. But when he lost the wrestling bout to this competitor, and so missed the prize, he understood what the oracle meant, that the god granted him to win five contests in war by his divinations.

Book 3, Part 4 Cite

The Lacedaemonians, hearing of the oracle the Pythian priestess had given to Tisamenus, persuaded him to migrate from Elis and to be state-diviner at Sparta. And Tisamenus won them five contests in war. The first was at Plataea against the Persians; the second was at Tegea, when the Lacedaemonians had engaged the Tegeans and Argives; the third was at Dipaea, an Arcadian town in Maenalia, when all the Arcadians except the Mantineans were arrayed against them.

His fourth contest was against the Helots who had rebelled and left the Isthmus for Ithome. Not all the Helots revolted, only the Messenian element, which separated itself off from the old Helots. These events I shall relate presently. On the occasion I mention the Lacedaemonians allowed the rebels to depart under a truce, in accordance with the advice of Tisamenus and of the oracle at Delphi. The last time Tisamenus divined for them was at Tanagra, an engagement taking place with the Argives and Athenians.

Such I learned was the history of Tisamenus. On their market-place the Spartans have images of Apollo Pythaeus, of Artemis and of Leto. The whole of this region is called Choros (Dancing), because at the Gymnopaediae, a festival which the Lacedaemonians take more seriously than any other, the lads perform dances in honor of Apollo. Not far from them is a sanctuary of Earth and of Zeus of the Market-place, another of Athena of the Market-place and of Poseidon surnamed Securer, and likewise one of Apollo and of Hera.

There is also dedicated a colossal statue of the Spartan People. The Lacedaemonians have also a sanctuary of the Fates, by which is the grave of Orestes, son of Agamemnon. For when the bones of Orestes were brought from Tegea in accordance with an oracle they were buried here. Beside the grave of Orestes is a statue of Polydorus, son of Alcamenes, a king who rose to such honor that the magistrates seal with his likeness everything that requires sealing.

There is also Hermes of the Market-place carrying Dionysus as a child, besides the old Courts of the Ephors, as they are called, in which are the tombs of Epimenides the Cretan and of Aphareus the son of Perieres. As to Epimenides, I think the Lacedaemonian story is more probable than the Argive. Here, where the Fates are, the Lacedaemonians also have a sanctuary of Hestia. There is also Zeus Hospitable and Athena Hospitable.

As you go from the market-place by the road they name the Aphetaid Road, you come to the so-called Booneta. But my narrative must first explain why the road has this name.

It is said that Icarius proposed a foot-race for the wooers of Penelope; that Odysseus won is plain, but they say that the competitors were let go (aphethenai) for the race along the Aphetaid Road. In my opinion, Icarius was imitating Danaus when he held the running-race. For Danaus contrived the following plan to solve the difficulty about his daughters. Nobody would take a wife from among them because of their pollution so Danaus sent round a notice that he would give away his daughters without bride-gifts, and that each suitor could choose the one whose beauty pleased him most. A few men came, among whom he held a foot-race the first comer was allowed to choose before all the others, after him the second, and so on to the last. The daughters that were left had to wait until other suitors arrived and competed in another foot-race.

On this road the Lacedaemonians have, as I have already said, what is called the Booneta, which once was the house of their king Polydorus. When he died, they bought it from his widow, paying the price in oxen. For at that time there was as yet neither silver nor gold coinage, but they still bartered in the old way with oxen, slaves, and uncoined silver and gold.

Those who sail to India say that the natives give other merchandise in exchange for Greek cargoes, knowing nothing about coinage, and that though they have plenty of gold and of bronze.On the opposite side of the office of the Bidiaeans is a sanctuary of Athena. Odysseus is said to have set up the image and to have named it Keleuthea (Lady of the Road), when he had beaten the suitors of Penelope in the foot-race. Of Keleuthea he set up sanctuaries, three in number, at some distance from each other.

Farther along the Aphetaid Road are hero-shrines, of Iops, who is supposed to have been born in the time of Lelex or. Myles, and of Amphiaraus the son of Oicles. The last they think was made by the sons of Tyndareus, for that Amphiaraus was their cousin. There is a hero-shrine of Lelex himself. Not far from these is a precinct of Poseidon of Taenarum, which is the surname given him, and near by an image of Athena, which is said to have been dedicated by the colonists

who left for Tarentum in Italy. As to the place they call the HeIlenium, it has been stated that those of the Greeks who were preparing to repel Xerxes when he was crossing into Europe deliberated at this place how they should resist. The other story is that those who made the expedition against Troy to please Menelaus deliberated here how they could sail out to Troy and exact satisfaction from Alexander for carrying off Helen.

Near the Hellenium they point out the tomb of Talthybius. The Achaeans of Aegium too say that a tomb which they show on their market-place belongs to Talthybius. It was this Talthybius whose wrath at the murder of the heralds, who were sent to Greece by king Dareius to demand earth and water, left its mark upon the whole state of the Lacedaemonians, but in Athens fell upon individuals, the members of the house of one man, Miltiades the son of Cimon. Miltiades was responsible for the death at the hands of the Athenians of those of the heralds who came to Attica.

The Lacedaemonians have an altar of Apollo Acritas, and a sanctuary, surnamed Gasepton, of Earth. Above it is set up Maleatian Apollo. At the end of the Aphetaid Road, quite close to the wall, are a sanctuary of Dictynna and the royal graves of those called the Eurypontidae. Beside the Hellenium is a sanctuary of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus and sister of the wives of Polydeuces and Castor. At the place called the Forts is a temple of Artemis, and a little further on has been built a tomb for the diviners from Elis, called the Iamidae.

There is also a sanctuary of Maron and of Alpheius. Of the Lacedaemonians who served at Thermopylae they consider that these men distinguished themselves in the fighting more than any save Leonidas himself. The sanctuary of Zeus Tropaean (He who turns to flight) was made by the Dorians, when they had conquered in war the Amyclaeans, as well as the other Achaeans, who at that time occupied Laconia. The sanctuary of the Great Mother has paid to it the most extraordinary honors. After it come the hero-shrines of Hippolytus, son of Theseus, and of the Arcadian Aulon, son of Tlesimenes. Some say that Tlesimenes was a brother, others a son of Parthenopaeus, son of Melanion.

Leading from the market-place is another road, on which they have built what is called Scias (Canopy), where even at the present day they hold their meetings of the Assembly. This Canopy was made, they say, by Theodorus of Samos, who discovered the melting of iron and the moulding of images from it. Here the Lacedaemonians hung the harp of Timotheus of Miletus, to express their disapproval of his innovation in harping, the addition of four strings to the seven old ones.

By the Canopy is a circular building, and in it images of Zeus and Aphrodite surnamed Olympian. This, they say, was set up by Epimenides, but their account of him does not agree with that of the Argives, for the Lacedaemonians deny that they ever fought with the Cnossians.

Hard by is the grave of Cynortas son of Amyclas, together with the tomb of Castor, and over the tomb there has also been made a sanctuary, for they say that it was not before the fortieth year after the fight with Idas and Lynceus that divine honors were paid to the sons of Tyndareus. By the Canopy is also shown the grave of Idas and Lynceus. Now it fits in best with their history to hold that they were buried not here but in Messenia.

But the disasters of the Messenians, and the length of their exile from the Peloponnesus, even after their return wrapped in darkness much of their ancient history, and their. ignorance makes it easy for any who wish to dispute a claim with them.Opposite the Olympian Aphrodite the Lacedaemonians have a temple of the Saviour Maid. Some say that it was made by Orpheus the Thracian, others by Abairis when he had come from the Hyperboreans.

Carneus, whom they surname “of the House,” had honors in Sparta even before the return of the Heracleidae, his seat being in the house of a seer, Crius (Ram) the son of Theocles. The daughter of this Crius was met as she was filling her pitcher by spies of the Dorians, who entered into conversation with her, visited Crius and learned from him how to capture Sparta.

The cult of Apollo Carneus has been established among all the Dorians ever since Carnus, an Acarnanian by birth, who was a seer of Apollo. When he was killed by Hippotes the son of Phylas, the wrath of Apollo fell upon the camp of the Dorians Hippotes went into banishment because of the bloodguilt, and from this time the custom was established among the Dorians of propitiating the Acarnanian seer. But this Carnus is not the Lacedaemonian Carneus of the House, who was worshipped in the house of Crius the seer while the Achaeans were still in possession of Sparta.

The poetess Praxilla represents Carneus as the son of Europa, Apollo and Leto being his nurses. There is also another account of the name; in Trojan Ida there grew in a grove of Apollo cornel-trees, which the Greeks cut down to make the Wooden Horse. Learning that the god was wroth with them they propitiated him with sacrifices and named Apollo Carneus from the cornel-tree (craneia), a custom prevalent in the olden time making them transpose the r and the a.

Not far from Carneus is what is called the image of Aphetaeus. Here they say was the starting-place of the race run by the suitors of Penelope. There is a place having its porticoes in the form of a square, where of old stuff used to be sold to the people. By this is an altar of Zeus Counsellor and of Athena Counsellor, also of the Dioscuri, likewise surnamed Counsellors.

Opposite is what is called the Knoll, with a temple of Dionysus of the Knoll, by which is a precinct of the hero who they say guided Dionysus on the way to Sparta. To this hero sacrifices are offered before they are offered to the god by the daughters of Dionysus and the daughters of Leucippus. For the other eleven ladies who are named daughters of Dionysus there is held a footrace; this custom came to Sparta from Delphi.

Not far from the Dionysus is a sanctuary of Zeus of Fair Wind, on the right of which is a hero-shrine of Pleuron. The sons of Tyndareus were descended on their mother's side from Pleuron, for Asius in his poem says that Thestius the father of Leda was the son of Agenor the son of Pleuron. Not far from the hero-shrine is a hill, and on the hill a temple of Argive Hera, set up, they say, by Eurydice, the daughter of Lacedaemon and the wife of Acrisius the son of Abas. An oracular utterance caused to be built a sanctuary of Hera Hyperchemia (she whose hand is above) at a time when the Eurotas was flooding a great part of the land.

An old wooden image they call that of Aphrodite Hera. A mother is wont to sacrifice to the goddess when a daughter is married. On the road to the right of the hill is a statue of Hetoemocles. Both Hetoemocles himself and his father Hipposthenes won Olympic victories for wrestling the two together won eleven, but Hipposthenes succeeded in beating his son by one victory.

On going westwards from the market-place is a cenotaph of Brasidas the son of Tellis. Not far from it is the theater, made of white marble and worth seeing. Opposite the theater are two tombs; the first is that of Pausanias, the general at Plataea, the second is that of Leonidas. Every year they deliver speeches over them, and hold a contest in which none may compete except Spartans. The bones of Leonidas were taken by Pausanias from Thermopylae forty years after the battle. There is set up a slab with the names, and their fathers' names, of those who endured the fight at Thermopylae against the Persians.

There is a place in Sparta called Theomelida. In this part of the city are the graves of the Agiad kings, and near is what is called the lounge of the Crotani, who form a part of the Pitanatans. Not far from the lounge is a sanctuary of Asclepius, called “in the place of the Agiadae.” Farther on is the tomb of Taenarus, after whom they say the headland was named that juts out into the sea. Here are sanctuaries of Poseidon Hippocurius (Horse-tending) and of Artemis Aiginaea (Goat-goddess?). On returning to the lounge you see a sanctuary of Artemis Issoria. They surname her also Lady of the Lake, though she is not really Artemis hut Britomartis of Crete. I deal with her in my account of Aegina.

Very near to the tombs which have been built for the Agiadae you will see a slab, on which are written the victories in the foot-race won, at Olympia and elsewhere, by Chionis, a Lacedaemonian. The Olympian victories were seven, four in the single-stade race and three in the double-stade race. The race with the shield, that takes place at the end of the contest, was not at that time one of the events. It is said that Chionis also took part in the expedition of Battus of Thera, helped him to found Cyrene and to reduce the neighboring Libyans.

The sanctuary of Thetis was set up, they say, for the following reason. The Lacedaemonians were making war against the Messenians, who had revolted, and their king Anaxander, having invaded Messenia, took prisoners certain women, and among them Cleo, priestess of Thetis. This Cleo the wife of Anaxander asked for from her husband, and discovering that she had the wooden image of Thetis, she set up with her a temple for the goddess. This Leandris did because of a vision in a dream,

but the wooden image of Thetis is guarded in secret. The cult of Demeter Chthonia (of the Lower World) the Lacedaemonians say was handed on to them by Orpheus, but in my opinion it was because of the sanctuary in Hermione that the Lacedaemonians also began to worship Demeter Chthonia. The Spartans have also a sanctuary of Serapis, the newest sanctuary in the city, and one of Zeus surnamed Olympian.

The Lacedaemonians give the name Running Course to the place where it is the custom for the young men even down to the present day to practise running. As you go to this Course from the grave of the Agiadae, you see on the left the tomb of Eumedes—this Eumedes was one of the children of Hippocoon—and also an old image of Heracles, to whom sacrifice is paid by the Sphaereis. These are those who are just passing from youth to manhood. In the Course are two gymnastic schools, one being a votive gift of Eurycles, a Spartan. Outside the Course, over against the image of Heracles, there is a house belonging now to a private individual, but in olden times to Menelaus. Farther away from the Course are sanctuaries of the Dioscuri, of the Graces, of Eileithyia, of Apollo Carneus, and of Artemis Leader.

The sanctuary of Agnitas has been made on the right of the Course; Agnitas is a surname of Asclepius, because the god had a wooden image of agnus castus. The agnus is a willow like the thorn. Not far from Asclepius stands a trophy, raised, they say, by Polydeuces to celebrate his victory over Lynceus. This is one of the pieces of evidence that confirm my statement that the sons of Aphareus were not buried in Sparta. At the beginning of the Course are the Dioscuri Starters, and a little farther on a hero-shrine of Alcon, who they say was a son of Hippocoon.Beside the shrine of Alcon is a sanctuary of Poseidon, whom they surname “of the House.”

And there is a place called Platanistas (Plane-tree Grove) from the unbroken ring of tall plane trees growing round it. The place itself, where it is customary for the youths to fight, is surrounded by a moat just like an island in the sea; you enter it by bridges. On each of the two bridges stand images; on one side an image of Heracles, on the other a likeness of Lycurgus. Among the laws Lycurgus laid down for the constitution are those regulating the fighting of the youths.

There are other acts performed by the youths, which I will now describe. Before the fighting they sacrifice in the Phoebaeum, which is outside the city, not far distant from Therapne. Here each company of youths sacrifices a puppy to Enyalius, holding that the most valiant of tame animals is an acceptable victim to the most valiant of the gods. I know of no other Greeks who are accustomed to sacrifice puppies except the people of Colophon; these too sacrifice a puppy, a black bitch, to the Wayside Goddess. Both the sacrifice of the Colophonians and that of the youths at Sparta are appointed to take place at night.

Book 3, Part 5 Cite

At the sacrifice the youths set trained boars to fight; the company whose boar happens to win generally gains the victory in Plane-tree Grove. Such are the performances in the Phoebaeum. A little before the middle of the next day they enter by the bridges into the place I have mentioned. They cast lots during the night to decide by which entrance each band is to go in. In fighting they use their hands, kick with their feet, bite, and gouge out the eyes of their opponents. Man to man they fight in the way I have described, but in the melee they charge violently and push one another into the water.

At Plane-tree Grove there is also a hero-shrine of Cynisca, daughter of Archidamus king of the Spartans. She was the first woman to breed horses, and the first to win a chariot race at Olympia. Behind the portico built by the side of Plane-tree Grove are other hero-shrines, of Alcimus, of Enaraephorus, at a little distance away one of Dorceus, and close to it one of Sebrus.

These are said to be sons of Hippocoon. The fountain near the hero-shrine of Dorceus they call Dorcean after him; the place Sebrium is named after Sebrus. On the right of Sebrium is the tomb of Alcman, the lyric poet, the charm of whose works was not in the least spoilt by the Laconian dialect, which is the least musical of them all.

There are sanctuaries of Helen and of Heracles; the former is near the grave of Alcman, the latter is quite close to the wall and contains an armed image of Heracles. The attitude of the image is due, they say, to the fight with Hippocoon and his sons. The enmity of Heracles towards the family of Hippocoon is said to have sprung out of their refusing to cleanse him when he came to Sparta for cleansing after the death of Iphitus.

The following incident, too, helped to begin the feud. Oeonus, a stripling cousin of Heracles—he was the son of Licymnius the brother of Alcmene—came to Sparta along with Heracles, and went round to view the city. When he came to the house of Hippocoon, a house-dog attacked him. Oeonus happened to throw a stone which knocked over the dog. So the sons of Hippocoon ran out, and dispatched Oeonus with their clubs.

This made Heracles most bitterly wroth with Hippocoon and his sons, and straightway, angry as he was, he set out to give them battle. On this occasion he was wounded, and made good his retreat by stealth but afterwards he made an expedition against Sparta and succeeded in avenging himself on Hippocoon, and also on the sons of Hippocoon for their murder of Oeonus. The tomb of Oeonus is built by the side of the sanctuary of Heracles.

As you go from the Course towards the east, there is a path on the right, with a sanctuary of Athena called Axiopoinos (Just Requital or Tit for Tat). For when Heracles, in avenging himself on Hippocoon and his sons, had inflicted upon them a just requital for their treatment of his relative, he founded a sanctuary of Athena, and surnamed her Axiopoinos because the ancients used to call vengeance poinai. There is another sanctuary of Athena on another road from the Course. It was dedicated, they say, by Theras son of Autesion son of Tisamenus son of Thersander, when he was leading a colony to the island now called Thera after him, the name of which in ancient times was Calliste (Fairest).

Near is a temple of Hipposthenes, who won so many victories in wrestling. They worship Hipposthenes in accordance with an oracle, paying him honors as to Poseidon. Opposite this temple is an old image of Enyalius in fetters. The idea the Lacedaemonians express by this image is the same as the Athenians express by their Wingless Victory; the former think that Enyalius will never run away from them, being bound in the fetters, while the Athenians think that Victory, having no wings, will always remain where she is.

In this fashion, and with such a belief have these cities set up the wooden images. In Sparta is a lounge called Painted, and by it hero-shrines of Cadmus the son of Agenor, and of his descendants Oeolycus, son of Theras, and Aegeus, son of Oeolycus. They are said to have been made by Maesis, Laeas and Europas, sons of Hyraeus, son of Aegeus. They made for Amphilochus too his hero-shrine, because their ancestor Tisamenus had for his mother Demonassa, the sister of Amphilochus.

The Lacedaemonians are the only Greeks who surname Hera Goat-eater, and sacrifice goats to the goddess. They say that Heracles founded the sanctuary and was the first to sacrifice goats, because in his fight against Hippocoon and his children he met with no hindrance from Hera, although in his other adventures he thought that the goddess opposed him. He sacrificed goats, they say, because he lacked other kinds of victims.

Not far from the theater is a sanctuary of Poseidon God of Kin, and there are hero-shrines of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, and of Oebalus. The most famous of their sanctuaries of Asclepius has been built near Booneta, and on the left is the hero-shrine of Teleclus. I shall mention him again later in my history of Messenia. A little farther on is a small hill, on which is an ancient temple with a wooden image of Aphrodite armed. This is the only temple I know that has an upper storey built upon it.

It is a sanctuary of Morpho, a surname of Aphrodite, who sits wearing a veil and with fetters on her feet. The story is that the fetters were put on her by Tyndareus, who symbolized by the bonds the faithfulness of wives to their husbands. The other account, that Tyndareus punished the goddess with fetters because he thought that from Aphrodite had come the shame of his daughters, I will not admit for a moment. For it were surely altogether silly to expect to punish the goddess by making a cedar figure and naming it Aphrodite.

Near is a sanctuary of Hilaeira and of Phoebe. The author of the poem Cypria calls them daughters of Apollo. Their priestesses are young maidens, called, as are also the goddesses, Leucippides (Daughter of Leucippus). One of the images was adorned by a Leucippis who had served the goddesses as a priestess. She gave it a face of modern workmanship instead of the old one; she was forbidden by a dream to adorn the other one as well. Here there his been hung from the roof an egg tied to ribands, and they say that it is the famous egg that legend says Leda brought forth.

Each year the women weave a tunic for the Apollo at Amyclae, and they call Tunic the chamber in which they do their weaving. Near it is built a house, said to have been occupied originally by the sons of Tyndareus, but afterwards it was acquired by Phormion, a Spartan. To him came the Dioscuri in the likeness of strangers. They said that they had come from Cyrene, and asked to lodge with him, requesting to have the chamber which had pleased them most when they dwelt among men.

He replied that they might lodge in any other part of the house they wished, but that they could not have the chamber.For it so happened that his maiden daughter was living in it. By the next day this maiden and all her girlish apparel had disappeared, and in the room were found images of the Dioscuri, a table, and silphium upon it.

Such is the story. As you go from the Tunic in the direction of the gate there is a hero-shrine of Cheilon, who is considered one of the Seven Sages, and also of Athenodorus, one of those who with Dorieus the son of Anaxandrides set out for Sicily. The reason of their setting out was that they held that the Erycine district belonged to the descendants of Heracles and not to the foreigners who held it. The story is that Heracles wrestled with Eryx on these terms: if Heracles won, the land of Eryx was to belong to him but if he were beaten, Eryx was to depart with the cows of Geryon;

for Heracles at the time was driving these away, and when they swam across to Sicily he too crossed over in search of them near the bent olive-tree. The favour of heaven was more partial to Heracles than it was afterwards to Dorieus the son of Anaxandrides; Heracles killed Eryx, but Dorieus himself and the greater part of his army were destroyed by the Egestaeans.

The Lacedaemonians have also made a sanctuary for Lycurgus, who drew up the laws, looking upon him as a god. Behind the temple is the grave of Eucosmus, the son of Lycurgus, and by the altar the grave of Lathria and Anaxandra. Now these were themselves twins, and therefore the sons of Aristodemus, who also were twins likewise, took them to wife; they were daughters of Thersander son of Agamedidas, king of the Cleonaeans and great-grandson of Ctesippus, son of Heracles. Opposite the temple is the tomb of Theopompus son of Nicander, and also that of Eurybiades, who commanded the Lacedaemonian warships that fought the Persians at Artemisium and Salamis. Near is what is called the hero-shrine of Astrabacus.

The place named Limnaeum (Marshy) is sacred to Artemis Orthia (Upright). The wooden image there they say is that which once Orestes and Iphigenia stole out of the Tauric land, and the Lacedaemonians say that it was brought to their land because there also Orestes was king. I think their story more probable than that of the Athenians. For what could have induced Iphigenia to leave the image behind at Brauron? Or why did the Athenians, when they were preparing to abandon their land, fail to include this image in what they put on board their ships?

And yet, right down to the present day, the fame of the Tauric goddess has remained so high that the Cappadocians dwelling on the Euxine claim that the image is among them, a like claim being made by those Lydians also who have a sanctuary of Artemis Anaeitis. But the Athenians, we are asked to believe, made light of it becoming booty of the Persians. For the image at Brauron was brought to Susa, and afterwards Seleucus gave it to the Syrians of Laodicea, who still possess it.

I will give other evidence that the Orthia in Lacedaemon is the wooden image from the foreigners. Firstly, Astrabacus and Alopecus, sons of Irbus, son of Amphisthenes, son of Amphicles, son of Agis, when they found the image straightway became insane. Secondly, the Spartan Limnatians, the Cynosurians, and the people of Mesoa and Pitane, while sacrificing to Artemis, fell to quarreling, which led also to bloodshed; many were killed at the altar and the rest died of disease.

Whereat an oracle was delivered to them, that they should stain the altar with human blood. He used to be sacrificed upon whomsoever the lot fell, but Lycurgus changed the custom to a scourging of the lads, and so in this way the altar is stained with human blood. By them stands the priestess, holding the wooden image. Now it is small and light,

but if ever the scourgers spare the lash because of a lad's beauty or high rank, then at once the priestess finds the image grow so heavy that she can hardly carry it. She lays the blame on the scourgers, and says that it is their fault that she is being weighed down. So the image ever since the sacrifices in the Tauric land keeps its fondness for human blood. They call it not only Orthia, but also Lygodesma (Willow-bound), because it was found in a thicket of willows, and the encircling willow made the image stand upright.

Not far from the Orthia is a sanctuary of Eileithyia. They say that they built it, and came to worship Eileithyia as a goddess, because of an oracle from Delphi.The Lacedaemonians have no citadel rising to a conspicuous height like the Cadmea at Thebes and the Larisa at Argos. There are, however, hills in the city, and the highest of them they call the citadel.

Here is built a sanctuary of Athena, who is called both City-protecting and Lady of the Bronze House. The building of the sanctuary was begun, they say, by Tyndareus. On his death his children were desirous of making a second attempt to complete the building, and the resources they intended to use were the spoils of Aphidna. They too left it unfinished, and it was many years afterwards that the Lacedaemonians made of bronze both the temple and the image of Athena. The builder was Gitiadas, a native of Sparta, who also composed Dorian lyrics, including a hymn to the goddess.

On the bronze are wrought in relief many of the labours of Heracles and many of the voluntary exploits he successfully carried out, besides the rape of the daughters of Leucippus and other achievements of the sons of Tyndareus. There is also Hephaestus releasing his mother from the fetters. The legend about this I have already related in my history of Attica. There are also represented nymphs bestowing upon Perseus, who is starting on his enterprise against Medusa in Libya, a cap and the shoes by which he was to be carried through the air. There are also wrought the birth of Athena, Amphitrite, and Poseidon, the largest figures, and those which I thought the best worth seeing.

There is here another sanctuary of Athena; her surname is the Worker. As you go to the south portico there is a temple of Zeus surnamed Cosmetas (Orderer), and before it is the tomb of Tyndareus. The west portico has two eagles, and upon them are two Victories. Lysander dedicated them to commemorate both his exploits; the one was off Ephesus, when he conquered Antiochus, the captain of Alcibiades, and the Athenian warships and the second occurred later, when he destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami.

On the left of the Lady of the Bronze House they have set up a sanctuary of the Muses, because the Lacedaemonians used to go out to fight, not to the sound of the trumpet, but to the music of the flute and the accompaniment of lyre and harp. Behind the Lady of the Bronze House is a temple of Aphrodite Areia (Warlike). The wooden images are as old as any in Greece.

On the right of the Lady of the Bronze House has been set up an image of Zeus Most High, the oldest image that is made of bronze. It is not wrought in one piece. Each of the limbs has been hammered separately; these are fitted together, being prevented from coming apart by nails. They say that the artist was Clearchus of Rhegium, who is said by some to have been a pupil of Dipoenus and Scyllis, by others of Daedalus himself. By what is called the Scenoma (Tent) there is a statue of a woman, whom the Lacedaemonians say is Euryleonis. She won a victory at Olympia with a two-horse chariot.

By the side of the altar of the Lady of the Bronze House stand two statues of Pausanias, the general at Plataea. His history, as it is known, I will not relate. The accurate accounts of my predecessors suffice; I shall content myself with adding to them what I heard from a man of Byzantium. Pausanias was detected in his treachery, and was the only suppliant of the Lady of the Bronze House who failed to win security, solely because he had been unable to wipe away a defilement of bloodshed.

When he was cruising about the Hellespont with the Lacedaemonian and allied fleets, he fell in love with a Byzantine maiden. And straightway at the beginning of night Cleonice —that was the girl's name—was brought by those who had been ordered to do so. But Pausanias was asleep at the time and the noise awoke him. For as she came to him she unintentionally dropped her lighted lamp. And Pausanias, conscious of his treason to Greece, and therefore always nervous and fearful, jumped up then and struck the girl with his sword.

From this defilement Pausanias could not escape, although he underwent all sorts of purifications and became a suppliant of Zeus Phyxius (God of Flight), and finally went to the wizards at Phigalia in Arcadia but he paid a fitting penalty to Cleonice and to the god. The Lacedaemonians, in fulfillment of a command from Delphi, had the bronze images made and honor the spirit Bountiful, saying that it was this Bountiful that turns aside the wrath that the God of Suppliants shows because of Pausanias.

Near the statues of Pausanias is an image of Aphrodite Ambologera (Postponer of Old Age), which was set up in accordance with an oracle; there are also images of Sleep and of Death. They think them brothers, in accordance with the verses in the Iliad.

As you go towards what is called the Alpium is a temple of Athena Ophthalmitis (Goddess of the Eye). They say that Lycurgus dedicated it when one of his eyes had been struck out by Alcander, because the laws he had made happened not to find favour with Alcander. Having fled to this place he was saved by the Lacedaemonians from losing his remaining eye, and so he made this temple of Athena Ophthalmitis.

Book 3, Part 6 Cite

Farther on from here is a sanctuary of Ammon. From the first the Lacedaemonians are known to have used the oracle in Libya more than any other Greeks. It is said also that when Lysander was besieging Aphytis in Pallene Ammon appeared by night and declared that it would be better for him and for Lacedaemon if they ceased from warring against Aphytis. And so Lysander raised the siege, and induced the Lacedaemonians to worship the god still more. The people of Aphytis honor Ammon no less than the Ammonian Libyans.

The story of Artemis Cnagia is as follows. Cnageus, they say, was a native who joined the Dioscuri in their expedition against Aphidna. Being taken prisoner in the battle and sold into Crete, he lived as a slave where the Cretans had a sanctuary of Artemis; but in course of time he ran away in the company of the maiden priestess, who took the image with her. It is for this reason that they name Artemis Cnagia.

But I am of opinion that Cnageus came to Crete in some other way, and not in the manner the Lacedaemonians state; for I do not think there was a battle at Aphidna at all, Theseus being detained among the Thesprotians and the Athenians not being unanimous, their sympathies inclining towards Menestheus. Moreover, even if a fight occurred, nobody would believe that prisoners were taken from the conquerors, especially as the victory was overwhelming, so that Aphidna itself was captured.

I must now end my criticisms. As you go down to Amyclae from Sparta you come to a river called Tiasa. They hold that Tiasa was a daughter of Eurotas, and by it is a sanctuary of Graces, Phaenna and Cleta, as Alcman calls them in a poem. They believe that Lacedaemon founded the sanctuary for the Graces here, and gave them their names.

The things worth seeing in Amyclae include a victor in the pentathlon, named Aenetus, on a slab. The story is that he won a victory at Olympia, but died while the crown was being placed on his head. So there is the statue of this man; there are also bronze tripods. The older ones are said to be a tithe of the Messenian war.

Under the first tripod stood an image of Aphrodite, and under the second an Artemis. The two tripods themselves and the reliefs are the work of Gitiadas. The third was made by Gallon of Aegina, and under it stands an image of the Maid, daughter of Demeter. Aristander of Paros and Polycleitus of Argos have statues here; the former a woman with a lyre, supposed to be Sparta, the latter an Aphrodite called “beside the Amyclaean.” These tripods are larger than the others, and were dedicated from the spoils of the victory at Aegospotami.

Bathycles of Magnesia, who made the throne of the Amyclaean, dedicated, on the completion of the throne, Graces and an image of Artemis Leucophryene. Whose pupil this Bathycles was, and who was king of Lacedaemon when he made the throne, I pass over; but I saw the throne and will describe its details.

It is supported in front, and similarly behind, by two Graces and two Seasons. On the left stand Echidna and Typhos, on the right Tritons. To describe the reliefs one by one in detail would have merely bored my readers; but to be brief and concise (for the greater number of them are not unknown either) Poseidon and Zeus are carrying Taygete, daughter of Atlas, and her sister Alcyone. There are also reliefs of Atlas, the single combat of Heracles and Cycnus, and the battle of the Centaurs at the cave of Pholus.

I cannot say why Bathycles has represented the so-called Bull of Minos bound, and being led along alive by Theseus. There is also on the throne a band of Phaeacian dancers, and Demodocus singing. Perseus, too, is represented killing Medusa. Passing over the fight of Heracles with the giant Thurius and that of Tyndareus with Eurytus, we have next the rape of the daughters of Leucippus. Here are Dionysus, too, and Heracles; Hermes is bearing the infant Dionysus to heaven, and Athena is taking Heracles to dwell henceforth with the gods.

There is Peleus handing over Achilles to be reared by Cheiron, who is also said to have been his teacher. There is Cephalus, too, carried off by Day because of his beauty. The gods are bringing gifts to the marriage of Harmonia. There is wrought also the single combat of Achilles and Memnon , and Heracles avenging himself upon Diomedes the Thracian, and upon Nessus at the river Euenus. Hermes is bringing the goddesses to Alexander to be judged. Adrastus and Tydeus are staying the fight between Amphiaraus and Lycurgus the son of Pronax.

Hera is gazing at Io, the daughter of Inachus, who is already a cow, and Athena is running away from Hephaestus, who chases her. Next to these have been wrought two of the exploits of Heracles—his slaying the hydra, and his bringing up the Hound of Hell. Anaxias and Mnasinous are each seated on horseback, but there is one horse only carrying Megapenthes, the son of Menelaus, and Nicostratus. Bellerophontes is destroying the beast in Lycia, and Heracles is driving off the cows of Geryones.

At the upper edge of the throne are wrought, one on each side, the sons of Tyndareus on horses. There are sphinxes under the horses, and beasts running upwards, on the one side a leopard, by Polydeuces a lioness. On the very top of the throne has been wrought a band of dancers, the Magnesians who helped Bathycles to make the throne.

Underneath the throne, the inner part away from the Tritons contains the hunting of the Calydonian boar and Heracles killing the children of Actor. Calais and Zetes are driving the Harpies away from Phineus. Peirithous and Theseus have seized Helen, and Heracles is strangling the lion. Apollo and Artemis are shooting Tityus.

There is represented the fight between Heracles and Oreius the Centaur, and also that between Theseus and the Bull of Minos. There are also represented the wrestling of Heracles with Achelous, the fabled binding of Hera by Hephaestus, the games Acastus held in honor of his father, and the story of Menelaus and the Egyptian Proteus from the Odyssey. Lastly there is Admetus yoking a boar and a lion to his chariot, and the Trojans are bringing libations to Hector.

The part of the throne where the god would sit is not continuous; there are several seats, and by the side of each seat is left a wide empty space, the middle, whereon the image stands, being the widest of them.

I know of nobody who has measured the height of the image, but at a guess one would estimate it to be as much as thirty cubits. It is not the work of Bathycles, being old and uncouth; for though it has face, feet, and hands, the rest resembles a bronze pillar. On its head it has a helmet, in its hands a spear and a bow.

The pedestal of the statue is fashioned into the shape of an altar and they say that Hyacinthus is buried in it, and at the Hyacinthia, before the sacrifice to Apollo, they devote offerings to Hyacinthus as to a hero into this altar through a bronze door, which is on the left of the altar. On the altar are wrought in relief, here an image of Biris, there Amphitrite and Poseidon. Zeus and Hermes are conversing; near stand Dionysus and Semele, with Ino by her side.

On the altar are also Demeter, the Maid, Pluto, next to them Fates and Seasons, and with them Aphrodite, Athena and Artemis. They are carrying to heaven Hyacinthus and Polyboea, the sister, they say, of Hyacinthus, who died a maid. Now this statue of Hyacinthus represents him as bearded, but Nicias, son of Nicomedes, has painted him in the very prime of youthful beauty, hinting at the love of Apollo for Hyacinthus of which legend tells.

Wrought on the altar is also Heracles; he too is being led to heaven by Athena and the other gods. On the altar are also the daughters of Thestius, Muses and Seasons. As for the West Wind, how Apollo unintentionally killed Hyacinthus, and the story of the flower, we must be content with the legends, although perhaps they are not true history.

