Elis 2
1.After my description of the votive offerings I must now go on to mention the statues of racehorses and those of men, whether athletes or ordinary folk. Not all the Olympic victors have had their statues erected; some, in fact, who have distinguished themselves, either at the games or by other exploits, have had no statue.
[2] These I am forced to omit by the nature of my work, which is not a list of athletes who have won Olympic victories, but an account of statues and of votive offerings generally. I shall not even record all those whose statues have been set up, as I know how many have before now won the crown of wild olive not by strength but by the chance of the lot.1 Those only will be mentioned who themselves gained some distinction, or whose statues happened to be better made than others.
[3]
On the right of the temple of Hera is the statue of a wrestler, Symmachus the son of Aeschylus. He was an Elean by birth. Beside him is Neolaidas, son of Proxenus, from Pheneus in Arcadia, who won a victory in the boys' boxing-match. Next comes Archedamus, son of Xenius, another Elean by birth, who like Symmachus overthrew wrestlers in the contest for boys. The statues of the athletes mentioned above were made by Alypus of Sicyon, pupil of Naucydes of Argos.
[4] The inscription on Cleogenes the son of Silenus declares that he was a native, and that he won a prize with a riding-horse from his own private stable. Hard by Cleogenes are set up Deinolochus, son of Pyrrhus, and Troilus, son of Alcinous. These also were both Eleans by birth, though their victories were not the same. Troilus, at the time that he was umpire, succeeded in winning victories in the chariot-races, one for a chariot drawn by a full-grown pair and another for a chariot drawn by foals. The date of his victories was the hundred and second Festival2.
[5] After this the Eleans passed a law that in future no umpire was to compete in the chariot-races. The statue of Troilus was made by Lysippus. The mother of Deinolochus had a dream, in which she thought that the son she clasped in her bosom had a crown on his head. For this reason Deinolochus was trained to compete in the games and outran the boys. The artist was Cleon of Sicyon.
[6] As for Cynisca, daughter of Archidamus, her ancestry and Olympic victories, I have given an account thereof in my history of the Lacedaemonian kings.3 By the side of the statue of Troilus at Olympia has been made a basement of stone, whereon are a chariot and horses, a charioteer, and a statue of Cynisca herself, made by Apelles; there are also inscriptions relating to Cynisca.
[7] Next to her also have been erected statues of Lacedaemonians. They gained victories in chariot-races. Anaxander was the first of his family to be proclaimed victor with a chariot, but the inscription on him declares that previously his paternal grandfather received the crown for the pentathlum. Anaxander is represented in an attitude of prayer to the god, while Polycles, who gained the surname of Polychalcus, likewise won a victory with a four-horse chariot, and his statue holds a ribbon in the right hand.
[8] Beside him are two children; one holds a wheel and the other is asking for the ribbon. Polycles, as the inscription on him says, also won the chariot-race at Pytho, the Isthmus and Nemea.
2.
The statue of a pancratiast was made by Lysippus. The athlete was the first to win the pancratium not only from Stratus itself but from the whole of Acarnania, and his name was Xenarces the son of Philandrides. Now after the Persian invasion the Lacedaemonians became keener breeders of horses than any other Greeks. For beside those I have already mentioned, the following horse-breeders from Sparta have their statues set up after that of the Acarnanian athlete Xenarces,4 Lycinus, Arcesilaus, and Lichas his son.
[2] Xenarces succeeded in winning other victories, at Delphi, at Argos and at Corinth. Lycinus brought foals to Olympia, and when one of them was disqualified, entered his foals for the race for full-grown horses, winning with them. He also dedicated two statues at Olympia, works of Myron5 the Athenian. As for Arcesilaus and his son Lichas, the father won two Olympic victories; his son, because in his time the Lacedaemonians were excluded from the games, entered his chariot in the name of the Theban people, and with his own hands bound the victorious charioteer with a ribbon. For this offence he was scourged by the umpires,
[3] and on account of this Lichas the Lacedaemonians invaded Elis in the reign of King Agis, when a battle took place within the Altis. When the war was over Lichas set up the statue in this place, but the Elean records of Olympic victors give as the name of the victor, not Lichas, but the Theban people.
[4]
Near Lichas stands an Elean diviner, Thrasybulus, son of Aeneas of the Iamid family, who divined for the Mantineans in their struggle against the Lacedaemonians under Agis, son of Eudamidas, their king. I shall have more to say about this in my account of the Arcadians.6 On the statue of Thrasybulus is a spotted lizard crawling towards his right shoulder, and by his side lies a dog, obviously a sacrificial victim, cut open and with his liver exposed.
[5] Divination by kids, lambs or calves has, we all know, been established among men from ancient times, and the Cyprians have even discovered how to practise the art by means of pigs; but no peoples are wont to make any use of dogs in divining. So Thrasybulus apparently established a method of divination peculiar to himself, by means of the entrails of dogs. The diviners called Iamidae are descended from Iamus, who, Pindar says in an ode,7 was a son of Apollo and received the gift of divination from him.
[6]
By the statue of Thrasybulus stands Timosthenes of Elis, winner of the foot-race for boys, and Antipater of Miletus, son of Cleinopater, conqueror of the boy boxers. Men of Syracuse, who were bringing a sacrifice from Dionysius to Olympia, tried to bribe the father of Antipater to have his son proclaimed as a Syracusan. But Antipater, thinking naught of the tyrant's gifts, proclaimed himself a Milesian and wrote upon his statue that he was of Milesian descent and the first Ionian to dedicate his statue at Olympia.
[7] The artist who made this statue was Polycleitus, while that of Timosthenes was made by Eutychides of Sicyon, a pupil of Lysippus. This Eutychides made for the Syrians on the Orontes an image of Fortune, which is highly valued by the natives.
[8]
In the Altis by the side of Timosthenes are statues of Timon and of his son Aesypus, who is represented as a child seated on a horse. In fact the boy won the horse-race, while Timon was proclaimed victor in the chariot-race. The statues of Timon and of his son were made by Daedalus of Sicyon, who also made for the Eleans the trophy in the Altis commemorating the victory over the Spartans.
[9] The inscription on the Samian boxer says that his trainer Mycon dedicated the statue and that the Samians are best among the Ionians for athletes and at naval warfare; this is what the inscription says, but it tells us nothing at all about the boxer himself.
[10] Beside this is the Messenian Damiscus, who won an Olympic victory at the age of twelve. I was exceedingly surprised to learn that while the Messenians were in exile from the Peloponnesus, their luck at the Olympic games failed. For with the exception of Leontiscus and Symmachus, who came from Messene on the Strait, we know of no Messenian, either from Sicily or from Naupactus, who won a victory at Olympia. Even these two are said by the Sicilians to have been not Messenians but of old Zanclean blood.
[11] However, when the Messenians came back to the Peloponnesus their luck in the Olympic games came with them. For at the festival celebrated by the Eleans in the year after the settlement of Messene, the foot-race for boys was won by this Damiscus, who afterwards won in the pentathlum both at Nemea and at the Isthmus.
3.
Nearest to Damiscus stands a statue of somebody; they do not give his name, but it was Ptolemy son of Lagus who set up the offering. In the inscription Ptolemy calls himself a Macedonian, though he was king of Egypt. On Chaereas of Sicyon, a boy boxer, is an inscription that he won a victory when a young man, and that his father was Chaeremon; the name of the artist who made the statue is also written, Asterion son of Aeschylus.
[2] After Chaereas are statues of a Messenian boy Sophius and of Stomius, a man of Elis. Sophius outran his boy competitors, and Stomius won a victory in the pentathlum at Olympia and three at the Nemean games. The inscription on his statue adds that, when commander of the Elean cavalry, he set up trophies and killed in single combat the general of the enemy, who had challenged him.
[3] The Eleans say that the dead general was a native of Sicyon in command of Sicyonian troops, and that they themselves with the force from Boeotia attacked Sicyon out of friendship to the Thebans. So the attack of the Eleans and Thebans against Sicyon apparently took place after the Lacedaemonian disaster at Leuctra.
[4]
Next stands the statue of a boxer from Lepreus in Elis, whose name was Labax son of Euphron, and also that of Aristodemus, son of Thrasis, a boxer from Elis itself, who also won two victories at Pytho. The statue of Aristodemus is the work of Daedalus of Sicyon, the pupil and son of Patrocles.
[5] The statue of Hippus of Elis, who won the boys' boxing-match, was made by Damocritus of Sicyon, of the school of Attic Critias, being removed from him by four generations of teachers. For Gritias himself taught Ptolichus of Corcyra, Amphion was the pupil of Ptolichus, and taught Pison of Calaureia, who was the teacher of Damocritus.
[6] Cratinus of Aegeira in Achaia was the most handsome man of his time and the most skilful wrestler, and when he won the wrestling-match for boys the Eleans allowed him to set up a statue of his trainer as well. The statue was made by Cantharus of Sicyon, whose father was Alexis, while his teacher was Eutychides.
[7]
The statue of Eupolemus of Elis was made by Daedalus of Sicyon. The inscription on it informs us that Eupolemus won the foot-race for men at Olympia, and that he also received two Pythian crowns for the pentathlum and another at the Nemean games. It is also said of Eupolemus that three umpires stood on the course, of whom two gave their verdict in favour of Eupolemus and one declared the winner to be Leon the Ambraciot. Leon, they say, got the Olympic Council to fine each of the umpires who had decided in favour of Eupolemus.
[8]
The statue of Oebotas was set up by the Achaeans by the command of the Delphic Apollo in the eightieth Olympiad8, but Oebotas won his victory in the footrace at the sixth Festival9. How, therefore, could Oebotas have taken part in the Greek victory at Plataea? For it was in the seventy-fifth Olympiad10 that the Persians under Mardonius suffered their disaster at Plataea. Now I am obliged to report the statements made by the Greeks, though I am not obliged to believe them all. The other incidents in the life of Oebotas I will add to my history of Achaia.11
[9]
The statue of Antiochus was made by Nicodamus. A native of Lepreus, Antiochus won once at Olympia the pancratium for men, and the pentathlum twice at the Isthmian games and twice at the Nemean. For the Lepreans are not afraid of the Isthmian games as the Eleans themselves are. For example, Hysmon of Elis, whose statue stands near that of Antiochus, competed successfully in the pentathlum both at Olympia and at Nemea, but clearly kept away, just like other Eleans, from the Isthmian games.
[10] It is said that when Hysmon was still a boy he was attacked by a flux in his muscles, and it was in order that by hard exercise he might be a healthy man free from disease that he practised the pentathlum. So his training was also to make him win famous victories in the games. His statue is the work of Cleon, and he holds jumping-weights of old pattern.
[11] After Hysmon comes the statue of a boy wrestler from Heraea in Arcadia, Nicostratus the son of Xenocleides. Pantias was the artist, and if you count the teachers you will find five between him and Aristocles of Sicyon.
Dicon, the son of Callibrotus, won five footraces at Pytho, three at the Isthmian games, four at Nemea, one at Olympia in the race for boys besides two in the men's race. Statues of him have been set up at Olympia equal in number to the races he won. When he was a boy he was proclaimed a native of Caulonia, as in fact he was. But afterwards he was bribed to proclaim himself a Syracusan.
[12] Caulonia was a colony in Italy founded by Achaeans, and its founder was Typhon of Aegium. When Pyrrhus son of Aeacides and the Tarentines were at war with the Romans, several cities in Italy were destroyed, either by the Romans or by the Epeirots, and these included Caulonia, whose fate it was to be utterly laid waste, having been taken by the Campanians, who formed the largest contingent of allies on the Roman side.
[13]
Close to Dicon is a statue of Xenophon, the son of Menephylus, a pancratiast of Aegium in Achaia, and likewise one of Pyrilampes of Ephesus after winning the long foot-race. Olympus made the statue of Xenophon; that of Pyrilampes was made by a sculptor of the same name, a native, not of Sicyon, but of Messene beneath Ithome.
[14]
A statue of Lysander, son of Aristocritus, a Spartan, was dedicated in Olympia by the Samians, and the first of their inscriptions runs:“In the much-seen precinct of Zeus, ruler on high,
I stand, dedicated at public expense by the Samians.
”So this inscription informs us who dedicated the statue; the next is in praise of Lysander himself:“Deathless glory by thy achievements, for fatherland and for Aristocritus,
Lysander, hast thou won, and art famed for valour.
”
[15] So plainly “the Samians and the rest of the Ionians,” as the Ionians themselves phrase it, painted both the walls. For when Alcibiades had a strong fleet of Athenian triremes along the coast of Ionia, most of the Ionians paid court to him, and there is a bronze statue of Alcibiades dedicated by the Samians in the temple of Hera. But when the Attic ships were captured at Aegospotami12, the Samians set up a statue of Lysander at Olympia, and the Ephesians set up in the sanctuary of Artemis not only a statue of Lysander himself but also statues of Eteonicus, Pharax and other Spartans quite unknown to the Greek world generally.
[16] But when fortune changed again, and Conon had won the naval action off Cnidus and the mountain called Dorium13, the Ionians likewise changed their views, and there are to be seen statues in bronze of Conon and of Timotheus both in the sanctuary of Hera in Samos and also in the sanctuary of the Ephesian goddess at Ephesus. It is always the same; the Ionians merely follow the example of all the world in paying court to strength.
4.
Next to the statue of Lysander is an Ephesian boxer who beat the other boys, his competitors—his name was Athenaeus,—and also a man of Sicyon who was a pancratiast, Sostratus surnamed Acrochersites. For he used to grip his antagonist by the fingers14 and bend them, and would not let go until he saw that his opponent had given in.
[2] He won at the Nemean and Isthmian games combined twelve victories, three victories at Olympia and two at Pytho. The hundred and fourth Festival, when Sostratus won his first victory, is not reckoned by the Eleans, because the games were held by the Pisans and Arcadians and not by themselves.
[3] Beside Sostratus is a statue of Leontiscus, a man wrestler, a native of Sicily from Messene on the Strait. He was crowned, they say, by the Amphictyons and twice by the Eleans, and his mode of wrestling was similar to the pancratium of Sostratus the Sicyonian. For they say that Leontiscus did not know how to throw his opponents, but won by bending their fingers.
[4] The statue was made by Pythagoras of Rhegium, an excellent sculptor if ever there was one. They say that he studied under Clearchus, who was likewise a native of Rhegium, and a pupil of Eucheirus. Eucheirus, it is said, was a Corinthian, and attended the school of Syadras and Chartas, men of Sparta.
[5]
The boy who is binding his head with a fillet must be mentioned in my account because of Pheidias and his great skill as a sculptor, but we do not know whose portrait the statue is that Pheidias made. Satyrus of Elis, son of Lysianax, of the clan of the Iamidae, won five victories at Nemea for boxing, two at Pytho, and two at Olympia. The artist who made the statue was Silanion, an Athenian. Polycles, another sculptor of the Attic school, a pupil of Stadieus the Athenian, has made the statue of an Ephesian boy pancratiast, Amyntas the son of Hellanicus.
[6]
Chilon, an Achaean of Patrae, won two prizes for men wrestlers at Olympia, one at Delphi, four at the Isthmus and three at the Nemean games. He was buried at the public expense by the Achaeans, and his fate it was to lose his life on the field of battle. My statement is borne out by the inscription at Olympia:“In wrestling only I alone conquered twice the men at Olympia and at Pytho,
Thrice at Nemea, and four times at the Isthmus near the sea;
Chilon of Patrae, son of Chilon, whom the Achaean folk
Buried for my valour when I died in battle.
”
[7] Thus much is plain from the inscription. But the date of Lysippus, who made the statue, leads me to infer about the war in which Chilon fell, that plainly either he marched to Chaeroneia with the whole of the Achaeans15, or else his personal courage and daring led him alone of the Achaeans to fight against the Macedonians under Antipater at the battle of Lamia in Thessaly16.