Amyclae was laid waste by the Dorians, and since that time has remained a village; I found there a sanctuary and image of Alexandra worth seeing. Alexandra is said by the Amyclaeans to be Cassandra, the daughter of Priam. Here is also a statue of Clytaemnestra, together with what is supposed to be the tomb of Agamemnon. The natives worship the Amyclaean god and Dionysus, surnaming the latter, quite correctly I think, Psilax. For psila is Doric for wings, and wine uplifts men and lightens their spirit no less than wings do birds.Such I found were the things worth mentioning about Amyclae. Another road from the city leads to Therapne,

and on this road is a wooden image of Athena Alea. Before the Eurotas is crossed, a little above the bank is shown a sanctuary of Zeus Wealthy. Across the river is a temple of Asclepius Cotyleus (of the Hip-joint); it was made by Heracles, who named Asclepius Cotyleus, because he was cured of the wound in the hip-joint that he received in the former fight with Hippocoon and his sons. Of all the objects along this road the oldest is a sanctuary of Ares. This is on the left of the road, and the image is said to have been brought from Colchis by the Dioscuri.

They surname him Theritas after Thero, who is said to have been the nurse of Ares. Perhaps it was from the Colchians that they heard the name Theritas, since the Greeks know of no Thero, nurse of Ares. My own belief is that the surname Theritas was not given to Ares because of his nurse, but because when a man meets an enemy in battle he must cast aside all gentleness, as Homer says of Achilles:And he is fierce as a lion.

The name of Therapne is derived from the daughter of Lelex, and in it is a temple of Menelaus; they say that Menelaus and Helen were buried here. The account of the Rhodians is different. They say that when Menelaus was dead, and Orestes still a wanderer, Helen was driven out by Nicostratus and Megapenthes and came to Rhodes, where she had a friend in Polyxo,

the wife of Tlepolemus. For Polyxo, they say, was an Argive by descent, and when she was already married to Tlepolemus shared his flight to Rhodes. At the time she was queen of the island, having been left with an orphan boy. They say that this Polyxo desired to avenge the death of Tlepolemus on Helen, now that she had her in her power. So she sent against her when she was bathing handmaidens dressed up as Furies, who seized Helen and hanged her on a tree, and for this reason the Rhodians have a sanctuary of Helen of the Tree.

A story too I will tell which I know the people of Crotona tell about Helen. The people of Himera too agree with this account. In the Euxine at the mouths of the Ister is an island sacred to Achilles. It is called White Island, and its circumference is twenty stades. It is wooded throughout and abounds in animals, wild and tame, while on it is a temple of Achilles with an image of him.

The first to sail thither legend says was Leonymus of Crotona. For when war had arisen between the people of Crotona and the Locri in Italy, the Locri, in virtue of the relationship between them and the Opuntians, called upon Ajax son of Oileus to help them in battle. So Leonymus the general of the people of Crotona attacked his enemy at that point where he heard that Ajax was posted in the front line. Now he was wounded in the breast, and weak with his hurt came to Delphi. When he arrived the Pythian priestess sent Leonynius to White Island, telling him that there Ajax would appear to him and cure his wound.

In time he was healed and returned from White Island, where, he used to declare, he saw Achilles, as well as Ajax the son of Oileus and Ajax the son of Telamon. With them, he said, were Patroclus and Antilochus; Helen was wedded to Achilles, and had bidden him sail to Stesichorus at Himera, and announce that the loss of his sight was caused by her wrath.

Therefore Stesichorus composed his recantation. In Therapne I remember seeing the fountain Messeis. Some of the Lacedaemonians, however, have declared that of old the name Messeis was given, not to the fountain at Therapne, but to the one we call Polydeucea. The fountain Polydeucea and a sanctuary of Polydeuces are on the right of the road to Therapne.

Not far from Therapne is what is called Phoebaeum, in which is a temple of the Dioscuri. Here the youths sacrifice to Enyalius. At no great distance from it stands a sanctuary of Poseidon surnamed Earth-embracer. Going on from here in the direction of Taygetus you come to a place called Alesiae (Place of Grinding) they say that Myles (Mill-man) the son of Lelex was the first human being to invent a mill, and that he ground corn in this Alesiae. Here they have a hero-shrine of Lacedaemon, the son of Taygete.

Crossing from here a river Phellia, and going past Amyclae along a road leading straight towards the sea, you come to the site of Pharis, which was once a city of Laconia. Turning away from the Phellia to the right is the road that leads to Mount Taygetus. On the plain is a precinct of Zeus Messapeus, who is surnamed, they say, after a man who served the god as his priest. Leaving Taygetus from here you come to the site of the city Bryseae. There still remains here a temple of Dionysus with an image in the open. But the image in the temple women only may see, for women by themselves perform in secret the sacrificial rites.

Above Bryseae rises Taletum, a peak of Taygetus. They call it sacred to Helius (the Sun), and among the sacrifices they offer here to Helius are horses. I am aware that the Persians also are wont to offer the same sacrifice. Not far from Taletum is a place called Euoras, the haunt of wild animals, especially wild goats. In fact all Taygetus is a hunting-ground for these goats and for boars, and it is well stocked with both deer and bears.

Between Taletum and Euoras is a place they name Therae, where they say Leto from the Peaks of Taygetus ... is a sanctuary of Demeter surnamed Eleusinian. Here according to the Lacedaemonian story Heracles was hidden by Asclepius while he was being healed of a wound. In the sanctuary is a wooden image of Orpheus, a work, they say, of Pelasgians.

I know also of the following rite which is performed here. By the sea was a city Helos, which Homer too has mentioned in his list of the Lacedaemonians:These had their home in Amyclae, and in Helos the town by the seaside.It was founded by Helius, the youngest of the sons of Perseus, and the Dorians afterwards reduced it by siege. Its inhabitants became the first slaves of the Lacedaemonian state, and were the first to be called Helots, as in fact Helots they were. The slaves afterwards acquired, although they were Dorians of Messenia, also came to be called Helots, just as the whole Greek race were called Hellenes from the region in Thessaly once called Hellas.

From this Helos, on stated days, they bring up to the sanctuary of the Eleusinian a wooden image of the Maid, daughter of Demeter. Fifteen stades distant from the sanctuary is Lapithaeum, named after Lapithus, a native of the district. So this Lapithaeum is on Taygetus, and not far off is Dereium, where is in the open an image of Artemis Dereatis, and beside it is a spring which they name Anonus. About twenty stades past Dereum is Harpleia, which extends as far as the plain.

Book 3, Part 7 Cite

On the road from Sparta to Arcadia there stands in the open an image of Athena surnamed Pareia, and after it is a sanctuary of Achilles. This it is not customary to open, but all the youths who are going to take part in the contest in Plane-tree Grove are wont to sacrifice to Achilles before the fight. The Spartans say that the sanctuary was made for them by Prax, a grandson of Pergamus the son of Neoptolemus.

Further on is what is called the Tomb of Horse. For Tyndareus, having sacrificed a horse here, administered an oath to the suitors of Helen, making them stand upon the pieces of the horse. The oath was to defend Helen and him who might be chosen to marry her if ever they should be wronged. When he had sworn the suitors he buried the horse here. Seven pillars, which are not far from this tomb ... in the ancient manner, I believe, which they say are images of the planets. On the road is a precinct of Cranius surnamed Stemmatias, and a sanctuary of Mysian Artemis.

The image of Modesty, some thirty stades distant from the city, they say was dedicated by Icarius, the following being the reason for making it. When Icarius gave Penelope in marriage to Odysseus, he tried to make Odysseus himself settle in Lacedaemon, but failing in the attempt, he next besought his daughter to remain behind, and when she was setting forth to Ithaca he followed the chariot, begging her to stay.

Odysseus endured it for a time, but at last he bade Penelope either to accompany him willingly, or else, if she preferred her father, to go back to Lacedaemon. They say that she made no reply, but covered her face with a veil in reply to the question, so that Icarios, realizing that she wished to depart with Odysseus, let her go, and dedicated an image of Modesty; for Penelope, they say, had reached this point of the road when she veiled herself.

Twenty stades from here the stream of the Eurotas comes very near to the road, and here is the tomb of Ladas, the fastest runner of his day. He was crowned at Olympia for a victory in the long race, and falling ill, I take it, immediately after the victory he was on his way home; his death took place here, and his grave is above the highway. His namesake, who also won at Olympia a victory, not in the long race but in the short race, is stated in the Elean records of Olympic victors to have been a native of Aegium in Achaia.

Farther On in the direction of Pellana is what is called Characoma (Trench); and after it Pellana, which in the olden time was a city. They say that Tyndareus dwelt here when he fled from Sparta before Hippocoon and his sons. Remarkable sights I remember seeing here were a sanctuary of Asclepius and the spring Pellanis. Into it they say a maiden fell when she was drawing water, and when she had disappeared the veil on her head reappeared in another spring, Lancia.

A hundred stades away from Pellana is The place called Belemina. It is naturally The best watered region of Laconia, seeing that The river Eurotas passes through it, while it has abundant springs of its own.

As you go down to the sea towards Gythium you come to a village called Croceae and a quarry. It is not a continuous stretch of rock, but the stones they dig out are shaped like river pebbles; they are hard to work, but when worked sanctuaries of the gods might be adorned with them, while they are especially adapted for beautifying swimming-baths and fountains. Here before the village stands an image of Zeus of Croceae in marble, and the Dioscuri in bronze are at the quarry.

After Croceae, turning away to the right from the straight road to Gythium, you will reach a city Aegiae. They say that this is the city which Homer in his poem calls Augeae. Here is a lake called Poseidon's, and by the lake is a temple with an image of the god. They are afraid to take out the fish, saying that a fisherman in these waters turns into the fish called the fisher.

Gythium is thirty stades distant from Aegiae, built by the sea in the territory of the Free Laconians, whom the emperor Augustus freed from the bondage in which they had been to the Lacedaemonians in Sparta. All the Peloponnesus, except the Isthmus of Corinth, is surrounded by sea, but the best shell-fish for the manufacture of purple dye after those of the Phoenician sea are to be found on the coast of Laconia.

The Free Laconians have eighteen cities; the first as you go down from Aegiae to the sea is Gythium; after it come Teuthrone and Las and Pyrrhichus; on Taenarum are Caenepolis, Oetylus, Leuctra and Thalamae, and in addition Alagoma and Gerenia. On the other side of Clythium by the sea are Asopus, Acriae, Boeae, Larax, Epidaurus Limera, Brasiae, Geronthrae and Marius. These are all that are left to the Free Laconians out of twenty-four cities which once were theirs. All the other cities with which my narrative will deal belong, it must be remembered, to Sparta, and are not independent like those I have already mentioned.

The people of Cythium say that their city had no human founder, but that Heracles and Apollo, when they were reconciled after their strife for the possession of the tripod, united to found the city. In the market-place they have images of Apollo and of Heracles, and a Dionysus stands near them. In another part of the city are Carnean Apollo, a sanctuary of Ammon and a bronze image of Asclepius, whose temple is roofless, a spring belonging to the god, a holy sanctuary of Demeter and an image of Poseidon Earth-embracer.

Him whom the people of Cythium name Old Man, saying that he lives in the sea, I found to be Nereus. They got this name originally from Homer, who says in a part of the Iliad, where Thetis is speaking:—Into the broad expanse, and into the bosom of oceanPlunge, to behold the old man of the sea and the home of your father.Here is also a gate called the Gate of Castor, and on the citadel have been built a temple and image of Athena.

Just about three stades from Ciythium is an unwrought stone. Legend has it that when Orestes sat down upon it his madness left him. For this reason the stone was named in the Dorian tongue Zeus Cappotas. Before Gythium lies the island Cranae, and Homer says that when Alexander had carried off Helen he had intercourse with her there for the first time. On the mainland opposite the island is a sanctuary of Aphrodite Migonitis (Union), and the whole place is called Migonium.

This sanctuary, they say, was made by Alexander. But when Menelaus had taken Ilium and had returned safe home eight years after the sack of Troy, he set up near the sanctuary of Migonitis an image of Thetis and the goddesses Praxidicae (Exacters of Justice). Above Migonium is a mountain called Larysiumi sacred to Dionysus, and at the beginning of spring they hold a festival in honor of Dionysus, and among the things they say about the ritual is that they find here a ripe bunch of grapes.

Some thirty stades beyond Gythium on the left there are on the mainland walls of a place called Trinasus (Three Islands), which was in my opinion a fort and not a city. Its name I think is derived from the islets which lie off the coast here, three in number. About eighty stades beyond Trinasus I came to the ruins o Af Helos,

and some thirty stades farther is Acriae, a city on the coast. Well worth seeing here are a temple and marble image of the Mother of the Gods. The people of Acriae say that this is the oldest sanctuary of this goddess in the Peloponnesus, although the Magnesians, who live to the north of Mount Sipylus, have on the rock Coddinus the most ancient of all the images of the Mother of the gods. The Magnesians say that it was made by Broteas the son of Tantalus.

The people of Acriae once produced an Olympian victor, Nicocles, who at two Olympian festivals carried off five prizes for running. There has been raised to him a monument between the gymnasium and the wall by the harbor.

A hundred and twenty stades inland from Acriae is Geronthrae. It was inhabited before the Heracleidae came to Peloponnesus, but the Dorians of Lacedaemon expelled the Achaean inhabitants and afterwards sent to it settlers of their own; but in my time it belonged to the Free Laconians. On the road from Acriae to Geronthrae is a village called Palaea (Old), and in Geronthrae itself are a temple and grove of Ares.

Every year they hold a festival in honor of the God, at which women are forbidden to enter the grove. Around the market-place are their springs of drinking-water. On the citadel is a temple of Apollo with the head of an ivory image. The rest of the image was destroyed by fire along with the former temple.

Marius is another town of the Free Laconians, distant from Geronthrae one hundred stades. Here is an ancient sanctuary common to all the gods, and around it is a grove containing springs. In a sanctuary of Artemis also there are springs. In fact Marius has an unsurpassed supply of water. Above the town, and like it in the interior, is a village, Glyppia. From Geronthrae to another village, Selinus, is a journey of twenty stades.

These places are inland from Acriae. By the sea is a city Asopus, sixty stades distant from Acriae. In it is a temple of the Roman emperors, and about twelve stades inland from the city is a sanctuary of Asclepius. They call the god Philolaus, and the bones in the gymnasium, which they worship, are human, although of superhuman size. On the citadel is also a sanctuary of Athena, surnamed Cyparissia (Cypress Goddess). At the foot of the citadel are the ruins of a city called the City of the Paracyparissian Achaeans.

There is also in this district a sanctuary of Asclepius, about fifty stades from Asopus the place where the sanctuary is they name Hyperteleatum. Two hundred stades from Asopus there juts out into the sea a headland, which they call Onugnathus (Jaw of an Ass). Here is a sanctuary of Athena, having neither image nor roof. Agamemnon is said to have made it. There is also the tomb of Cinadus, one of the pilots of the ship of Menelaus.

After the peak there runs into the land the Gulf of Boeae, and the city of Boeae is at the head of the gulf. This was founded by Boeus, one of the Heracleidae, and he is said to have collected inhabitants for it from three cities, Etis, Aphrodisias and Side. Of the ancient cities two are said to have been founded by Aeneas when he was fleeing to Italy and had been driven into this gulf by storms. Etias, they allege, was a daughter of Aeneas. The third city they say was named after Side, daughter of Danaus.

When the inhabitants of these cities were expelled, they were anxious to know where they ought to settle, and an oracle was given them that Artemis would show them where they were to dwell. When therefore they had gone on shore, and a hare appeared to them, they looked upon the hare as their guide on the way. When it dived into a myrtle tree, they built a city on the site of the myrtle, and down to this day they worship that myrtle tree, and name Artemis Saviour.

In the market-place of Boeae is a temple of Apollo, and in another part of the town are temples of Asclepius, of Serapis, and of Isis. The ruins of Etis are not more than seven stades distant from Boeae. On the way to them there stands on the left a stone image of Hermes. Among the ruins is a not insignificant sanctuary of Asclepius and Health.

Cythera lies opposite Boeae; to the promontory of Platanistus, the point where the island lies nearest to the mainland, it is a voyage of forty stades from a promontory on the mainland called Onugnathus. In Cythera is a port Scandeia on the coast, but the town Cythera is about ten stades inland from Scandeia. The sanctuary of Aphrodite Urania (the Heavenly) is most holy, and it is the most ancient of all the sanctuaries of Aphrodite among the Greeks. The goddess herself is represented by an armed image of wood.

On the voyage from Boeae towards the point of Malea is a harbor called Nymphaeum, with a statue of Poseidon standing, and a cave close to the sea; in it is a spring of sweet water. There is a large population in the district. After doubling the point of Malea and proceeding a hundred stades, you reach a place on the coast within the frontier of the Boeatae, which is sacred to Apollo and called Epidelium.

For the wooden image which is now here, once stood in Delos. Delos was then a Greek market, and seemed to offer security to traders on account of the god; but as the place was unfortified and the inhabitants unarmed, Menophanes, an officer of Mithridates, attacked it with a fleet, to show his contempt for the god, or acting on the orders of Mithridates; for to a man whose object is gain what is sacred is of less account than what is profitable.

This Menophanes put to death the foreigners residing there and the Delians themselves, and after plundering much property belonging to the traders and all the offerings, and also carrying women and children away as slaves, he razed Delos itself to the ground. As it was being sacked and pillaged, one of the barbarians wantonly flung this image into the sea; but the wave took it and brought it to land here in the country of the Boeatae. For this reason they call the place Epidelium.

But neither Menophanes nor Mithridates himself escaped the wrath of the god. Menophanes, as he was putting to sea after the sack of Delos was sunk at once by those of the merchants who had escaped; for they lay in wait for him in ships. The god caused Mithridates at a later date to lay hands upon himself, when his empire had been destroyed and he himself was being hunted on all sides by the Romans. There are some who say that he obtained a violent death as a favour at the hands of one of his mercenaries. This was the reward of their impiety.

The country of the Boeatae is adjoined by Epidaurus Limera, distant some two hundred stades from Epidelium. The people say that they are not descended from the Lacedaemonians but from the Epidaurians of the Argolid, and that they touched at this point in Laconia when sailing on public business to Asclepius in Cos. Warned by dreams that appeared to them, they remained and settled here.

They also say that a snake, which they were bringing from their home in Epidaurus, escaped from the ship, and disappeared into the ground not far from the sea. As a result of the portent of the snake together with the vision in their dreams they resolved to remain and settle here. There are altars to Asclepius where the snake disappeared, with olive trees growing round them.

About two stades to the right is the water of Ino, as it is called, in extent like a small lake, but going deeper into the earth. Into this water they throw cakes of barley meal at the festival of Ino. If good luck is portended to the thrower, the water keeps them under. But if it brings them to the surface, it is judged a bad sign.

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The craters in Aetna have the same feature; for they lower into them objects of gold and silver and also all kinds of victims. If the fire receives and consumes them, they rejoice at the appearance of a good sign, but if it casts up what has been thrown in, they think misfortune will befall the man to whom this happens.

By the road leading from Boeae to Epidaurus Limera is a sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis (Of the Lake) in the country of the Epidaurians. The city lies on high ground, not far from the sea. Here the sanctuary of Artemis is worth seeing, also that of Asclepius with a standing statue of stone, a temple of Athena on the acropolis, and of Zeus with the title Saviour in front of the harbor.

A promontory called Minoa projects into the sea near the town. The bay has nothing to distinguish it from all the other inlets of the sea in Laconia, but the beach here contains pebbles of prettier form and of all colors.

A hundred stades from Epidaurus is Zarax; though possessing a good harbor, it is the most ruinous of the towns of the Free Laconians, since it was the only town of theirs to be depopulated by Cleonymus the son of Cleomenes, son of Agesipolis. I have told the story of Cleomenes elsewhere. There is nothing in Zarax except a temple of Apollo, with a statue holding a lyre, at the head of the harbor.

The road from Zarax follows the coast for about a hundred stades, and there strikes inland. After an ascent of ten stades inland are the ruins of the so-called Cyphanta, among which is a cave sacred to Asclepius; the image is of stone. There is a fountain of cold water springing from the rock, where they say that Atalanta, distressed by thirst when hunting, struck the rock with her spear, so that the water gushed forth.

Brasiae is the last town on the coast belonging to the Free Laconians in this direction. It is distant two hundred stades by sea from Cyphanta. The inhabitants have a story, found nowhere else in Greece, that Semele, after giving birth to her son by Zeus, was discovered by Cadmus and put with Dionysus into a chest, which was washed up by the waves in their country. Semele, who was no longer alive when found, received a splendid funeral, but they brought up Dionysus.

For this reason the name of their city, hitherto called Oreiatae, was changed to Brasiae after the washing up of the chest to land; so too in our time the common word used of the waves casting things ashore is ekbrazein. The people of Brasiae add that Ino in the course of her wanderings came to the country, and agreed to become the nurse of Dionysus. They show the cave where Ino nursed him, and call the plain the garden of Dionysus.

The temples here are those of Asclepius and of Achilles, in whose honor they hold an annual festival. There is a small promontory at Brasiae, which projects gently into the sea; on it stand bronze figures, not more than a foot high, with caps on their heads. I am not sure whether they consider them to be Dioscuri or Corybants. They are three in number; a statue of Athena makes a fourth.

To the right of Gythium is Las, ten stades from the sea and forty from Gythium. The site of the present town extends over the ground between the mountains called Ilius, Asia and Cnacadium; formerly it lay on the summit of Mount Asia. Even now there are ruins of the old town, with a statue of Heracles outside the walls, and a trophy for a victory over the Macedonians. These formed a detachment of Philip's army, when he invaded Laconia, but were separated from the main body and were plundering the coastal districts.

Among the ruins is a temple of Athena named Asia, made, it is said, by Polydeuces and Castor on their return home from Colchis; for the Colchians had a shrine of Athena Asia. I know that the sons of Tyndareus took part in Jason's expedition. As to the Colchians honoring Athena Asia, I give what I heard from the Lacedaemonians. Near the present town is a spring called Galaco (Milky) from the color of the water, and beside the spring a gymnasium, which contains an ancient statue of Hermes.

On Mount Ilius is a temple of Dionysus, and of Asclepius at the very summit. On Cnacadium is an Apollo called Carneius.Some thirty stades from the Apollo is a place Hypsoi, within the Spartan frontier. Here is a sanctuary of Asclepius and of Artemis called Daphnaea (of the laurel).

By the sea is a temple of Artemis Dictynna on a promontory, in whose honor they hold an annual festival. A river Smenus reaches the sea to the left of the promontory; its water is extremely sweet to drink; its sources are in Mount Taygetus, and it passes within five stades of the town.

At a spot called Arainus is the tomb of Las with a statue upon it. The natives say that Las was their founder and was killed by Achilles, and that Achilles put in to their country to ask the hand of Helen of Tyndareus. In point of fact it was Patroclus who killed Las, for it was he who was Helen's suitor. We need not regard it as a proof that Achilles did not ask for Helen because he is not mentioned in the Catalogue of Women as one of her suitors.

But at the beginning of his poem Homer says that Achilles came to Troy as a favour to the sons of Atreus, and not because he was bound by the oaths which Tyndareus exacted; and in the Games he makes Antilochus say that Odysseus was a generation older than he, whereas Odysseus, telling Alcinous of his descent to Hades and other adventures, said that he wished to see Theseus and Peirithous, men of an earlier age. We know that Theseus carried off Helen, so that it is quite impossible that Achilles could have been her suitor.

Beyond the tomb a river named Scyras enters the sea. Formerly it was without a name, but was so called, because Pyrrhus the son of Achilles put in here when he sailed from Scyros to wed Hermione. Across the river is an ancient shrine . . . further from an altar of Zeus. Inland, forty stades from the river, lies Pyrrhichus, the name of which is said to be derived from Pyrrhus the son of Achilles;

but according to another account Pyrrhichus was one of the gods called Curetes. Others say that Silenus came from Malea and settled here. That Silenus was brought up in Malea is clear from these words in an ode of Pindar:The mighty one, the dancer, whom the mount of Malea nurtured, husband of Nais, Silenus.Not that Pindar said his name was Pyrrhichus; that is a statement of the men of Malea.

At Pyrrhichus there is a well in the market-place, considered to be the gift of Silenus. If this were to fail, they would be short of water. The sanctuaries of the gods, that they have in the country, are of Artemis, called Astrateia, because the Amazons stayed their advance (strateia) here, and an Apollo Amazonius. Both gods are represented by wooden images, said to have been dedicated by the women from Thermodon.

From Pyrrhichus the road comes down to the sea at Teuthrone. The inhabitants declare that their founder was Teuthras, an Athenian. They honor Artemis Issoria most of the Gods, and have a spring Naia. The promontory of Taenarum projects into the sea 150 stades from Teuthrone, with the harbors Achilleius and Psamathus. On the promontory is a temple like a cave, with a statue of Poseidon in front of it.

Some of the Greek poets state that Heracles brought up the hound of Hades here, though there is no road that leads underground through the cave, and it is not easy to believe that the gods possess any underground dwelling where the souls collect. But Hecataeus of Miletus gave a plausible explanation, stating that a terrible serpent lived on Taenarum, and was called the hound of Hades, because any one bitten was bound to die of the poison at once, and it was this snake, he said, that was brought by Heracles to Eurystheus.

But Homer, who was the first to call the creature brought by Heracles the hound of Hades, did not give it a name or describe it as of manifold form, as he did in the case of the Chimaera. Later poets gave the name Cerberus, and though in other respects they made him resemble a dog, they say that he had three heads. Homer, however, does not imply that he was a dog, the friend of man, any more than if he had called a real serpent the hound of Hades.

Among other offerings on Taenarum is a bronze statue of Arion the harper on a dolphin. Herodotus has told the story of Arion and the dolphin, as he heard it, in his history of Lydia. I have seen the dolphin at Poroselene that rewards the boy for saving his life. It had been damaged by fishermen and he cured it.I saw this dolphin obeying his call and carrying him whenever he wanted to ride on it.

There is a spring also on Taenarum but now it possesses nothing marvellous. Formerly, as they say, it showed harbors and ships to those who looked into the water. These sights in the water were brought to an end for good and all by a woman washing dirty clothes in it.

From the point of Taenarum Caenepolis is distant forty stades by sea. Its name also was formerly Taenarum. In it is a hall of Demeter, and a temple of Aphrodite on the shore, with a standing statue of stone. Thirty stades distant is Thyrides, a headland of Taenarum, with the ruins of a city Hippola; among them is a sanctuary of Athena Hippolaitis. A little further are the town and harbor of Messa.

From this harbor it is 150 stades to Oetylus. The hero, from whom the city received its name, was an Argive by descent, son of Amphianax, the son of Antimachus. In Oetylus the sanctuary of Sarapis, and in the market-place a wooden image of Apollo Carneius are worth seeing.

From Oetylus to Thalamae the road is about eighty stades long. On it is a sanctuary of Ino and an oracle. They consult the oracle in sleep, and the goddess reveals whatever they wish to learn, in dreams. Bronze statues of Pasiphae and of Helios stand in the unroofed part of the sanctuary. It was not possible to see the one within the temple clearly, owing to the garlands, but they say this too is of bronze. Water, sweet to drink, flows from a sacred spring. Pasiphae is a title of the Moon, and is not a local goddess of the people of Thalamae.

Twenty stades from Thalamae is a place called Pephnus on the coast. In front of it lies a small island no larger than a big rock, also called Pephnus. The people of Thalamae say that the Dioscuri were born here. I know that Alcman too says this in a song: but they do not say that they remained to be brought up in Pephnus, but that it was Hermes who took them to Pellana.

In this little island there are bronze statues of the Dioscuri, a foot high, in the open air. The sea will not move them, though in winter-time it washes over the rock, which is wonderful. Also the ants here have a whiter color than is usual. The Messenians say that this district was originally theirs, and so they think that the Dioscuri belong to them rather than to the Lacedaemonians.

Twenty stades from Pephnus is Leuctra. I do not know why the city has this name. If indeed it is derived from Leucippus the son of Perieres, as the Messenians say, it is for this reason, I think, that the inhabitants honor Asclepius most of the gods, supposing him to be the son of Arsinoe the daughter of Leucippus. There is a stone statue of Asclepius, and of Ino in another place.

Also a temple and statue have been erected to Cassandra the daughter of Priam, called Alexandra by the natives. There are wooden images of Apollo Carneius according to the same custom that prevails among the Lacedaemonians of Sparta. On the acropolis is a sanctuary and image of Athena, and there is a temple and grove of Eros in Leuctra. Water flows through the grove in winter-time, but the leaves which are shaken from the trees by the wind would not be carried away by the water even in flood.

I record an event which I know to have taken place in my time on the coast of Leuctra. A fire carried by the wind into a wood destroyed most of the trees, and when the place showed bare, a statue of Zeus of Ithome was found to have been dedicated there. The Messenians say that this is evidence that Leuctra was formerly a part of Messenia. But it is possible, if the Lacedaemonians originally lived in Leuctra, that Zeus of Ithome might be worshipped among them.

Cardamyle, which is mentioned by Homer in the Gifts promised by Agamemnon, is subject to the Lacedaemonians of Sparta, having been separated from Messenia by the emperor Augustus. It is eight stades from the sea and sixty from Leuctra. Here not far from the beach is a precinct sacred to the daughters of Nereus. They say that they came up from the sea to this spot to see Pyrrhus the son of Achilles, when he was going to Sparta to wed Hermione. In the town is a sanctuary of Athena, and an Apollo Carneius according to the local Dorian custom.

A city, called in Homer's poems Enope, with Messenian inhabitants but belonging to the league of the Free Laconians, is called in our time Gerenia. One account states that Nestor was brought up in this city, another that he took refuge here, when Pylos was captured by Heracles.

Here in Gerenia is a tomb of Machaon, son of Asclepius, and a holy sanctuary. In his temple men may find cures for diseases. They call the holy spot Rhodos; there is a standing bronze statue of Machaon, with a crown on his head which the Messenians in the local speech call kiphos. The author of the epic The Little Iliad says that Machaon was killed by Eurypylus, son of Telephus.

I myself know that to be the reason of the practice at the temple of Asclepius at Pergamum, where they begin their hymns with Telephus but make no reference to Eurypylus, or care to mention his name in the temple at all, as they know that he was the slayer of Machaon. It is said that the bones of Machaon were brought home by Nestor, but that Podaleirius, as they were returning after the sack of Troy, was carried out of his course and reached Syrnus on the Carian mainland in safety and settled there.

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In the territory of Gerenia is a mountain, Calathium; on it is a sanctuary of Claea with a cave close beside it; it has a narrow entrance, but contains objects which are worth seeing. Thirty stades inland from Gerenia is Alagonia, a town which I have already mentioned in the list of the Free Laconians. Worth seeing here are temples of Dionysus and of Artemis.

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The frontier between Messenia and that part of it which was incorporated by the emperor in Laconia towards Gerenia is formed in our time by the valley called Choerius. They say that this country, being unoccupied, received its first inhabitants in the following manner: On the death of Lelex, who ruled in the present Laconia, then called after him Lelegia, Myles, the elder of his sons, received the kingdom. Polycaon was the younger and for this reason a private person, until he took to wife Messene, the daughter of Triopas, son of Phorbas, from Argos.

Messene, being proud of her origin, for her father was the chief of the Greeks of his day in reputation and power, was not content that her husband should be a private person. They collected a force from Argos and from Lacedaemon and came to this country, the whole land receiving the name Messene from the wife of Polycaon. Together with other cities, they founded Andania, where their palace was built.

Before the battle which the Thebans fought with the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, and the foundation of the present city of Messene under Ithome, I think that no city had the name Messene. I base this conclusion principally on Homer's lines. In the catalogue of those who came to Troy he enumerated Pylos, Arene and other towns, but called no town Messene. In the Odyssey he shows that the Messenians were a tribe and not a city by the following:—For Messenian men carried away sheep from Ithaca.

He is still more clear when speaking about the bow of Iphitus:—They met one another in Messenein the dwelling of Ortilochus.By the dwelling of Ortilochus he meant the city of Pherae in Messene, and explained this himself in the visit of Peisistratus to Menelaus:—They came to Pherae to the house of Diocleus,son of Ortilochus.

The first rulers then in this country were Polycaon, the son of Lelex, and Messene his wife. It was to her that Caucon, the son of Celaenus, son of Phlyus, brought the rites of the Great Goddesses from Eleusis. Phlyus himself is said by the Athenians to have been the son of Earth, and the hymn of Musaeus to Demeter made for the Lycomidae agrees.

But the mysteries of the Great Goddesses were raised to greater honor many years later than Caucon by Lycus, the son of Pandion, an oak-wood, where he purified the celebrants, being still called Lycus' wood. That there is a wood in this land so called is stated by Rhianus the Cretan:—By rugged Elaeum above Lycus' wood.

That this Lycus was the son of Pandion is made clear by the lines on the statue of Methapus, who made certain improvements in the mysteries. Methapus was an Athenian by birth, an expert in the mysteries and founder of all kinds of rites. It was he who established the mysteries of the Cabiri at Thebes, and dedicated in the hut of the Lycomidae a statue with an inscription that amongst other things helps to confirm my account:—

I sanctified houses of Hermes and paths of holy Demeter and Kore her firstborn, where they say that Messene established the feast of the Great Goddesses, taught by Caucon, sprung from Phlyus' noble son. And I wondered that Lycus, son of Pandion, brought all the Attic rite to wise Andania.

This inscription shows that Caucon who came to Messene was a descendant of Phlyus, and proves my other statements with regard to Lycus, and that the mysteries were originally at Andania. And it seems natural to me that Messene should have established the mysteries where she and Polycaon lived, not anywhere else.

As I was extremely anxious to learn what children were born to Polycaon by Messene, I read the poem called Eoeae and the epic Naupactia, and in addition to these all the genealogies of Cinaethon and Asius. However, they made no reference to this matter, although I know that the Great Eoeae says that Polycaon, the son of Butes, married Euaichme, the daughter of Hyllus, son of Heracles, but it omits all reference to the husband of Messene and to Messene herself.

Some time later, as no descendant of Polycaon survived (in my opinion his house lasted for five generations, but no more), they summoned Perieres, the son of Aeolus, as king. To him, the Messenians say, came Melaneus, a good archer and considered for this reason to be a son of Apollo; Perieres assigned to him as a dwelling a part of the country now called the Carnasium, but which then received the name Oechalia, derived, as they say, from the wife of Melaneus.

Most matters of Greek history have come to be disputed. The Thessalians say that Eurytium, which to-day is not inhabited, was formerly a city and was called Oechalia. The account given by the Euboeans agrees with the statements of Creophylus in his Heraeleia ; and Hecataeus of Miletus stated that Oechalia is in Scius, a part of the territory of Eretria. Nevertheless, I think that the whole version of the Messenians is more probable than these, particularly on account of the bones of Eurytus, which my story will deal with later.

Perieres had issue by Gorgophone the daughter of Perseus, Aphareus and Leucippus, and after his death they inherited the Messenian kingdom. But Aphareus had the greater authority. On his accession he founded a city Arene, named after the daughter of Oebalus, who was both his wife and sister by the same mother. For Gorgophone was married to Oebalus. The facts regarding her have already been given twice, in my account of the Argolid and of Laconia.

Aphareus then founded the city of Arena in Messenia, and received into his house his cousin Neleus the son of Cretheus, son of Aeolus (he was also called a son of Poseidon), when he was driven from Iolcos by Pelias. He gave him the maritime part of the land, where with other towns was Pylos, in which Neleus settled and established his palace.

Lycus the son of Pandion also came to Arene, when he too was driven from Athens by his brother Aegeus, and revealed the rites of the Great Goddesses to Aphareus and his children and to his wife Arene; but it was to Andania that he brought the rites and revealed them there, as it was there that Caucon initiated Messene.

Of the children born to Aphareus Idas was the elder and more brave, Lynceus the younger; he, if Pindar's words are credible, possessed eyesight so keen that he saw through the trunk of an oak. We know of no child of Lynceus, but Idas had by Marpessa a daughter Cleopatra, who married Meleager. The writer of the epic Cypria says that the wife of Protesilaus, the first who dared to land when the Greeks reached Troy, was named Polydora, whom he calls a daughter of Meleager the son of Oeneus. If this is correct, these three women, the first of whom was Marpessa, all slew themselves on the death of their husbands.

After the fight about the cattle between the sons of Aphareus and their cousins the Dioscuri, when Lynceus was killed by Polydeuces and Idas met his doom from the lightning, the house of Aphareus was bereft of all male descendants, and the kingdom of Messenia passed to Nestor the son of Neleus, including all the part ruled formerly by Idas, but not that subject to the sons of Asclepius.