[8]
Next to Chilon two statues have been set up. One is that of a man named Molpion, who, says the inscription, was crowned by the Eleans. The other statue bears no inscription, but tradition says that it represents Aristotle from Stageira in Thrace, and that it was set up either by a pupil or else by some soldier aware of Aristotle's influence with Antipater and at an earlier date with Alexander. Sodamas from Assos in the Troad,
[9] a city at the foot of Ida, was the first of the Aeolians in this district to win at Olympia the foot-race for boys. By the side of Sodamas stands Archidamus, son of Agesilaus, king of the Lacedaemonians. Before this Archidamus no king, so far as I could learn, had his statue set up by the Lacedaemonians, at least outside the boundaries of the country. They sent the statue of Archidamus to Olympia chiefly, in my opinion, on account of his death, because he met his end in a foreign land, and is the only king in Sparta who is known to have missed burial.
[10] I have spoken at greater length on this matter in my account of Sparta.17 Euanthes of Cyzicus won prizes for boxing, one among the men at Olympia, and also among the boys at the Nemean and at the Isthmian games. By the side of Euanthes is the statue of a horse-breeder and his chariot; mounted on the chariot is a young maid. The man's name is Lampus, and his native city was the last to be founded in Macedonia, named after its founder Philip, son of Amyntas.
[11] The statue of Cyniscus, the boy boxer from Mantinea, was made by Polycleitus. Ergoteles, the son of Philanor, won two victories in the long foot-race at Olympia, and two at Pytho, the Isthmus and Nemea. The inscription on the statue states that he came originally from Himera; but it is said that this is incorrect, and that be was a Cretan from Cnossus. Expelled from Cnossus by a political party he came to Himera, was given citizenship and won many honors besides. It was accordingly natural for him to be proclaimed at the games as a native of Himera.
5.
The statue on the high pedestal is the work of Lysippus, and it represents the tallest of all men except those called heroes and any other mortal race that may have existed before the heroes. But this man, Pulydamas the son of Nicias, is the tallest of our own era.
[2] Scotussa, the native city of Pulydamas, has now no inhabitants, for Alexander the tyrant of Pherae seized it in time of truce. It happened that an assembly of the citizens was being held, and those who were assembled in the theater the tyrant surrounded with targeteers and archers, and shot them all down; all the other grown men he massacred, selling the women and children as slaves in order to pay his mercenaries.
[3] This disaster befell Scotussa when Phrasicleides was archon at Athens18, in the hundred and second Olympiad, when Damon of Thurii was victor for the second time, and in the second year of this Olympiad. The people that escaped remained but for a while, for later they too were forced by their destitution to leave the city, when Heaven brought a second calamity in the war with Macedonia.
[4]
Others have won glorious victories in the pancratium, but Pulydamas, besides his prizes for the pancratium, has to his credit the following exploits of a different kind. The mountainous part of Thrace, on this side the river Nestus, which runs through the land of Abdera, breeds among other wild beasts lions, which once attacked the army of Xerxes, and mauled the camels carrying his supplies.
[5] These lions often roam right into the land around Mount Olympus, one side of which is turned towards Macedonia, and the other towards Thessaly and the river Peneius. Here on Mount Olympus Pulydamas slew a lion, a huge and powerful beast, without the help of any weapon. To this exploit he was impelled by an ambition to rival the labours of Heracles, because Heracles also, legend says, overthrew the lion at Nemea.
[6] In addition to this, Pulydamas is remembered for another wonderful performance. He went among a herd of cattle and seized the biggest and fiercest bull by one of its hind feet, holding fast the hoof in spite of the bull's leaps and struggles, until at last it put forth all its strength and escaped, leaving the hoof in the grasp of Pulydamas. It is also said of him that he stopped a charioteer who was driving his chariot onwards at a great speed. Seizing with one hand the back of the chariot he kept a tight hold on both horses and driver.
[7] Dareius, the bastard son of Artaxerxes, who with the support of the Persian common people put down Sogdius, the legitimate son of Artaxerxes, and ascended the throne in his stead, learning when he was king of the exploits of Pulydamas, sent messengers with the promise of gifts and persuaded him to come before his presence at Susa. There he challenged three of the Persians called Immortals to fight him—one against three— and killed them. Of his exploits enumerated, some are represented on the pedestal of the statue at Olympia, and others are set forth in the inscription.
[8] But after all, the prophecy of Homer19 respecting those who glory in their strength was to be fulfilled also in the case of Pulydamas, and he too was fated to perish through his own might. For Pulydamas entered a cave with the rest of his boon companions. It was summer-time, and, as ill-luck would have it, the roof of the cave began to crack. It was obvious that it would quickly fall in, and could not hold out much longer.
[9] Realizing the disaster that was coming, the others turned and ran away; but Pulydamas resolved to remain, holding up his hands in the belief that he could prevent the falling in of the cave and would not be crushed by the mountain. Here Pulydamas met his end.
6.
Beside the statue of Pulydamas at Olympia stand two Arcadians and one Attic athlete. The statue of the Mantinean, Protolaus the son of Dialces, who won the boxing-match for boys, was made by Pythagoras of Rhegium; that of Narycidas, son of Damaretus, a wrestler from Phigalia, was made by Daedalus of Sicyon; that of the Athenian Callias, a pancratiast, is by the Athenian painter Micon. Nicodamus the Maenalian made the statue of the Maenalian pancratiast Androsthenes, the son of Lochaeus, who won two victories among the men.
[2] By these is set up a statue of Eucles, son of Callianax, a native of Rhodes and of the family of the Diagoridae. For he was the son of the daughter of Diagoras, and won an Olympic victory in the boxing-match for men. His statue is by Naucydes. Polycleitus of Argos, not the artist who made the image of Hera, but a pupil of Naucydes, made the statue of a boy wrestler, Agenor of Thebes. The statue was dedicated by the Phocian Commonwealth, for Theopompus, the father of Agenor, was a state friend20 of their nation.
[3] Nicodamus, the sculptor from Maenalus, made the statue of the boxer Damoxenidas of Maenalus. There stands also the statue of the Elean boy Lastratidas, who won the crown for wrestling. He won a victory at Nemea also among the boys, and another among the beardless striplings. Paraballon, the father of Lastratidas, was first in the double foot-race, and he left to those coming after an object of ambition, by writing up in the gymnasium at Olympia the names of those who won Olympic victories.
[4]
So much for these. But it would not be right for me to pass over the boxer Euthymus, his victories and his other glories. Euthymus was by birth one of the Italian Locrians, who dwell in the region near the headland called the West Point, and he was called son of Astycles. Local legend, however, makes him the son, not of this man, but of the river Caecinus, which divides Locris from the land of Rhegium and produces the marvel of the grasshoppers. For the grasshoppers within Locris as far as the Caecinus sing just like others, but across the Caecinus in the territory of Rhegium they do not utter a sound.
[5] This river then, according to tradition, was the father of Euthymus, who, though he won the prize for boxing at the seventy-fourth Olympic Festival21, was not to be so successful at the next. For Theagenes of Thasos, wishing to win the prizes for boxing and for the pancratium at the same Festival, overcame Euthymus at boxing, though he had not the strength to gain the wild olive in the pancratium, because he was already exhausted in his fight with Euthymus.
[6] Thereupon the umpires fined Theagenes a talent, to be sacred to the god, and a talent for the harm done to Euthymus, holding that it was merely to spite him that he entered for the boxing competition. For this reason they condemned him to pay an extra fine privately to Euthymus. At the seventy-sixth Festival Theagenes paid in full the money owed to the god, . . . and as compensation to Euthymus did not enter for the boxing-match. At this Festival, and also at the next following, Euthymus won the crown for boxing. His statue is the handiwork of Pythagoras, and is very well worth seeing.
[7] On his return to Italy Euthymus fought against the Hero, the story about whom is as follows. Odysseus, so they say, in his wanderings after the capture of Troy was carried down by gales to various cities of Italy and Sicily, and among them he came with his ships to Temesa. Here one of his sailors got drunk and violated a maiden, for which offence he was stoned to death by the natives.
[8] Now Odysseus, it is said, cared nothing about his loss and sailed away. But the ghost of the stoned man never ceased killing without distinction the people of Temesa, attacking both old and young, until, when the inhabitants had resolved to flee from Italy for good, the Pythian priestess forbad them to leave Temesa, and ordered them to propitiate the Hero, setting him a sanctuary apart and building a temple, and to give him every year as wife the fairest maiden in Temesa.
[9] So they performed the commands of the god and suffered no more terrors from the ghost. But Euthymus happened to come to Temesa just at the time when the ghost was being propitiated in the usual way; learning what was going on he had a strong desire to enter the temple, and not only to enter it but also to look at the maiden. When he saw her he first felt pity and afterwards love for her. The girl swore to marry him if he saved her, and so Euthymus with his armour on awaited the onslaught of the ghost.
[10] He won the fight, and the Hero was driven out of the land and disappeared, sinking into the depth of the sea. Euthymus had a distinguished wedding, and the inhabitants were freed from the ghost for ever. I heard another story also about Euthymus, how that he reached extreme old age, and escaping again from death departed from among men in another way. Temesa is still inhabited, as I heard from a man who sailed there as a merchant.
[11] This I heard, and I also saw by chance a picture dealing with the subject. It was a copy of an ancient picture. There were a stripling, Sybaris, a river, Calabrus, and a spring, Lyca. Besides, there were a hero-shrine and the city of Temesa, and in the midst was the ghost that Euthymus cast out. Horribly black in color, and exceedingly dreadful in all his appearance, he had a wolf's skin thrown round him as a garment. The letters on the picture gave his name as Lycas.
7.
So much for the story of Euthymus. After his statue stands a runner in the foot-race, Pytharchus of Mantinea, and a boxer, Charmides of Elis, both of whom won prizes in the contests for boys. When you have looked at these also you will reach the statues of the Rhodian athletes, Diagoras and his family. These were dedicated one after the other in the following order. Acusilaus, who received a crown for boxing in the men's class; Dorieus, the youngest, who won the pancratium at Olympia on three successive occasions. Even before Dorieus, Damagetus beat all those who had entered for the pancratium.
[2] These were brothers, being sons of Diagoras, and by them is set up also a statue of Diagoras himself, who won a victory for boxing in the men's class. The statue of Diagoras was made by the Megarian Callicles, the son of the Theocosmus who made the image of Zeus at Megara. The sons too of the daughters of Diagoras practised boxing and won Olympic victories: in the men's class Eucles, son of Callianax and Callipateira, daughter of Diagoras; in the boys' class Peisirodus, whose mother dressed herself as a man and a trainer, and took her son herself to the Olympic games.
[3] This Peisirodus is one of the statues in the Altis, and stands by the father of his mother. The story goes that Diagoras came to Olympia in the company of his sons Acusilaus and Damagetus. The youths on defeating their father proceeded to carry him through the crowd, while the Greeks pelted him with flowers and congratulated him on his sons. The family of Diagoras was originally, through the female line, Messenian, as he was descended from the daughter of Aristomenes.
[4] Dorieus, son of Diagoras, besides his Olympian victories, won eight at the Isthmian and seven at the Nemean games. He is also said to have won a Pythian victory without a contest. He and Peisirodus were proclaimed by the herald as of Thurii, for they had been pursued by their political enemies from Rhodes to Thurii in Italy. Dorieus subsequently returned to Rhodes. Of all men he most obviously showed his friendship with Sparta, for he actually fought against the Athenians with his own ships, until he was taken prisoner by Attic men-of-war and brought alive to Athens.
[5] Before he was brought to them the Athenians were wroth with Dorieus and used threats against him; but when they met in the assembly and beheld a man so great and famous in the guise of a prisoner, their feeling towards him changed, and they let him go away without doing him any hurt, and that though they might with justice have punished him severely.
[6] The death of Dorieus is told by Androtion in his Attic history. He says that the great King's fleet was then at Caunus, with Conon in command, who persuaded the Rhodian people to leave the Lacedaemonian alliance and to join the great King and the Athenians. Dorieus, he goes on to say, was at the time away from home in the interior of the Peloponnesus, and having been caught by some Lacedaemonians he was brought to Sparta, convicted of treachery by the Lacedaemonians and sentenced to death.
[7] If Androtion tells the truth, he appears to me to wish to put the Lacedaemonians on a level with the Athenians, because they too are open to the charge of precipitous action in their treatment of Thrasyllus and his fellow admirals at the battle of Arginusae22.
Such was the fame won by Diagoras and his family.
[8] Alcaenetus too, son of Theantus, a Leprean, himself and his sons won Olympian victories. Alcaenetus was successful in the boxing contest for men, as at an earlier date he had been in the contest for boys. His sons, Helianicus and Theantus, were proclaimed winners of the boys' boxing.match, Hellanicus at the eighty-ninth Festival23 and Theantus at the next. All have their statues set up at Olympia.
[9] Next to the sons of Alcaenetus stand Gnathon, a Maenalian of Dipaea, and Lucinus of Elis. These too succeeded in beating the boys at boxing at Olympia. The inscription on his statue says that Gnathon was very young indeed when he won his victory. The artist who made the statue was Callicles of Megara.
[10] A man from Stymphalus, by name Dromeus （Runner）, proved true to it in the long race, for he won two victories at Olympia, two at Pytho, three at the Isthmus and five at Nemea. He is said to have also conceived the idea of a flesh diet; up to this time athletes had fed on cheese from the basket. The statue of this athlete is by Pythagoras; the one next to it, representing Pythocles, a pentathlete of Elis, was made by Polycleitus.
8.
Socrates of Pellene won the boys' race, and Amertes of Elis the wrestlers' match for boys at Olympia, besides beating all competitors in the men's wrestling match at Pytho. It is not said who made the statue of Socrates, but that of Amertes is from the band of Phradmon of Argos. Euanoridas of Elis won the boys' wrestling-match both at Olympia and at Nemea. When he was made an umpire he joined the ranks of those who have recorded at Olympia the names of the victors.
[2]
As to the boxer, by name Damarchus, an Arcadian of Parrhasia, I cannot believe （except, of course, his Olympic victory） what romancers say about him, how he changed his shape into that of a wolf at the sacrifice of Lycaean （Wolf） Zeus, and how nine years after he became a man again. Nor do I think that the Arcadians either record this of him, otherwise it would have been recorded as well in the inscription at Olympia, which runs:—“This statue was dedicated by Damarchus, son of Dinytas,
Parrhasian by birth from Arcadia.
”
[3] Here the inscription ends. Eubotas of Cyrene, when the Libyan oracle foretold to him his coming Olympic victory for running, had his portrait statue made beforehand, and so was proclaimed victor and dedicated the statue on the same day. He is also said to have won the chariot-race at that Festival which, according to the account of the Eleans, was not genuine because the Arcadians presided at it.
[4]
The statue of Timanthes of Cleonae, who won the crown in the pancratium for men, was made by Myron of Athens, but Naucydes made that of Baucis of Troezen, who overthrew the men wrestlers. Timanthes, they say, met his end through the following cause. On retiring from athletics he continued to test his strength by drawing a great bow every day. His practice with the bow was interrupted during a period when he was away from home. On his return, finding that he was no longer able to bend the bow, he lit a fire and threw himself alive on to it. In my view all such deeds, whether they have already occurred among men or will take place hereafter, ought to be regarded as acts of madness rather than of courage.
[5]
After Baucis are statues of Arcadian athletes: Euthymenes from Maenalus itself, who won the men's and previously the boys' wrestling-match; Philip, an Azanian from Pellana, who beat the boys at boxing, and Critodamus from Cleitor, who like Philip was proclaimed victor in the boys' boxing match. The statue of Euthymenes for his victory over the boys was made by Alypus; the statue of Damocritus was made by Cleon, and that of Philip the Azanian by Myron. The story of Promachus, son of Dryon, a pancratiast of Pellene, will be included in my account of the Achaeans.24
[6] Not far from Promachus is set up the statue of Timasitheus, a Delphian by birth, the work of Ageladas of Argos. This athlete won in the pancratium two victories at Olympia and three at Pytho. His achievements in war too are distinguished by their daring and by the good luck which attended all but the last, which caused his death. For when Isagoras the Athenian captured the Acropolis of the Athenians with a view to setting up a tyranny, Timasitheus took part in the affair, and, on being taken prisoner on the Acropolis, was put to death by the Athenians for his sin against them.