For they say that the sons of Asclepius who went to Troy were Messenians, Asclepius being the son of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, not the son of Coronis, and they call a desolate spot in Messenia by the name Tricca and quote the lines of Homer, in which Nestor tends Machaon kindly, when he has been wounded by the arrow. He would not have shown such readiness except to a neighbor and king of a kindred people. But the surest warrant for their account of the Asclepiadae is that they point to a tomb of Machaon in Gerenia and to the sanctuary of his sons at Pharae.

After the conclusion of the Trojan war and the death of Nestor after his return home, the Dorian expedition and return of the Heracleidae, which took place two generations later, drove the descendants of Nestor from Messenia. This has already formed a part of my account of Tisamenus. I will only add the following: When the Dorians assigned Argos to Temenus, Cresphontes asked them for the land of Messenia, in that he was older than Aristodemus.

Aristodemus was now dead, but Cresphontes was vigorously opposed by Theras the son of Autesion, who was of Theban origin and fourth in descent from Polyneices the son of Oedipus. He was at that time guardian of the sons of Aristodemus, being their uncle on the mother's side, Aristodemus having married a daughter of Autesion, called Argeia. Cresphontes, wishing to obtain Messenia as his portion at all costs, approached Temenus, and having suborned him pretended to leave the decision to the lot.

Temenus put the lots of the children of Aristodemus and of Cresphontes into a jar containing water, the terms being that the party whose lot came up first should be the first to choose a portion of the country. Temenus had caused both lots to be made of clay, but for the sons of Aristodemus sun-dried, for Cresphontes baked with fire. So the lot of the sons of Aristodemus was dissolved, and Cresphontes, winning in this way, chose Messenia.

The common people of the old Messenians were not dispossessed by the Dorians, but agreed to be ruled by Cresphontes and to divide the land with the Dorians. They were induced to give way to them in this by the suspicion which they felt for their rulers, as the Neleidae were originally of Iolcos. Cresphontes took to wife Merope the daughter of Cypselus, then king of the Arcadians, by whom with other children was born to him Aepytus his youngest.

He had the palace, which he and his children were to occupy, built in Stenyclerus. Originally Perieres and the other kings dwelt at Andania, but when Aphareus founded Arene, he and his sons settled there. In the time of Nestor and his descendants the palace was at Pylos, but Cresphontes ordained that the king should live in Stenyclerus. As his government for the most part was directed in favour of the people, the rich rebelled and killed Cresphontes and all his sons except Aepytus.

He was still a boy and being brought up by Cypselus, and was the sole survivor of his house. When he reached manhood, he was brought back by the Arcadians to Messene, the other Dorian kings, the sons of Aristodemus and Isthmius, the son of Temenus, helping to restore him. On becoming king, Aepytus punished his father's murderers and all who had been accessories to the crime. By winning the Messenian nobles to his side by deference, and all who were of the people by gifts, he attained to such honor that his descendants were given the name of Aepytidae instead of Heracleidae.

Glaucus, his son and successor, was content to imitate his father in all other matters, both publicly and in his treatment of individuals, but attained to greater piety. For the precinct of Zeus on the summit of Ithome, having been consecrated by Polycaon and Messene, had hitherto received no honor among the Dorians, and it was Glaucus who established this worship among them and he was the first to sacrifice to Machaon the son of Asclepius in Gerenia, and to assign to Messene, the daughter of Triopas, the honors customarily paid to heroes.

Isthmius the son of Glaucus built a shrine also to Gorgasus and Nicomachus which is in Pharae. Isthmius had a son Dotadas, who constructed the harbor at Mothone, though Messenia contained others. Sybotas the son of Dotadas established the annual sacrifice by the king to the river Pamisus and also the offering to the hero Eurytus the son of Melaneus at Oechalia before the mysteries of the great Goddesses, which were still held at Andania.

In the reign of Phintas the son of Sybotas the Messenians for the first time sent an offering and chorus of men to Apollo at Delos. Their processional hymn to the god was composed by Eumelus, this poem being the only one of his that is considered genuine. It was in the reign of Phintas that a quarrel first took place with the Lacedaemonians. The very cause is disputed, but is said to have been as follows:

There is a sanctuary of Artemis called Limnatis (of the Lake) on the frontier of Messenian, in which the Messenians and the Lacedaemonians alone of the Dorians shared. According to the Lacedaemonians their maidens coming to the festival were violated by Messenian men and their king was killed in trying to prevent it. He was Teleclus the son of Archelaus, son of Agesilaus, son of Doryssus, son of Labotas, son of Echestratus, son of Agis. In addition to this they say that the maidens who were violated killed themselves for shame.

The Messenians say that a plot was formed by Teleclus against persons of the highest rank in Messene who had come to the sanctuary, his incentive being the excellence of the Messenian land; in furtherance of his design he selected some Spartan youths, all without beards, dressed them in girls' clothes and ornaments, and providing them with daggers introduced them among the Messenians when they were resting; the Messenians, in defending themselves, killed the beardless youths and Teleclus himself; but the Lacedaemonians, they say, whose king did not plan this without the general consent, being conscious that they had begun the wrong, did not demand justice for the murder of Teleclus. These are the accounts given by the two sides; one may believe them according to one's feelings towards either side.

A generation later in the reign of Alcamenes the son of Teleclus in Lacedaemon—the king of the other house was Theopompus the son of Nicander, son of Charillus, son of Polydectes, son of Eunomus, son of Prytanis, son of Eurypon in Messenia Antiochus and Androcles, the sons of Phintas were reigning—the mutual hatred of the Lacedaemonians and Messenians was aroused, and the Lacedaemonians began war, obtaining a pretext which was not only sufficient for them, eager for a quarrel as they were and resolved on war at all costs, but also plausible in the highest degree, although with a more peaceful disposition it could have been settled by the decision of a court. What happened was as follows.

There was a Messenian Polychares, a man of no small distinction in all respects and an Olympic victor. (The Eleians were holding the fourth Olympiad, the only event being the short foot-race, when Polychares won his victory.) This man, possessing cattle without land of his own to provide them with sufficient grazing, gave them to a Spartan Euaephnus to feed on his own land, Euaephnus to have a share of the produce.

Now Euaephnus was a man who set unjust gain above loyalty, and a trickster besides. He sold the cattle of Polychares to some merchants who put in to Laconia, and went himself to inform Polychares but he said that pirates had landed in the country, had overcome him and carried off the cattle and the herdsmen. While he was trying to deceive him by his lies, one of the herdsmen, escaping in the meantime from the merchants, returned and found Euaephnus there with his master, and convicted him before Polychares.

Thus caught and unable to deny it, he made many appeals to Polychares himself and to his son to grant him pardon; for among the many inducements to be found in human nature which drive us to wrongdoing the love of gain exercises the greatest power. He stated the price which he had received for the cattle and begged that the son of Polychares should come with him to receive it. When on their way they reached Laconia, Euaephnus dared a deed more impious than the first; he murdered Polychares' son.

Polychares, when he heard of this new misfortune, went to Lacedaemon and plagued the kings and ephors, loudly lamenting his son and recounting the wrongs that he had suffered from Euaephnus, whom he had made his friend and trusted above all the Lacedaemonians. Obtaining no redress in spite of continual visits to the authorities, Polychares at last was driven out of his mind, gave way to his rage, and, regardless of himself, dared to murder every Lacedaemonian whom he could capture.

The Lacedaemonians say that they went to war because Polychares was not surrendered to them, and on account of the murder of Teleclus; even before this they had been suspicious on account of the wrongdoing of Cresphontes in the matter of the lot. The Messenians make the reply that I have already given with regard to Teleclus, and point to the fact that the sons of Aristodemus helped to restore Aepytus the son of Cresphontes, which they would never have done if they had been at variance with Cresphontes.

They say that they did not surrender Polychares to the Lacedaemonians for punishment because they also had not surrendered Euaephnus, but that they offered to stand trial at the meeting of the league before the Argives, kinsmen of both parties, and to submit the matter to the court at Athens called the Areopagus, as this court was held to exercise an ancient jurisdiction in cases pertaining to murder.

They say that these were not the reasons of the Lacedaemonians in going to war, but that they had formed designs on their country through covetousness, as in others of their actions, bringing forward against them their treatment of the Arcadians and of the Argives; for in both cases they have never been satisfied with their continual encroachments. When Croesus sent them presents they were the first to become friends with the barbarian, after he had reduced the other Greeks of Asia Minor and all the Dorians who live on the Carian mainland.

They point out too that when the Phocian leaders had seized the temple at Delphi, the kings and every Spartan of repute privately, and the board of ephors and senate publicly, had a share of the god's property. As the most convincing proof that the Lacedaemonians would stick at nothing for the sake of gain, they reproach them with their alliance with Apollodorus, who became tyrant in Cassandreia.

I could not introduce into the present account the reasons why the Messenians have come to regard this as so bitter a reproach. Although the courage of the Messenians and the length of time for which they fought differ from the facts of the tyranny of Apollodorus, in their disastrous character the sufferings of the people of Cassandreia would not fall far short of the Messenian.

These then are the reasons for the war which the two sides allege. An embassy then came from the Lacedaemonians to demand the surrender of Polychares. The Messenian kings replied to the ambassadors that after deliberation with the people they would send the findings to Sparta and after their departure they themselves summoned the citizens to a meeting. The views put forward differed widely, Androcles urging the surrender of Polychares as guilty of an impious and abominable crime. Antiochus among other arguments urged against him that it would be the most piteous thing that Polychares should suffer before the eyes of Euaephnus, and enumerated in detail all that he would have to undergo.

Book 4, Part 2 Cite

Finally the supporters of Androcles and of Antiochus were so carried away that they took up arms. But the battle did not last long, for the party of Antiochus, far outnumbering the other, killed Androcles and his principal supporters, Antiochus, now sole king, sent to Sparta that he was ready to submit the matter to the courts which I have already mentioned. But the Lacedaemonians are said to have made no reply to the bearers of the letter.

Not many months later Antiochus died and his son Euphaes succeeded to the kingdom. The Lacedaemonians, without sending a herald to declare war on the Messenians or renouncing their friendship beforehand, had made their preparations secretly and with all the concealment possible; they first took an oath that neither the length of the war, should it not be decided soon, nor their disasters, however great they might be, would deter them until they won the land of Messenia by the sword.

After taking this oath, they attacked Ampheia by night, appointing Alcamenes the son of Teleclus leader of the force. Ampheia is a small town in Messenia near the Laconian border, of no great size, but situated on a high hill and possessing copious springs of water. It seemed generally a suitable base for the whole war. The gates being open and the town not garrisoned, they took it and killed the Messenians captured there, some still in their beds and others who had taken refuge at the sanctuaries and altars of the gods when they realized what had happened. Those who escaped were few.

This was the first attack which the Lacedaemonians made on the Messenians, in the second year of the ninth Olympiad, when Xenodocus of Messenia won the short foot-race. In Athens there were not as yet the archons appointed annually by lot for at first the people deprived the descendants of Melanthus, called Medontidae, of most of their power, transforming the kingship into a constitutional office; afterwards they limited their tenure of office to ten years. At the time of the seizure of Ampheia, Aesimides the son of Aeschylus was holding his fifth year office at Athens.

Before I wrote the history of the war and all the sufferings and actions that heaven prepared in it for both sides, I wished to reach a decision regarding the age of a certain Messenian. This war was fought between the Lacedaemonians with their allies and the Messenians with their supporters, but received its name not from the invaders like the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, but was called Messenian from their disasters, just as the name Trojan war, rather than Greek, came to be universally applied to the war at Troy. An account of this war of the Messenians has been given by Rhianus of Bene in his epic, and by Myron of Priene. Myron's history is in prose.

Neither writer achieved a complete and continuous account of the whole war from its beginning to the end, but only of the part which each selected: Myron narrated the capture of Ampheia and subsequent events down to the death of Aristodemus; Rhianus did not touch this first war at all. He described the events that in time befell the Messenians after their revolt from the Lacedaemonians, not indeed the whole of them, but those subsequent to the battle which they fought at the Great Trench, as it is called.

The Messenian, Aristomenes, on whose account I have made my whole mention of Rhianus and Myron, was the man who first and foremost raised the name of Messene to renown. He was introduced by Myron into his history, while to Rhianus in his epic Aristomenes is as great a man as is the Achilles of the Iliad to Homer. As their statements differ so widely, it remained for me to adopt one or other of the accounts, but not both together, and Rhianus appeared to me to have given the more probable account as to the age of Aristomenes.

One may realize in others of his works that Myron gives no heed to the question of his statements seeming to lack truth and credibility, and particularly in this Messenian history. For he has made Aristomenes kill Theopompus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, shortly before the death of Aristodemus but we know that Theopompus was not killed either in battle or in any other way before the war was concluded.

It was this Theopompus who put an end to the war, and my evidence is the lines of Tyrtaeus, which say:—To our king beloved of the gods, Theopompus, through whom we took Messene with wide dancing-grounds. Aristomenes then in my view belongs to the time of the second war, and I will relate his history when I come to this.

The Messenians, when they heard of the events at Ampheia from the actual survivors from the captured town, mustered in Stenyclerus from their cities. When the people had gathered in the assembly, first the leading men and finally the king exhorted them not to be panic-stricken at the sack of Ampheia, or to suppose that the issue of the whole war had already been decided thereby, or to be afraid of the power of the Lacedaemonians as superior to their own. For the Lacedaemonians had longer practice in warfare, but they themselves had a stronger necessity to show themselves brave men, and greater goodwill would be shown by the gods to men defending their country, who were not the authors of injustice.

With these words Euphaes dismissed the gathering, and henceforward kept all the Messenians under arms, compelling the untrained to learn the art of war and the trained men to undergo a more rigorous discipline than before. The Lacedaemonians carried out raids into Messenia, but did no harm to the country, regarding it as their own, nor did they cut down trees or demolish buildings, but they drove off any cattle that they met with, and carried off the corn and other produce.

They made assaults on the towns but captured none, as they were fortified with walls and carefully garrisoned. They withdrew with loss and without effecting anything, and finally gave up attempting the towns. The Messenians also ravaged the Laconian coast and all the cultivated land round Taygetos.

Three years after the capture of Ampheia, being eager to put to use the spirit of the Messenians, now at the height of their passion against the Lacedaemonians, and considering too that they had undergone sufficient training, Euphaes ordered an advance. He bade the slaves also accompany him, bringing wood and all else that was required for the making of an entrenched camp. The Lacedaemonians heard from their garrison at Ampheia that the Messenians were marching out, so they also came out to battle.

There was a place in Messenia which was in other ways suitable for an engagement, but had a deep ravine in front of it. Here Euphaes drew up the Messenians and appointed Cleonnis general; the cavalry and light-armed, together amounting to less than 500, were commanded by Pytharatus and Antander.

As the two forces were about to engage, the ravine which divided them prevented the heavy-armed from coming to close quarters, though they approached one another eagerly and with a recklessness born of hate. The cavalry and light-armed engaged above the ravine, but as they were equally matched in numbers and skill, for this reason the fight was indecisive.

While they were involved, Euphaes ordered the slaves to fortify with a palisade first the rear of his force and afterwards both flanks, and when the battle had been broken off at nightfall, they fortified his front also on the ravine. So at daybreak the Lacedaemonians realized the forethought of Euphaes. They had no means of fighting the Messenians unless they came out from the stockade, and despaired of forming a siege, for which they were unprepared in all things alike.

They then returned home; but a year later, when the older men reviled them and taunted them both with cowardice and disregard of their oath, they made a second expedition openly against the Messenians. Both kings were in command, Theopompus the son of Nicander and Polydorus the son of Alcamenes, Alcamenes being no longer alive. The Messenians encamped opposite them, and when the Spartans endeavored to join battle, went out to meet them.

The Lacedaemonian commander on the left wing was Polydorus, and Theopompus on the right. The center was held by Euryleon, now a Lacedaemonian, but of Theban origin of the house of Cadmus, fourth in descent from Aegeus the son of Oeolycus, son of Theras, son of Autesion. On the side of the Messenians Antander and Euphaes were posted opposite the Lacedaemonian right; the other wing, opposite Polydorus, was held by Pytharatus, with Cleonnis in the center.

As they were about to engage, the kings came forward to encourage their men. The words of encouragement addressed by Theopompus to the Lacedaemonians were few, according to their native custom. He reminded them of their oath against the Messenians, and said how noble was their ambition, to prove themselves to have done a deed more glorious than their fathers, who subdued the neighboring peoples, and to have won a more fortunate land. Euphaes spoke at greater length than the Spartan, but no more than he saw the occasion admitted.

He declared that the contest would be not only for land and possessions, but he knew well what would overtake them if defeated. Their wives and children would be carried off as slaves, and death unaccompanied by outrage would be the mildest fate for their grown men their sanctuaries would be despoiled and their ancestral homes burnt. His words were not supposition, the fate of the men captured at Ampheia was evidence that all could see.

Better a noble death than such evils; it was far easier for them, while still undefeated and equally matched in courage, to outdo their adversaries in zeal than to repair their losses when once they had lost heart.

Such were the words of Euphaes. When the leaders on either side gave the signal, the Messenians charged the Lacedaemonians recklessly like men eager for death in their wrath, each one of them eager to be the first to join battle. The Lacedaemonians also advanced to meet them eagerly, but were careful not to break their ranks.

When they were about to come to close quarters, they threatened one another by brandishing their arms and with fierce looks, and fell to recriminations, these calling the Messenians already their slaves, no freer than the Helots; the others answering that they were impious in their undertaking, who for the sake of gain attacked their kinsmen and outraged all the ancestral gods of the Dorians, and Heracles above all. And now with their taunts they come to deeds, mass thrusting against mass, especially on the Lacedaemonian side, and man attacking man.

The Lacedaemonians were far superior both in tactics and training, and also in numbers, for they had with them the neighboring peoples already reduced and serving in their ranks, and the Dryopes of Asine, who a generation earlier had been driven out of their own country by the Argives and had come as suppliants to Lacedaemon, were forced to serve in the army. Against the Messenian light-armed they employed Cretan archers as mercenaries.

The Messenians were inspired alike by desperation and readiness to face death, regarding all their sufferings as necessary rather than terrible to men who honored their country, and exaggerating their achievements and the consequences to the Lacedaemonians. Some of them leapt forth from the ranks, displaying glorious deeds of valor, in others fatally wounded and scarce breathing the frenzy of despair still reigned.

They encouraged one another, the living and unwounded urging the stricken before their last moment came to sell their lives as dearly as they could and accept their fate with joy. And the wounded, when they felt their strength ebbing and breath failing, urged the unwounded to prove themselves no less valorous than they and not to render their death of no avail to their fatherland.

The Lacedaemonians refrained from exhorting one another, and were less inclined than the Messenians to engage in striking deeds of valor. As they were versed in warfare from boyhood, they employed a deeper formation and hoped that the Messenians would not endure the contest for so long as they, or sustain the toil of battle or wounds.

These were the differences in both sets of combatants in action and in feeling; but on both sides alike the conquered made no appeals or promises of ransom, perhaps in their enmity despairing of getting quarter, but mainly because they scorned to disgrace their previous achievements. The victorious refrained alike from boasting and from taunts, neither side having yet sure hopes of victory. The most remarkable was the death of those who tried to strip any of the fallen. For if they exposed any part of their bodies, they were struck with javelins or were struck down while intent on their present occupation, or were killed by those whom they were plundering who still lived.

The kings fought in a manner that deserves mention. Theopompus rushed wildly forward to slay Euphaes himself. Euphaes, seeing him advancing, said to Antander that the action of Theopompus was no different from the attempt of his ancestor Polyneices; for Polyneices led an army from Argos against his fatherland, and slaying his brother with his own hand was slain by him. Theopompus was ready to involve the race of the Heracleidae in pollution as great as that of the house of Laius and Oedipus, but he would not leave the field unscathed. With these words he too advanced.

Thereupon the battle, though the combatants had wearied, everywhere broke out again in full force. Their strength was renewed and recklessness of death heightened on both sides, so that it might have been thought that they were engaging for the first time. Finally Euphaes and his men in a frenzy of despair that was near to madness (for picked Messenian troops formed the whole of the king's bodyguard), overpowering the enemy by their valor, drove back Theopompus himself and routed the Lacedaemonian troops opposed to them.

But the other Messenian wing was in difficulties, for the general Pytharatus had been killed, and the men, without a commander, were fighting in a disorganized and confused manner, though not without heart. Polydorus did not pursue the Messenians when they gave way, nor Euphaes' men the Lacedaemonians. It seemed better to him and his men to support the defeated wing; they did not, however, engage with Polydorus' force, for darkness had already descended on the field;

moreover, the Lacedaemonians were prevented from following the retiring force further not least by their ignorance of the country. Also it was an ancient practice with them not to carry out a pursuit too quickly, as they were more careful about maintaining their formation than about slaying the flying. In the center, where Euryleon was commanding the Lacedaemonians, and Cleonnis on the Messenian side, the contest was undecided; the coming of night separated them here also.

This battle was fought principally or entirely by the heavy-armed troops on both sides. The mounted men were few and achieved nothing worth mention; for the Peloponnesians were not good horsemen then. The Messenian light-armed and the Cretans on the Lacedaemonian side did not engage at all; for on both sides according to the ancient practice they were posted in reserve to their own infantry.

The following day neither side was minded to begin battle or to be the first to set up a trophy, but as the day advanced they made proposals for taking up the dead; when this was agreed on both sides, they proceeded to bury them.

But after the battle the affairs of the Messenians began to get serious. They were exhausted by the expenditure of money devoted to the garrisoning of the towns, and their slaves were deserting to the Lacedaemonians. They were visited also by disease, which caused alarm, as resembling plague, although it did not attack all. In these circumstances they resolved to desert all their numerous towns inland and to settle on Mount Ithome.

A small town existed here, which they say Homer mentions in the Catalogue:Stepped Ithome.To this town they withdrew, extending the old circuit to form a sufficient protection for them all. The place was strong in other respects, for Ithome falls short of none of the mountains within the Isthmus in height and at this point was most difficult to climb.

They also resolved to send an envoy to Delphi, and despatched Tisis the son of Alcis, a man of the highest reputation, considered to be fully versed in divination. While he was returning from Delphi men from the Lacedaemonian garrison at Ampheia laid an ambush for him. Though trapped, he did not submit to be made a prisoner, but stood his ground to resist in spite of the wounds he received, until a voice was heard from an unseen quarter, “Let the bearer of the oracle go free.”

Tisis, reaching Ithome with all speed, delivered the oracle to the king, and soon afterwards died of his wounds. Euphaes assembled the Messenians and made known the oracle:Ye shall sacrifice a pure maiden to the gods below, appointed by lot of the blood of the sons of Aepytus, and slay her by night. But if that ye cannot do, offer a maiden from another house, if the father gives her freely for the slaughter.

When the god declared this, all the maidens of the house of the Aepytidae forthwith cast lots, and the lot fell on the daughter of Lyciscus. But Epebolus the seer forbade them to offer her, for she was not the daughter of Lyciscus, but the woman who was married to Lyciscus being unable to bear a child had palmed off the girl as hers. While Epebolus was making this declaration, Lyciscus took the girl away and deserted to Sparta.

The Messenians were in despair when they saw that Lyciscus had fled; thereupon Aristodemus, a son of the house of the Aepytidae, of higher standing than Lyciscus both in reputation and in war, freely offered his daughter for the sacrifice. But human affairs and human purpose above all are obscured by fate, just as the mud of a river hides a pebble; for when Aristodemus was striving his utmost to save Messene, fate set this obstacle in his path.

Book 4, Part 3 Cite

A Messenian, whose name is not recorded, was in love with the daughter of' Aristodemus, and was already about to make her his wife. He at first disputed the rights of Aristodemus over the girl for Aristodemus, since he had betrothed her to himself had no further rights over the girl, but he to whom she was betrothed had greater rights than the father. Next, when he saw that this was of no avail, he had recourse to a shameless plea, that the girl was with child by him.

At last he drove Aristodemus to such a fury of passion that lie killed his daughter; then cutting her open he showed that she was not pregnant. Epebolus, who was present, ordered another man to come forward and offer his daughter, for the daughter of Aristodemus was of no avail to them dead; for the father had murdered her, not offered her to the gods whom the Pythia ordained.

When the seer said this, the multitude of the Messenians rushed on the girl's lover to kill him, since he had fixed the guilt of bloodshed on Aristodemus to no purpose, and had made their hopes of safety doubtful. But as he was a close friend of Euphaes, Euphaes persuaded the Messenians that the oracle was fulfilled by the death of the girl and that the deed done by Aristodemus sufficed for them.

When he said this, all the members of the house of the Aepytidae said that he spoke truth, for each was eager to be rid of the terror threatening his daughter. The people took the advice of' the king and broke up the assembly and thereupon turned to sacrifices to the gods and feasting.

But the Lacedaemonians, when they heard the oracle given to the Messenians, were in despair, both they and their kings, and for the future shrank from offering battle.But five years after the escape of Lyciscus from Ithome, the victims being auspicious, the Lacedaemonians marched against Ithome. The Cretans were no longer with them. The allies of the Messenians also were late, for the Spartans had now incurred the suspicion of others of the Peloponnesians, especially of the Arcadians and Argives. The Argives intended to come without the knowledge of the Lacedaemonians, and by private enterprise rather than by public declaration. The expedition was openly proclaimed among the Arcadians, but they did not arrive either. For the Messenians were induced by the credit placed in the oracle to face the risk without allies.

This engagement did not differ in most points from the first, as on this occasion too daylight failed the combatants, but they record that on neither side was a wing or division broken, as they did not maintain the formation in which they were originally posted, champions on either side meeting in the middle, and there supporting the whole combat.

Euphaes, who showed more eagerness than a king should and recklessly attacked Theopompus' bodyguard, received a number of mortal wounds. When he swooned and fell, the Lacedaemonians did their utmost to drag him into their own ranks, as he still breathed. But the Messenians were roused by the affection which they felt for their king and by the reproach which would be theirs. It seemed better to die for their kings and sacrifice their lives than that he should be abandoned while one of them escaped.

So the fall of Euphaes prolonged the battle and called forth further deeds of daring on both sides. He came to himself later and saw that his men had not had the worst of the fight, but he died in a few days, having reigned thirteen years over the Messenians, and having been at war with the Lacedaemonians for the whole of his reign.

Euphaes, having no children, left his kingdom to the man chosen by the people. Cleonnis and Damis came forward to dispute it with Aristodemus, as they were considered superior to him in war and all else. Antander had been killed by the enemy, risking his life for Euphaes in the battle. The views of both the seers, Epebolus and Ophioneus, were identical, that they should not give the honors of Aepytus and his descendants to a man who was accursed and polluted by the murder of his daughter. Nevertheless Aristodemus was chosen and became king.

This Ophioneus, the Messenian seer, was blind from birth and practised the following method of divination. By learning the facts relevant to each case, both private and public, he thus foretold the future. This then was the way he practised his art. Aristodemus, becoming king, constantly was ready to show all reasonable favour to the people, and held all the nobles in honor, especially Cleonnis and Damis. He maintained good relations with the allies, sending gifts to the Arcadian leaders and to Argos and Sicyon.

They carried on the war during his reign by means of constant forays with small parties, and made incursions into one another's country at harvest time, the Messenians being supported by the Arcadians in their raids into Laconia. The Argives did not think fit to declare their hatred for the Lacedaemonians beforehand, but prepared to take part in the contest when it came.

In the fifth year of the reign of Aristodemus, being exhausted by the length of the war and by their expenditure, after due notice that a battle would be fought, both sides were joined by their allies, the Lacedaemonians by the Corinthians alone of the Peloponnesians, the Messenians by the full muster of' the Arcadians and by picked troops from Argos and Sicyon. The Lacedaemonians entrusted their center to the Corinthians, Helots and all the neighboring peoples who were serving with them; they themselves and the kings were posted on the wings in a deeper and closer formation than ever before.

The dispositions of Aristodemus and his men were as follows: he selected the most serviceable of the arms for all the Arcadians and Messenians who were physically strong and stout hearted but did not possess powerful weapons, and as the matter was urgent, posted them with the Argives and Sicyonians, extending the line that they might not be surrounded by the enemy. He also took care that they should be drawn up with Mount Ithome in their rear. Placing Cleonnis in command of these troops,

he himself and Damis remained in reserve with the light troops consisting of a few slingers or archers, the bulk of the force being physically suited to rapid assaults and retirements and lightly armed. Not all of them possessed a breastplate or shield, but those who lacked them were protected with the skins of goats and sheep, some of them, particularly the Arcadian mountaineers, having the hides of wild beasts, wolves and bears.

Each carried several javelins, and some of them spears. While these were in ambush in a part of Ithome where they were least likely to be visible, the heavy-armed troops of the Messenians and their allies withstood the first assault of the Lacedaemonians, and continued after this to show courage in every way. They were inferior in numbers to the enemy, but were picked men fighting against levies, not selected troops like themselves, and so, by their bravery and training were more able to maintain a lengthy resistance.

Then the mobile Messenian force, when the signal was given to them, charged the Lacedaemonians and enveloping them threw javelins on their flanks. All who were of higher courage ran in and struck at close quarters. The Lacedaemonians, faced simultaneously with a second and unforeseen danger, were not demoralized, but turning on the light troops, tried to defend themselves. But, as the enemy with their light equipment drew off without difficulty, the Lacedaemonians were filled with perplexity and, as a consequence, with anger.

Men are apt to be most annoyed by what they regard as beneath them. So then the Spartans who had already been wounded and all who after the fall of their comrades were the first to meet the attack of the light troops, ran out to meet them when they saw the light troops advancing and hotly extended the pursuit as they retired. The Messenian light troops maintained their original tactics, striking and shooting at them when they stood still, and outstripping them in flight when they pursued, attacking again as they tried to retire.

They did this in separate parties and at different points of the enemy's line. The Messenian heavy-armed and their allies meantime pressed more boldly on the troops facing them. Finally the Lacedaemonians, worn out by the length of the battle and their wounds, and demoralized contrary to their custom by the light troops, broke their ranks. When they had been routed, the light troops inflicted greater damage on them.

It was impossible to reckon the Lacedaemonian losses in the battle, but I for my part am convinced that they were heavy. The rest made their retreat homewards without molestation, but for the Corinthians it was likely to be difficult, for whether they tried to retire through the Argolid or by Sicyon, in either case it was through enemy country.

The Lacedaemonians were distressed by the reverse that had befallen them. Their losses in the battle were great and included important men, and they were inclined to despair of all hope in the war. For this reason they sent envoys to Delphi, who received the following reply from the Pythia:Phoebus bids thee pursue not only the task of war with the hand, but by guile a people holds the Messenian land, and by the same arts as they first employed shall the people fall.

At this the kings and ephors were eager to invent stratagems, but failed. They imitated that deed of Odysseus at Troy, and sent a hundred men to Ithome to observe what the enemy were planning, but pretending to be deserters. A sentence of banishment had been openly pronounced on them. On their arrival Aristodemus at once sent them away, saying that the crimes of the Lacedaemonians were new, but their tricks old.

Failing in their attempt, the Lacedaemonians next attempted to break up the Messenian alliance. But when repulsed by the Arcadians, to whom their ambassadors came first, they put off going to Argos. Aristodemus, hearing of the Lacedaemonian intrigues, also sent men to enquire of the god. And the Pythia replied to them:

The god gives thee glory in war, but beware lest by guile the hated company of Sparta scale the well-built walls, for mightier is their god of war. And harsh shall be the dwellers in the circle of the dancing ground, when the two have started forth by one chance from the hidden ambush. Yet the holy day shall not behold this ending until their doom o'ertake those which have changed their nature.At the time Aristodemus and the seers were at a loss to interpret the saying, but in a few years the god was like to reveal it and bring it to fulfillment.

Other things befell the Messenians at that time: while Lyciscus was living abroad in Sparta, death overtook the daughter whom he carried with him on his flight from Messene. As he often visited her tomb, Arcadian horsemen lay in wait and captured him. When carried to Ithome and brought into the assembly he urged that he had not departed a traitor to his country, but because he believed the words of the seer that the girl was not his own.

His defence did not win credence until the woman who was then holding the priesthood of Hera came into the theater. She confessed that she was the mother of the girl and had given her to Lyciscus' wife to pass off as her own. “And now,” she said, “revealing the secret, I have come to lay down my office.” She said this because it was an established custom in Messene that, if a child of a man or woman holding a priesthood died before its parent, the office should pass to another. Accepting the truth of her statement, they chose another woman to take her place as priestess of the goddess, and said that Lyciscus' deed was pardonable.

After this, as the twentieth year of the war was approaching, they resolved to send again to Delphi to ask concerning victory. The Pythia made answer to their question:To those who first around the altar set up tripods ten times ten to Zeus of Ithome, heaven grants glory in war and the Messenian land. For thus hath Zeus ordained. Deceit raised thee up and punishment follows after, nor would'st thou deceive the god. Act as fate wills, destruction comes on this man before that.

Hearing this they thought that the oracle was in their favour and granted them victory; for as they themselves possessed the sanctuary of Zeus of Ithome within the walls, the Lacedaemonians could not forestall them in making the dedication. They set about making tripods of wood, as they had not money enough to make them of bronze. But one of the Delphians reported the oracle to Sparta. When they heard it, no plan occurred to them in public,

but Oebalus, a man of no repute in general, but evidently shrewd, made a hundred tripods, as best he might, of clay, and hiding them in a bag, carried nets with them like a hunter. As he was unknown even to most of the Lacedaemonians, he would more easily escape detection by the Messenians. Joining some countrymen, he entered Ithome with them, and as soon as night fell, dedicated these tripods of clay to the god, and returned to Sparta to tell the Lacedaemonians.

The Messenians, when they saw them, were greatly disturbed, thinking, rightly enough, that they were from the Lacedaemonians. Nevertheless Aristodemus encouraged them, saying what the occasion demanded, and setting up the wooden tripods, which had already been made, round the altar of the god of Ithome. It happened also that Ophioneus, the seer who had been blind from birth, received his sight in the most remarkable way. He was seized with a violent pain in the head, and thereupon received his sight.

Next, as fate was already inclining towards the conquest of the Messenians, the god revealed to them the future. For the armed statue of Artemis, which was all of bronze, let its shield fall. And as Aristodemus was about to sacrifice the victims to Zeus of Ithome, the rams of their own accord leapt towards the altar, and dashing their horns violently against it were killed by the force of the blow. A third portent befell them. The dogs assembled together and howled every night, and at last fled together to the camp of the Lacedaemonians.

Aristodemus was alarmed by this and by the following dream which came to him. He thought that he was about to go forth armed to battle and the victims' entrails were lying before him on a table, when his daughter appeared, wearing a black robe and showing her breast and belly cut open; when she appeared she flung down what was on the table, stripped him of his arms, and instead set a golden crown on his head and put a white robe about him.

Aristodemus, who was already in despair, thought the dream foretold the end of life for him, because the Messenians used to carry out their chiefs for burial wearing a crown and dressed in white garments. Then he received news that Ophioneus the seer could no longer see but had suddenly become blind, as he was at first. Then they understood the oracle, that by the two starting forth from the ambush and again meeting their doom the Pythia meant the eyes of Ophioneus.

Then Aristodemus, reckoning up his private sorrows, that to no purpose he had become the slayer of his daughter, and seeing that no hope of safety remained for his country, slew himself upon the tomb of his child. He had done all that human calculation could do to save the Messenians, but fortune brought to naught both his achievements and his plans. He had reigned six years and a few months when he died.

The Messenians were plunged into despair, and were even ready to send to the Lacedaemonians to ask mercy, so demoralized were they by the death of Aristodemus. Their pride, however, prevented them from doing this. But they met in the assembly and chose not a king, but Damis as general with absolute power. He selected Cleonnis and Phyleus as colleagues, and even with their present resources made ready to join battle. For he was forced to this by the blockade, and above all by famine and by the consequent terror that they would be destroyed by want.