9.
Theognetus of Aegina succeeded in winning the crown for the boys' wrestling-match, and Ptolichus of Aegina made his statue. Ptolichus was a pupil of his father Synnoon, and he of Aristocles the Sicyonian, a brother of Canachus and almost as famous an artist. Why Theognetus carries a cone of the cultivated pine and a pomegranate I could not conjecture; perhaps some of the Aeginetans may have a local story about it.
[2] After the statue of the man who the Eleans say had not his name recorded with the others because he was proclaimed winner of the trotting-race, stand Xenocles of Maenalus, who overthrew the boys at wrestling, and Alcetus, son of Alcinous, victor in the boys' boxing-match, who also was an Arcadian from Cleitor. Cleon made the statue of Alcetus; that of Xenocles is by Polycleitus.
[3] Aristeus of Argos himself won a victory in the long-race, while his father Cheimon won the wrestling-match. They stand near to each other, the statue of Aristeus being by Pantias of Chios, the pupil of his father Sostratus. Besides the statue of Cheimon at Olympia there is another in the temple of Peace at Rome, brought there from Argos. Both are in my opinion among the most glorious works of Naucydes. It is also told how Cheimon overthrew at wrestling Taurosthenes of Aegina, how Taurosthenes at the next Festival overthrew all who entered for the wrestling-match, and how a wraith like Taurosthenes appeared on that day in Aegina and announced the victory.
[4] The statue of Philles of Elis, who won the boys' wrestling-match, was made by the Spartan Cratinus.
As regards the chariot of Gelon, I did not come to the same opinion about it as my predecessors, who hold that the chariot is an offering of the Gelon who became tyrant in Sicily. Now there is an inscription on the chariot that it was dedicated by Gelon of Gela, son of Deinomenes, and the date of the victory of this Gelon is the seventy-third Festival25.
[5] But the Gelon who was tyrant of Sicily took possession of Syracuse when Hybrilides was archon at Athens, in the second year of the seventy-second Olympiad26, when Tisicrates of Croton won the foot-race. Plainly, therefore, he would have announced himself as of Syracuse, not Gela. The fact is that this Gelon must be a private person, of the same name as the tyrant, whose father had the same name as the tyrant's father. It was Glaucias of Aegina who made both the chariot and the portrait-statue of Gelon.
[6]
At the Festival previous to this it is said that Cleomedes of Astypalaea killed Iccus of Epidaurus during a boxing-match. On being convicted by the umpires of foul play and being deprived of the prize he became mad through grief and returned to Astypalaea. Attacking a school there of about sixty children he pulled down the pillar which held up the roof.
[7] This fell upon the children, and Cleomedes, pelted with stones by the citizens, took refuge in the sanctuary of Athena. He entered a chest standing in the sanctuary and drew down the lid. The Astypalaeans toiled in vain in their attempts to open the chest. At last, however, they broke open the boards of the chest, but found no Cleomedes, either alive or dead. So they sent envoys to Delphi to ask what had happened to Cleomedes.
[8]
The response given by the Pythian priestess was, they say, as follows:—“Last of heroes is Cleomedes of Astypalaea;
Honor him with sacrifices as being no longer a mortal.
”So from this time have the Astypalaeans paid honors to Cleomedes as to a hero.
[9]
By the side of the chariot of Gelon is dedicated a statue of Philon, the work of the Aeginetan Glaucias. About this Philon Simonides the son of Leoprepes composed a very neat elegiac couplet:“My fatherland is Corcyra, and my name is Philon; I am
The son of Glaucus, and I won two Olympic victories for boxing.
”There is also a statue of Agametor of Mantineia, who beat the boys at boxing.
10.
Next to those that I have enumerated stands Glaucus of Carystus. Legend has it that he was by birth from Anthedon in Boeotia, being descended from Glaucus the sea-deity. This Carystian was a son of Demylus, and they say that to begin with he worked as a farmer. The ploughshare one day fell out of the plough, and he fitted it into its place, using his hand as a hammer;
[2] Demylus happened to be a spectator of his son's performance, and thereupon brought him to Olympia to box. There Glaucus, inexperienced in boxing, was wounded by his antagonists, and when he was boxing with the last of them he was thought to be fainting from the number of his wounds. Then they say that his father called out to him, “Son, the plough touch.” So he dealt his opponent a more violent blow which forthwith brought him the victory.
[3] He is said to have won other crowns besides, two at Pytho, eight at the Nemean and eight at the Isthmian games. The statue of Glaucus was set up by his son, while Glaucias of Aegina made it. The statue represents a figure sparring, as Glaucus was the best exponent of the art of all his contemporaries. When he died the Carystians, they say, buried him in the island still called the island of Glaucus.
[4]
Damaretus of Heraea, his son and his grandson, each won two victories at Olympia. Those of Damaretus were gained at the sixty-fifth Festival27 （at which the race in full armour was instituted） and also at the one succeeding. His statue shows him, not only carrying the shield that modern competitors have, but also wearing a helmet on his head and greaves on his legs. In course of time the helmet and greaves were taken from the armour of competitors by both the Eleans and the Greeks generally. Theopompus, son of Damaretus, won his victories in the pentathlum, and his son Theopompus the second, named after his father, won his in the wrestling-match.
[5]
Who made the statue of Theopompus the wrestler we do not know, but those of his father and grandfather are said by the inscription to be by Eutelidas and Chrysothemis, who were Argives. It does not, however, declare the name of their teacher, but runs as follows:—“Eutelidas and Chrysothemis made these works,
Argives, who learnt their art from those who lived before.
”
Iccus the son of Nicolaidas of Tarentum won the Olympic crown in the pentathlum, and afterwards is said to have become the best trainer of his day.
[6] After Iccus stands Pantarces the Elean, beloved of Pheidias, who beat the boys at wrestling. Next to Pantarces is the chariot of Cleosthenes, a man of Epidamnus. This is the work of Ageladas, and it stands behind the Zeus dedicated by the Greeks from the spoil of the battle of Plataea. Cleosthenes' victory occurred at the sixty-sixth Festival, and together with the statues of his horses he dedicated a statue of himself and one of his charioteer.
[7]
There are inscribed the names of the horses, Phoenix and Corax, and on either side are the horses by the yoke, on the right Cnacias, on the left Samus. This inscription in elegiac verse is on the chariot :—“Cleosthenes, son of Pontis, a native of Epidamnus, dedicated me
After winning with his horses a victory in the glorious games of Zeus.
”
[8] This Cleosthenes was the first of those who bred horses in Greece to dedicate his statue at Olympia. For the offering of Evagoras the Laconian consists of the chariot without a figure of Evagoras himself; the offerings of Miltiades the Athenian, which he dedicated at Olympia, I will describe in another part of my story.28 The Epidamnians occupy the same territory to-day as they did at first, but the modern city is not the ancient one, being at a short distance from it. The modern city is called Dyrrhachium from its founder.
[9]
Lycinus of Heraea, Epicradius of Mantineia, Tellon of Oresthas, and Agiadas of Elis won victories in boys' matches; Lycinus for running, the rest of them for boxing. The artist who made the statue of Epicradius was Ptolichus of Aegina; that of Agiadas was made by Serambus, also a native of Aegina. The statue of Lycinus is the work of Cleon. Who made the statue of Tellon is not related.
11.
Next to these are offerings of Eleans, representing Philip the son of Amyntas, Alexander the son of Philip, Seleucus and Antigonus. Antigonus is on foot; the rest are on horseback.