Even then the Messenians were not inferior in courage and brave deeds, but all their generals were killed and their most notable men. After this they held out for some five months, but as the year was coming to an end deserted Ithome, the war having lasted twenty years in all, as is stated in the poems of Tyrtaeus:But in the twentieth year they left their rich tilled lands, and fled from out the lofty mountains of Ithome.

This war came to an end in the first year of the fourteenth Olympiad, when Dasmon of Corinth won the short footrace. At Athens the Medontidae were still holding the archonship as a ten years' office, Hippomenes having completed his fourth year.

All the Messenians who had ties with Sicyon and Argos and among any of the Arcadians retired to these states, but those who belonged to the family of the Priests and performed the mysteries of the Great Goddesses, to Eleusis. The majority of the common people were scattered in their native towns, as before.

The Lacedaemonians first razed Ithome to the ground, then attacked and captured the remaining towns. Of the spoils they dedicated bronze tripods to the god of Amyclae. A statue of Aphrodite stands under the first tripod, of Artemis under the second, of Kore or Demeter under the third.

Dedicating these offerings at Amyclae, they gave to the people of Asine, who had been driven out by the Argives, that part of Messenia on the coast which they still occupy; to the descendants of Androcles (he had a daughter, who with her children had fled at his death and come to Sparta) they assigned the part called Hyamia.

The Messenians themselves were treated in this way: First they exacted an oath that they would never rebel or attempt any kind of revolution. Secondly, though no fixed tribute was imposed on them, they used to bring the half of all the produce of their fields to Sparta. It was also ordained that for the funerals of the kings and other magistrates men should come from Messene with their wives in black garments, and a penalty was laid on those who disobeyed.

Book 4, Part 4 Cite

As to the wanton punishments which they inflicted on the Messenians, this is what is said in Tyrtaeus' poems:Like asses worn by their great burdens, bringing of dire necessity to their masters the half of all the fruits the corn-land bears.That they were compelled to share their mourning, he shows by the following:Wailing for their masters, they and their wives alike, whensoever the baneful doom of death came upon any.

In these straits the Messenians, foreseeing no kindness from the Lacedaemonians, and thinking death in battle or a complete migration from Peloponnese preferable to their present lot, resolved at all costs to revolt. They were incited to this mainly by the younger men, who were still without experience of war but were of high spirit and preferred death in a free country, even though slavery might bring happiness in all else.

Of the young men who had grown up in Messenia the best and most numerous were round Andania, and among them was Aristomenes, who to this day is worshipped as a hero among the Messenians. They think that even the circumstances of his birth were notable, for they assert that a spirit or a god united with his mother, Nicoteleia, in the form of a serpent. I know that the Macedonians tell a similar story about Olympias, and the Sicyonians about Aristodama, but there is this difference:

The Messenians do not make Aristomenes the son of Heracles or of Zeus, as the Macedonians do with Alexander and Ammon, and the Sicyonians with Aratus and Asclepius. Most of the Greeks say that Pyrrhus was the father of Aristomenes, but I myself know that in their libations the Messenians call him Aristomenes son of Nicomedes. He then, being in the full vigor of youth and courage, with others of the nobles incited them to revolt. This was not done openly at first, but they sent secretly to Argos and to the Arcadians, to ask if they were ready to help unhesitatingly and no less energetically than in the former war.

When all their preparations were made for the war, the readiness of their allies exceeding expectation (for now the hatred which the Argives and Arcadians felt for the Lacedaemonians had blazed up openly), they revolted in the thirty-ninth year after the capture of Ithome, and in the fourth year of the twenty-third Olympiad, when Icarus of Hyreresia won the short footrace. At Athens the archonship was now of annual tenure, and Tlesias held office.

Tyrtaeus has not recorded the names of the kings then reigning in Lacedaemon, but Rhianos stated in his epic that Leotychides was king at the time of this war. I cannot agree with him at all on this point. Though Tyrtaeus makes no statement, he may be regarded as having done so by the following; there are lines of his which refer to the first war:Around it they fought unceasingly for nineteen years, ever maintaining a stout heart, the warrior fathers of our fathers.

It is obvious then that the Messenians went to war now in the second generation after the first war, and the sequence of time shows that the kings of Sparta at that time were Anaxander the son of Eurycrates, son of Polydorus, and of the other house Anaxidamus the son of Zeuxidamus, son of Archidamus, son of Theopompus. I go as far as the third in descent from Theopompus, because Archidamus the son of Theopompus died before his father, and the kingdom of Theopompus passed to his grandson, Zeuxidamus. But Leotychides clearly succeeded Demaratus the son of Ariston, Ariston being sixth in descent from Theopompus.

In the first year after the revolt the Messenians engaged the Lacedaemonians at a place called Derae in Messenia, both sides being without their allies. Neither side won a clear victory, but Aristomenes is said to have achieved more than it seemed that one man could, so that, as he was of the race of the Aepytidae, they were for making him king after the battle. As he declined, they appointed him general with absolute power.

It was the view of Aristomenes that any man would be ready to die in battle if he had first done deeds worthy of record, but that it was his own especial task at the very beginning of the war to prove that he had struck terror into the Lacedaemonians and that he would be more terrible to them for the future. With this purpose he came by night to Lacedaemon and fixed on the temple of Athena of the Brazen House a shield inscribed “The Gift of Aristomenes to the Goddess, taken from Spartans.”

The Spartans received an oracle from Delphi that they should procure the Athenian as counsellor. So they sent messengers to Athens to announce the oracle, asking for a man to advise what they must do. The Athenians, who were not anxious either that the Lacedaemonians should add to their possessions the best part of Peloponnese without great dangers, or that they themselves should disobey the god, made their plans accordingly. There was a man Tyrtaeus, a teacher of letters, who was considered of poor intellect and was lame in one foot. Him they sent to Sparta. On his arrival he recited his poems in elegiacs and anapaests to the nobles in private and to all whom he could collect.

A year after the fight at Derae, both sides being joined by their allies, they prepared to join battle at the Boar's Tomb, as it is called. The Messenians had the Eleians and Arcadians and also succors from Argos and from Sicyon. They were joined by all the Messenians who had previously been in voluntary exile, together with those from Eleusis, whose hereditary task it was to perform the rites of the Great Goddesses, and the descendants of Androcles. These indeed were their most zealous supporters.

The Corinthians came to fight on the side of the Lacedaemonians, and some of the Lepreans owing to their hatred of the Eleians. But the people of Asine were bound by oaths to both sides. This spot, the Boar's Tomb, lies in Stenyclerus of Messenia, and there, as is said, Heracles exchanged oaths with the sons of Neleus over the pieces of a boar.

Sacrifice was offered by the seers on both sides before the battle; on the Lacedaemonian side by Hecas, descendant and namesake of the Hecas who had come with the sons of Aristodemus to Sparta, on the Messenian side by Theoclus, who was descended from Eumantis, an Eleian of the house of the Iamidae, whom Cresphontes had brought to Messene. Then in the presence of the seers both sides were spurred by greater ardor for the fight.

All showed the zeal that befitted their age and strength, but Anaxander, the Lacedaemonian king, and his Spartan guard above all. On the Messenian side the descendants of Androcles, Phintas and Androcles, and their company tried to acquit themselves like brave men. Tyrtaeus and the chief priests of the Great Goddesses took no part in the action, but urged on the hindmost on their own sides.

As to Aristomenes himself he had with him eighty picked men of the Messenians of the same age as himself, each one of them thinking it the highest honor that he had been thought worthy of a place in the troop with Aristomenes. They were quick to understand each other's movements, especially those of their leader, when he began or contemplated any manoeuvre. They themselves with Aristomenes were at first hard pressed in face of Anaxander and the Lacedaemonian champions, but receiving wounds unflinchingly and slowing every form of desperate courage they repulsed Anaxander and his men by their long endurance and valor.

As they fled, Aristomenes ordered another Messenian troop to undertake the pursuit. He himself attacked the enemies' line where it was firmest, and after breaking it at this point sought a new point of assault. Soon successful here, he was the more ready to assail those who stood their ground, until he threw into confusion the whole line of the Lacedaemonians themselves and of their allies. They were now running without shame and without waiting for one another, while he assailed them with a terror that seemed more than one man's fury could inspire.

There was a wild pear-tree growing in the plain, beyond which Theoclus the seer forbade him to pass, for he said that the Dioscuri were seated on the tree. Aristomenes, in the heat of passion, did not hear all that the seer said, and when he reached the tree, lost his shield, and his disobedience gave to the Lacedaemonians an opportunity for some to escape from the rout. For he lost time trying to recover his shield.

The Lacedaemonians were thrown into despair after this blow and purposed to put an end to the war. But Tyrtaeus by reciting his poems contrived to dissuade them, and filled their ranks from the Helots to replace the slain. When Aristomenes returned to Andania, the women threw ribbons and flower blossoms over him, singing also a song which is sung to this day:To the middle of Stenyclerus' plain and to the hilltop Aristomenes followed after the Lacedaemonians.

He recovered his shield also, going to Delphi and descending into the holy shrine of Trophonius at Lebadeia, as the Pythia bade. Afterwards he took the shield to Lebadeia and dedicated it, and I myself have seen it there among the offerings. The device on it is an eagle with both wings outspread to the rim. Now on his return from Boeotia having learnt of the shield at the shrine of Trophonius and recovered it, he at once engaged in greater deeds.

Collecting a force of Messenians, together with his own picked troop, he waited for night and went to a city of Laconia whose ancient name in Homer's Catalogue is Pharis, but is called Pharae by the Spartans and neighboring people. Arriving here he killed those who offered resistance and surrounding the cattle started to drive them off to Messene. On the way he was attacked by Lacedaemonian troops under king Anaxander, but put them to flight and began to pursue Anaxander; but he stopped the pursuit when wounded in the buttocks with a javelin; he did not, however, lose the booty which he was driving away.

After waiting only for the wound to heal, he was making an attack by night on Sparta itself, but was deterred by the appearance of Helen and of the Dioscuri. But he lay in wait by day for the maidens who were performing the dances in honor of Artemis at Caryae, and capturing those who were wealthiest and of noblest birth, carried them off to a village in Messenia, entrusting them to men of his troop to guard, while he rested for the night.

There the young men, intoxicated, I suppose, and without any self-control, attempted to violate the girls. When Aristomenes attempted to deter them from an action contrary to Greek usage, they paid no attention, so that he was compelled to kill the most disorderly. He released the captives for a large ransom, maidens, as when he captured them.

There is a place Aegila in Laconia, where is a sanctuary sacred to Demeter. Aristomenes and his men knowing that the women were keeping festival there . . . the women were inspired by the goddess to defend themselves, and most of the Messenians were wounded with the knives with which the women sacrificed the victims and the spits on which they pierced and roasted the meat. Aristomenes was struck with the torches and taken alive. Nevertheless he escaped to Messenia during the same night. Archidameia, the priestess of Demeter, was charged with having released him, not for a bribe but because she had been in love with him before; but she maintained that Aristomenes had escaped by burning through his bonds.

In the third year of the war, when an engagement was about to take place at what is called The Great Trench, and the Messenians had been joined by Arcadians from all the cities, the Lacedaemonians bribed Aristocrates the son of Hicetas of Trapezus, who was then king and general of the Arcadians. The Lacedaemonians were the first of whom we know to give bribes to an enemy, and the first to make victory in war a matter of purchase.

Before the Lacedaemonians committed this crime in the Messenian war in the matter of the treachery of Aristocrates the Arcadian, the decision in battle was reached by valor and the fortune of heaven. Again it is clear that at a later date, when they were lying opposite the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami, the Lacedaemonians bought Adeimantus and other Athenian generals.

However in course of time the punishment of Neoptolemus, as it is called, came upon the Lacedaemonians themselves in their turn. Now it was the fate of Neoptolemus the son of Achilles, after killing Priam on the altar of Zeus Herkeios (Of the Courtyard), himself to be slain by the altar of Apollo in Delphi. Thenceforward to suffer what a man has himself done to another is called the Punishment of Neoptolemus.

So in the case of the Lacedaemonians, when they were at the height of their power after the destruction of the Athenian fleet, and Agesilaus had already reduced the greater part of Asia, they were unable to capture the whole empire of the Persians but the barbarian overreached them with their own invention, sending money to Corinth, Argos, Athens and Thebes as the result of this bribery the so-called Corinthian war broke out, compelling Agesilaus to abandon his conquests in Asia.

Thus it was the purpose of heaven to turn the trick employed by the Lacedaemonians against the Messenians to their own destruction. After receiving the money from Lacedaemon, Aristocrates concealed his plot from the Arcadians for the present, but when they were about to come into action, he alarmed them by saying that they were caught in a difficult place and there would be no means of retreat for them, if defeated, also that the offerings had not been satisfactory. He ordered everyone therefore to take to flight when he gave the signal.

When the Lacedaemonians were about to close and the Messenians were occupied on their own front, then Aristocrates withdrew the Arcadians as the battle began, leaving the Messenian left and center without troops. For the Arcadians occupied both positions in the absence of the Eleians from the battle and of the Argives and Sicyonians. To complete his work Aristocrates caused his men to fly through the Messenians.

They were amazed at the unexpected state of affairs, and moreover were thrown into confusion by the passage of the Arcadians through their ranks, so that they almost forgot what lay before them; for instead of the advance of the Lacedaemonians they watched the Arcadian retirement, some begging them to stand by them, others cursing them for traitors and scoundrels.

It was not difficult for the Lacedaemonians to surround the Messenians thus isolated, and they won without trouble the easiest of victories. Aristomenes and his men held together and tried to check the fiercest of the Lacedaemonian assaults but, being few in number, were unable to render much assistance. So great were the numbers of the people of the Messenians slain that in lieu of their former thoughts of becoming the masters instead of the slaves of the Lacedaemonians they now despaired of safety itself. Among the chieftains killed were Androcles and Phintas, and Phanas after the most glorious resistance. He had previously been victorious in the long foot race at Olympia.

Aristomenes collected the Messenian survivors after the battle and persuaded them to desert Andania and most of the other towns that lay in the interior and to settle on Mount Eira. When they had been driven to this spot, the Lacedaemonians sat down to besiege them, thinking that they would soon reduce them. Nevertheless the Messenians maintained their resistance for eleven years after the disaster at the Trench.

The length of the siege is proved by these lines of the poet Rhianus, regarding the Lacedaemonians:In the folds of the white mountain were they encamped, for two and twenty winters and green herbs.He reckons winters and summers, by “green herbs” meaning the green corn or the time just before harvest.

Settling on Eira and cut off from the rest of Messenia, except in so far as the people of Pylos and Mothone maintained the coastal districts for them, the Messenians plundered both Laconia and their own territory, regarding it now as enemy country. The men taking part in the raids were drawn from all sources, and Aristomenes raised the number of his chosen troop to three hundred.

They harried and plundered whatever Lacedaemonian property they could; when corn, cattle and wine were captured, they were consumed, but movable property and men were sold. The Lacedaemonians, as their labours were more profitable to the men at Eira than to themselves, accordingly resolved that Messenia and the neighboring part of Laconia should be left uncultivated during the war.

As a result scarcity arose in Sparta, and with it revolution. For those who had property here could not endure its lying idle. Their differences were being composed by Tyrtaeus, when Aristomenes and his troop, starting in the late evening and by rapid movement reaching Amyclae before sunrise, captured and plundered the town, retiring before a force from Sparta could come to its relief.

He continued to overrun the country afterwards, until in an engagement with more than half the Lacedaemonian infantry and both the kings he received various wounds while defending himself and was struck on the head by a stone, so that his eyes became dizzy. When he fell a number of the Lacedaemonians closed upon him and took him alive with some fifty of his followers. The Lacedaemonians resolved to fling them all into the Ceadas, into which they throw men punished for the greatest crimes.

The rest of the Messenians were killed at once as they fell, but Aristomenes now as on other occasions was preserved by one of the gods. His panegyrists say that, when Aristomenes was thrown into the Ceadas, an eagle flew below him and supported him with its wings, bringing him to the bottom without any damage to his body and without wound. Even from here, as it seems, it was the will of heaven to show him a means of escape.

For when he came to the bottom of the chasm he lay down, and covering himself with his cloak awaited the death that fate had surely decreed. But after two days he heard a noise and uncovered, and being by this time able to see through the gloom, saw a fox devouring the dead bodies. Realizing that the beast must have some entrance, he waited for the fox to come near him, and then seized it. Whenever it turned on him he used one hand to hold out his cloak for it to bite. For the most part he kept pace with it as it ran, but over the more difficult ground he was dragged along by it. At last he saw a hole big enough for a fox to get through and daylight showing through it.

The fox, when released by Aristomenes, made of presumably, to its earth. But Aristomenes enlarged the hole, which was not large enough to let him through, with his hands and reached his home at Eira in safety, having undergone a remarkable chance in the matter of his capture, for his courage and prowess were so high that no one would have expected Aristomenes to be made a prisoner. Still more remarkable, and a convincing example of divine assistance, was his escape from the Ceadas.

Book 4, Part 5 Cite

The Lacedaemonians at once received information from deserters that Aristomenes had returned in safety. Though they thought it as incredible as the news that anyone had risen from the dead, their belief was ensured by the following action on the part of Aristomenes himself. The Corinthians were sending a force to assist the Lacedaemonians in the reduction of Eira.

Learning from his scouts that their march discipline was lax and that their encampments were made without precaution, Aristomenes attacked them by night. He slew most of them while the rest were still sleeping, and killed the leaders Hypermenides, Achladaeus, Lysistratus and Sidectus. And having plundered the generals' tent, he made it clear to the Spartans that it was Aristomenes and no other Messenian who had done this.

He also made the sacrifice called the Offering for the hundred slain to Zeus of Ithome. This was an old-established custom, all Messenians making it who had slain their hundred enemies. Aristomenes first offered it after the battle at the Boar's Tomb, his second offering was occasioned by the slaughter of the Corinthians in the night. It is said that he made a third offering as the result of his later raids.

Now the Lacedaemonians, as the festival of Hyacinthus was approaching, made a truce of forty days with the men of Eira. They themselves returned home to keep the feast, but some Cretan archers, whom they had summoned as mercenaries from Lyctus and other cities, were patrolling Messenia for them. Aristomenes then, in view of the truce, was at a distance from Eira and was advancing somewhat carelessly, when seven of these archers laid an ambush for him. They captured him and bound him with the thongs which they had on their quivers, as evening was coming on.

So two of them went to Sparta, bringing the glad news that Aristomenes had been captured. The rest went to one of the farms in Messenia, where there dwelt a fatherless girl with her mother. On the previous night the girl had seen a dream. Wolves brought a lion to their farm bound and without talons; but she herself loosed the lion from his bonds and found and gave to him his talons, and thus it seemed that the wolves were torn in pieces by the lion.

And now when the Cretans brought in Aristomenes, the girl realized that the dream of the night had come true, and asked her mother who he was. On learning she was encouraged, and looking intently at him understood what she had been bidden to do. Accordingly she plied the Cretans with wine, and when they were overcome with drunkenness she stole away the dagger of the man who was sleeping most heavily. Then the girl cut the bonds of Aristomenes, and he took the sword and despatched the men. This maiden was taken to wife by Gorgus the son of Aristomenes. Aristomenes gave him to the girl as a recompense for saving his life, for Gorgus had not yet completed his eighteenth year when he wedded her.

But in the eleventh year of the siege it was fated that Eira should be taken and the Messenians dispersed, and the god fulfilled for them an oracle given to Aristomenes and Theoclus. They had come to Delphi after the disaster at the Trench and asked concerning safety, receiving this reply from the Pythia:Whensoever a he-goat drinks of Neda's winding stream, no more do I protect Messene, for destruction is at hand.

The springs of the Neda are in Mount Lycaeus. The river flows through the land of the Arcadians and turning again towards Messenia forms the boundary on the coast between Messenia and Elis. Then they were afraid of the he-goats drinking from the Neda, but it appeared that what the god foretold to them was this. Some of the Greeks call the wild fig-tree olynthe, but the Messenians themselves tragos (he-goat). Now at that time a wild fig-tree growing on the bank of the Neda had not grown straight up, but was bending towards the stream and touching the water with the tips of its leaves.

When the seer Theoclus saw it, he guessed that the goat who drinks of the Neda foretold by the Pythia was this wild fig-tree, and that their fate had already come upon the Messenians. He kept it secret from the rest, but led Aristomenes to the fig-tree and showed him that their time of safety had gone by. Aristomenes believed that it was so and that there was no delaying their fate, and made provision such as circumstances demanded.

For the Messenians possessed a secret thing. If it were destroyed, Messene would be overwhelmed and lost for ever, but if it were kept, the oracles of Lycus the son of Pandion said that after lapse of time the Messenians would recover their country. Aristomenes, knowing the oracles, took it towards nightfall, and coming to the most deserted part of Ithome, buried it on the mountain, calling on Zeus who keeps Ithome and the gods who had hitherto protected the Messenians to remain guardians of the pledge, and not to put their only hope of return into the power of the Lacedaemonians.

After this, as formerly for the Trojans, the beginning of the Messenian misfortunes was in adultery. The Messenians commanded the mountain of Eira and its slopes as far as the Neda, some of them having their dwellings outside the gates. The only deserter that came to them from Laconia was a herdsman, slave of Emperamus, bringing his master's cattle. Emperamus was a man of repute in Sparta.

This herdsman, who kept his cattle not far from the Neda, saw the wife of one of the Messenians, who had their dwellings outside the wall, as she came to draw water. Falling in love with her, he dared to speak with her and seduced her with gifts. Thenceforward he marked the time when her husband went away to mount guard, garrison duty on the acropolis being undertaken by the Messenians in turn. For it was at this point that they were most afraid of the enemy making their way into the town. Whenever he went away, then the herdsman used to visit the lady.

Now once when it happened that the turn for duty fell to him and others in the night, it chanced that there was heavy rain, and the Messenians deserted their post. For they were overcome by the density of the rain that streamed from heaven, as there were no battlements or towers erected on the wall owing to the hurried nature of its building; moreover they did not expect the Lacedaemonians even to stir on a moonless night that was so stormy.

A few days earlier a merchant from Cephallenia, who was a friend of Aristomenes and was bringing to Eira all that they needed, had been captured by the Lacedaemonians and archers from Aptera, commanded by Euryalus the Spartan; Aristomenes rescued him and recovered all the goods that he was bringing, but had himself been wounded and was unable to visit rounds, as was his custom. This was the main reason that the acropolis was deserted.

All of them left their posts and with them the husband of the woman seduced by the herdsman. She was entertaining the herdsman at the time but heard her husband coming and at once hid the man away as quickly as possible. When the husband entered, she treated him with greater affection than ever before and asked him what was the reason of his return. But knowing that she was unfaithful or that the herdsman was in the house, he told her the truth, that owing to the violence of the rain he and all the rest had deserted their post.

The herdsman listened to him speaking, and learning the exact position, again deserted from the Messenians to the Lacedaemonians. The Kings were absent at the time from the Lacedaemonian camp, but Emperamus, his master, who was commandant, was conducting the siege of Eira. Coming to him he first begged forgiveness for his crime of deserting and then showed him that now was the time for them to take Eira, recounting everything that he had learnt from the Messenian.

His story seemed to be reliable, and he led the way for Emperamus and the Spartans. Their march was difficult, as it was dark and the rain never ceased. Nevertheless they accomplished it in their eagerness, and arriving before the acropolis of Eira, mounted by raising ladders and in any other way that was possible. Various indications of the trouble that was upon them were given to the Messenians, especially by the dogs barking, not in their usual fashion, but uttering more loud and continuous howls. realizing that the supreme and most desperate crisis had come upon them, they did not wait to collect all their arms but snatched whatever lay ready to the hand of each, to defend the fatherland that alone was left to them of all Messenia.

The first to realize that the enemy were within and to go against them were Gorgus the son of Aristomenes, Aristomenes himself, Theoclus the seer and Manticlus his son, and with them Euergetidas a man of high repute in Messenia who had attained to greater honor through his wife for he was wedded to Hagnagora, the sister of Aristomenes. Then the rest, though understanding that they were caught as in a net, nevertheless derived some hope even from their present plight.

But Aristomenes and the seer knew that there was no putting off destruction for the Messenians, for they knew the riddle of the oracle which the Pythia had uttered concerning the goat. Nevertheless they would not declare it, and kept it secret from the rest. As they hastened through the city, visiting all, they exhorted those whom they encountered, when they saw that they were Messenians, to be brave men, and summoned from the houses those who still remained.

During the night nothing worthy of mention was done on either side; for their ignorance of the ground and the daring of Aristomenes gave pause to the Lacedaemonians, while the Messenians had not previously received a watchword from their generals, and the rain would put out torches or any other light that they kindled.

When it was day and they could see one another Aristomenes and Theoclus tried to rouse the fury of despair in the Messenians, setting forth all that suited the occasion and reminding them of the valor of the men of Smyrna, how, though an Ionian people, by their valor and courage they had driven out Cyges the son of Dascylus and the Lydians, when they were in occupation of their town.

The Messenians, when they heard, were filled with desperate courage, and mustering as they happened to be gathered rushed on the Lacedaemonians. Women too were eager to fling tiles and what they could upon the enemy, yet the violence of the rain prevented them from doing this and from mounting to the house-tops. But they dared to take arms, and they too further inflamed the ardor of the men, when they saw their women preferring to perish with their fatherland rather than be taken as slaves to Lacedaemon, so that they might yet have been able to escape their fate.

But the god caused the rain to descend more densely, with loud claps of thunder, and dazzled their eyes with lightning flashing in their faces. All this put courage in the Lacedaemonians, who said that heaven itself was-helping them and as the lightning was on their right, Hecas the seer declared the sign of good omen.

It was he who devised the following plan. The Lacedaemonians far outnumbered the Messenians, but as the battle was not being fought on open ground with troops in line, but they were fighting over different quarters of the town, the rearmost of each detachment were rendered useless. Hecas ordered these to retire to the camp, take food and sleep, and return before evening to relieve their own men who were to remain on duty.

The Lacedaemonians, by resting and fighting by turns, held out the longer, but the Messenians were faced with difficulties on all sides. They fought continuously day and night until the third day with none to relieve them. When the next day dawned, worn out by lack of sleep and by the rain and cold from heaven, they were assailed by hunger and thirst. The women especially, unaccustomed to war, were exhausted by the continuous suffering.

So the seer Theoclus came to Aristomenes' side and said: “Why vainly maintain this toil? The decree of fate stands fast that Messene should fall; long since the Pythia declared to us the disaster now before our eyes, and lately the fig-tree revealed it. On me the gods have laid one doom with my country, but do thou save the Messenians with what power thou hast and save thyself.” When he had spoken to Aristomenes he rushed upon the enemy, and these were the words that he was constrained to fling at the Lacedaemonians. “Yet not for all time shall you enjoy the fruits of Messenia with impunity.”

Then falling upon the men who faced him he killed them and himself was wounded, and having sated his passion with the slaughter of his foes, he breathed his last. But Aristomenes called the Messenians back from the fight, except those who by virtue of their courage were fighting to cover them. These he allowed to remain at their post. The rest he ordered to receive the women and children within their ranks and follow him wherever he should show a passage.

He appointed Gorgus and Manticlus to command the rear, he himself ran to the head of the company and by the gestures of his head and movement of his spear signified that he asked a passage and had resolved to depart. Emperamus and the Spartans present were pleased to let the Messenians pass, without further inflaming men who had reached the bounds of frenzy and despair. Moreover Hecas the seer ordered them to act thus.

As soon as the Arcadians heard of the Capture of Eira, they at once ordered Aristocrates to lead them to the rescue of the Messenians or to death with them. But he, being in receipt of bribes from Lacedaemon, refused to lead them, and said that he knew that no Messenian survived for them to help.

When they obtained more certain news, that they survived and had been forced to desert Eira, they themselves proposed to receive them at Mount Lycaeus after preparing clothing and food, and sent some of their leading men to comfort the Messenians and also to be their guides on the way. After their safe arrival at Mount Lycaeus, the Arcadians entertained them and treated them kindly in every way, offering to distribute them among their towns and to make a new distribution of their land on their account.

But Aristomenes' grief for the sack of Eira and his hatred of the Lacedaemonians suggested to him the following plan. He chose from the body of the Messenians five hundred men whom he knew to be the most unsparing of themselves, and asked them in the hearing of Aristocrates and the rest of the Arcadians if they were ready to die with him, avenging their country He did not know that Aristocrates was a traitor, for he thought that he had fled from the battle formerly from lack of courage and through cowardice, not for any knavery; so he asked the five hundred in his presence.

When they said that they were ready, he revealed the whole plan, that he proposed at all costs to lead them against Sparta during the following evening. For now was the time when the majority of the Lacedaemonians was away at Eira, and others were scouring Messenia for booty and plunder. “If we can capture and occupy Sparta,” said Aristomenes, “we can give back to the Lacedaemonians what is theirs and receive our own. If we fail, we shall die together, having done a deed for posterity to remember.”

When he said this, as many as three hundred of the Arcadians were ready to share his enterprise. For the time they delayed their departure, as the victims were unfavorable, but on the following day they learnt that the Lacedaemonians had been forewarned of their secret, and that they themselves had been a second time betrayed by Aristocrates. For Aristocrates had at once written the designs of Aristomenes in a letter, and having entrusted it to the slave whom he knew to be most loyal, sent him to Anaxander in Sparta.

As the slave was returning, he was intercepted by some of the Arcadians, who had formerly been at variance with Aristocrates and regarded him then with some suspicion. Having intercepted the slave they brought him before the Arcadians and made known to the people the answer from Lacedaemon. Anaxander was writing that his retreat from the Great Trench formerly had not gone unrewarded on the part of the Lacedaemonians and that he would receive an additional recompense for his information on the present occasion.

When this was declared to all, the Arcadians themselves stoned Aristocrates and urged the Messenians to join them. They looked to Aristomenes. But he was weeping, with his eyes fixed on the ground. So the Arcadians stoned Aristocrates to death and flung him beyond their borders without burial, and set up a tablet in the precinct of Zeus Lycaeus with the words:Truly time hath declared justice upon an unjust king and with the help of Zeus hath easily declared the betrayer of Messene. Hard it is for a man forsworn to hide from God. Hail, king Zeus, and keep Arcadia safe.

All the Messenians, who were captured about Eira or anywhere else in Messenia, were reduced by the Lacedaemonians to serfdom. The people of Pylos and Mothone and all who occupied the maritime district retired in ships on the capture of Eira to Cyllene, the port of the Eleians. Thence they sent to the Messenians in Arcadia, proposing to unite their forces and seek a new country to dwell in, enjoining Aristomenes to lead them to a colony.

But he said that while he lived, he would make war on the Lacedaemonians, as he knew well that trouble would always be brewing for Sparta through him, but he gave them Gorgus and Manticlus as leaders. Euergetidas too had retired to Mount Lycaeus with the rest of the Messenians. From there, when he saw that Aristomenes' plan to seize Sparta had failed, he persuaded some fifty of the Messenians to go back with him to Eira and attack the Lacedaemonians,

and coming upon them while they were still plundering, he turned their celebrations of victory to grief. He then met his doom there, but Aristomenes ordered all the Messenians who wished to take part in the colony to join the leaders at Cyllene. And all took part except those debarred by age or lack of funds for journeying abroad. These remained here with the Arcadians.

Eira was taken, and the second war between the Lacedaemonians and Messenians completed in the archonship of Autosthenes at Athens, and in the first year of the twenty-eighth Olympiad, when Chionis the Laconian was victorious.

When the Messenians assembled at Cyllene, they resolved to winter there for that season, the Eleians providing a market and funds. With the spring they began to debate where they should go. It was the view of Gorgus that they should occupy Zacynthos off Cephallenia, becoming islanders instead of mainlanders, and raid the coasts of Laconia with their ships and ravage the land. But Manticlus bade them forget Messene and their hatred of the Lacedaemonians, and sail to Sardinia and win an island which was of the largest extent and greatest fertility.

Book 4, Part 6 Cite

Meantime Anaxilas sent to the Messenians and summoned them to Italy. He was tyrant of Rhegium, third in descent from Alcidamidas, who had left Messene for Rhegium after the death of king Aristodemus and the capture of Ithome. So now this Anaxilas summoned the Messenians. When they came, he said that the people of Zancle were at war with him, and that they possessed a prosperous land and city well placed in Sicily; and these he said he was ready to give them and help them to conquer. When they accepted the proposal, Anaxilas then transported them to Sicily.

Zancle was originally occupied by pirates, who, as the land was uninhabited, walled off the harbor and used it as a base for their raids and cruises. Their leaders were Crataemenes a Samian and Perieres of Chalcis. Later Perieres and Crataemenes resolved to introduce other Greek settlers.

Anaxilas defeated the Zanclaeans, when they put to sea to oppose him, and the Messenians did the like by land, and the Zanclaeans, blockaded on land by the Messenians and from the sea by the fleet of the Rhegines, when their wall was carried, fled for refuge to the altars of the gods and to the temples. Anaxilas, however, advised the Messenians to put to death the suppliant Zanclaeans and to enslave the rest together with the women and children.

But Gorgus and Manticlus besought Anaxilas not to compel them, the victims of unholy treatment at the hands of kinsmen, to do the like to men of Greek race. After this they made the Zanclaeans rise from the altars, and exchanging pledges with them, dwelt together in common. They changed the name of the city from Zancle to Messene.

This event took place in the twenty-ninth Olympiad, when Chionis the Laconian was victorious for the second time. Miltiades was archon at Athens. Manticlus founded the temple of Heracles for the Messenians; the temple of the god is outside the walls and he is called Heracles Manticlus, just as Ammon in Libya and Belus in Babylon are named, the latter from an Egyptian, Belus the son of Libya, Ammon from the shepherd-founder. Thus the exiled Messenians reached the end of their wanderings.

After declining the leadership of the men setting forth to found a colony, Aristomenes gave his sister Hagnagora in marriage to Tharyx at Phigalia, and his daughters, both the eldest and the next in age, to Damothoidas of Lepreum and Theopompus of Heraea. He himself went to Delphi to enquire of the god. The reply that was given to Aristomenes is not recorded,

but when Damagetus the Rhodian, who reigned at Ialysos, came to Apollo and asked whence he should take a wife, the Pythia bade him take a daughter of the bravest of the Greeks. As Aristomenes had a third daughter, he married her, considering that Aristomenes was by far the bravest of the Greeks of that age. Aristomenes, coming to Rhodes with his daughter, purposed to go up from there to Sardis to Ardys the son of Gyges, and to Ecbatana of the Medes to king Phraortes.

But ere that he was overtaken by illness and death, for no further misfortune was to befall the Lacedaemonians at the hands of Aristomenes. On his death Damagetus and the Rhodians built him a splendid tomb and paid honor to him thenceforward. I omit what is recorded of the Diagoridae in Rhodes, as they are called, a line sprung from Diagoras the son of Damagetus, son of Dorieus, who was the son of Damagetus and of the daughter of Aristomenes, lest it should seem to be irrelevant.

Now the Lacedaemonians, gaining possession of Messenia, divided it all among themselves, except the land belonging to the people of Asine; but they gave Mothone to the men of Nauplia, who had recently been driven from their town by the Argives.

The Messenians who were captured in the country, reduced by force to the position of serfs, were later moved to revolt from the Lacedaemonians in the seventy-ninth Olympiad, when Xenophon the Corinthian was victorious. Archimedes was archon at Athens. The occasion which they found for the revolt was this. Certain Lacedaemonians who had been condemned to death on some charge fled as suppliants to Taenarum but the board of ephors dragged them from the altar there and put them to death.

As the Spartans paid no heed to their being suppliants, the wrath of Poseidon came upon them, and the god razed all their city to the ground. At this disaster all the serfs who were of Messenian origin seceded to Mount Ithome. Against them the Lacedaemonians, amongst other allies, called to their assistance Cimon the son of Miltiades, their patron in Athens, and an Athenian force. But when the Athenians arrived, they seem to have regarded them with suspicion that they were likely to promote revolution, and as a result of this suspicion to have soon dismissed them from Ithome.