[2]
Not far from the kings mentioned stands a Thasian, Theagenes the son of Timosthenes. The Thasians say that Timosthenes was not the father of Theagenes, but a priest of the Thasian Heracles, a phantom of whom in the likeness of Timosthenes had intercourse with the mother of Theagenes. In his ninth year, they say, as he was going home from school, he was attracted by a bronze image of some god or other in the marketplace; so he caught up the image, placed it on one of his shoulders and carried it home.
[3] The citizens were enraged at what he had done, but one of them, a respected man of advanced years, bade them not to kill the lad, and ordered him to carry the image from his home back again to the market-place. This he did, and at once became famous for his strength, his feat being noised abroad through-out Greece.
[4] The achievements of Theagenes at the Olympian games have already—the most famous of them—been described29 in my story, how he beat Euthymus the boxer, and how he was fined by the Eleans. On this occasion the pancratium, it is said, was for the first time on record won without a contest, the victor being Dromeus of Mantineia. At the Festival following this, Theagenes was the winner in the pancratium.
[5] He also won three victories at Pytho. These were for boxing, while nine prizes at Nemea and ten at the Isthmus were won in some cases for the pancratium and in others for boxing. At Phthia in Thessaly he gave up training for boxing and the pancratium. He devoted himself to winning fame among the Greeks for his running also, and beat those who entered for the long race. His ambition was, I think, to rival Achilles by winning a prize for running in the fatherland of the swiftest of those who are called heroes. The total number of crowns that he won was one thousand four hundred.
[6] When he departed this life, one of those who were his enemies while he lived came every night to the statue of Theagenes and flogged the bronze as though he were ill-treating Theagenes himself. The statue put an end to the outrage by falling on him, but the sons of the dead man prosecuted the statue for murder. So the Thasians dropped the statue to the bottom of the sea, adopting the principle of Draco, who, when he framed for the Athenians laws to deal with homicide, inflicted banishment even on lifeless things, should one of them fall and kill a man.
[7] But in course of time, when the earth yielded no crop to the Thasians, they sent envoys to Delphi, and the god instructed them to receive back the exiles. At this command they received them back, but their restoration brought no remedy of the famine. So for the second time they went to the Pythian priestess, saying that although they had obeyed her instructions the wrath of the gods still abode with them.
[8]
Whereupon the Pythian priestess replied to them :—“But you have forgotten your great Theagenes.
”And when they could not think of a contrivance to recover the statue of Theagenes, fishermen, they say, after putting out to sea for a catch of fish caught the statue in their net and brought it back to land. The Thasians set it up in its original position, and are wont to sacrifice to him as to a god.
[9] There are many other places that I know of, both among Greeks and among barbarians, where images of Theagenes have been set up, who cures diseases and receives honors from the natives. The statue of Theagenes is in the Altis, being the work of Glaucias of Aegina.
12.
Hard by is a bronze chariot with a man mounted upon it; race-horses, one on each side, stand beside the chariot, and on the horses are seated boys. They are memorials of Olympic victories won by Hiero the son of Deinomenes, who was tyrant of Syracuse after his brother Gelo. But the offerings were not sent by Hiero; it was Hiero's son Deinomenes who gave them to the god, Onatas the Aeginetan who made the chariot, and Calamis who made the horses on either side and the boys on them.
[2]
By the chariot of Hiero is a man of the same name as the son of Deinomenes. He too was tyrant of Syracuse, and was called Hiero the son of Hierocles. After the death of Agathocles, a former tyrant, tyranny again sprung up at Syracuse in the person of this Hiero, who came to power in the second year of the hundred and twenty-sixth Olympiad30, at which Festival Idaeus of Cyrene won the foot-race.
[3] This Hiero made an alliance with Pyrrhus the son of Aeacides, sealing it by the marriage of Gelo his son and Nereis the daughter of Pyrrhus. When the Romans went to war with Carthage for the possession of Sicily, the Carthaginians held more than half the island, and Hiero sided with them at the beginning of the war. Shortly after, however, he changed over to the Romans, thinking that they were stronger, and firmer and more reliable friends.
[4] He met his end at the hands of Deinomenes, a Syracusan by birth and an inveterate enemy of tyranny, who afterwards, when Hippocrates the brother of Epicydes had just come from Erbessus to Syracuse and was beginning to harangue the multitude, rushed at him with intent to kill him. But Hippocrates withstood him, and certain of the bodyguard over-powered and slew Deinomenes. The statues of Hiero at Olympia, one on horseback and the other on foot, were dedicated by the sons of Hiero, the artist being Micon, a Syracusan, the son of Niceratus.
[5]
After the likenesses of Hiero stand Areus the Lacedaemonian king, the son of Acrotatus, and Aratus the son of Cleinias, with another statue of Areus on horseback. The statue of Aratus was dedicated by the Corinthians, that of Areus by the people of Elis.
[6] I have already given some account of both Aratus and Areus,31 and Aratus was also proclaimed at Olympia as victor in the chariot-race. Timon, an Elean, the son of Aesypus, entered a four-horse chariot for the Olympic races ... this is of bronze, and on it is mounted a maiden, who, in my opinion, is Victory. Callon the son of Harmodius and Hippomachus the son of Moschion, Elean by race, were victors in the boys' boxing-match. The statue of Callon was made by Daippus; who made that of Hippomachus I do not know, but it is said that he overcame three antagonists without receiving a blow or any physical injury.
[7] Theochrestus of Cyrene bred horses after the traditional Libyan manner; he himself and before him his paternal grandfather of the same name won victories at Olympia with the four-horse chariot, while the father of Theochrestus won a victory at the Isthmus. So declares the inscription on the chariot.
[8] The elegiac verses bear witness that Agesarchus of Triteia, the son of Haemostratus, won the boxing-match for men at Olympia, Nemea, Pytho and the Isthmus; they also declare that the Tritaeans are Arcadians, but I found this statement to be untrue. For the founders of the Arcadian cities that attained to fame have well-known histories; while those that had all along been obscure because of their weakness were surely absorbed for this very reason into Megalopolis, being included in the decree then made by the Arcadian confederacy;
[9] no other city Triteia, except the one in Achaia, is to be found in Greece. However, one may assume that at the time of the inscription the Tritaeans were reckoned as Arcadians, just as nowadays too certain of the Arcadians themselves are reckoned as Argives. The statue of Agesarchus is the work of the sons of Polycles, of whom we shall give some account later on.32
13.
The statue of Astylus of Crotona is the work of Pythagoras; this athlete won three successive victories at Olympia, in the short race and in the double race. But because on the two latter occasions he proclaimed himself a Syracusan, in order to please Hiero the son of Deinomenes, the people of Crotona for this condemned his house to be a prison, and pulled down his statue set up by the temple of Lacinian Hera.
[2]
There is also set up in Olympia a slab recording the victories of Chionis the Lacedaemonian. They show simplicity who have supposed that Chionis himself dedicated the slab, and not the Lacedaemonian people. Let us assume that, as the slab says, the race in armour had not yet been introduced; how could Chionis know whether the Eleans would at some future time add it to the list of events? But those are simpler still who say that the statue standing by the slab is a portrait of Chionis, it being the work of the Athenian Myron.
[3]
Similar in renown to Chionis was Hermogenes of Xanthus, a Lydian, who won the wild olive eight times at three Olympic festivals, and was surnamed Horse by the Greeks. Polites also you will consider a great marvel. This Polites was from Ceramus in Caria, and showed at Olympia every excellence in running. For from the longest race, demanding the greatest stamina, he changed, after the shortest interval, to the shortest and quickest, and after winning a victory in the long race and immediately afterwards in the short race, he added on the same day a third victory in the double course.
[4] Polites then in the second ... and four, as they are grouped together by lot, and they do not start them all together for the race. The victors in each heat run again for the prize. So he who is crowned in the foot-race will be victorious twice. However, the most famous runner was Leonidas of Rhodes. He maintained his speed at its prime for four Olympiads, and won twelve victories for running.
[5]
Not far from the slab of Chionis at Olympia stands Scaeus, the son of Duris, a Samian, victor in the boys' boxing-match. The statue is the work of Hippias, the son of ... and the inscription on it states that Scaeus won his victory at the time when the people of Samos were in exile from the island, but the occasion ... the people to their own.
[6] By the side of the tyrant is a statue of Diallus the son of Pollis, a Smyrnean by descent, and this Diallus declares that he was the first Ionian to receive at Olympia a crown for the boys' pancratium. There are statues of Thersilochus of Corcyra and of Aristion of Epidaurus, the son of Theophiles, made by Polycleitus the Argive; Aristion won a crown for the men's boxing, Thersilochus for the boys'.
[7] Bycelus, the first Sicyonian to win the boys' boxing-match, had his statue made by Canachus of Sicyon, a pupil of the Argive Polycleitus. By the side of Bycelus stands the statue of a man-at-arms, Mnaseas of Cyrene, surnamed the Libyan; Pythagoras of Rhegium made the statue. To Agemachus of Cyzicus from the mainland of Asia ... the inscription on it shows that he was born at Argos.
[8] Naxos was founded in Sicily by the Chalcidians on the Euripus. Of the city not even the ruins are now to be seen, and that the name of Naxos has survived to after ages must be attributed to Tisander, the son of Cleocritus. He won the men's boxing-match at Olympia four times; he had the same number of victories at Pytho, but at this time neither the Corinthians nor the Argives kept complete records of the victors at Nemea and the Isthmus.
[9]
The mare of the Corinthian Pheidolas was called, the Corinthians relate, Aura （breeze）, and at the beginning of the race she chanced to throw her rider. But nevertheless she went on running properly, turned round the post, and, when she heard the trumpet, quickened her pace, reached the umpires first, realized that she had won and stopped running. The Eleans proclaimed Pheidolas the winner and allowed him to dedicate a statue of this mare.
[10]
The sons also of Pheidolas were winners in the horse-race, and the horse is represented on a slab with this inscription :—“The swift Lycus by one victory at the Isthmus and two here
Crowned the house of the sons of Pheidolas.
”But the inscription is at variance with the Elean records of Olympic victors. These records give a victory to the sons of Pheidolas at the sixty-eighth Festival but at no other. You may take my statements as accurate.
[11] There are statues to Agathinus, son of Thrasybulus, and to Telemachus, both men of Elis. Telemachus won the race for four-horse chariots; the statue of Agathinus was dedicated by the Achaeans of Pellene. The Athenian people dedicated a statue of Aristophon, the son of Lysinus, who won the men's pancratium at Olympia.
14.
Pherias of Aegina, whose statue stands by the side of Aristophon the Athenian, at the seventy-eighth Festival was considered very young, and, being judged to be as yet unfit to wrestle, was debarred from the contest. Out at the next Festival he was admitted to the boys' wrestling-match and won it. What happened to this Pherias was different, in fact the exact opposite of what happened at Olympia to Nicasylus of Rhodes.
[2] Being eighteen years of age he was not allowed by the Eleans to compete in the boys' wrestling-match, but won the men's match and was proclaimed victor. He was afterwards proclaimed victor at Nemea also and at the Isthmus. But when he was twenty years old he met his death before he returned home to Rhodes. The feat of the Rhodian wrestler at Olympia was in my opinion surpassed by Artemidorus of Tralles. He failed in the boys' pancratium at Olympia, the reason of his failure being his extreme youth.
[3] When, however, the time arrived for the contest held by the Ionians of Smyrna, his strength had so increased that he beat in the pancratium on the same day those who had competed with him at Olympia, after the boys the beardless youths as they are called, and thirdly the pick of the men. His match with the beardless youths was the outcome, they say, of a trainer's encouragement; he fought the men because of the insult of a man pancratiast. Artemidorus won an Olympic victory among the men at the two hundred and twelfth Festival33.
[4] Next to the statue of Nicasylus is a small bronze horse, which Crocon of Eretria dedicated when he won a crown with a racehorse. Near the horse is Telestas of Messene, who won the boys' boxing-match. The artist who represented Telestas was Silanion.
[5]
The statue of Milo the son of Diotimus was made by Dameas, also a native of Crotona. Milo won six victories for wrestling at Olympia, one of them among the boys; at Pytho he won six among the men and one among the boys. He came to Olympia to wrestle for the seventh time, but did not succeed in mastering Timasitheus, a fellow-citizen who was also a young man, and who refused, moreover, to come to close quarters with him.
[6] It is further stated that Milo carried his own statue into the Altis. His feats with the pomegranate and the quoit are also remembered by tradition. He would grasp a pomegranate so firmly that nobody could wrest it from him by force, and yet he did not damage it by pressure. He would stand upon a greased quoit, and make fools of those who charged him and tried to push him from the quoit. He used to perform also the following exhibition feats.
[7] He would tie a cord round his forehead as though it were a ribbon or a crown. Holding his breath and filling with blood the veins on his head, he would break the cord by the strength of these veins. It is said that he would let down by his side his right arm from the shoulder to the elbow, and stretch out straight the arm below the elbow, turning the thumb upwards, while the other fingers lay in a row. In this position, then, the little finger was lowest, but nobody could bend it back by pressure.
[8] They say that he was killed by wild beasts. The story has it that he came across in the land of Crotona a tree-trunk that was drying up; wedges were inserted to keep the trunk apart. Milo in his pride thrust his hands into the trunk, the wedges slipped, and Milo was held fast by the trunk until the wolves—a beast that roves in vast packs in the land of Crotona—made him their prey.
[9]
Such was the fate that overtook Milo. Pyrrhus, the son of Aeacides, who was king on the Thesprotian mainland and performed many remarkable deeds, as I have related in my account of the Athenians,34 had his statue dedicated by Thrasybulus of Elis. Beside Pyrrhus is a little man holding flutes, carved in relief upon a slab. This man won Pythian victories next after Sacadas of Argos.
[10]
For Sacadas won in the games introduced by the Amphictyons before a crown was awarded for success, and after this victory two others for which crowns were given; but at the next six Pythian Festivals Pythocritus of Sicyon was victor, being the only flute-player so to distinguish himself. It is also clear that at the Olympic Festival he fluted six times for the pentathlum. For these reasons the slab at Olympia was erected in honor of Pythocritus, with the inscription on it :—“This is the monument of the flute-player Pythocritus, the son of Callinicus.
”
[11] The Aetolian League dedicated a statue of Cylon, who delivered the Eleans from the tyranny of Aristotimus. The statue of Gorgus, the son of Eucletus, a Messenian who won a victory in the pentathlum, was made by the Boeotian Theron; that of Damaretus, another Messenian, who won the boys' boxing-match, was made by the Athenian Silanion. Anauchidas, the son of Philys, an Elean, won a crown in the boys' wrestling-match and afterwards in the match for men. Who made his statue is not known, but Ageladas of Argos made the statue of Anochus of Tarentum, the son of Adamatas, who won victories in the short and double foot-race.
[12] A boy seated on a horse and a man standing by the horse the inscription declares to be Xenombrotus of Meropian Cos, who was proclaimed victor in the horse-race, and Xenodicus, who was announced a winner in the boys' boxing-match. The statue of the latter is by Pantias, that of the former is by Philotimus the Aeginetan. The two statues of Pythes, the son of Andromachus, a native of Abdera, were made by Lysippus, and were dedicated by his soldiers. Pythes seems to have been a captain of mercenaries or some sort of distinguished soldier.
[13]
There are statues of winners of the boys' race, namely, Meneptolemus of Apollonia on the Ionian Gulf and Philo of Corcyra; also Hieronymus of Andros, who defeated in the pentathlum at Olympia Tisamenus of Elis, who afterwards served as soothsayer in the Greek army that fought against Mardonius and the Persians at Plataea. By the side of this Hieronymus is a statue of a boy wrestler, also of Andros, Procles, the son of Lycastidas. The sculptor who made the statue of Lycastidas was named Stomius, while Somis made the statue of Procles. Aeschines of Elis won two victories in the pentathlum, and his statues are also two in number.
15.