The Athenians, realizing the feelings of the Lacedaemonians towards them, made friends therefore with the Argives, and gave Naupactus to the Messenians besieged in Ithome, when they were allowed to depart under a truce. They had taken Naupactus from the Locrians adjoining Aetolia, called the Ozolian. The retirement of the Messenians from Ithome was secured by the strength of the place; also the Pythia announced to the Lacedaemonians that assuredly they would be punished if they committed a crime against the suppliant of Zeus of Ithome. For this reason then they were allowed to go from Peloponnese under a truce.

When they occupied Naupactus it was not enough for them to have received a city and country at the hands of the Athenians, but they were filled with a strong desire to show that they had won something notable with their own hands. Knowing that the Acarnanians of Oeniadae possessed a good land and were continually at war with the Athenians, they marched against them. They had no numerical advantage, but defeating them by their superior courage, they shut them up in the fortress and besieged them.

They neglected no human invention in the matter of siege-craft, tried to carry the town by raising scaling-ladders, mined the walls, and by bringing up such engines as could be made ready at short notice proceeded with the destruction of the fortifications. The inhabitants, fearing that if the city were taken they would be put to death and their wives and children enslaved, elected to withdraw on terms.

The Messenians held the town and occupied the country for about a year. In the following year the Acarnanians collected a force from all their towns and discussed an attack on Naupactus. They rejected this, as they saw that their line of march would be through the Aetolians, who were always their enemies; moreover they suspected that the men of Naupactus possessed a fleet, which was the fact; and while they commanded the sea, it was impossible to achieve anything of importance with a land force.

So they changed their plans and at once turned on the Messenians in Oeniadae and prepared to besiege them, for they never supposed that men so few in number would show such desperate courage as to fight against the full levy of the Acarnanians. The Messenians had previously prepared food and all else that was requisite, expecting to stand a long siege.

But they were determined before the siege was formed to fight a battle in the open, and being Messenians, who had not been surpassed in valor even by Lacedaemonians, but in fortune only, were determined not to be dismayed at the horde which had come from Acarnania. They recalled the achievement of the Athenians at Marathon, how thirty myriad Persians had been destroyed by men not numbering ten thousand.

So they joined battle with the Acarnanians, and the course of the battle is said to have been thus. The enemy, being far superior in numbers, had no difficulty in surrounding the Messenians, except where prevented by the gates in the Messenian rear and by the zealous help of their men posted on the wall. Here they could not be surrounded, hut the Acarnanians enveloped both their flanks and shot volleys at them from all sides.

The Messenians, in close formation, whenever they charged the Acarnanians in a body, threw the enemy at that point into confusion, killing and wounding many of them, but they could not effect a complete rout. For wherever the Acarnanians saw a part of their own line being broken by the Messenians they went to the support of their harassed troops at this point and checked the Messenians, overwhelming them by numbers.

The Messenians, beaten back and again attempting to pierce the massed troops of the Acarnanians at another point, would meet with the same result. Wherever they attacked, they threw the enemy into confusion and drove them a short distance, but as the Acarnanians again streamed eagerly to this point, they were driven back against their will. The battle was evenly contested until evening, but when at nightfall the Acarnanians received reinforcements from their cities, the blockade of the Messenians was formed.

They had no fear of the wall being taken by assault, either by the Acarnanians scaling it or by themselves being forced to abandon their posts. But in the eighth month all their provisions alike had been consumed.

They shouted to the Acarnanians from the wall in mockery that their supplies would not fail them until the tenth year of the siege, but they themselves sallied out of Oeniadae at the time of the first sleep. Their escape became known to the Acarnanians and they were compelled to fight, losing some three hundred and killing still more of the enemy. But the greater part of them got through the Acarnanians, and reaching the territory of the Aetollans, who were their friends, arrived safely at Naupactus.

Afterwards, as at all times, they were stirred by their hatred against the Lacedaemonians, and provided the most striking example of their hostility towards them in the war which took place between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. For they offered Naupactus as a base against Peloponnese, and Messenian slingers from Naupactus helped to capture the Spartans cut off in Sphacteria.

When the Athenian reverse at Aegospotami took place, the Lacedaemonians, having command of the sea, then drove the Messenians from Naupactus; they went to their kinsmen in Sicily and to Rhegium, but the majority came to Libya and to the Euesperitae there, who had suffered severely in war with barbarian neighbors and were inviting any Greek to join them. So the majority of the Messenians went to them, their leader being Comon, who had commanded them in Sphacteria.

A year before the victory of the Thebans at Leuctra, heaven foretold their return to Peloponnese to the Messenians. It is said that in Messene on the Straits the priest of Heracles saw a vision in a dream: it seemed that Heracles Manticlus was bidden by Zeus as a guest to Ithome. Also among the Euesperitae Comon dreamt that he lay with his dead mother, but that afterwards she came to life again. He hoped that as the Athenians had recovered their seapower, they would be restored to Naupactus. But the dream really indicated the recovery of Messene.

Not long afterwards the Lacedaemonians suffered at Leuctra the disaster that had long been due. For at the end of the oracle given to Aristodemus, who reigned over the Messenians, are the words:Act as fate wills, destruction comes on this man before that,signifying that he and the Messenians must suffer evil at the present, but that hereafter destruction would overtake Lacedaemon.

Then after their victory at Leuctra the Thebans sent messengers to Italy, Sicily and to the Euesperitae, and summoned the Messenians to Peloponnese from every other quarter where they might be, and they, with longing for their country and through the hatred which had ever remained with them for the Lacedaemonians, assembled quicker than could have been expected.

To Epaminondas it seemed in no way easy to found a city that could resist the Lacedaemonians, nor could he discover where in the land to build it. For the Messenians refused to settle again in Andania and Oechalia, because their disasters had befallen them when they dwelt there. To Epaminondas in his difficulty it is said that an ancient man, closely resembling a priest of Demeter, appeared in the night and said: “My gift to thee is that thou shalt conquer whomsoever thou dost assail; and when thou dost pass from men, Theban, I will cause thy name to be unforgotten and give thee glory. But do thou restore to the Messenians their fatherland and cities, for now the wrath of the Dioscuri against them hath ceased.”

This he said to Epaminondas, and revealed this to Epiteles the son of Aeschines, who had been chosen by the Argives to be their general and to refound Messene. He was bidden by the dream, wherever he found yew and myrtle growing on Ithome, to dig between them and recover the old woman, for, shut in her brazen chamber, she was overcome and well-nigh fainting. When day dawned, Epiteles went to the appointed place, and as he dug, came upon a brazen urn.

He took it at once to Epaminondas, told him the dream and bade him remove the lid and see what was within. Epaminondas, after sacrifice and prayer to the vision that had appeared, opened the urn and having opened it found some tin foil, very thin, rolled like a book. On it were inscribed the mysteries of the Great Goddesses, and this was the pledge deposited by Aristomenes. They say that the man who appeared to Epiteles and Epaminondas in their sleep was Caucon, who came from Athens to Messene the daughter of Triopas at Andania.

The wrath of the sons of Tyndareus against the Messenians began before the battle in Stenyclerus, and arose, I think, for the following reason. Panormus and Gonippus of Andania, young men in the bloom of youth, were close friends in all things, and marched together into battle and on raids into Laconia.

The Lacedaemonians were keeping a feast of the Dioscuri in camp and had turned to drinking and sports after the midday meal, when Gonippus and Panormus appeared to them, riding on the finest horses and dressed in white tunics and scarlet cloaks, with caps on their heads and spears in their hands. When the Lacedaemonians saw them they bowed down and prayed, thinking that the Dioscuri themselves had come to their sacrifice.

When once they had come among them, the youths rode right through them, striking with their spears, and when many had been killed, returned to Andania, having outraged the sacrifice to the Dioscuri. It was this, in my view, that roused the Dioscuri to their hatred of the Messenians. But now, as the dream declared to Epaminondas, the Dioscuri no longer opposed the return of the Messenians.

Epaminondas was most strongly drawn to the foundation by the oracles of Bacis, who was inspired by the Nymphs and left prophecies regarding others of the Greeks as well as the return of the Messenians:Then indeed shall the bright bloom of Sparta perish and Messene again shall be inhabited for all time.I have discovered that Bacis also told in what manner Eira would be captured, and this too is one of his oracles:The men of Messene o'ercome by the thunder's roll and spouting rain.

When the mysteries were recovered, all who were of the priestly family set them down in books. As Epaminondas considered the spot where the city of the Messenians now stands most convenient for the foundation, he ordered enquiry to be made by the seers if the favour of the gods would follow him here. When they announced that the offerings were auspicious, he began preparations for the foundation, ordering stone to be brought, and summoning men skilled in laying out streets and in building houses, temples, and ring-walls.

When all was in readiness, victims being provided by the Arcadians, Epaminondas himself and the Thebans then sacrificed to Dionysus and Apollo Ismenius in the accustomed manner, the Argives to Argive Hera and Nemean Zeus, the Messenians to Zeus of Ithome and the Dioscuri, and their priests to the Great Goddesses and Caucon. And together they summoned heroes to return and dwell with them, first Messene the daughter of Triopas, after her Eurytus, Aphareus and his children, and of the sons of Heracles Cresphontes and Aepytus. But the loudest summons from all alike was to Aristomenes.

For that day they were engaged in sacrifice and prayer, but on the following days they raised the circuit of the walls, and within built houses and the temples. They worked to the sound of music, but only from Boeotian and Argive flutes, and the tunes of Sacadas and Pronomus were brought into keen competition. The city itself was given the name Messene, but they founded other towns. The men of Nauplia were not disturbed at Mothone,

and they allowed the people of Asine to remain in their home, remembering their kindness when they refused to join the Lacedaemonians in the war against them. The men of Nauplia on the return of the Messenians to Peloponnese brought them such gifts as they had, and while praying continually to the gods for their return begged the Messenians to grant protection to themselves.

The Messenians returned to Peloponnese and recovered their own land two hundred and eighty-seven years after the capture of Eira, in the archonship of Dyscinetus at Athens and in the third year of the hundred and second Olympiad, when Damon of Thurii was victorious for the second time. It was no short time for the Plataeans that they were in exile from their country, and for the Delians when they settled in Adramyttium after being expelled from their island by the Athenians.

The Minyae, driven by the Thebans from Orchomenos after the battle of Leuctra, were restored to Boeotia by Philip the son of Amyntas, as were also the Plataeans. When Alexander had destroyed the city of the Thebans themselves, Cassander the son of Antipater rebuilt it after a few years. The exile of the Plataeans seems to have lasted the longest of those mentioned, but even this was not for more than two generations.

Book 4, Part 7 Cite

But the wanderings of the Messenians outside the Peloponnese lasted almost three hundred years, during which it is clear that they did not depart in any way from their local customs, and did not lose their Doric dialect, but even to our day they have retained the purest Doric in Peloponnese.

After their return they had nothing to fear at first from the Lacedaemonians. For the Lacedaemonians, restrained by fear of the Thebans, submitted to the foundation of Messene and to the gathering of the Arcadians into one city. But when the Phocian or, as it is called, the Sacred War caused the Thebans to withdraw from Peloponnese, the Lacedaemonians regained courage and could no longer refrain from attacking the Messenians.

The Messenians maintained the war with the help of the Argives and Arcadians, and asked the Athenians for help. They refused to join in an attack on Laconia, but promised to render assistance in person if the Lacedaemonians began war and invaded Messenia. Finally the Messenians formed an alliance with Philip the son of Amyntas and the Macedonians; it was this, they say, that prevented them from taking part in the battle which the Greeks fought at Chaeroneia. They refused, however, to bear arms against the Greeks.

After the death of Alexander, when the Greeks had raised a second war against the Macedonians, the Messenians took part, as I have shown earlier in my account of Attica. They did not join the Greeks against the Gauls, as Cleonymus and the Lacedaemonians refused to grant them a truce.

Not long afterwards the Messenians occupied Elis, employing strategy and daring alike. The Eleians in the earliest times were the most law-abiding of the Peloponnesians, but when Philip the son of Amyntas did all the harm to Greece that has been related, he also bribed the leading men in Elis; the Eleians were divided by factions for the first time and came to blows, it is said.

Henceforward it was likely to be more easy for quarrels to arise among men whose counsels were divided on account of the Lacedaemonians, and they arrived at civil war. Learning this, the Lacedaemonians were preparing to assist their partisans in Elis. While they were being organized in squadrons and distributed in companies, a thousand picked Messenian troops arrived hurriedly at Elis with Laconian blazons on their shields.

Seeing their shields, all the Laconising party in Elis thought their supporters had arrived and received them into the fortress. But having obtained admission in this way, the Messenians drove out the supporters of the Lacedaemonians and made over the city to their own partisans.

The trick is Homer's, but the Messenians plainly imitated it opportunely, for Homer represents Patroclus in the Iliad clad in the arms of Achilles, and says that the barbarians were filled with the belief that it was Achilles attacking them, and that their front ranks were thrown into confusion. Other stratagems are the invention of Homer, the coming of the two Greek spies by night among the Trojans, instead of one and later a man coming to Troy, who pretends to be a deserter but actually is to find out their secrets.

Again, the Trojans who, through youth or years were not of fighting age, he posted as garrison of the walls, while the men of military age were encamped against the Greeks. The wounded Greeks in Homer arm the fighting men, so that even they may not be altogether idle. Indeed Homer's ideas have proved useful to men in every matter.

Not long after the affair at Elis, the Macedonians and Demetrius the son of Philip, son of Demetrius, captured Messene. I have already, in my account of Sicyon, narrated most of the crimes of Perseus against Philip himself and against Demetrius the son of Philip. These are the facts relating to the capture of Messene.

Philip was in need of money, and as it was necessary to raise it at all costs, he sent Demetrius with a fleet to Peloponnese. He put in to one of the less frequented harbors of the Argolid, and at once marched his army by the shortest route to Messene. With an advance guard consisting of all the light-armed troops who knew the road to Ithome, he succeeded just before dawn in scaling the wall unnoticed at a point where it lay between the city and the peak of Ithome.

When day dawned and the inhabitants had realized the danger that beset them, they were at first under the impression that the Lacedaemonians had forced an entry into the town, and attacked them more recklessly owing to their ancient hatred. But when they discovered from their equipment and speech that it was the Macedonians and Demetrius the son of Philip, they were filled with great fear, when they considered the Macedonian training in warfare and the good fortune which they saw that they enjoyed in all their ventures.

Nevertheless the magnitude of the present evil caused them to display a courage beyond their strength, also they were inspired with hope for the best, since it seemed not without divine help that they had accomplished their return to Peloponnese after so long an absence. So the Messenians in the town went against the Macedonians full of courage, and the garrison on the acropolis attacked from the high ground above.

In like manner the Macedonians, brave and experienced troops, at first offered a firm resistance. But worn out by their march, attacked by the men and bombarded with tiles and stones by the women, they took to flight in disorder. The majority were pushed over the precipices and killed, for Ithome is very steep at this point. A few escaped by throwing away their arms.

The Messenians refrained at first from joining the Achaean league for the following reason, I think. When Pyrrhus the son of Aeacides made war on the Lacedaemonians, they came unasked to their assistance, and as a result of this service a more peaceful disposition towards them came to be established at Sparta. Therefore they were unwilling to revive the feud by joining the league, which was openly declared the bitterest enemy of the Lacedaemonians.

I realize, as of course did the Messenians, that even without their joining the league the policy of the Achaeans was hostile to the Lacedaemonians. For the Argives and the Arcadian group formed not the smallest element in the league. However, in the course of time they joined the league. And not long afterwards Cleomenes the son of Leonidas, son of Cleonymus, captured the Arcadian Megalopolis in peace-time.

Of the people of Megalopolis who were caught in the city, some were killed at the time of its capture, but Philopoemen the son of Craugis and all who withdrew with him (the number of the citizens who escaped is said to have been more than two-thirds) were received by the Messenians, who for the sake of the former services rendered by the Arcadians in the time of Aristomenes and again at the founding of Messene now repaid the like.

Such, it would seem, are the vicissitudes of human affairs, that it was the will of heaven that the Messenians should in their turn preserve the Arcadians, and what is still more surprising, that they should capture Sparta. For they fought against Cleomenes at Sellasia and joined with Aratus and the Achaeans to capture Sparta.

When the Lacedaemonians were rid of Cleomenes there rose to power a tyrant Machanidas, and after his death a second tyrant arose in Nabis. As he plundered human property and robbed temples alike, he amassed vast wealth in a short time and with it raised an army. This Nabis seized Messene, but when Philopoemen and the people of Megalopolis arrived during the same night,

the Spartan tyrant retired on terms. But the Achaeans after this, having some quarrel with the Messenians, invaded them with all their forces and ravaged most of the country. On a second occasion they mustered when the corn was ripe to invade Messenia. But Deinocrates, the head of the government, who had been chosen to command the Messenians on that occasion, compelled Lycortas and his force to retire without effecting anything, by occupying beforehand the passes from Arcadia into Messenia with the Messenians from the city and troops from the surrounding districts that came to their assistance.

Philopoemen arrived with a few cavalry some time later than the force with Lycortas and had been unable to obtain any news of it; the Messenians, having the advantage of the high ground, defeated him and took him alive. I will narrate the manner of Philopoemen's capture and death in my account of Arcadia later. The Messenians, who were responsible for his death, were punished and Messene was again brought into the Achaean league.

Hitherto my account has dealt with the many sufferings of the Messenians, how fate scattered them to the ends of the earth, far from Peloponnese, and afterwards brought them safely home to their own country. Let us now turn to a description of the country and cities.

There is in our time a city Abia in Messenia on the coast, some twenty stades distant from the Choerius valley. They say that this was formerly called Ire and was one of the seven cities which Homer says that Agamemnon promised to Achilles. When Hyllus and the Dorians were defeated by the Achaeans, it is said that Abia, nurse of Glenus the son of Heracles, withdrew to Ire, and settling there built a temple to Heracles, and that afterwards for this reason Cresphontes, amongst other honors assigned to her, renamed the city after Abia. There was a notable temple of Heracles here, and also of Asclepius.

Pharae is seventy stades distant from Abia. On the road is a salt spring. The Emperor Augustus caused the Messenians of Pharae to be incorporated in Laconia. The founder Pharis is said to have been the son of Hermes and Phylodameia the daughter of Danaus. He had no male children, but a daughter Telegone. Homer, tracing her descendants in the Iliad, says that twins, Crethon and Ortilochus, were born to Diocles, Diocles himself being the son of Ortilochus son of Alpheius. He makes no reference to Telegone, who in the Messenian account bore Ortilochus to Alpheius.

I heard also at Pharae that besides the twins a daughter Anticleia was born to Diocles, and that her children were Nicomachus and Gorgasus, by Machaon the son of Asclepius. They remained at Pharae and succeeded to the kingdom on the death of Diocles. The power of healing diseases and curing the maimed has remained with them to this day, and in return for this, sacrifices and votive offerings are brought to their sanctuary. The people of Pharae possess also a temple of Fortune (Tyche) and an ancient image.

Homer is the first whom I know to have mentioned Fortune in his poems. He did so in the Hymn to Demeter, where he enumerates the daughters of Ocean, telling how they played with Kore the daughter of Demeter, and making Fortune one of them. The lines are:We all in a lovely meadow, Leucippe, Phaeno, Electre and Ianthe, Melobosis and Tyche and Ocyrhoe with face like a flower.

He said nothing further about this goddess being the mightiest of gods in human affairs and displaying greatest strength, as in the Iliad he represented Athena and Enyo as supreme in war, and Artemis feared in childbirth, and Aphrodite heeding the affairs of marriage. But he makes no other mention of Fortune.

Bupalos a skilful temple-architect and carver of images, who made the statue of Fortune at Smyrna, was the first whom we know to have represented her with the heavenly sphere upon her head and carrying in one hand the horn of Amaltheia, as the Greeks call it, representing her functions to this extent. The poems of Pindar later contained references to Fortune, and it is he who called her Supporter of the City.

Not far from Pharae is a grove of Apollo Carneius and a spring of water in it. Pharae is about six stades from the sea. Eighty stades on the road which leads thence into the interior of Messenia is the city of the Thuriatae, which they say had the name Antheia in Homer's poems. Augustus gave Thuria into the possession of the Lacedaemonians of Sparta. For when Augustus was emperor of the Romans, Antony, himself a Roman, made war upon him and was joined by the Messenians and the rest of the Greeks, because the Lacedaemonians were on the side of Augustus.

For this reason Augustus punished the Messenians and the rest of his adversaries, some more, some less. The people of Thuria left their town, which lay originally on high ground, and came down to live in the plain. Nevertheless the upper town is not entirely deserted, but there are remains of the wall and a temple there, called the temple of the Syrian Goddess. A river called Aris flows past the town in the plain.

In the interior is a village Calamae and a place Limnae, where is a sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis (Of the lake). They say that Teleclus king of Sparta met his end here.

On the road from Thuria towards Arcadia are the springs of the Pamisus, at which little children find cures.A road turns to the left from the springs, and after some forty stades is the city of the Messenians under Ithome. It is enclosed not only by Mount Ithome, but on the side towards the Pamisos by Mount Eva. The mountain is said to have obtained its name from the fact that the Bacchic cry of “Evoe” was first uttered here by Dionysus and his attendant women.

Round Messene is a wall, the whole circuit of which is built of stone, with towers and battlements upon it. I have not seen the walls at Babylon or the walls of Memnon at Susa in Persia, nor have I heard the account of any eye-witness; but the walls at Ambrossos in Phocis, at Byzantium and at Rhodes, all of them the most strongly fortified places, are not so strong as the Messenian wall.

The Messenians possess a statue of Zeus the Saviour in the market-place and a fountain Arsinoe. It received its name from the daughter of Leucippus and is fed from a source called Clepsydra. There are sanctuaries of the gods Poseidon and Aphrodite, and, what is most deserving of mention, a statue of the Mother of the Gods, of Parian marble, the work of Damophon, the artist who repaired the Zeus at Olympia with extreme accuracy when the ivory parted. Honors have been granted to him by the people of Elis.

By Damophon too is the so-called Laphria at Messene. The cult came to be established among them in the following way: Among the people of Calydon, Artemis, who was worshipped by them above all the gods, had the title Laphria, and the Messenians who received Naupactus from the Athenians, being at that time close neighbors of the Aetolians, adopted her from the people of Calydon. I will describe her appearance in another place. The name Laphria spread only to the Messenians and to the Achaeans of Patrae.

But all cities worship Artemis of Ephesus, and individuals hold her in honor above all the gods. The reason, in my view, is the renown of the Amazons, who traditionally dedicated the image, also the extreme antiquity of this sanctuary. Three other points as well have contributed to her renown, the size of the temple, surpassing all buildings among men, the eminence of the city of the Ephesians and the renown of the goddess who dwells there.

The Messenians have a temple erected to Eileithyia with a stone statue, and near by a hall of the Curetes, where they make burnt offerings of every kind of living creature, thrusting into the flames not only cattle and goats, but finally birds as well. There is a holy shrine of Demeter at Messene and statues of the Dioscuri, carrying the daughters of Leucippus. I have already explained in an earlier passage that the Messenians argue that the sons of Tyndareus belong to them rather than to the Lacedaemonians.

The most numerous statues and the most worth seeing are to be found in the sanctuary of Asclepius. For besides statues of the god and his sons, and besides statues of Apollo, the Muses and Heracles, the city of Thebes is represented and Epaminondas the son of Cleommis, Fortune, and Artemis Bringer of Light. The stone statues are the work of Damophon (I know of no other Messenian sculptor of merit apart from him); the statue of Epaminondas is of iron and the work of some other artist.

There is also a temple of Messene the daughter of Triopas with a statue of gold and Parian marble. At the back of the temple are paintings of the kings of Messene: before the coming of the Dorian host to Peloponnese, Aphareus and his sons, after the return of the Heracleidae, Cresphontes the Dorian leader, of the inhabitants of Pylos, Nestor, Thrasymedes and Antilochus, singled out from among the sons of Nestor on the score of age and because they took part in the expedition to Troy.

There is Leucippus brother of Aphareus, Hilaeira and Phoebe, and with them Arsinoe. Asclepius too is represented, being according to the Messenian account a son of Arsinoe, also Machaon and Podaleirius, as they also took part in the affair at Troy. These pictures were painted by Omphalion, pupil of Nicias the son of Nicomedes. Some say that he was also a slave in the house of Nicias and his favorite.

Book 4, Part 8 Cite

The place called Hierothesion by the Messenians contains statues of all the gods whom the Greeks worship, and also a bronze image of Epaminondas. Ancient tripods are dedicated there, which “have felt not the fire,” as Homer says. The statues in the gymnasium are the work of Egyptian artists. They represent Hermes, Heracles and Theseus, who are honored in the gymnasium and wrestling-ground according to a practice universal among Greeks, and now common among barbarians...

I learnt by enquiry that Aethidas was a man older than myself, who gained influence through his wealth and is honored by the Messenians as a hero. There are certain Messenians, who, while admitting that Aethidas was a man of great wealth, maintain that it is not he who is represented on the relief but an ancestor and namesake. The elder Aethidas was their leader, when Demetrius the son of Philip and his force surprised them in the night and succeeded in penetrating into the town unnoticed.

There is also the tomb of Aristomenes here. They say that it is not a cenotaph, but when I asked whence and in what manner they recovered the bones of Aristomenes, they said that they sent to Rhodes for them, and that it was the god of Delphi who ordered it. They also instructed me in the nature of the rites carried out at the tomb. The bull which is to be offered to the dead man is brought to the tomb and bound to the pillar which stands upon the grave. Being fierce and unused to bonds he will not stand; and if the pillar is moved by his struggles and bounds, it is a good omen to the Messenians, but if the pillar is not moved the sign portends misfortune.

They have it that Aristomenes was present at the battle of Leuctra, though no longer among men, and say that he helped the Thebans and was the chief cause of the Lacedaemonian disaster. I know that the Chaldaeans and Indian sages were the first to say that the soul of man is immortal, and have been followed by some of the Greeks, particularly by Plato the son of Ariston. If all are willing to accept this, this too cannot be denied, that his hatred for the Lacedaemonians was imparted to Aristomenes for all time.

What I myself heard in Thebes gives probability to the Messenian account, although it does not coincide in all respects. The Thebans say that when the battle of Leuctra was imminent, they sent to other oracles and to enquire of the god of Lebadeia. The replies of the Ismenian and Ptoan Apollo are recorded, also the responses given at Abae and at Delphi. Trophonius, they say, answered in hexameters:—Or ever ye join battle with the foe, set up a trophy and deck it with my shield, which impetuous Aristomenes the Messenian placed in my temple. And I will destroy the host of foemen bearing shield.

When the oracle was brought, they say that Epaminondas urged Xenocrates, who sent for the shield of Aristomenes and used it to adorn a trophy in a spot where it could be seen by the Lacedaemonians. Those of them who had seen the shield at Lebadeia in peace-time knew it, and all knew it by repute. After their victory the Thebans restored the offering to Trophonius. There is also a bronze statue of Aristomenes in the Messenian running-ground. Not far from the theater is a sanctuary of Sarapis and Isis.

On the ascent to the summit of Ithome, which is the Messenian acropolis, is a spring Clepsydra. It is a hopeless task, however zealously undertaken, to enumerate all the peoples who claim that Zeus was born and brought up among them. The Messenians have their share in the story for they too say that the god was brought up among them and that his nurses were Ithome and Neda, the river having received its name from the latter, while the former, Ithome, gave her name to the mountain. These nymphs are said to have bathed Zeus here, after he was stolen by the Curetes owing to the danger that threatened from his father, and it is said that it has its name from the Curetes' theft. Water is carried every day from the spring to the sanctuary of Zeus of Ithome.

The statue of Zeus is the work of Ageladas and was made originally for the Messenian settlers in Naupactus. The priest is chosen annually and keeps the image in his house. They keep an annual festival, the Ithomaea, and originally a musical contest was held. This can be gathered from the epic lines of Eumelus and other sources. Eumelus, in his processional hymn to Delos, says:For dear to the God of Ithome was the Muse, whose [lute] is pure and free her sandals.I think that he wrote the lines because he knew that they held a musical contest.

At the Arcadian gate leading to Megalopolis is a Herm of Attic style; for the square form of Herm is Athenian, and the rest adopted it thence. After a descent of thirty stades from the gate is the watercourse of Balyra. The river is said to have got its name from Thamyris throwing (ballein) his lyre away here after his blinding. He was the son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope, who once dwelt on Parnassus, but settled among the Odrysae when pregnant, for Philammon refused to take her into his house. Thamyris is called an Odrysian and Thracian on these grounds. The watercourses Leucasia and Amphitos unite to form one stream.

When these are crossed, there is a plain called the plain of Stenyclerus. Stenyclerus was a hero, it is said. Facing the plain is a site anciently called Oechalia, in our time the Carnasian grove, thickly grown with cypresses. There are statues of the gods Apollo Carneius [and Hagne], also Hermes carrying a ram. Hagne (the holy one) is a title of Kore the daughter of Demeter. Water rises from a spring close to the statue.

I may not reveal the rites of the Great Goddesses, for it is their mysteries which they celebrate in the Carnasian grove, and I regard them as second only to the Eleusinian in sanctity. But my dream did not prevent me from making known to all that the brazen urn, discovered by the Argive general, and the bones of Eurytus the son of Melaneus were kept here. A river Charadrus flows past the grove;

about eight stades along the road to the left are the ruins of Andania. The guides agree that the city got its name from a woman Andania, but I can say nothing as to her parents or her husband. On the road from Andania towards Cyparissiae is Polichne, as it is called, and the streams of Electra and Coeus. The names perhaps are to be connected with Electra the daughter of Atlas and Coeus the father of Leto, or Electra and Coeus may be two local heroes.

When the Electra is crossed, there is a spring called Achaia, and the ruins of a city Dorium. Homer states that the misfortune of Thamyris took place here in Dorium, because he said that he would overcome the Muses themselves in song. But Prodicus of Phocaea, if the epic called the Minyad is indeed his, says that Thamyris paid the penalty in Hades for his boast against the Muses. My view is that Thamyris lost his eyesight through disease, as happened later to Homer. Homer, however, continued making poetry all his life without giving way to his misfortune, while Thamyris forsook his art through stress of the trouble that afflicted him.

From Messene to the mouth of the Pamisus is a journey of eighty stades. The Pamisus is a pure stream flowing through cultivated lands, and is navigable some ten stades from the sea. Sea-fish run up it, especially in spring, as they do up the Rhine and Maeander. The chief run of fish is up the stream of the Achelous, which discharges opposite the Echinades islands.

But the fish that enter the Pamisus are of quite a different kind, as the water is pure and not muddy like the rivers which I have mentioned. The grey mullet, a fish that loves mud, frequents the more turbid streams. The rivers of Greece contain no creatures dangerous to men as do the Indus and the Egyptian Nile, or again the Rhine and Danube, the Euphrates and Phasis. These indeed produce man-eating creatures of the worst, in shape resembling the cat-fish of the Hermus and Maeander, but of darker color and stronger. In these respects the cat-fish is inferior.

The Indus and Nile both contain crocodiles, and the Nile river-horses as well, as dangerous to man as the crocodile. But the rivers of Greece contain no terrors from wild beasts, for the sharks of the Aous, which flows through Thesprotia, are not river beasts but migrants from the sea.

Corone is a city to the right of the Pamisus, on the sea-coast under Mount Mathia. On this road is a place on the coast regarded as sacred to Ino. For they say that she came up from the sea at this point, after her divinity had been accepted and her name changed from Ino to Leucothea. A short distance further the river Bias reaches the sea. The name is said to be derived from Bias the son of Amythaon. Twenty stades off the road is the fountain of Plataniston, the water of which flows out of a broad plane tree, which is hollow inside. The breadth of the tree gives the impression of a small cave; from it the drinking water flows to Corone.

The old name of Corone was Aepeia, but when the Messenians were restored to Peloponnese by the Thebans, it is said that Epimelides, who was sent as founder, named it Coroneia after his native town in Boeotia. The Messenians got the name wrong from the start, and the mistake which they made gradually prevailed in course of time. Another story is told to the effect that, when digging the foundations of the city wall, they came upon a bronze crow, in Greek corone.

The gods who have temples here are Artemis, called the “Nurse of Children,” Dionysus and Asclepius. The statues of Asclepius and Dionysus are of stone, but there is a statue of Zeus the Saviour in the market-place made of bronze. The statue of Athena also on the acropolis is of bronze, and stands in the open air, holding a crow in her hand. I also saw the tomb of Epimelides. I do not know why they call the harbor “the harbor of the Achaeans.”

Some eighty stades beyond Corone is a sanctuary of Apollo on the coast, venerated because it is very ancient according to Messenian tradition, and the god cures illnesses. They call him Apollo Corynthus. His image is of wood, but the statue of Apollo Argeotas, said to have been dedicated by the Argonauts, is of bronze.

The city of Corone is adjoined by Colonides. The inhabitants say that they are not Messenians but settlers from Attica brought by Colaenus, who followed a bird known as the crested lark to found the settlement in accordance with an oracle. They were, however, in the course of time to adopt the dialect and customs of the Dorians. The town of Colonides lies on high ground, a short distance from the sea.

The people of Asine originally adjoined the Lycoritae on Parnassus. Their name, which they maintained after their arrival in Peloponnese, was Dryopes, from their founder. Two generations after Dryops, in the reign of Phylas, the Dryopes were conquered in battle by Heracles and brought as an offering to Apollo at Delphi. When brought to Peloponnese according to the god's instructions to Heracles, they first occupied Asine by Hermion. They were driven thence by the Argives and lived in Messenia. This was the gift of the Lacedaemonians, and when in the course of time the Messenians were restored, they were not driven from their city by the Messenians.

But the people of Asine give this account of themselves. They admit that they were conquered by Heracles and their city in Parnassus captured, but they deny that they were made prisoners and brought to Apollo. But when the walls were carried by Heracles, they deserted the town and fled to the heights of Parnassus, and afterwards crossed the sea to Peloponnese and appealed to Eurystheus. Being at feud with Heracles, he gave them Asine in the Argolid.

The men of Asine are the only members of the race of the Dryopes to pride themselves on the name to this day. The case is very different with the Euboeans of Styra. They too are Dryopes in origin, who took no part in the battle with Heracles, as they dwelt at some distance from the city. Yet the people of Styra disdain the name of Dryopes, just as the Delphians have refused to be called Phocians. But the men of Asine take the greatest pleasure in being called Dryopes, and clearly have made the most holy of their sanctuaries in memory of those which they once had, established on Parnassus. For they have both a temple of Apollo and again a temple and ancient statue of Dryops, whose mysteries they celebrate every year, saying that he is the son of Apollo.

The town itself lies on the coast just as the old Asine in Argive territory. It is a journey of forty stades from Colonides to Asine, and of an equal number from Asine to the promontory called Acritas. Acritas projects into the sea and has a deserted island, Theganussa, lying off it. After Acritas is the harbor Phoenicus and the Oenussae islands lying opposite.

Before the mustering of the army for the Trojan war, and during the war, Mothone was called Pedasus. Later, as the people themselves say, it received a new name from the daughter of Oeneus. They say that Mothone was born of a concubine to Oeneus the son of Porthaon, when he had taken refuge with Diomede in Peloponnese after the fall of Troy. But in my view it was the rock Mothon that gave the place its name. It is this which forms their harbor. For projecting under water, it makes the entrance for ships more narrow and also serves as a breakwater against a heavy swell.

I have shown in earlier passages that, when the Nauplians in the reign of Damocratidas in Argos were expelled for their Laconian sympathies, the Lacedaemonians gave them Mothone, and that no change was made regarding them on the part of the Messenians when they returned. The Nauplians in my view were Egyptians originally, who came by sea with Danaus to the Argolid, and two generations later were settled in Nauplia by Nauplius the son of Amymone.

The Emperor Trajan granted civic freedom and autonomy to the people of Mothone. In earlier days they were the only people of Messenia on the coast to suffer a disaster like the following: Thesprotian Epirus was ruined by anarchy. For Deidameia the daughter of Pyrrhus, being without children, handed over the government to the people when she was on the point of death. She was the daughter of Pyrrhus, son of Ptolemy, son of Alexander, son of Pyrrhus.

I have told the facts relating to Pyrrhus the son of Aeacides in my account of the Athenians. Procles the Carthaginian indeed rated Alexander the son of Philip higher on account of his good fortune and for the brilliance of his achievements, but said that Pyrrhus was the better man in infantry and cavalry tactics and in the invention of stratagems of war.

When the Epirots were rid of their kings, the people threw off all control and disdained to listen to their magistrates, and the Illyrians who live on the Ionian sea above Epirus reduced them by a raid. We have yet to hear of a democracy bringing prosperity to a nation other than the Athenians; the Athenians attained to greatness by its means, for they surpassed the Greek world in native wit, and least disregarded the established laws.

Now the Illyrians, having tasted empire and being always desirous of more, built ships, and plundering others whom they fell in with, put in to the coast of Mothone and anchored as in a friendly port. Sending a messenger to the city they asked for wine to be brought to their ships. A few men came with it and they bought the wine at the price which the inhabitants asked, and themselves sold a part of their cargo.

When on the following day a larger number arrived from the town, they allowed them also to make their profit. Finally women and men came down to the ships to sell wine and trade with the barbarians. Thereupon by a bold stroke the Illyrians carried off a number of men and still more of the women. Carrying them on board ship, they set sail for the Ionian sea, having desolated the city of the Mothonaeans.

In Mothone is a temple of Athena Of the Winds, with a statue dedicated, it is said, by Diomede, who gave the goddess her name. The country being damaged by violent and unseasonable blasts, Diomede prayed to the goddess, and henceforward no disaster caused by the winds has visited their country. There is also a shrine of Artemis here and water in a well mixed with pitch, in appearance very like the iris-oil of Cyzicos. Water can assume every color and scent.

The bluest that I know from personal experience is that at Thermopylae, not all of it, but that which flows into the swimming-baths, called locally the Women's Pots. Red water, in color like blood, is found in the land of the Hebrews near the city of Joppa. The water is close to the sea, and the account which the natives give of the spring is that Perseus, after destroying the sea-monster, to which the daughter of Cepheus was exposed, washed off the blood in the spring.

I have myself seen water coming up black from springs at Astyra. Astyra opposite Lesbos is the name of the hot baths in the district called Atarneus. It was this Atarneus, which the Chians received as a reward from the Persians as a reward for surrendering the suppliant, Pactyas the Lydian. This water then has a black color; but the Romans have a white water, above the city across the river called Anio. When a man enters it, he is at first attacked with cold and shivering, but after a little time it warms him like the hottest drug.

All these springs that had something wonderful to show I have seen myself. For I pass over the less wonderful that I know, and it is no great marvel to find water that is salt and harsh. But there are two other kinds. The water in the White Plain, as it is called, in Caria, by the village with the name Dascylou Come, is warm and sweeter than milk to drink. I know that Herodotus says that a spring of bitter water flows into the river Hypanis. We can assuredly admit the truth of his statement, when in our days at Dicaearchia (Puteoli), in the land of the Tyrrhenians, a hot spring has been found, so acid that in a few years it dissolved the lead through which its water passed.

It is a journey of about a hundred stades from Mothone to the promontory of Coryphasium, on which Pylos lies. This was founded by Pylos the son of Cleson, bringing from the Megarid the Leleges who then occupied the country. But he did not enjoy it, as he was driven out by Neleus and the Pelasgians of Iolcos, on which he departed to the adjoining country and there occupied the Pylos in Elis. When Neleus became king, he raised Pylos to such renown that Homer in his epics calls it the city of Neleus.

It contains a sanctuary of Athena with the title Coryphasia, and a house called the house of Nestor, in which there is a painting of him. His tomb is inside the city; the tomb at a little distance from Pylos is said to be the tomb of Thrasymedes. There is a cave inside the town, in which it is said that the cattle belonging to Nestor and to Neleus before him were kept.

These cattle must have been of Thessalian stock, having once belonged to Iphiclus the father of Protesilaus. Neleus demanded these cattle as bride gifts for his daughter from her suitors, and it was on their account that Melampus went to Thessaly to gratify his brother Bias. He was put in bonds by the herdsmen of Iphiclus, but received them as his reward for the prophecies which he gave to Iphiclus at his request. So it seems the men of those days made it their business to amass wealth of this kind, herds of horses and cattle, if it is the case that Nestor desired to get possession of the cattle of Iphiclus and that Eurystheus, in view of the reputation of the Iberian cattle, ordered Heracles to drive off the herd of Geryones.

Eryx too, who was reigning then in Sicily, plainly had so violent a desire for the cattle from Erytheia that he wrestled with Heracles, staking his kingdom on the match against these cattle. As Homer says in the Iliad, a hundred kine were the first of the bride gifts paid by Iphidamas the son of Antenor to his bride's father. This confirms my argument that the men of those days took the greatest pleasure in cattle.

Book 4, Part 9 Cite

But the cattle of Neleus were pastured for the most part across the border, I think. For the country of the Pylians in general is sandy and unable to provide so much grazing. Homer testifies to this, when he mentions Nestor, always adding that he was king of sandy Pylos.

The island of Sphacteria lies in front of the harbor just as Rheneia off the anchorage at Delos. It seems that places hitherto unknown have been raised to fame by the fortunes of men. For Caphereus in Euboea is famous since the storm that here befell the Greeks with Agamemnon on their voyage from Troy. Psyttaleia by Salamis we know from the destruction of the Persians there. In like manner the Lacedaemonian reverse made Sphacteria known to all mankind. The Athenians dedicated a bronze statue of Victory also on the acropolis as a memorial of the events at Sphacteria.

When Cyparissiae is reached from Pylos, there is a spring below the city near the sea, the water of which they say gushed forth for Dionysus when he struck he ground with a thyrsus. For this reason they call the spring Dionysias. There is a shrine of Apollo in Cyparissiae and of Athena with the title Cyparissia. In the depression called Aulon there is a temple and statue of Asclepius Aulonius. Here flows the river Neda, forming the boundary between Messenia and Elis.

Book 5, Part 1 Cite

The Greeks who say that the Peloponnesus has five, and only five, divisions must agree that Arcadia contains both Arcadians and Eleans, that the second division belongs to the Achaeans, and the remaining three to the Dorians. Of the races dwelling in Peloponnesus the Arcadians and Achaeans are aborigines. When the Achaeans were driven from their land by the Dorians, they did not retire from Peloponnesus, but they cast out the Ionians and occupied the land called of old Aegialus, but now called Achaea from these Achaeans. The Arcadians, on the other hand, have from the beginning to to the present time continued in possession of their own country.

The rest of Peloponnesus belongs to immigrants. The modern Corinthians are the latest inhabitants of Peloponnesus, and from my time to the time when they received their land from the Roman Emperor is two hundred and seventeen years. The Dryopians reached the Peloponnesus from Parnassus, the Dorians from Oeta.

The Eleans we know crossed over from Calydon and Aetolia generally. Their earlier history I found to be as follows. The first to rule in this land, they say, was Aethlius, who was the son of Zeus and of Protogeneia, the daughter of Deucalion, and the father of Endymion.

The Moon, they say, fell in love with this Endymion and bore him fifty daughters. Others with greater probability say that Endymion took a wife Asterodia—others say she was Cromia, the daughter of Itonus, the son of Amphictyon; others again, Hyperippe, the daughter of Arcas—but all agree that Endymion begat Paeon, Epeius, Aetolus, and also a daughter Eurycyda. Endymion set his sons to run a race at Olympia for the throne; Epeius won, and obtained the kingdom, and his subjects were then named Epeans for the first time.

Of his brothers they say that Aetolus remained at home, while Paeon, vexed at his defeat, went into the farthest exile possible, and that the region beyond the river Axius was named after him Paeonia. As to the death of Endymion, the people of Heracleia near Miletus do not agree with the Eleans for while the Eleans show a tomb of Endymion, the folk of Heracleia say that he retired to Mount Latmus and give him honor, there being a shrine of Endymion on Latmus.

Epeius married Anaxiroe, the daughter of Coronus, and begat a daughter Hyrmina, but no male issue. In the reign of Epeius the following events also occurred. Oenomaus was the son of Alxion (though poets proclaimed his father to be Ares, and the common report agrees with them), but while lord of the land of Pisa he was put down by Pelops the Lydian, who crossed over from Asia.

On the death of Oenomaus, Pelops took possession of the land of Pisa and its bordering country Olympia, separating it from the land of Epeius. The Eleans said that Pelops was the first to found a temple of' Hermes in Peloponnesus and to sacrifice to the god, his purpose being to avert the wrath of the god for the death of Myrtilus.

Aetolus, who came to the throne after Epeius, was made to flee from Peloponnesus, because the children of Apis tried and convicted him of unintentional homicide. For Apis, the son of Jason, from Pallantium in Arcadia, was run over and killed by the chariot of Aetolus at the games held in honor of Azan. Aetolus, son of Endymion, gave to the dwellers around the Achelous their name, when he fled to this part of the mainland. But the kingdom of the Epeans fell to Eleius, the son of Eurycyda, daughter of Endymion and, believe the tale who will, of Poseidon. It was Eleius who gave the inhabitants their present name of Eleans in place of Epeans.

Eleius had a son Augeas. Those who exaggerate his glory give a turn to the name Eleius and make Helius to be the father of Augeas. This Augeas had so many cattle and flocks of goats that actually most of his land remained untilled because of the dung of the animals. Now he persuaded Heracles to cleanse for him the land from dung, either in return for a part of Elis or possibly for some other reward.

Heracles accomplished this feat too, turning aside the stream of the Menius into the dung. But, because Heracles had accomplished his task by cunning, without toil, Augeas refused to give him his reward, and banished Phyleus, the elder of his two sons, for objecting that he was wronging a man who had been his benefactor. He made preparations himself to resist Heracles, should he attack Elis; more particularly he made friends with the sons of Actor and with Amarynceus. Amarynceus, besides being a good soldier,

had a father, Pyttius, of Thessalian descent, who came from Thessaly to Elis. To Amarynceus, therefore, Augeas also gave a share in the government of Elis; Actor and his sons had a share in the kingdom and were natives of the country. For the father of Actor was Phorbas, son of Lapithus, and his mother was Hyrmina, daughter of Epeius. Actor named after her the city of Hyrmina, which he founded in Elis.

Heracles accomplished no brilliant feat in the war with Augeas. For the sons of Actor were in the prime of courageous manhood, and always put to flight the allies under Heracles, until the Corinthians proclaimed the Isthmian truce, and the sons of Actor came as envoys to the meeting. Heracles set an ambush for then, at Cleonae and murdered them. As the murderer was unknown, Moline, more than any of the other children, devoted herself to detecting him.

When she discovered him, the Eleans demanded satisfaction for the crime from the Argives, for at the time Heracles had his home at Tiryns. When the Argives refused them satisfaction, the Eleans as an alternative pressed the Corinthians entirely to exclude the Argive people from the Isthmian games. When they failed in this also, Moline is said to have laid curses on her countrymen, should they refuse to boycott the Isthmian festival. The curses of Moline are respected right down to the present day, and no athlete of Elis is wont to compete in the Isthmian games.

There are two other accounts, differing from the one that I have given. According to one of them Cypselus, the tyrant of Corinth, dedicated to Zeus a golden image at Olympia. As Cypselus died before inscribing his own name on the offering, the Corinthians asked of the Eleans leave to inscribe the name of Corinth on it, but were refused. Wroth with the Eleans, they proclaimed that they must keep away from the Isthmian games. But how could the Corinthians themselves take part in the Olympic games if the Eleans against their will were shut out by the Corinthians from the Isthmian games?

The other account is this. Prolaus, a distinguished Elean, had two sons, Philanthus and Lampus, by his wife Lysippe. These two came to the Isthmian games to compete in the boys' pancratium, and one of them intended to wrestle. Before they entered the ring they were strangled or done to death in some other way by their fellow competitors. Hence the curses of Lysippe on the Eleans, should they not voluntarily keep away from the Isthmian games. But this story too proves on examination to be silly.

For Timon, a man of Elis, won victories in the pentathlum at the Greek games, and at Olympia there is even a statue of him, with an elegiac inscription giving the crowns he won and also the reason why he secured no Isthmian victory. The inscription sets forth the reason thus:—But from going to the land of Sisyphus he was hindered by a quarrelAbout the baleful death of the Molionids.

Enough of my discussion of this question. Heracles afterwards took Elis and sacked it, with an army he had raised of Argives, Thebans and Arcadians. The Eleans were aided by the men of Pisa and of Pylus in Elis. The men of Pylus were punished by Heracles, but his expedition against Pisa was stopped by an oracle from Delphi to this effectMy father cares for Pisa, but to me in the hollows of Pytho.This oracle proved the salvation of Pisa. To Phyleus Heracles gave up the land of Elis and all the rest, more out of respect for Phyleus than because he wanted to do so: he allowed him to keep the prisoners, and Augeas to escape punishment.

The women of Elis, it is said, seeing that their land had been deprived of its vigorous manhood, prayed to Athena that they might conceive at their first union with their husbands. Their prayer was answered, and they set up a sanctuary of Athena surnamed Mother. Both wives and husbands were so delighted at their union that they named the place itself, where they first met, Bady (sweet), and the river that runs thereby Bady Water, this being a word of their native dialect.

When Phyleus had returned to Dulichium after organizing the affairs of Elis, Augeas died at an advanced age, and the kingdom of Elis devolved on Agasthenes, the son of Augeas, and on Amphimachus and Thalpius. For the sons of Actor married twin sisters, the daughters of Dexamenus who was king at Olenus; Amphimachus was born to one son and Theronice, Thalpius to her sister Theraephone and Eurytus.

However, neither Amarynceus himself nor his son Diores remained common people. Incidentally this is shown by Homer in his list of the Eleans; he makes their whole fleet to consist of forty ships, half of them under the command of Amphimachus and Thalpius, and of the remaining twenty he puts ten under Diores, the son of Amarynceus, and ten under Polyxenus, the son of Agasthenes. Polyxenus came back safe from Troy and begat a son, Amphimachus. This name I think Polyxenus gave his son because of his friendship with Amphimachus, the son of Cteatus, who died at Troy.

Amphimachus begat Eleius, and it was while Eleius was king in Elis that the assembly of the Dorian army under the sons of Aristomachus took place, with a view to returning to the Peloponnesus. To their kings was delivered this oracle, that they were to choose the “one with three eyes” to lead them on their return. When they were at a loss as to the meaning of the oracle, they were met by a man driving a mule, which was blind of one eye.

Cresphontes inferred that this was the man indicated by the oracle, and so the Dorians made him one of themselves. He urged them to descend upon the Peloponnesus in ships, and not to attempt to go across the Isthmus with a land army. Such was his advice, and at the same time he led them on the voyage from Naupactus to Molycrium. In return they agreed to give him at his request the land of Elis. The man was Oxylus, son of Haemon, the son of Thoas. This was the Thoas who helped the sons of Atreus to destroy the empire of Priam, and from Thoas to Aetolus the son of Endymion are six generations.

There were ties of kindred between the Heracleidae and the kings of Aetolia; in particular the mothers of Thoas, the son of Andraemon, and of Hyllus, the son of Heracles, were sisters. It fell to the lot of Oxylus to be an outlaw from Aetolia. The story goes that as he was throwing the quoit he missed the mark and committed unintentional homicide. The man killed by the quoit, according to one account, was Thermius, the brother of Oxylus; according to another it was Alcidocus, the son of Scopius.

The following story is also told of Oxylus. He suspected that, when the sons of Aristomachus saw that the land of Elis was a goodly one, and cultivated throughout, they would be no longer willing to give it to him. He accordingly led the Dorians through Arcadia and not through Elis. Oxylus was anxious to get the kingdom of Elis without a battle, but Dius would not give way; he proposed that, instead of their fighting a pitched battle with all their forces, a single soldier should be chosen from each army to fight as its champion.

This proposal chanced to find favour with both sides, and the champions chosen were the Elean Degmenus, an archer, and Pyraechmes, a slinger, to represent the Aetolians. Pyraechmes won and Oxylus got the kingdom. He allowed the old inhabitants, the Epeans, to keep their possessions, except that he introduced among them Aetolian colonists, giving them a share in the land. He assigned privileges to Dius, and kept up after the ancient manner the honors paid to heroes, especially the worship of Augeas, to whom even at the present day hero-sacrifice is offered.

He is also said to have induced to come into the city the dwellers in the villages near the wall, and by increasing the number of the inhabitants to have made Elis larger and generally more prosperous. There also came to him an oracle from Delphi, that he should bring in as co-founder “the descendant of Pelops.” Oxylus made diligent search, and in his search he discovered Agorius, son of Damasius, son of Penthilus, son of Orestes. He brought Agorius himself from Helice in Achaia, and with him a small body of Achaeans.

The wife of Oxylus they say was called Pieria, but beyond this nothing more about her is recorded. Oxylus is said to have had two sons, Aetolus and Laias. Aetolus died before his parents, who buried him in a tomb which they caused to be made right in the gate leading to Olympia and the sanctuary of Zeus. That they buried him thus was due to an oracle forbidding the corpse to be laid either without the city or within it. Right down to our own day the gymnasiarch sacrifices to Aetolus as to a hero every year.

After Oxylus the kingdom devolved on Laias, son of Oxylus. His descendants, however, I find did not reign, and so I pass them by, though I know who they were; my narrative must not descend to men of common rank. Later on Iphitus, of the line of Oxylus and contemporary with Lycurgus, who drew up the code of laws for the Lacedaemonians, arranged the games at Olympia and reestablished afresh the Olympic festival and truce, after an interruption of uncertain length. The reason for this interruption I will set forth when my narrative deals with Olympia.

At this time Greece was grievously worn by internal strife and plague, and it occurred to Iphitus to ask the god at Delphi for deliverance from these evils. The story goes that the Pythian priestess ordained that Iphitus himself and the Eleans must renew the Olympic games. Iphitus also induced the Eleans to sacrifice to Heracles as to a god, whom hitherto they had looked upon as their enemy. The inscription at Olympia calls Iphitus the son of Haemon, but most of the Greeks say that his father was Praxonides and not Haemon, while the ancient records of Elis traced him to a father of the same name.

The Eleans played their part in the Trojan war, and also in the battles of the Persian invasion of Greece. I pass over their struggles with the Pisans and Arcadians for the management of the Olympian games. Against their will they joined the Lacedaemonians in their invasion of Athenian territory, and shortly afterwards they rose up with the Mantineans and Argives against the Lacedaemonians, inducing Athens too to join the alliance.

When Agis invaded the land, and Xenias turned traitor, the Eleans won a battle near Olympia, routed the Lacedaemonians and drove them out of the sacred enclosure; but shortly afterwards the war was concluded by the treaty I have already spoken of in my account of the Lacedaemonians.

When Philip the son of Amyntas would not let Greece alone, the Eleans, weakened by civil strife, joined the Macedonian alliance, but they could not bring themselves to fight against the Greeks at Chaeroneia. They joined Philip's attack on the Lacedaemonians because of their old hatred of that people, but on the death of Alexander they fought on the side of the Greeks against Antipater and the Macedonians.

Book 5, Part 2 Cite

Later on Aristotimus, the son of Damaretus, the son of Etymon, became despot of Elis, being aided in his attempt by Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, who was king in Macedonia. After a despotism of six months Aristotimus was deposed, a rising against him having been organized by Chilon, Hellanicus, Lampis and Cylon; Cylon it was who with his own hand killed the despot when he had sought sanctuary at the altar of Zeus the Saviour.Such were the wars of the Eleans, of which my present enumeration must serve as a summary.

The land of Elis contains two marvels. Here, and here only in Greece, does fine flax grow; and secondly, only over the border, and not within it, can the mares be impregnated by asses. The cause of this is said to have been a curse. The fine flax of Elis is as fine as that of the Hebrews, but it is not so yellow.

As you go from Elis there is a district stretching down to the sea. It is called Samicum, and above it on the right is what is called Triphylia, in which is the city Lepreus. The citizens of this city wish to belong to the Arcadians, but it is plain that from the beginning they have been subject to the Eleans. Such of them as have won Olympic victories have been announced by the herald as Eleans from Lepreus, and Aristophanes in a comedy calls Lepreus a town of the Eleans. Leaving the river Anigrus on the left there is a road leading to Lepreus; from Samicum another leads to it from Olympia and a third from Elis. The longest of them is a day's journey.

The city got its name, they say, from its founder Lepreus the son of Pyrgeus. There was also a story that Lepreus contended with Heracles: that he was as good a trencherman. Each killed an ox at the same time and prepared it for the table. It turned out, even as Lepreus maintained, that he was as powerful a trencherman as Heracles. Afterwards he made bold to challenge him to a duel. Lepreus, they say, lost, was killed, and was buried in the land of Phigaleia. The Phigalians, however, could not show a tomb of Lepreus.

I have heard some who maintained that Lepreus was founded by Leprea, the daughter of Pyrgeus. Others say that the first dwellers in the land were afflicted with the disease leprosy, and that the city received its name from the misfortune of the inhabitants. The Lepreans told me that in their city once was a temple of Zeus Leucaeus (Of the White Poplar), the grave of Lycurgus, son of Aleus, and the grave of Caucon, over which was the figure of a man holding a lyre.

But as far as I could see they had no tomb of distinction, and no sanctuary of any deity save one of Demeter. Even this was built of unburnt brick, and contained no image. Not far from the city of the Lepreans is a spring called Arene, and they say that it derives its name from the wife of Aphareus.

Returning again to Samicum, and passing through the district, we reach the mouth of the Anigrus. The current of this river is often held back by violent gales, which carry the sand from the open sea against it and stop the onward flow of the water. So whenever the sand has become soaked on both sides, by the sea without and by the river within, beasts and still more travellers on foot are in danger of sinking into it.

The Anigrus descends from the mountain Lapithus in Arcadia, and right from its source its water does not smell sweet but actually stinks horribly. Before it receives the tributary Acidas it plainly cannot support fish-life at all. After the rivers unite, the fish that come down into the Anigrus with the water are uneatable, though before, if they are caught in the Acidas, they are eatable.

I heard from an Ephesian that the Acidas was called Iardanus in ancient times. I repeat his statement, though I have nowhere found evidence in support of it. I am convinced that the peculiar odor of the Anigrus is due to the earth through which the water springs up, just as those rivers beyond Ionia, the exhalation from which is deadly to man, owe their peculiarity to the same cause. Some Greeks say that Chiron,

others that Pylenor, another Centaur, when shot by Heracles fled wounded to this river and washed his hurt in it, and that it was the hydra's poison which gave the Anigrus its nasty smell. Others again attribute the quality of the river to Melampus the son of Amythaon, who threw into it the means he used to purify the daughters of Proetus.

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 leuke 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.

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.

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.

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.

After the Anigrus, if you travel for a considerable distance through a district that is generally sandy and grows wild pines, you will see behind you on the left the ruins of Scillus. It was one of the cities of Triphylia but in the war between Pisa and Elis the citizens of Scillus openly helped Pisa against her enemy, and for this reason the Eleans utterly destroyed it.

The Lacedaemonians afterwards separated Scillus from Elis and gave it to Xenophon, the son of Grylus, when he had been exiled from Athens, The reason for his banishment was that he had taken part in an expedition which Cyrus, the greatest enemy of the Athenian people, had organized against their friend, the Persian king. Cyrus, in fact, with his seat at Sardis, had been providing Lysander, the son of Aristocritus, and the Lacedaemonians with money for their fleet. Xenophon, accordingly, was banished and having made Scillus his home he built in honor of Ephesian Artemis a temple with a sanctuary and a sacred enclosure.

Scillus is also a hunting-ground for wild boars and deer, and the land is crossed by a river called the Selinus. The guides of Elis said that the Eleans recovered Scillus again, and that Xenophon was tried by the Olympic Council for accepting the land from the Lacedaemonians, and, obtaining pardon from the Eleans, dwelt securely in Scillus. Moreover, at a little distance from the sanctuary was shown a tomb, and upon the grave is a statue of marble from the Pentelic quarry. The neighbors say that it is the tomb of Xenophon.

As you go from Scillus along the road to Olympia, before you cross the Alpheius,there is a mountain with high, precipitous cliffs. It is called Mount Typaeum. It is a law of Elis to cast down it any women who are caught present at the Olympic games, or even on the other side of the Alpheius, on the days prohibited to women. However, they say that no woman has been caught, except Callipateira only; some, however, give the lady the name of Pherenice and not Callipateira.

She, being a widow, disguised herself exactly like a gymnastic trainer, and brought her son to compete at Olympia. Peisirodus, for so her son was called, was victorious, and Callipateira, as she was jumping over the enclosure in which they keep the trainers shut up, bared her person. So her sex was discovered, but they let her go unpunished out of respect for her father, her brothers and her son, all of whom had been victorious at Olympia. But a law was passed that for the future trainers should strip before entering the arena.

By the time you reach Olympia the Alpheius is a large and very pleasant river to see, being fed by several tributaries, including seven very important ones. The Helisson joins the Alpheius passing through Megalopolis; the Brentheates comes out of the territory of that city; past Gortyna, where is a sanctuary of Asclepius, flows the Gortynius; from Melaeneae, between the territories of Megalopolis and Heraea, comes the Buphagus; from the land of the Clitorians the Ladon; from Mount Erymanthus a stream with the same name as the mountain. These come down into the Alpheius from Arcadia; the Cladeus comes from Elis to join it. The source of the Alpheius itself is in Arcadia, and not in Elis.

There is another legend about the Alpheius. They say that there was a hunter called Alpheius, who fell in love with Arethusa, who was herself a huntress. Arethusa, unwilling to marry, crossed, they say, to the island opposite Syracuse called Ortygia, and there turned from a woman to a spring. Alpheius too was changed by his love into the river.

This account of Alpheius [...] to Ortygia. But that the Alpheius passes through the sea and mingles his waters with the spring at this place I cannot disbelieve, as I know that the god at Delphi confirms the story. For when he despatched Archias the Corinthian to found Syracuse he uttered this oracle:An isle, Ortygia, lies on the misty oceanOver against Trinacria, where the mouth of Alpheius bubblesMingling with the springs of broad Arethusa.For this reason, therefore, because the water of the Alpheius mingles with the Arethusa, I am convinced that the legend arose of the river's love-affair.

Those Greeks or Egyptians who have gone up into Ethiopia beyond Syene as far as the Ethiopian city of Meroe all say that the Nile enters a lake, and passes through it as though it were dry land, and that after this it flows through lower Aethiopia into Egypt before coming down into the sea at Pharos. And in the land of the Hebrews, as I can myself bear witness, the river Jordan passes through a lake called Tiberias, and then, entering another lake called the Dead Sea, it disappears in it.

The Dead Sea has the opposite qualities to those of any other water. Living creatures float in it naturally without swimming; dying creatures sink to the bottom. Hence the lake is barren of fish; their danger stares them in the face, and they flee back to the water which is their native element. The peculiarity of the Alpheius is shared by a river of Ionia. The source of it is on Mount Mycale, and having gone through the intervening sea the river rises again opposite Branchidae at the harbor called Panormus.

These things then are as I have described them. As for the Olympic games, the most learned antiquaries of Elis say that Cronus was the first king of heaven, and that in his honor a temple was built in Olympia by the men of that age, who were named the Golden Race. When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Dactyls of Ida, who are the same as those called Curetes. They came from Cretan Ida—Heracles, Paeonaeus, Epimedes, Iasius and Idas.

Heracles, being the eldest, matched his brothers, as a game, in a running-race, and crowned the winner with a branch of wild olive, of which they had such a copious supply that they slept on heaps of its leaves while still green. It is said to have been introduced into Greece by Heracles from the land of the Hyperboreans, men living beyond the home of the North Wind.

Olen the Lycian, in his hymn to Achaeia, was the first to say that from these Hyperboreans Achaeia came to Delos. When Melanopus of Cyme composed an ode to Opis and Hecaerge declaring that these, even before Achaeia, came to Delos from the Hyperboreans.

And Aristeas of Proconnesus—for he too made mention of the Hyperboreans—may perhaps have learnt even more about them from the Issedones, to whom he says in his poem that he came. Heracles of Ida, therefore, has the reputation of being the first to have held, on the occasion I mentioned, the games, and to have called them Olympic. So he established the custom of holding them every fifth year, because he and his brothers were five in number.

Now some say that Zeus wrestled here with Cronus himself for the throne, while others say that he held the games in honor of his victory over Cronus. The record of victors include Apollo, who outran Hermes and beat Ares at boxing. It is for this reason, they say, that the Pythian flute-song is played while the competitors in the pentathlum are jumping; for the flute-song is sacred to Apollo, and Apollo won Olympic victories.

Later on there came (they say) from Crete Clymenus, the son of Cardys, about fifty years after the flood came upon the Greeks in the time of Deucalion. He was descended from Heracles of Ida; he held the games at Olympia and set up an altar in honor of Heracles, his ancestor, and the other Curetes, giving to Heracles the surname of Parastates (Assistant). And Endymion, the son of Aethlius, deposed Clymenus, and set his sons a race in Olympia with the kingdom as the prize.

And about a generation later than Endymion, Pelops held the games in honor of Olympian Zeus in a more splendid manner than any of his predecessors. When the sons of Pelops were scattered from Elis over all the rest of Peloponnesus, Amythaon, the son of Cretheus, and cousin of Endymion on his father's side (for they say that Aethlius too was the son of Aeolus, though supposed to be a son of Zeus), held the Olympian games, and after him Pelias and Neleus in common.

Augeas too held them, and likewise Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, after the conquest of Elis. The victors crowned by Heracles include Iolaus, who won with the mares of Heracles. So of old a competitor was permitted to compete with mares which were not his own. Homer, at any rate, in the games held in honor of Patroclus, has told how Menelaus drove a pair of which one was Aetha, a mare of Agamemnon, while the other was his own horse.

Book 5, Part 3 Cite

Moreover, Iolaus used to be charioteer to Heracles. So Iolaus won the chariot-race, and Iasius, an Arcadian, the horse-race; while of the sons of Tyndareus one won the foot-race and Polydeuces the boxing-match. Of Heracles himself it is said that he won victories at wrestling and the pancratium.

After the reign of Oxylus, who also celebrated the games, the Olympic festival was discontinued until the reign of Iphitus. When Iphitus, as I have already related, renewed the games, men had by this time forgotten the ancient tradition, the memory of which revived bit by bit, and as it revived they made additions to the games.

This I can prove; for when the unbroken tradition of the Olympiads began there was first the foot-race, and Coroebus an Elean was victor. There is no statue of Coroebus at Olympia, but his grave is on the borders of Elis. Afterwards, at the fourteenth Festival, the double foot-race was added: Hypenus of Pisa won the prize of wild olive in the double race, and at the next Festival Acanthus of Lacedaemon won in the long course.

At the eighteenth Festival they remembered the pentathlum and wrestling. Lampis won the first and Eurybatus the second, these also being Lacedaemonians. At the twenty-third Festival they restored the prizes for boxing, and the victor was Onomastus of Smyrna, which already was a part of Ionia. At the twenty-fifth they recognized the race of full-grown horses, and Pagondas of Thebes was proclaimed “victor in the chariot-race.”

At the eighth Festival after this they admitted the pancratium for men and the horse-race. The horse-race was won by Crauxidas of Crannon, and Lygdamis of Syracuse overcame all who entered for the pancratium. Lygdamis has his tomb near the quarries at Syracuse, and according to the Syracusans he was as big as Heracles of Thebes, though I cannot vouch for the statement.

The contests for boys have no authority in old tradition, but were established by the Eleans themselves because they approved of them. The prizes for running and wrestling open to boys were instituted at the thirty-seventh Festival; Hipposthenes of Lacedaemon won the prize for wrestling, and that for running was won by Polyneices of Elis. At the forty-first Festival they introduced boxing for boys, and the winner out of those who entered for it was Philytas of Sybaris.

The race for men in armour was approved at the sixty-fifth Festival, to provide, I suppose, military training; the first winner of the race with shields was Damaretus of Heraea. The race for two full-grown horses, called synoris (chariot and pair), was instituted at the ninety-third Festival, and the winner was Evagoras of Elis. At the ninety-ninth Festival they resolved to hold contests for chariots drawn by foals, and Sybariades of Lacedaemon won the garland with his chariot and foals.

Afterwards they added races for chariots and pairs of foals, and for single foals with rider. It is said that the victors proclaimed were: for the chariot and pair, Belistiche, a woman from the seaboard of Macedonia; for the ridden race, Tlepolemus of Lycia. Tlepolemus, they say, won at the hundred and thirty-first Festival, and Belistiche at the third before this. At the hundred and forty-fifth Festival prizes were offered for boys in the pancratium, the victory falling to Phaedimus, an Aeolian from the city Troas.

Certain contests, too, have been dropped at Olympia, the Eleans resolving to discontinue them. The pentathlum for boys was instituted at the thirty-eighth Festival; but after Eutelidas of Lace-daemon had received the wild olive for it, the Eleans disapproved of boys entering for this competition. The races for mule-carts, and the trotting-race, were instituted respectively at the seventieth Festival and the seventy-first, but were both abolished by proclamation at the eighty-fourth. When they were first instituted, Thersius of Thessaly won the race for mule-carts, while Pataecus, an Achaean from Dyme, won the trotting-race.

The trotting-race was for mares, and in the last part of the course the riders jumped off and ran beside the mares, holding on to the bridle, just as at the present day those do who are called “mounters.” The mounters, however, differ from the riders in the trotting-race by having different badges, and by riding horses instead of mares. The cart-race was neither of venerable antiquity nor yet a graceful performance. Moreover, each cart was drawn by a pair of mules, not horses, and there is an ancient curse on the Eleans if this animal is even born in Elis.

The order of the games in our own day, which places the sacrifices to the god for the pentathlum and chariot-races second, and those for the other competitions first, was fixed at the seventy-seventh Festival. Previously the contests for men and for horses were held on the same day. But at the Festival I mentioned the pancratiasts prolonged their contests till night-fall, because they were not summoned to the arena soon enough. The cause of the delay was partly the chariot-race, but still more the pentathlum. Callias of Athens was champion of the pancratiasts on this occasion, but never afterwards was the pancratium to be interfered with by the pentathlum or the chariots.

The rules for the presidents of the games are not the same now as they were at the first institution of the festival. Iphitus acted as sole president, as likewise did the descendants of Oxylus after Iphitus. But at the fiftieth Festival two men, appointed by lot from all the Eleans, were entrusted with the management of the Olympic games, and for a long time after this the number of the presidents continued to be two.

But at the ninety-fifth Festival nine umpires were appointed. To three of them were entrusted the chariot-races, another three were to supervise the pentathlum, the rest superintended the remaining contests. At the second Festival after this the tenth umpire was added. At the hundred and third Festival, the Eleans having twelve tribes, one umpire was chosen from each.

But they were hard pressed in a war with the Arcadians and lost a portion of their territory, along with all the parishes included in the surrendered district, and so the number of tribes was reduced to eight in the hundred and fourth Olympiad. Thereupon were chosen umpires equal in number to the tribes. At the hundred and eighth Festival they returned again to the number of ten umpires, which has continued unchanged down to the present day.

Many are the sights to be seen in Greece, and many are the wonders to be heard; but on nothing does Heaven bestow more care than on the Eleusinian rites and the Olympic games.The sacred grove of Zeus has been called from of old Altis, a corruption of the word “alsos,” which means a grove. Pindar too calls the place Altis in an ode composed for an Olympic victor.

The temple and the image were made for Zeus from spoils, when Pisa was crushed in war by the Eleans, and with Pisa such of the subject peoples as conspired together with her. The image itself was wrought by Pheidias, as is testified by an inscription written under the feet of Zeus:Pheidias, son of Charmides, an Athenian, made me.The temple is in the Doric style, and the outside has columns all around it. It is built of native stone.

Its height up to the pediment is sixty-eight feet, its breadth is ninety-five, its length two hundred and thirty. The architect was Libon, a native. The tiles are not of baked earth, but of Pentelic marble cut into the shape of tiles. The invention is said to be that of Byzes of Naxos, who they say made the images in Naxos on which is the inscription:—To the offspring of Leto was I dedicated by Euergus,A Naxian, son of Byzes, who first made tiles of stone.This Byzes lived about the time of Alyattes the Lydian, when Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, reigned over the Medes.

At Olympia a gilt caldron stands on each end of the roof, and a Victory, also gilt, is set in about the middle of the pediment. Under the image of Victory has been dedicated a golden shield, with Medusa the Gorgon in relief. The inscription on the shield declares who dedicated it and the reason why they did so. It runs thus:—The temple has a golden shield; from TanagraThe Lacedaemonians and their allies dedicated it,A gift taken from the Argives, Athenians and Ionians,The tithe offered for victory in war.This battle I also mentioned in my history of Attica, Then I described the tombs that are at Athens.

On the outside of the frieze that runs round the temple at Olympia, above the columns, are gilt shields one and twenty in number, an offering made by the Roman general Mummius when he had conquered the Achaeans in war, captured Corinth, and driven out its Dorian inhabitants.

To come to the pediments: in the front pediment there is, not yet begun, the chariot-race between Pelops and Oenomaus, and preparation for the actual race is being made by both. An image of Zeus has been carved in about the middle of the pediment; on the right of Zeus is Oenomaus with a helmet on his head, and by him Sterope his wife, who was one of the daughters of Atlas. Myrtilus too, the charioteer of Oenomaus, sits in front of the horses, which are four in number. After him are two men. They have no names, but they too must be under orders from Oenomaus to attend to the horses.

At the very edge lies Cladeus, the river which, in other ways also, the Eleans honor most after the Alpheius. On the left from Zeus are Pelops, Hippodameia, the charioteer of Pelops, horses, and two men, who are apparently grooms of Pelops. Then the pediment narrows again, and in this part of it is represented the Alpheius. The name of the charioteer of Pelops is, according to the account of the Troezenians, Sphaerus, but the guide at Olympia called him Cillas.

The sculptures in the front pediment are by Paeonius, who came from Mende in Thrace; those in the back pediment are by Alcamenes, a contemporary of Pheidias, ranking next after him for skill as a sculptor. What he carved on the pediment is the fight between the Lapithae and the Centaurs at the marriage of Peirithous. In the center of the pediment is Peirithous. On one side of him is Eurytion, who has seized the wife of Peirithous, with Caeneus bringing help to Peirithous, and on the other side is Theseus defending himself against the Centaurs with an axe. One Centaur has seized a maid, another a boy in the prime of youth. Alcamenes, I think, carved this scene, because he had learned from Homer's poem that Peirithous was a son of Zeus, and because he knew that Theseus was a great grandson of Pelops.

Most of the labours of Heracles are represented at Olympia. Above the doors of the temple is carved the hunting of the Arcadian boar, his exploit against Diomedes the Thracian, and that against Geryones at Erytheia; he is also about to receive the burden of Atlas, and he cleanses the land from dung for the Eleans. Above the doors of the rear chamber he is taking the girdle from the Amazon; and there are the affairs of the deer, of the bull at Cnossus, of the Stymphalian birds, of the hydra, and of the Argive lion.

As you enter the bronze doors you see on the right, before the pillar, Iphitus being crowned by a woman, Ececheiria (Truce), as the elegiac couplet on the statue says. Within the temple stand pillars, and inside also are porticoes above, with an approach through them to the image. There has also been constructed a winding ascent to the roof.

The god sits on a throne, and he is made of gold and ivory. On his head lies a garland which is a copy of olive shoots. In his right hand he carries a Victory, which, like the statue, is of ivory and gold; she wears a ribbon and—on her head—a garland. In the left hand of the god is a scepter, ornamented with every kind of metal, and the bird sitting on the scepter is the eagle. The sandals also of the god are of gold, as is likewise his robe. On the robe are embroidered figures of animals and the flowers of the lily.

The throne is adorned with gold and with jewels, to say nothing of ebony and ivory. Upon it are painted figures and wrought images. There are four Victories, represented as dancing women, one at each foot of the throne, and two others at the base of each foot. On each of the two front feet are set Theban children ravished by sphinxes, while under the sphinxes Apollo and Artemis are shooting down the children of Niobe.

Between the feet of the throne are four rods, each one stretching from foot to foot. The rod straight opposite the entrance has on it seven images; how the eighth of them disappeared nobody knows. These must be intended to be copies of obsolete contests, since in the time of Pheidias contests for boys had not yet been introduced. The figure of one binding his own head with a ribbon is said to resemble in appearance Pantarces, a stripling of Elis said to have been the love of Pheidias. Pantarces too won the wrestling-bout for boys at the eighty-sixth Festival.

On the other rods is the band that with Heracles fights against the Amazons. The number of figures in the two parties is twenty-nine, and Theseus too is ranged among the allies of Heracles. The throne is supported not only by the feet, but also by an equal number of pillars standing between the feet. It is impossible to go under the throne, in the way we enter the inner part of the throne at Amyclae. At Olympia there are screens constructed like walls which keep people out.

Of these screens the part opposite the doors is only covered with dark-blue paint; the other parts show pictures by Panaenus. Among them is Atlas, supporting heaven and earth, by whose side stands Heracles ready to receive the load of Atlas, along with Theseus; Perithous, Hellas, and Salamis carrying in her hand the ornament made for the top of a ship's bows; then Heracles' exploit against the Nemean lion, the outrage committed by Ajax on Cassandra,

Hippodameia the daughter of Oenomaus with her mother, and Prometheus still held by his chains, though Heracles has been raised up to him. For among the stories told about Heracles is one that he killed the eagle which tormented Prometheus in the Caucasus, and set free Prometheus himself from his chains. Last in the picture come Penthesileia giving up the ghost and Achilles supporting her; two Hesperides are carrying the apples, the keeping of which, legend says, had been entrusted to them. This Panaenus was a brother of Pheidias; he also painted the picture of the battle of Marathon in the painted portico at Athens.

On the uppermost parts of the throne Pheidias has made, above the head of the image, three Graces on one side and three Seasons on the other. These in epic poetry are included among the daughters of Zeus. Homer too in the Iliad says that the Seasons have been entrusted with the sky, just like guards of a king's court. The footstool of Zeus, called by the Athenians thranion, has golden lions and, in relief, the fight of Theseus against the Amazons, the first brave deed of the Athenians against foreigners.

On the pedestal supporting the throne and Zeus with all his adornments are works in gold: the Sun mounted on a chariot, Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus, and by his side Grace. Close to her comes Hermes, and close to Hermes Hestia. After Hestia is Eros receiving Aphrodite as she rises from the sea, and Aphrodite is being crowned by Persuasion. There are also reliefs of Apollo with Artemis, of Athena and of Heracles; and near the end of the pedestal Amphitrite and Poseidon, while the Moon is driving what I think is a horse. Some have said that the steed of the goddess is a mule not a horse, and they tell a silly story about the mule.

Book 5, Part 4 Cite

I know that the height and breadth of the Olympic Zeus have been measured and recorded; but I shall not praise those who made the measurements, for even their records fall far short of the impression made by a sight of the image. Nay, the god himself according to legend bore witness to the artistic skill of Pheidias. For when the image was quite finished Pheidias prayed the god to show by a sign whether the work was to his liking. Immediately, runs the legend, a thunderbolt fell on that part of the floor where down to the present day the bronze jar stood to cover the place.

All the floor in front of the image is paved, not with white, but with black tiles. In a circle round the black stone runs a raised rim of Parian marble, to keep in the olive oil that is poured out. For olive oil is beneficial to the image at Olympia, and it is olive oil that keeps the ivory from being harmed by the marshiness of the Altis. On the Athenian Acropolis the ivory of the image they call the Maiden is benefited, not by olive oil, but by water. For the Acropolis, owing to its great height, is over-dry, so that the image, being made of ivory, needs water or dampness.

When I asked at Epidaurus why they pour neither water nor olive oil on the image of Asclepius, the attendants at the sanctuary informed me that both the image of the god and the throne were built over a cistern.

Those who think that the projections from the mouth of an elephant are not horns but teeth of the animal should consider both the elk, a beast of the Celtic land, and also the Aethiopian bull. Male elks have horns on their brows, but the female does not grow them at all. Ethiopian bulls grow their horns on their noses. Who therefore would be greatly surprised at horns growing out of an animal's mouth?

They may also correct their error from the following considerations. Horns drop off animals each year and grow again; the deer and the antelope undergo this experience, and so likewise does the elephant. But a tooth will never be found to grow again, at least after the animal is full-grown. So if the projections through the mouth were teeth and not horns, how could they grow up again? Again, a tooth refuses to yield to fire; but fire turns the horns of oxen and elephants from round to flat, and also into other shapes. However, the hippopotamus and the boar have tusks growing out of the lower jaw, but we do not see horns growing out of jaws.

So be assured that an elephant's horns descend through the temples from above, and so bend outwards. My statement is not hearsay; I once saw an elephant's skull in the sanctuary of Artemis in Campania. The sanctuary is about thirty stades from Capua, which is the capital of Campania. So the elephant differs from all other animals in the way its horns grow, just as its size and shape are peculiar to itself. And the Greeks in my opinion showed an unsurpassed zeal and generosity in honoring the gods, in that they imported ivory from India and Aethiopia to make images.

In Olympia there is a woollen curtain, adorned with Assyrian weaving and Phoenician purple, which was dedicated by Antiochus, who also gave as offerings the golden aegis with the Gorgon on it above the theater at Athens. This curtain is not drawn upwards to the roof as is that in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, but it is let down to the ground by cords.

The offerings inside, or in the fore-temple include: a throne of Arimnestus, king of Etruria, who was the first foreigner to present an offering to the Olympic Zeus, and bronze horses of Cynisca, tokens of an Olympic victory. These are not as large as real horses, and stand in the fore-temple on the right as you enter. There is also a tripod, plated with bronze, upon which, before the table was made, were displayed the crowns for the victors.

There are statues of emperors: Hadrian, of Parian marble dedicated by the cities of the Achaean confederacy, and Trajan, dedicated by all the Greeks. This emperor subdued the Getae beyond Thrace, and made war on Osroes the descendant of Arsaces and on the Parthians. Of his architectural achievements the most remarkable are baths called after him, a large circular theater, a building for horse-races which is actually two stades long, and the Forum at Rome, worth seeing not only for its general beauty but especially for its roof made of bronze.

Of the statues set up in the round buildings, the amber one represents Augustus the Roman emperor, the ivory one they told me was a portrait of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia. After him the greatest city in Bithynia was renamed Nicomedeia; before him it was called Astacus, and its first founder was Zypoetes, a Thracian by birth to judge from his name. This amber of which the statue of Augustus is made, when found native in the sand of the Eridanus, is very rare and precious to men for many reasons; the other “amber” is an alloy of gold and silver.

In the temple at Olympia are four offerings of Nero—three crowns representing wild-olive leaves, and one representing oak leaves. Here too are laid twenty-five bronze shields, which are for the armed men to carry in the race. Tablets too are set up, including one on which is written the oath sworn by the Eleans to the Athenians, the Argives and the Mantineans, that they would be their allies for a hundred years.

Within the Altis there is also a sacred enclosure consecrated to Pelops, whom the Eleans as much prefer in honor above the heroes of Olympia as they prefer Zeus over the other gods. To the right of the entrance of the temple of Zeus, on the north side, lies the Pelopium. It is far enough removed from the temple for statues and other offerings to stand in the intervening space, and beginning at about the middle of the temple it extends as far as the rear chamber. It is surrounded by a stone fence, within which trees grow and statues have been dedicated.

The entrance is on the west. The sanctuary is said to have been set apart to Pelops by Heracles the son of Amphitryon. Heracles too was a great-grandson of Pelops, and he is also said to have sacrificed to him into the pit. Right down to the present day the magistrates of the year sacrifice to him, and the victim is a black ram. No portion of this sacrifice goes to the sooth-sayer, only the neck of the ram it is usual to give to the “woodman,” as he is called.

The woodman is one of the servants of Zeus, and the task assigned to him is to supply cities and private individuals with wood for sacrifices at a fixed rate, wood of the white poplar, but of no other tree, being allowed. If anybody, whether Elean or stranger, eat of the meat of the victim sacrificed to Pelops, he may not enter the temple of Zeus. The same rule applies to those who sacrifice to Telephus at Pergamus on the river Caicus; these too may not go up to the temple of Asclepius before they have bathed.

The following tale too is told. When the war of the Greeks against Troy was prolonged, the soothsayers prophesied to them that they would not take the city until they had fetched the bow and arrows of Heracles and a bone of Pelops. So it is said that they sent for Philoctetes to the camp, and from Pisa was brought to them a bone of Pelops—a shoulder-blade. As they were returning home, the ship carrying the bone of Pelops was wrecked off Euboea in the storm.

Many years later than the capture of Troy, Damarmenus, a fisherman from Eretria, cast a net into the sea and drew up the bone. Marvelling at its size he kept it hidden in the sand. At last he went to Delphi, to inquire whose the bone was, and what he ought to do with it.

It happened that by the providence of Heaven there was then at Delphi an Elean embassy praying for deliverance from a pestilence. So the Pythian priestess ordered the Eleans to recover the bones of Pelops, and Damarmenus to give back to the Eleans what he had found. He did so, and the Eleans repaid him by appointing him and his descendants to be guardians of the bone. The shoulder-blade of Pelops had disappeared by my time, because, I suppose, it had been hidden in the depths so long, and besides its age it was greatly decayed through the salt water.

That Pelops and Tantalus once dwelt in my country there have remained signs right down to the present day. There is a lake called after Tantalus and a famous grave, and on a peak of Mount Sipylus there is a throne of Pelops beyond the sanctuary of Plastene the Mother. If you cross the river Hermus you see an image of Aphrodite in Temnus made of a living myrtle-tree. It is a tradition among us that it was dedicated by Pelops when he was propitiating the goddess and asking for Hippodameia to be his bride.

The altar of Olympic Zeus is about equally distant from the Pelopium and the sanctuary of Hera, but it is in front of both. Some say that it was built by Idaean Heracles, others by the local heroes two generations later than Heracles. It has been made from the ash of the thighs of the victims sacrificed to Zeus, as is also the altar at Pergamus. There is an ashen altar of Samian Hera not a bit grander than what in Attica the Athenians call “improvised hearths.”

The first stage of the altar at Olympia, called prothysis, has a circumference of one hundred and twenty-five feet; the circumference of the stage on the prothysis is thirty-two feet; the total height of the altar reaches to twenty-two feet. The victims themselves it is the custom to sacrifice on the lower stage, the prothysis. But the thighs they carry up to the highest part of the altar and burn them there.

The steps that lead up to the prothysis from either side are made of stone, but those leading from the prothysis to the upper part of the altar are, like the altar itself, composed of ashes. The ascent to the prothysis may be made by maidens, and likewise by women, when they are not shut out from Olympia, but men only can ascend from the prothysis to the highest part of the altar. Even when the festival is not being held, sacrifice is offered to Zeus by private individuals and daily by the Eleans.

Every year the soothsayers, keeping carefully to the nineteenth day of the month Elaphius, bring the ash from the town-hall, and making it into a paste with the water of the Alpheius they daub the altar therewith. But never may the ash be made into paste with other water, and for this reason the Alpheius is thought to be of all rivers the dearest to Olympic Zeus. There is also an altar at Didyma of the Milesians, which Heracles the Theban is said by the Milesians to have made from the blood of the victims. But in later times the blood of the sacrifices has not made the altar excessively large.

The altar at Olympia shows another strange peculiarity, which is this. The kite, the bird of prey with the most rapacious nature, never harms those who are sacrificing at Olympia. Should ever a kite seize the entrails or some of the flesh, it is regarded as an unfavorable sign for the sacrificer. There is a story that when Heracles the son of Alcmena was sacrificing at Olympia he was much worried by the flies. So either on his own initiative or at somebody's suggestion he sacrificed to Zeus Averter of Flies, and thus the flies were diverted to the other side of the Alpheius. It is said that in the same way the Eleans too sacrifice to Zeus Averter of Flies, to drive the flies out of Olympia.

The Eleans are wont to use for the sacrifices to Zeus the wood of the white poplar and of no other tree, preferring the white poplar, I think, simply and solely because Heracles brought it into Greece from Thesprotia. And it is my opinion that when Heracles sacrificed to Zeus at Olympia he himself burned the thigh bones of the victims upon wood of the white poplar. Heracles found the white poplar growing on the banks of the Acheron, the river in Thesprotia, and for this reason Homer calls it “Acheroid.”

So from the first down to the present all rivers have not been equally suited for the growth of plants and trees. Tamarisks grow best and in the greatest numbers by the Maeander; the Boeotian Asopus can produce the tallest reeds; the persea tree flourishes only in the water of the Nile. So it is no wonder that the white poplar grew first by the Acheron and the wild olive by the Alpheius, and that the dark poplar is a nursling of the Celtic land of the Celtic Eridanus.

Now that I have finished my account of the greatest altar, let me proceed to describe all the altars in Olympia. My narrative will follow in dealing with them the order in which the Eleans are wont to sacrifice on the altars. They sacrifice to Hestia first, secondly to Olympic Zeus, going to the altar within the temple, thirdly to Zeus Laoetas and to Poseidon Laoetas. This sacrifice too it is usual to offer on one altar. Fourthly and fifthly they sacrifice to Artemis and to Athena, Goddess of Booty,

sixthly to the Worker Goddess. The descendants of Pheidias, called Cleansers, have received from the Eleans the privilege of cleaning the image of Zeus from the dirt that settles on it, and they sacrifice to the Worker Goddess before they begin to polish the image. There is another altar of Athena near the temple, and by it a square altar of Artemis rising gently to a height.

After the altars I have enumerated there is one on which they sacrifice to Alpheius and Artemis together. The cause of this Pindar, I think, intimates in an ode, and I give it in my account of Letrini. Not far from it stands another altar of Alpheius, and by it one of Hephaestus. This altar of Hephaestus some Eleans call the altar of Warlike Zeus. These same Eleans also say that Oenomaus used to sacrifice to Warlike Zeus on this altar whenever he was about to begin a chariot-race with one of the suitors of Hippodameia.

After this stands an altar of Heracles surnamed Parastates (Assistant); there are also altars of the brothers of Heracles—Epimedes, Idas, Paeonaeus, and Iasus; I am aware, however, that the altar of Idas is called by others the altar of Acesidas. At the place where are the foundations of the house of Oenomaus stand two altars: one is of Zeus of the Courtyard, which Oenomaus appears to have had built himself, and the other of Zeus of the Thunderbolt, which I believe they built later, when the thunderbolt had struck the house of Oenomaus.

An account of the great altar I gave a little way back; it is called the altar of Olympian Zeus. By it is an altar of Unknown Gods, and after this an altar of Zeus Purifier, one of Victory, and another of Zeus—this time surnamed Underground. There are also altars of all gods, and of Hera surnamed Olympian, this too being made of ashes. They say that it was dedicated by Clymenus. After this comes an altar of Apollo and Hermes in common, because the Greeks have a story about them that Hermes invented the lyre and Apollo the lute.

Next come an altar of Concord, another of Athena, and the altar of the Mother of the gods. Quite close to the entrance to the stadium are two altars; one they call the altar of Hermes of the Games, the other the altar of Opportunity. I know that a hymn to Opportunity is one of the poems of Ion of Chios; in the hymn Opportunity is made out to be the youngest child of Zeus. Near the treasury of the Sicyonians is an altar of Heracles, either one of the Curetes or the son of Alcmena, for both accounts are given.

On what is called the Gaeum (sanctuary of Earth) is an altar of Earth; it too is of ashes. In more ancient days they say that there was an oracle also of Earth in this place. On what is called the Stomium (Mouth) the altar to Themis has been built. All round the altar of Zeus Descender runs a fence; this altar is near the great altar made of the ashes. The reader must remember that the altars have not been enumerated in the order in which they stand, but the order followed by my narrative is that followed by the Eleans in their sacrifices. By the sacred enclosure of Pelops is an altar of Dionysus and the Graces in common; between them is an altar of the Muses, and next to these an altar of the Nymphs.

Book 5, Part 5 Cite

Outside the Altis there is a building called the workshop of Pheidias, where he wrought the image of Zeus piece by piece. In the building is an altar to all the gods in common. Now return back again to the Altis opposite the Leonidaeum.

The Leonidaeum is outside the sacred enclosure, but at the processional entrance to the Altis, which is the only way open to those who take part in the processions. It was dedicated by Leonidas, a native, but in my time the Roman governors of Greece used it as their lodging. Between the processional entrance and the Leonidaeum is a street, for the Eleans call streets what the Athenians call lanes.

Well, there is in the Altis, when you are about to pass to the left of the Leonidaeum, an altar of Aphrodite, and after it one of the Seasons. About opposite the rear chamber a wild olive is growing on the right. It is called the olive of the Beautiful Crown, and from its leaves are made the crowns which it is customary to give to winners of Olympic contests. Near this wild olive stands an altar of Nymphs; these too are styled Nymphs of the Beautiful Crowns.

Outside the Altis, but on the right of the Leonidaeum, is an altar of Artemis of the Market, and one has also been built for Mistresses, and in my account of Arcadia I will tell you about the goddess they call Mistress. After this is an altar of Zeus of the Market, and before what is called the Front Seats stands an altar of Apollo surnamed Pythian, and after it one of Dionysus. The last altar is said to be not old, and to have been dedicated by private individuals.

As you go to the starting-point for the chariot-race there is an altar with an inscription “to the Bringer of Fate.” This is plainly a surname of Zeus, who knows the affairs of men, all that the Fates give them, and all that is not destined for them. Near there is also an oblong altar of Fates, after it one of Hermes, and the next two are of Zeus Most High. At the starting-point for the chariot-race, just about opposite the middle of it, there are in the open altars of Poseidon Horse-god and Hera Horse-goddess, and near the pillar an altar of the Dioscuri.

At the entrance to what is called the Wedge there is on one side an altar of Ares Horse-god, on the other one of Athena Horse-goddess. On entering the Wedge itself you see altars of Good Luck, Pan and Aphrodite; at the innermost part of the Wedge an altar of the Nymphs called Blooming. An altar of Artemis stands on the right as you return from the Portico that the Eleans call the Portico of Agnaptus, giving to the building the name of its architect.

After re-entering the Altis by the processional gate there are behind the Heraeum altars of the river Cladeus and of Artemis; the one after them is Apollo's, the fourth is of Artemis surnamed Coccoca, and the fifth is of Apollo Thermius. As to the Elean surname Thermius, the conjecture occurred to me that in the Attic dialect it would be thesmios (god of laws), but why Artemis is surnamed Coccoca I could not discover.

Before what is called Theëcoleon is a building, in a corner of which has been set up an altar of Pan. The Town Hall of the Eleans is within the Altis, and it has been built beside the exit beyond the gymnasium. In this gymnasium are the running-tracks and the wrestling-grounds for the athletes. In front of the door of the Town Hall is an altar of Artemis Huntress.

In the Town Hall itself, on the right as you enter the room where they have the hearth, is an altar of Pan. This hearth too is made of ashes, and on it fire burns every day and likewise every night. The ashes from this hearth, according to the account I have already given, they bring to the altar of Olympian Zeus, and what is brought from the hearth contributes a great deal to the size of the altar.

Each month the Eleans sacrifice once on all the altars I have enumerated. They sacrifice in an ancient manner; for they burn on the altars incense with wheat which has been kneaded with honey, placing also on the altars twigs of olive, and using wine for a libation. Only to the Nymphs and the Mistresses are they not wont to pour wine in libation, nor do they pour it on the altar common to all the gods. The care of the sacrifices is given to a priest, holding office for one month, to soothsayers and libation-bearers, and also to a guide, a flute-player and the woodman.

The traditional words spoken by them in the Town Hall at the libations, and the hymns which they sing, it were not right for me to introduce into my narrative. They pour libations, not only to the Greek gods, but also to the god in Libya, to Hera Ammonia and to Parammon, which is a surname of Hermes. From very early times it is plain that they used the oracle in Libya, and in the temple of Ammon are altars which the Eleans dedicated. On them are engraved the questions of the Eleans, the replies of the god, and the names of the men who came to Ammon from Elis. These are in the temple of Ammon.

The Eleans also pour libations to all heroes and wives of heroes who are honored either in Elis or among the Aetolians. The songs sung in the Town Hall are in the Doric dialect, but they do not say who it was that composed them. The Eleans also have a banqueting room. This too is in the Town Hall, opposite the chamber where stands the hearth. In this room they entertain the winners in the Olympic games.

It remains after this for me to describe the temple of Hera and the noteworthy objects contained in it. The Elean account says that it was the people of Scillus, one of the cities in Triphylia, who built the temple about eight years after Oxylus came to the throne of Elis. The style of the temple is Doric, and pillars stand all round it. In the rear chamber one of the two pillars is of oak. The length of the temple is one hundred and sixty-nine feet, the breadth sixty-three feet, the height not short of fifty feet. Who the architect was they do not relate.

Every fourth year there is woven for Hera a robe by the Sixteen women, and the same also hold games called Heraea. The games consist of foot-races for maidens. These are not all of the same age. The first to run are the youngest; after them come the next in age, and the last to run are the oldest of the maidens. They run in the following way:

their hair hangs down, a tunic reaches to a little above the knee, and they bare the right shoulder as far as the breast. These too have the Olympic stadium reserved for their games, but the course of the stadium is shortened for them by about one-sixth of its length. To the winning maidens they give crowns of olive and a portion of the cow sacrificed to Hera. They may also dedicate statues with their names inscribed upon them. Those who administer to the Sixteen are, like the presidents of the games, married women.

The games of the maidens too are traced back to ancient times; they say that, out of gratitude to Hera for her marriage with Pelops, Hippodameia assembled the Sixteen Women, and with them inaugurated the Heraea. They relate too that a victory was won by Chloris, the only surviving daughter of the house of Amphion, though with her they say survived one of her brothers. As to the children of Niobe, what I myself chanced to learn about them I have set forth in my account of Argos.

Besides the account already given they tell another story about the Sixteen Women as follows. Damophon, it is said, when tyrant of Pisa did much grievous harm to the Eleans. But when he died, since the people of Pisa refused to participate as a people in their tyrant's sins, and the Eleans too became quite ready to lay aside their grievances, they chose a woman from each of the sixteen cities of Elis still inhabited at that time to settle their differences, this woman to be the oldest, the most noble, and the most esteemed of all the women.

The cities from which they chose the women were Elis, [...] The women from these cities made peace between Pisa and Elis. Later on they were entrusted with the management of the Heraean games, and with the weaving of the robe for Hera. The Sixteen Women also arrange two choral dances, one called that of Physcoa and the other that of Hippodameia. This Physcoa they say came from Elis in the Hollow, and the name of the parish where she lived was Orthia.

She mated they say with Dionysus, and bore him a son called Narcaeus. When he grew up he made war against the neighboring folk, and rose to great power, setting up moreover a sanctuary of Athena surnamed Narcaea. They say too that Narcaeus and Physcoa were the first to pay worship to Dionysus. So various honors are paid to Physcoa, especially that of the choral dance, named after her and managed by the Sixteen Women. The Eleans still adhere to the other ancient customs, even though some of the cities have been destroyed. For they are now divided into eight tribes, and they choose two women from each.

Whatever ritual it is the duty of either the Sixteen Women or the Elean umpires to perform, they do not perform before they have purified themselves with a pig meet for purification and with water. Their purification takes place at the spring Piera. You reach this spring as you go along the flat road from Olympia to Elis.

These things, then, are as I have already described. In the temple of Hera is an image of Zeus, and the image of Hera is sitting on a throne with Zeus standing by her, bearded and with a helmet on his head. They are crude works of art. The figures of Seasons next to them, seated upon thrones, were made by the Aeginetan Smilis. Beside them stands an image of Themis, as being mother of the Seasons. It is the work of Dorycleidas, a Lacedaemonian by birth and a disciple of Dipoenus and Scyllis.

The Hesperides, five in number, were made by Theocles, who like Dorycleidas was a Lacedaemonian, the son of Hegylus; he too, they say, was a student under Scyllis and Dipoenus. The Athena wearing a helmet and carrying a spear and shield is, it is said, a work of Medon, a Lacedaemonian, brother of Dorycleidas and a pupil of the same masters.

Then the Maid and Demeter sit opposite each other, while Apollo and Artemis stand opposite each other. Here too have been dedicated Leto, Fortune, Dionysus and a winged Victory. I cannot say who the artists were, but these figures too are in my opinion very ancient. The figures I have enumerated are of ivory and gold, but at a later date other images were dedicated in the Heraeum, including a marble Hermes carrying the baby Dionysus, a work of Praxiteles, and a bronze Aphrodite made by Cleon of Sicyon.

The master of this Cleon, called Antiphanes, was a pupil of Periclytus, who himself was a pupil of Polycleitus of Argos. A nude gilded child is seated before Aphrodite, a work fashioned by Boethus of Calchedon. There were also brought hither from what is called the Philippeum other images of gold and ivory, Eurydice the wife of Aridaeus and Olympias the wife of Philip.

There is also a chest made of cedar, with figures on it, some of ivory, some of gold, others carved out of the cedar-wood itself. It was in this chest that Cypselus, the tyrant of Corinth, was hidden by his mother when the Bacchidae were anxious to discover him after his birth. In gratitude for the saving of Cypselus, his descendants, Cypselids as they are called, dedicated the chest at Olympia. The Corinthians of that age called chests kypselai, and from this word, they say, the child received his name of Cypselus.

On most of the figures on the chest there are inscriptions, written in the ancient characters. In some cases the letters read straight on, but in others the form of the writing is what the Greeks call bustrophedon. It is like this: at the end of the line the second line turns back, as runners do when running the double race. Moreover the inscriptions on the chest are written in winding characters difficult to decipher. Beginning our survey at the bottom we see in the first space of the chest the following scenes.

Oenomaus is chasing Pelops, who is holding Hippodameia. Each of them has two horses, but those of Pelops have wings. Next is wrought the house of Amphiaraus, and baby Amphilochus is being carried by some old woman or other. In front of the house stands Eriphyle with the necklace, and by her are her daughters Eurydice and Demonassa, and the boy Alcmaeon naked.

Asius in his poem makes out Alcmena also to be a daughter of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle. Baton is driving the chariot of Amphiaraus, holding the reins in one hand and a spear in the other. Amphiaraus already has one foot on the chariot and his sword drawn; he is turned towards Eriphyle in such a transport of anger that he can scarcely refrain from striking her.

After the house of Amphiaraus come the games at the funeral of Pelias, with the spectators looking at the competitors. Heracles is seated on a throne, and behind him is a woman. There is no inscription saying who the woman is, but she is playing on a Phrygian, not a Greek, flute. Driving chariots drawn by pairs of horses are Pisus, son of Perieres, and Asterion, son of Cometas (Asterion is said to have been one of the Argonauts), Polydeuces, Admetus and Euphemus. The poets declare thatthe last was a son of Poseidon and a companion of Jason on his voyage to Colchis. He it is who is winning the chariot-race.

Those who have boldly ventured to box are Admetus and Mopsus, the son of Ampyx. Between them stands a man playing the flute, as in our day they are accustomed to play the flute when the competitors in the pentathlum are jumping. The wrestling-bout between Jason and Peleus is an even one. Eurybotas is shown throwing the quoit; he must be some famous quoit-thrower. Those engaged in a running-race are Melanion, Neotheus and Phalareus; the fourth runner is Argeius, and the fifth is Iphiclus. Iphiclus is the winner, and Acastus is holding out the crown to him. He is probably the father of the Protesilaus who joined in the war against Troy.

Tripods too are set here, prizes of course for the winners; and there are the daughters of Pelias, though the only one with her name inscribed is Alcestis. Iolaus, who voluntarily helped Heracles in his labours, is shown as a victor in the chariot-race. At this point the funeral games of Pelias come to an end, and Heracles, with Athena standing beside him, is shooting at the hydra, the beast in the river Amymone. Heracles can be easily recognized by his exploit and his attitude, so his name is not inscribed by him. There is also Phineus the Thracian, and the sons of Boreas are chasing the harpies away from him.

Now I come to the second space on the chest, and in going round it I had better begin from the left. There is a figure of a woman holding on her right arm a white child asleep, and on her left she has a black child like one who is asleep. Each has his feet turned different ways. The inscriptions declare, as one could infer without inscriptions, that the figures are Death and Sleep, with Night the nurse of both.

Book 5, Part 6 Cite

A beautiful woman is punishing an ugly one, choking her with one hand and with the other striking her with a staff. It is Justice who thus treats Injustice. Two other women are pounding in mortars with pestles; they are supposed to be wise in medicine-lore, though there is no inscription to them. Who the man is who is followed by a woman is made plain by the hexameter verses, which run thus:—Idas brings back, not against her will,Fair-ankled Marpessa, daughter of Evenus, whom Apollo carried off.

A man wearing a tunic is holding in his right hand a cup, and in his left a necklace; Alcmena is taking hold of them. This scene represents the Greek story how Zeus in the likeness of Amphitryon had intercourse with Alcmena. Menelaus, wearing a breastplate and carrying a sword, is advancing to kill Helen, so it is plain that Troy has been captured. Medeia is seated upon a throne, while Jason stands on her right and Aphrodite on her left. On them is an inscription:—Jason weds Medeia, as Aphrodite bids.

There are also figures of Muses singing, with Apollo leading the song; these too have an inscription:—This is Leto's son, prince Apollo, far-shooting;Around him are the Muses, a graceful choir, whom he is leading.Atlas too is supporting, just as the story has it, heaven and earth upon his shoulders; he is also carrying the apples of the Hesperides. A man holding a sword is coming towards Atlas. This everybody can see is Heracles, though he is not mentioned specially in the inscription, which reads:—Here is Atlas holding heaven, but he will let go the apples.

There is also Ares clad in armour and leading Aphrodite. The inscription by him is “Enyalius.” There is also a figure of Thetis as a maid; Peleus is taking hold of her, and from the hand of Thetis a snake is darting at Peleus. The sisters of Medusa, with wings, are chasing Perseus, who is flying. Only Perseus has his name inscribed on him.

On the third space of the chest are military scenes. The greater number of the figures are on foot, though there are some knights in two-horse chariots. About the soldiers one may infer that they are advancing to battle, but that they will recognize and greet each other. Two different accounts of them are given by the guides. Some have said that they are the Aetolians with Oxylus and the ancient Eleans, and that they are meeting in remembrance of their original descent and as a sign of their mutual good will. Others declare that the soldiers are meeting in battle, and that they are Pylians and Arcadians about to fight by the city Pheia and the river Iardanus.

But it cannot for a moment be admitted that the ancestor of Cypselus, a Corinthian, having the chest made as a possession for himself, of his own accord passed over all Corinthian story, and had carved on the chest foreign events which were not famous. The following interpretation suggested itself to me. Cypselus and his ancestors came originally from Gonussa above Sicyon, and one of their ancestors was Melas, the son of Antasus.

But, as I have already related in my account of Corinth, Aletes refused to admit as settlers Melas and the host with him, being nervous about an oracle which had been given him from Delphi; but at last Melas, using every art of winning favours, and returning with entreaties every time he was driven away, persuaded Aletes however reluctantly to receive them. One might infer that this army is represented by the figures wrought upon the chest.

In the fourth space on the chest as you go round from the left is Boreas, who has carried off Oreithyia; instead of feet he has serpents' tails. Then comes the combat between Heracles and Geryones, who is represented as three men joined to one another. There is Theseus holding a lyre, and by his side is Ariadne gripping a crown. Achilles and Memnon are fighting; their mothers stand by their side.

There is also Melanion by whom is Atalanta holding a young deer. Ajax is fighting a duel with Hector, according to the challenge, and between the pair stands Strife in the form of a most repulsive woman. Another figure of Strife is in the sanctuary of Ephesian Artemis; Calliphon of Samos included it in his picture of the battle at the ships of the Greeks. On the chest are also the Dioscuri, one of them a beardless youth, and between them is Helen.

Aethra, the daughter of Pittheus, lies thrown to the ground under the feet at Helen. She is clothed in black, and the inscription upon the group is an hexameter line with the addition of a single word:The sons of Tyndareus are carrying of Helen, and are dragging AethraFrom Athens.

Such is the way this line is constructed. Iphidamas, the son of Antenor, is lying, and Coon is fighting for him against Agamemnon. On the shield of Agamemnon is Fear, whose head is a lion's. The inscription above the corpse of Iphidamas runs:Iphidamas, and this is Coon fighting for him.The inscription on the shield of Agamemnon runs:

This is the Fear of mortals: he who holds him is Agamemnon.There is also Hermes bringing to Alexander the son of Priam the goddesses of whose beauty he is to judge, the inscription on them being:Here is Hermes, who is showing to Alexander, that he may arbitrateConcerning their beauty, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.On what account Artemis has wings on her shoulders I do not know; in her right hand she grips a leopard, in her left a lion. Ajax too is represented dragging Cassandra from the image of Athena, and by him is also an inscription:Ajax of Locri is dragging Cassandra from Athena.

Polyneices, the son of Oedipus, has fallen on his knee, and Eteocles, the other son of Oedipus, is rushing on him. Behind Polyneices stands a woman with teeth as cruel as those of a beast, and her fingernails are bent like talons. An inscription by her calls her Doom, implying that Polyneices has been carried off by fate, and that Eteocles fully deserved his end. Dionysus is lying down in a cave, a bearded figure holding a golden cup, and clad in a tunic reaching to the feet. Around him are vines, apple-trees and pomegranate-trees.

The highest space—the spaces are five in number—shows no inscription, so that we can only conjecture what the reliefs mean. Well, there is a grotto and in it a woman sleeping with a man upon a couch. I was of opinion that they were Odysseus and Circe, basing my view upon the number of the handmaidens in front of the grotto and upon what they are doing. For the women are four, and they are engaged on the tasks which Homer mentions in his poetry. There is a Centaur with only two of his legs those of a horse; his forelegs are human.

Next come two-horse chariots with women standing in them. The horses have golden wings, and a man is giving armour to one of the women. I conjecture that this scene refers to the death of Patroclus; the women in the chariots, I take it, are Nereids, and Thetis is receiving the armour from Hephaestus. And moreover, he who is giving the armour is not strong upon his feet, and a slave follows him behind, holding a pair of fire-tongs.

An account also is given of the Centaur, that he is Chiron, freed by this time from human affairs and held worthy to share the home of the gods, who has come to assuage the grief of Achilles. Two maidens in a mule-cart, one holding the reins and the other wearing a veil upon her head, are thought to be Nausicaa, the daughter of Alcinous, and her handmaiden, driving to the washing-pits. The man shooting at Centaurs, some of which he has killed, is plainly Heracles, and the exploit is one of his.

As to the maker of the chest, I found it impossible to form any conjecture. But the inscriptions upon it, though possibly composed by some other poet, are, as I was on the whole inclined to hold, the work of Eumelus of Corinth. My main reason for this view is the processional hymn he wrote for Delos.

There are here other offerings also: a couch of no great size and for the most part adorned with ivory; the quoit of Iphitus; a table on which are set out the crowns for the victors. The couch is said to have been a toy of Hippodameia. The quoit of Iphitus has inscribed upon it the truce which the Eleans proclaim at the Olympic festivals; the inscription is not written in a straight line, but the letters run in a circle round the quoit.

The table is made of ivory and gold, and is the work of Colotes. Colotes is said to have been a native of Heracleia, but specialists in the history of sculpture maintain that he was a Parian, a pupil of Pasiteles, who himself was a pupil of.... There are figures of Hera, Zeus, the Mother of the gods, Hermes, and Apollo with Artemis. Behind is the disposition of the games.

On one side are Asclepius and Health, one of his daughters; Ares too and Contest by his side; on the other are Pluto, Dionysus, Persephone and nymphs, one of them carrying a ball. As to the key (Pluto holds a key) they say that what is called Hades has been locked up by Pluto, and that nobody will return back again therefrom.

I must not omit the story told by Aristarchus, the guide to the sights at Olympia. He said that in his day the roof of the Heraeum had fallen into decay. When the Eleans were repairing it, the corpse of a foot-soldier with wounds was discovered between the roof supporting the tiles and the ornamented ceiling. This soldier took part in the battle in the Altis between the Eleans and the Lacedaemonians.

The Eleans in fact climbed to defend themselves on to all high places alike, including the sanctuaries of the gods. At any rate this soldier seemed to us to have crept under here after growing faint with his wounds, and so died. Lying in a completely sheltered spot the corpse would suffer harm neither from the heat of summer nor from the frost of winter. Aristarchus said further that they carried the corpse outside the Altis and buried him in the earth along with his armour.

What the Eleans call the pillar of Oenomaus is in the direction of the sanctuary of Zeus as you go from the great altar. On the left are four pillars with a roof on them, the whole constructed to protect a wooden pillar which has decayed through age, being for the most part held together by bands. This pillar, so runs the tale, stood in the house of Oenomaus. Struck by lightning the rest of the house was destroyed by the fire; of all the building only this pillar was left.

A bronze tablet in front of it has the following elegiac inscription:—Stranger, I am a remnant of a famous house,I, who once was a pillar in the house of Oenomaus;Now by Cronus' son I lie with these bands upon me,A precious thing, and the baleful flame of fire consumed me not.In my time another incident took place, which I will relate.

A Roman senator won an Olympic victory. Wishing to leave behind, as a memorial of his victory, a bronze statue with an inscription, he proceeded to dig, so as to make a foundation. When his excavation came very close to the pillar of Oenomaus, the diggers found there fragments of armour, bridles and curbs.

These I saw myself as they were being dug out. A temple of no great size in the Doric style they have called down to the present day Metroum, keeping its ancient name. No image lies in it of the Mother of the gods, but there stand in it statues of Roman emperors. The Metroum is within the Altis, and so is a round building called the Philippeum. On the roof of the Philippeum is a bronze poppy which binds the beams together.

This building is on the left of the exit over against the Town Hall. It is made of burnt brick and is surrounded by columns. It was built by Philip after the fall of Greece at Chaeroneia. Here are set statues of Philip and Alexander, and with them is Amyntas, Philip's father. These works too are by Leochares, and are of ivory and gold, as are the statues of Olympias and Eurydice.

From this point my account will proceed to a description of the statues and votive offerings; but I think that it would be wrong to mix up the accounts of them. For whereas on the Athenian Acropolis statues are votive offerings like everything else, in the Altis some things only are dedicated in honor of the gods, and statues are merely part of the prizes awarded to the victors. The statues I will mention later; I will turn first to the votive offerings, and go over the most noteworthy of them.

As you go to the stadium along the road from the Metroum, there is on the left at the bottom of Mount Cronius a platform of stone, right by the very mountain, with steps through it. By the platform have been set up bronze images of Zeus. These have been made from the fines inflicted on athletes who have wantonly broken the rules of the contests, and they are called Zanes (figures of Zeus) by the natives.

The first, six in number, were set up in the ninety-eighth Olympiad. For Eupolus of Thessaly bribed the boxers who entered the competition, Agenor the Arcadian and Prytanis of Cyzicus, and with them also Phormio of Halicarnassus, who had won at the preceding Festival. This is said to have been the first time that an athlete violated the rules of the games, and the first to be fined by the Eleans were Eupolus and those who accepted bribes from Eupolus. Two of these images are the work of Cleon of Sicyon; who made the next four I do not know.

Except the third and the fourth these images have elegiac inscriptions on them. The first of the inscriptions is intended to make plain that an Olympic victory is to be won, not by money, but by swiftness of foot and strength of body. The inscription on the second image declares that the image stands to the glory of the deity, through the piety of the Eleans, and to be a terror to law-breaking athletes. The purport of the inscription on the fifth image is praise of the Eleans, especially for their fining the boxers; that of the sixth and last is that the images are a warning to all the Greeks not to give bribes to obtain an Olympic victory.

Next after Eupolus they say that Callippus of Athens, who had entered for the pentathlum, bought off his fellow-competitors by bribes, and that this offence occurred at tie hundred and twelfth Festival. When the fine had been imposed by the Eleans on Callippus and his antagonists, the Athenians commissioned Hypereides to persuade the Eleans to remit them the fine. The Eleans refused this favour, and the Athenians were disdainful enough not to pay the money and to boycott the Olympic games, until finally the god at Delphi declared that he would deliver no oracle on any matter to the Athenians before they had paid the Eleans the fine.

Book 5, Part 7 Cite

So when it was paid, images, also six in number, were made in honor of Zeus; on them are inscribed elegiac verses not a whit more elegant than those relating the fine of Eupolus. The gist of the first inscription is that the images were dedicated because the god by an oracle expressed his approval of the Elean decision against the pentathletes; on the second image and likewise on the third are praises of the Eleans for their fining the competitors in the pentathlum.

The fourth purports to say that the contest at Olympia is one of merit and not of wealth; the inscription on the fifth declares the reason for dedicating the images, while that on the sixth commemorates the oracle given to the Athenians by Delphi.

The images next to those I have enumerated are two in number, and they were dedicated from a fine imposed on wrestlers. As to their names, neither I nor the guides of the Eleans knew them. On these images too are inscriptions; one says that the Rhodians paid money to Olympian Zeus for the wrongdoing of a wrestler; the other that certain men wrestled for bribes and that the image was made from the fines imposed upon them.

The rest of the information about these athletes comes from the guides of the Eleans, who say that it was at the hundred and seventy-eighth Festival that Eudelus accepted a bribe from Philostratus, and that this Philostratus was a Rhodian. This account I found was at variance with the Elean record of Olympic victories. In this record it is stated that Strato of Alexandria at the hundred and seventy-eighth Festival won on the same day the victory in the pancratium and the victory at wrestling. Alexandria on the Canopic mouth of the Nile was founded by Alexander the son of Philip, but it is said that previously there was on the site a small Egyptian town called Racotis.

Three Competitors before the time of this Strato, and three others after him, are known to have received the wild-olive for winning the pancratium and the wrestling: Caprus from Elis itself, and of the Greeks on the other side of the Aegean, Aristomenes of Rhodes and Protophanes of Magnesia on the Lethaeus, were earlier than Strato; after him came Marion his compatriot, Aristeas of Stratoniceia (anciently both land and city were called Chrysaoris), and the seventh was Nicostratus, from Gilicia on the coast, though he was in no way a Gilician except in name.

This Nicostratus while still a baby was stolen from Prymnessus in Phrygia by robbers, being a child of a noble family. Conveyed to Aegeae he was bought by somebody or other, who some time afterwards dreamed a dream. He thought that a lion's whelp lay beneath the pallet-bed on which Nicostratus was sleeping. Now Nicostratus, when he grew up, won other victories elsewhere, besides in the pancratium and wrestling at Olympia.

Afterwards others were fined by the Eleans, among whom was an Alexandrian boxer at the two hundred and eighteenth Festival. The name of the man fined was Apollonius, with the surname of Rhantes—it is a sort of national characteristic for Alexandrians to have a surname. This man was the first Egyptian to be convicted by the Eleans of a misdemeanor.

It was not for giving or taking a bribe that he was condemned, but for the following outrageous conduct in connection with the games. He did not arrive by the prescribed time, and the Eleans, if they followed their rule, had no option but to exclude him from the games. For his excuse, that he had been kept back among the Cyclades islands by contrary winds, was proved to be an untruth by Heracleides, himself an Alexandrian by birth. He showed that Apollonius was late because he had been picking up some money at the Ionian games.

In these circumstances the Eleans shut out from the games Apollonius with any other boxer who came after the prescribed time, and let the crown go to Heracleides without a contest. Whereupon Apollonius put on his gloves for a fight, rushed at Heracleides, and began to pummel him, though he had already put the wild-olive on his head and had taken refuge with the umpires. For this light-headed folly he was to pay dearly.

There are also two other images of modern workmanship. For at the two hundred and twenty-sixth Festival they detected that two boxing men, in a fight for victory only, had agreed about the issue for a sum of money. For this misconduct a fine was inflicted, and of the images of Zeus that were made, one stands on the left of the entrance to the stadium and the other on the right. Of the boxers, the one bribed was called Didas, and the briber was Sarapammon. They were from the same district, the newest in Egypt, called Arsinoites.

It is a wonder in any case if a man has so little respect for the god of Olympia as to take or give a bribe in the contests; it is an even greater wonder that one of the Eleans themselves has fallen so low. But it is said that the Elean Damonicus did so fall at the hundred and ninety second Festival. They say that collusion occurred between Polyctor the son of Damonicus and Sosander of Smyrna, of the same name as his father; these were competitors for the wrestling prize of wild-olive. Damonicus, it is alleged, being exceedingly ambitious that his son should win, bribed the father of Sosander.

When the transaction became known, the umpires imposed a fine, but instead of imposing it on the sons they directed their anger against the fathers, for that they were the real sinners. From this fine images were made. One is set up in the Elean gymnasium; the other is in the Altis in front of what is called the Painted Portico, because anciently there were pictures on the walls. Some call this Portico the Echo Portico, because when a man has shouted his voice is repeated by the echo seven or even more times.

They say that a pancratiast of Alexandria, by name Sarapion, at the two hundred and first Festival, was so afraid of his antagonists that on the day before the pancratium was to be called on he ran away. This is the only occasion on record when any man, not to say a man of Egypt, was fined for cowardice.

These were the causes for which I found that these images were made. There are also images of Zeus dedicated by States and by individuals. There is in the Altis an altar near the entrance leading to the stadium. On it the Eleans do not sacrifice to any of the gods, but it is customary for the trumpeters and heralds to stand upon it when they compete. By the side of this altar has been built a pedestal of bronze, and on it is an image of Zeus, about six cubits in height, with a thunderbolt in either hand. It was dedicated by the people of Cynaetha. The figure of Zeus as a boy wearing the necklace is the votive offering of Cleolas, a Phliasian.

By the side of what is called the Hippodamium is a semicircular stone pedestal, and on it are Zeus, Thetis, and Day entreating Zeus on behalf of her children. These are on the middle of the pedestal. There are Achilles and Memnon, one at either edge of the pedestal, representing a pair of combatants in position. There are other pairs similarly opposed, foreigner against Greek: Odysseus opposed to Helenus, reputed to be the cleverest men in the respective armies; Alexander and Menelaus, in virtue of their ancient feud; Aeneas and Diomedes, and Deiphobus and Ajax son of Telamon.

These are the work of Lycius, the son of Myron, and were dedicated by the people of Apollonia on the Ionian sea. There are also elegiac verses written in ancient characters under the feet of Zeus.As memorials of Apollonia have we been dedicated, which on the Ionian seaPhoebus founded, he of the unshorn locks.The Apollonians, after taking the land of Abantis, set up hereThese images with heaven's help, tithe from Thronium.The land called Abantis and the town of Thronium in it were a part of the Thesprotian mainland over against the Ceraunian mountains.

When the Greek fleet was scattered on the voyage home from Troy, Locrians from Thronium, a city on the river Boagrius, and Abantes from Euboea, with eight ships altogether, were driven on the Ceraunian mountains. Settling here and founding the city of Thronium, by common agreement they gave the name of Abantis to the land as far as they occupied it. Afterwards, however, they were conquered in war and expelled by the people of Apollonia, their neighbors. Apollonia was a colony of Corcyra, they say, and Corcyra of Corinth, and the Corinthians had their share of the spoils.

A little farther on is a Zeus turned towards the rising sun; he holds an eagle in one hand and in the other a thunderbolt. On him are set spring flowers, with a crown of them on his head. It is an offering of the people of Metapontum. The artist was Aristonus of Aegina, but we do not know when he lived nor who his teacher was.

The Phliasians also dedicated a Zeus, the daughters of Asopus, and Asopus himself. Their images have been ordered thus: Nemea is the first of the sisters, and after her comes Zeus seizing Aegina; by Aegina stands Harpina, who, according to the tradition of the Eleans and Phliasians, mated with Ares and was the mother of Oenomaus, king around Pisa; after her is Corcyra, with Thebe next; last of all comes Aesopus. There is a legend about Corcyra that she mated with Poseidon, and the same thing is said by Pindar of Thebe and Zeus.

Men of Leontini have set up a Zeus, not at public expense but out of their private purse. The height of the image is seven cubits, and in its hands are an eagle and the bolt of Zeus, in accordance with the poets' tales. It was dedicated by Hippagoras, Phrynon, and Aenesidemus, who in my opinion was some other Aenesidemus and not the tyrant of Leontini.

As you pass by the entrance to the Council Chamber you see an image of Zeus standing with no inscription on it, and then on turning to the north another image of Zeus. This is turned towards the rising sun, and was dedicated by those Greeks who at Plataea fought against the Persians under Mardonius. On the right of the pedestal are inscribed the cities which took part in the engagement: first the Lacedaemonians, after them the Athenians, third the Corinthians, fourth the Sicyonians,

fifth the Aeginetans; after the Aeginetans, the Megarians and Epidaurians, of the Arcadians the people of Tegea and Orchomenus, after them the dwellers in Phlius, Troezen and Hermion, the Tirynthians from the Argolid, the Plataeans alone of the Boeotians, the Argives of Mycenae, the islanders of Ceos and Melos, Ambraciots of the Thesprotian mainland, the Tenians and the Lepreans, who were the only people from Triphylia, but from the Aegean and the Cyclades there came not only the Tenians but also the Naxians and Cythnians, Styrians too from Euboea, after them Eleans, Potidaeans, Anactorians, and lastly the Chalcidians on the Euripus.

Of these cities the following are at the present day uninhabited: Mycenae and Tiryns were destroyed by the Argives after the Persian wars. The Ambraciots and Anactorians, colonists of Corinth, were taken away by the Roman emperor to help to found Nicopolis near Actium. The Potidaeans twice suffered removal from their city, once at the hands of Philip, the son of Amyntas, and once before this at the hands of the Athenians. Afterwards, however, Cassander restored the Potidaeans to their homes, but the name of the city was changed from Potidaea to Cassandreia after the name of its founder. The image at Olympia dedicated by the Greeks was made by Anaxagoras of Aegina. The name of this artist is omitted by the historians of Plataea.

In front of this Zeus there is a bronze slab, on which are the terms of the Thirty-years Peace between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians. The Athenians made this peace after they had reduced Euboea for the second time, in the third year of the eighty-third Olympiad, when Crison of Himera won the foot-race. One of the articles of the treaty is to the effect that although Argos has no part in the treaty between Athens and Sparta, yet the Athenians and the Argives may privately, if they wish, be at peace with each other. Such are the terms of this treaty.

There is yet another image of Zeus dedicated beside the chariot of Cleosthenes. This chariot I will describe later; the image of Zeus was dedicated by the Megarians, and made by the brothers Psylacus and Onaethus with the help of their sons. About their date, their nation and their master, I can tell you nothing.

By the chariot of Gelon stands an ancient Zeus holding a scepter which is said to be an offering of the Hyblaeans. There were two cities in Sicily called Hybla, one surnamed Gereatis and the other Greater, it being in fact the greater of the two. They still retain their old names, and are in the district of Catana. Greater Hybla is entirely uninhabited, but Gereatis is a village of Catana, with a sanctuary of the goddess Hyblaea which is held in honor by the Sicilians. The people of Gereatis, I think, brought the image to Olympia. For Philistus, the son of Archomenides, says that they were interpreters of portents and dreams, and more given to devotions than any other foreigners in Sicily.

Near the offering of the Hyblaeans has been made a pedestal of bronze with a Zeus upon it, which I conjecture to be about eighteen feet high. The donors and sculptors are set forth in elegiac verse:—The Cleitorians dedicated this image to the god, a titheFrom many cities that they had reduced by force.The sculptors were Aristo and Telestas,Own brothers and Laconians.I do not think that these Laconians were famous all over Greece, for had they been so the Eleans would have had something to say about them, and the Lacedaemonians more still, seeing that they were their fellow-citizens.

By the side of the altar of Zeus Laoetas and Poseidon Laoetas is a Zeus on a bronze pedestal. The people of Corinth gave it and Musus made it, whoever this Musus may have been. As you go from the Council Chamber to the great temple there stands on the left an image of Zeus, crowned as it were with flowers, and with a thunderbolt set in his right hand. It is the work of Ascarus of Thebes, a pupil of Canachus of Sicyon. The inscription on it says that it is a tithe from the war between Phocis and Thessaly.

If the Thessalians went to war with Phocis and dedicated the offering from Phocian plunder, this could not have been the so-called “Sacred War,” but must have been a war between the two States previous to the invasion of Greece by the Persians under their king. Not far from this is a Zeus, which, as is declared by the verse inscribed on it, was dedicated by the Psophidians for a success in war.

On the right of the great temple is a Zeus facing the rising of the sun, twelve feet high and dedicated, they say, by the Lacedaemonians, when they entered on a war with the Messenians after their second revolt. On it is an elegiac couplet:Accept, king, son of Cronus, Olympian Zeus, a lovely image,And have a heart propitious to the Lacedaemonians.

We know of no Roman, either commoner or senator, who gave a votive offering to a Greek sanctuary before Mummius, and he dedicated at Olympia a bronze Zeus from the spoils of Achaia. It stands on the left of the offering of the Lacedaemonians by the side of the first pillar on this side of the temple. The largest of the bronze images of Zeus in the Altis is twenty-seven feet high, and was dedicated by the Eleans themselves from the plunder of the war with the Arcadians.

Beside the Pelopium is a pillar of no great height with a small image of Zeus on it; one hand is outstretched. Opposite this are other offerings in a row, and likewise images of Zeus and Ganymedes. Homer's poem tells how Ganymedes was carried off by the gods to be wine-bearer to Zeus, and how horses were given to Tros in exchange for him. This offering was dedicated by the Thessalian Gnathis and made by Aristocles, pupil and son of Cleoetas.

Book 5, Part 8 Cite

There is also another Zeus represented as a beardless youth, which is among offerings of Micythus. The history of Micythus, his family, and why he dedicated so many offerings at Olympia, my narrative will presently set forth. A little farther on in a straight line from the image I have mentioned is another beardless image of Zeus. It was dedicated by the people of Elaea, who live in the first city of Aeolis you reach on descending from the plain of the Caicus to the sea.

Yet another image of Zeus comes next, and the inscription on it says that it was dedicated by the Chersonesians of Cnidus from enemy spoils. On either side of the image of Zeus they have dedicated images of Pelops and of the river Alpheius respectively. The greater part of the city of Cnidus is built on the Carian mainland, where are their most noteworthy possessions, but what is called Chersonnesus is an island lying near the mainland, to which it is joined by a bridge.

It is the inhabitants of this quarter who dedicated to Zeus the offerings at Olympia, just as if Ephesians living in what is called Coresus were to say that they had dedicated an offering independently of the Ephesians as a body. There is also by the wall of the Altis a Zeus turned towards the setting of the sun; it bears no inscription, but is said to be another offering of Mummius made from the plunder of the Achaean war.

But the Zeus in the Council Chamber is of all the images of Zeus the one most likely to strike terror into the hearts of sinners. He is surnamed Oath-god, and in each hand he holds a thunderbolt. Beside this image it is the custom for athletes, their fathers and their brothers, as well as their trainers, to swear an oath upon slices of boar's flesh that in nothing will they sin against the Olympic games. The athletes take this further oath also, that for ten successive months they have strictly followed the regulations for training.

An oath is also taken by those who examine the boys, or the foals entering for races, that they will decide fairly and without taking bribes, and that they will keep secret what they learn about a candidate, whether accepted or not. I forgot to inquire what it is customary to do with the boar after the oath of the athletes, though the ancient custom about victims was that no human being might eat of that on which an oath had been sworn.

Homer proves this point clearly. For the boar, on the slices of which Agamemnon swore that verily Briseis had not lain with him, Homer says was thrown by the herald into the sea.He spake, and cut the boar's throat with ruthless bronze;And the boar Talthybius swung and cast into the great depthOf the grey sea, to feed the fishes.Such was the ancient custom. Before the feet of the Oath-god is a bronze plate, with elegiac verses inscribed upon it, the object of which is to strike fear into those who forswear themselves.

I have enumerated the images of Zeus within the Altis with the greatest accuracy. For the offering near the great temple, though supposed to be a likeness of Zeus, is really Alexander, the son of Philip. It was set up by a Corinthian, not one of the old Corinthians, but one of those settlers whom the Emperor planted in the city. I shall also mention those offerings which are of a different kind, and not representations of Zeus. The statues which have been set up, not to honor a deity, but to reward mere men, I shall include in my account of the athletes.

The Messenians on the Strait in accordance with an old custom used to send to Rhegium a chorus of thirty-five boys, and with it a trainer and a flautist, to a local festival of Rhegium. On one occasion a disaster befell them for not one of those sent out returned home alive, but the ship with the boys on board went to the bottom.

The sea in fact at this strait is the stormiest of seas; it is made rough by winds bringing waves from both sides, from the Adriatic and the other sea, which is called the Tyrrhenian, and even if there be no gale blowing, even then the strait of itself produces a very violent swell and strong currents. So many monsters swarm in the water that even the air over the sea is infected with their stench. Accordingly a shipwrecked man has not even a hope left of getting out of the strait alive. If it was here that disaster overtook the ship of Odysseus, nobody could believe that he swam out alive to Italy, were it not that the benevolence of the gods makes all things easy.

On this occasion the Messenians mourned for the loss of the boys, and one of the honors bestowed upon them was the dedication of bronze statues at Olympia, the group including the trainer of the chorus and the flautist. The old inscription declared that the offerings were those of the Messenians at the strait; but afterwards Hippias, called “a sage” by the Greeks, composed the elegiac verses on them. The artist of the statues was Callon of Elis.

At the headland of Sicily that looks towards Libya and the south, called Pachynum, there stands the city Motye, inhabited by Libyans and Phoenicians. Against these foreigners of Motye war was waged by the Agrigentines, who, having taken from them plunder and spoils, dedicated at Olympia the bronze boys, who are stretching out their right hands in an attitude of prayer to the god. They are placed on the wall of the Altis, and I conjectured that the artist was Calamis, a conjecture in accordance with the tradition about them. Sicily is inhabited by the following races:

Sicanians, Sicels, and Phrygians; the first two crossed into it from Italy, while the Phrygians came from the river Scamander and the land of the Troad. The Phoenicians and Libyans came to the island on a joint expedition, and are settlers from Carthage. Such are the foreign races in Sicily. The Greeks settled there include Dorians and Ionians, with a small proportion of Phocians and of Attics.

On the same wall as the offerings of the Agrigentines are two nude statues of Heracles as a boy. One represents him shooting the lion at Nemea. This Heracles and the lion with him were dedicated by Hippotion of Tarentum, the artist being Nicodamus of Maenalus. The other image was dedicated by Anaxippus of Mende, and was transferred to this place by the Eleans. Previously it stood at the end of the road that leads from Elis to Olympia, called the Sacred Road.

There are also offerings dedicated by the whole Achaean race in common; they represent those who, when Hector challenged any Greek to meet him in single combat, dared to cast lots to choose the champion. They stand, armed with spears and shields, near the great temple. Right opposite, on a second pedestal, is a figure of Nestor, who has thrown the lot of each into the helmet. The number of those casting lots to meet Hector is now only eight, for the ninth, the statue of Odysseus, they say that Nero carried to Rome,

but Agamemnon's statue is the only one of the eight to have his name inscribed upon it; the writing is from right to left. The figure with the cock emblazoned on the shield is Idomeneus the descendant of Minos. The story goes that Idomeneus was descended from the Sun, the father of Pasiphae, and that the cock is sacred to the Sun and proclaims when he is about to rise.

An inscription too is written on the pedestal:—To Zeus these images were dedicated by the Achaeans,Descendants of Pelops the godlike scion of Tantalus.Such is the inscription on the pedestal, but the name of the artist is written on the shield of Idomeneus:—This is one of the many works of clever Onatas,The Aeginetan, whose sire was Micon.

Not far from the offering of the Achaeans there is also a Heracles fighting with the Amazon, a woman on horseback, for her girdle. It was dedicated by Evagoras, a Zanclaean by descent, and made by Aristocles of Cydonia. Aristocles should be included amongst the most ancient sculptors, and though his date is uncertain, he was clearly born before Zancle took its present name of Messene.

The Thasians, who are Phoenicians by descent, and sailed from Tyre, and from Phoenicia generally, together with Thasus, the son of Agenor, in search of Europa, dedicated at Olympia a Heracles, the pedestal as well as the image being of bronze. The height of the image is ten cubits, and he holds a club in his right hand and a bow in his left. They told me in Thasos that they used to worship the same Heracles as the Tyrians, but that afterwards, when they were included among the Greeks, they adopted the worship of Heracles the son of Amphitryon.

On the offering of the Thasians at Olympia there is an elegiac couplet:—Onatas, son of Micon, fashioned me,He who has his dwelling in Aegina. This Onatas, though belonging to the Aeginetan school of sculpture, I shall place after none of the successors of Daedalus or of the Attic school.

The Dorian Messenian who received Naupactus from the Athenians dedicated at Olympia the image of Victory upon the pillar. It is the work of Paeonius of Mende, and was made from the proceeds of enemy spoils, I think from the war with the Arcarnanians and Oeniadae. The Messenians themselves declare that their offering came from their exploit with the Athenians in the island of Sphacteria, and that the name of their enemy was omitted through dread of the Lacedaemonians; for, they say, they are not in the least afraid of Oeniadae and the Acarnanians.

The offerings of Micythus I found were numerous and not together. Next after Iphitus of Elis, and Echecheiria crowning Iphitus, come the following offerings of Micythus: Amphitrite, Poseidon and Hestia; the artist was Glaucus the Argive. Along the left side of the great temple Micythus dedicated other offerings: the Maid, daughter of Demeter, Aphrodite, Ganymedes and Artemis, the poets Homer and Hesiod, then again deities, Asclepius and Health.

Among the offerings of Micythus is Struggle carrying jumping-weights, the shape of which is as follows. They are half of a circle, not an exact circle but elliptical, and made so that the fingers pass through as they do through the handle of a shield. Such are the fashion of them. By the statue of Struggle are Dionysus, Orpheus the Thracian, and an image of Zeus which I mentioned just now. They are the works of Dionysius of Argos. They say that Micythus set up other offerings also in addition to these, and that they formed part of the treasures taken away by Nero.

The artists are said to have been Dionysius and Glaucus, who were Argives by birth, but the name of their teacher is not recorded. Their date is fixed by that of Micythus, who dedicated the works of art at Olympia. For Herodotus in his history says that this Micythus, when Anaxilas was despot of Rhegium, became his slave and steward of his property afterwards, on the death of Anaxilas, he went away to Tegea.

The inscriptions on the offerings give Choerus as the father of Micythus, and as his fatherland the Greek cities of Rhegium and Messene on the Strait. The inscriptions say that he lived at Tegea, and he dedicated the offerings at Olympia in fulfillment of a vow made for the recovery of a son, who fell ill of a wasting disease.

Near to the greater offerings of Micythus, which were made by the Argive Glaucus, stands an image of Athena with a helmet on her head and clad in an aegis. Nicodamus of Maenalus was the artist, but it was dedicated by the Eleans. Beside the Athena has been set up a Victory. The Mantineans dedicated it, but they do not mention the war in the inscription. Calamis is said to have made it without wings in imitation of the wooden image at Athens called Wingless Victory.

By the smaller offerings of Micythus, that were made by Dionysius, are some of the exploits of Heracles, including what he did to the Nemean lion, the Hydra, the Hound of Hell, and the boar by the river Erymanthus. These were brought to Olympia by the people of Heracleia when they had overrun the land of the Mariandynians, their foreign neighbors. Heracleia is a city built on the Euxine sea, a colony of Megara, though the people of Tanagra in Boeotia joined in the settlement.

Opposite the offerings I have enumerated are others in a row; they face towards the south, and are very near to that part of the precinct which is sacred to Pelops. Among them are those dedicated by the Maenalian Phormis. He crossed to Sicily from Maenalus to serve Gelon the son of Deinomenes. Distinguishing himself in the campaigns of Gelon and afterwards of his brother Hieron, he reached such a pitch of prosperity that he dedicated not only these offerings at Olympia, but also others dedicated to Apollo at Delphi.

The offerings at Olympia are two horses and two charioteers, a charioteer standing by the side of each of the horses. The first horse and man are by Dionysius of Argos, the second are the work of Simon of Aegina. On the side of the first of the horses is an inscription, the first part of which is not metrical. It runs thus:—Phormis dedicated me,An Arcadian of Maenalus, now of Syracuse.

This is the horse in which is, say the Eleans, the hippomanes (what maddens horses). It is plain to all that the quality of the horse is the result of magic skill. It is much inferior in size and beauty to all the horses standing within the Altis. Moreover, its tail has been cut off which makes the figure uglier still. But male horses, not only in spring but on any day, are at heat towards it.

In fact they rush into the Altis, breaking their tethers or escaping from their grooms, and they leap upon it much more madly than upon a living brood mare, even the most beautiful of them. Their hoofs slip off, but nevertheless they keep on neighing more and more, and leap with a yet more violent passion, until they are driven away by whips and sheer force. In no other way can they be separated from the bronze horse.

There is another marvel I know of, having seen it in Lydia; it is different from the horse of Phormis, but like it not innocent of the magic art. The Lydians surnamed Persian have sanctuaries in the city named Hierocaesareia and at Hypaepa. In each sanctuary is a chamber, and in the chamber are ashes upon an altar. But the color of these ashes is not the usual color of ashes.

Entering the chamber a magician piles dry wood upon the altar; he first places a tiara upon his head and then sings to some god or other an invocation in a foreign tongue unintelligible to Greeks, reciting the invocation from a book. So it is without fire that the wood must catch, and bright flames dart from it.

Book 5, Part 9 Cite

So much for this subject. Among these offerings is Phormis himself opposed to an enemy, and next are figures of him fighting a second and again a third. On them it is written that the soldier fighting is Phormis of Maenalus, and that he who dedicated the offerings was Lycortas of Syracuse. Clearly this Lycortas dedicated them out of friendship for Phormis. These offerings of Lycortas are also called by the Greeks offerings of Phormis.

The Hermes carrying the ram under his arm, with a helmet on his head, and clad in tunic and cloak, is not one of the offerings of Phormis, but has been given to the god by the Arcadians of Pheneus. The inscription says that the artist was Onatas of Aegina helped by Calliteles, who I think was a pupil or son of Onatas. Not far from the offering of the Pheneatians is another image, Hermes with a herald's wand. An inscription on it says that Glaucias, a Rhegian by descent, dedicated it, and Gallon of Elis made it.

Of the bronze oxen one was dedicated by the Corcyraeans and the other by the Eretrians. Philesius of Eretria was the artist. Why the Corcyraeans dedicated the ox at Olympia and another at Delphi will be explained in my account of Phocis. bout the offering at Olympia I heard the following story.

Sitting under this ox a little boy was playing with his head bent towards the ground. Suddenly lifting his head he broke it against the bronze, and died a few days later from the wound. So the Eleans were purposing to remove the ox from out the Altis as being guilty of bloodshed. But the god at Delphi gave an oracle that they were to let the offering stay where it was, after performing upon it the purificatory rites that are customary among the Greeks for unintentional shedding of blood.

Under the plane trees in the Altis, just about in the center of the enclosure, there is a bronze trophy, with an inscription upon the shield of the trophy, to the effect that the Eleans raised it as a sign that they had beaten the Lacedaemonians. It was in this battle that the warrior lost his life who was found lying in his armour when the roof of the Heraeum was being repaired in my time.

The offering of the Mendeans in Thrace came very near to beguiling me into the belief that it was a representation of a competitor in the pentathlum. It stands by the side of Anauchidas of Elis, and it holds ancient jumping-weights. An elegiac couplet is written on its thigh:—To Zeus, king of the gods, as first-fruits was I placed hereBy the Mendeans, who reduced Sipte by might of hand.Sipte seems to be a Thracian fortress and city. The Mendeans themselves are of Greek descent, coming from Ionia, and they live inland at some distance from the sea that is by the city of Aenus.