Archippus of Mitylene overcame his competitors in the men's boxing-match, and his fellow-townsmen hold that he added to his fame by winning the crown, when he was not more than twenty years old, at Olympia, at Pytho, at Nemea and at the Isthmus. The statue of the boy runner Xenon, son of Calliteles from Lepreus in Triphylia, was made by Pyrilampes the Messenan; who made the statue of Cleinomachus of Elis I do not know, but Cleinomachus was proclaimed victor in the pentathlum.
[2] The inscription on the statue of Pantarces of Elis states that it was dedicated by Achaeans, because he made peace between them and the Eleans, and procured the release of those who had been made prisoners by both sides during the war. This Pantarces also won a victory with a race-horse, and there is a memorial of his victory also at Olympia. The statue of Olidas, of Elis, was dedicated by the Aetolian nation, and Charinus of Elis is represented in a statue dedicated for a victory in the double race and in the race in armour. By his side is Ageles of Chios, victorious in the boys' boxing-match, the artist being Theomnestus of Sardes.
[3]
The statue of Cleitomachus of Thebes was dedicated by his father Hermocrates, and his famous deeds are these. At the isthmus he won the men's wrestling-match, and on the same day he overcame all competitors in the boxing-match and in the pancratium. His victories at Pytho were all in the pancratium, three in number. At Olympia this Cleitomachus was the first after Theagenes of Thasos to be proclaimed victor in both boxing and the pancratium.
[4] He won his victory in the pancratium at the hundred and forty-first Olympic Festival35. The next Festival saw this Cleitomachus a competitor in the pancratium and in boxing, while Caprus of Elis was minded both to wrestle and to compete in the pancratium on the same day.
[5] After Caprus had won in the wrestling-match, Cleitomachus put it to the umpires that it would be fair if they were to bring in the pancratium before he received wounds in the boxing. His request seemed reasonable, and so the pancratium was brought in. Although Cleitomachus was defeated by Caprus he tackled the boxers with sturdy spirit and unwearied vigor.
[6]
The Ionians of Erythrae dedicated a statue of Epitherses, son of Metrodorus, who won two boxing prizes at Olympia, two at Pytho, and also victories at Nemea and the Isthmus; the Syracusans dedicated two statues of Hiero at the public charge, while a third is the gift of Hiero's sons. I pointed out in a recent chapter36 ow this Hiero had the same name as the son of Deinomenes, and, like him, was despot of Syracuse.
[7] The Paleans, who form one of the four divisions of the Cephallenians, dedicated a statue of Timoptolis, an Elean, the son of Lampis. These Paleans were of old called Dulichians. There is also a statue set up of Archidamus the son of Agesilaus, and of some man or other representing a hunter. There is a statue of Demetrius, who made an expedition against Seleucus and was taken prisoner in the battle, and one of Antigonus the son of Demetrius; they are offerings, you may be sure, of the Byzantines.
[8] At the thirty-eighth Festival37 Eutelidas the Spartan won two victories among the boys, one for wrestling and one for the pentathlum, this being the first and last occasion when boys were allowed to enter for the pentathlum. The statue of Eutelidas is old, and the letters on the pedestal are worn dim with age.
[9] After Eutelidas is another statue of Areus the Lacedaemonian king, and beside it is a statue of Gorgus the Elean. Gorgus is the only man down to my time who has won four victories at Olympia for the pentathlum, beside a victory in the double race and a victory in the race in armour.
[10]
The man with the boys standing beside him they say is Ptolemy, son of Lagus38. Beside him are two statues of the Elean Caprus, the son of Pythagoras, who received on the same day a crown for wrestling and a crown for the pancratium. This Caprus was the first man to win the two victories. His victim overcome in the pancratium I have already mentioned;39 in wrestling the man he overcame was the Elean Paeanius, who at the previous Festival had won a victory for wrestling, while at the Pythian games he won a crown in the boys' boxing-match, and again in the men's wrestling-match and in the men's boxing-match on one and the same day.
16.
The victories of Caprus were not achieved without great toils and strong effort. There are also at Olympia statues to Anauchidas and Pherenicus, Eleans by race who won crowns for wrestling among the boys. Pleistaenus, the son of the Eurydamus who commanded the Aetolians against the Gauls, had his statue dedicated by the Thespians.
[2] The statue of Antigonus the father of Demetrius and the statue of Seleucus were dedicated by Tydeus the Elean. The fame of Seleucus became great among all men especially because of the capture of Demetrius. Timon won victories for the pentathlum at all the Greek games except the Isthmian, at which he, like other Eleans, abstained from competing. The inscription on his statue adds that he joined the Aetolians in their expedition against the Thessalians and became leader of the garrison at Naupactus because of his friendship with the Aetolians.
[3] Not far from the statue of Timon stands Hellas, and by Hellas stands Elis; Hellas is crowning with one hand Antigonus the guardian of Philip the son of Demetrius, with the other Philip himself; Elis is crowning Demetrius, who marched against Seleucus, and Ptolemy the son of Lagus.
[4]
Aristeides of Elis won at Olympia （so the inscription on his statue declares） a victory in the race run in armour, at Pytho a victory in the double race, and at Nemea in the race for boys in the horse-course. The length of the horse-course is twice that of the double course; the event had been omitted from the Nemean and Isthmian games, but was restored to the Argives for their winter Nemean games by the emperor Hadrian.
[5]
Quite close to the statue of Aristeides stands Menalces of Elis, Proclaimed victor at Olympia in the pentathlum, along with Philonides son of Zotes, who was a native of Chersonesus in Crete, and a courier of Alexander the son of Philip. After him comes Brimias of Elis, victor in the men's boxing-match, Leonidas from Naxos in the Aegean, a statue dedicated by the Arcadians of Psophis, a statue of Asamon, victor in the men's boxing-match, and a statue of Nicander, who won two victories at Olympia in the double course and six victories in foot-races of various kinds at the Nemean games.40 Asamon and Nicander were Eleans the statue of the latter was made by Daippus, that of Asamon by the Messenian Pyrilampes.
[6] Eualcidas of Elis won victories in the boys' boxing-match, Seleadas the Lacedaemonian in the men's wrestling-match. Here too is dedicated a small chariot of the Laconian Polypeithes, and on the same slab Calliteles, the father of Polypeithes, a wrestler. Polypeithes was victorious with his four-horse chariot, Calliteles in wrestling.
[7] There are private Eleans, Lampus the son of Arniscus and ... of Aristarchus; these the Psophidians dedicated, either because they were their public friends or because they had shown them some good-will. Between them stands Lysippus of Elis, who beat his competitors in the boys' wrestling-match; his statue was made by Andreas of Argos.
[8]
Demosthenes the Lacedaemonian won an Olympic victory in the men's foot-race, and he dedicated in the Altis a slab by the side of his statue. The inscription declares that the distance from Olympia to another slab at Lacedaemon is six hundred and sixty furlongs. Theodorus gained a victory in the pentathlum, Pyttalus the son of Lampis won the boys' boxing-match, and Neolaidas received a crown for the foot-race and the race in armour; all were, I may tell you, Eleans. About Pyttalus it is further related that, when a dispute about boundaries occurred between the Arcadians and the Eleans, he delivered judgment on the matter. His statue is the work of Sthennis the Olynthian.
[9] Next is Ptolemy, mounted on a horse, and by his side is an Elean athlete, Paeanius the son of Damatrius, who won at Olympia a victory in wrestling besides two Pythian victories. There is also Clearetus of Elis, who received a crown in the pentathlum, and a chariot of an Athenian, Glaucon the son of Eteocles. This Glaucon was proclaimed victor in a chariot-race for full-grown horses.
17.
These are the most remarkable sights that meet a man who goes over the Altis according to the instructions I have given. But if you will go to the right from the Leonidaeum to the great altar, you will come across the following notable objects. There is Democrates of Tenedos, who won the men's wrestling-match, and Criannius of Elis, who won a victory in the race in armour. The statue of Democrates was made by Dionysicles of Miletus, that of Criannius by Lysus of Macedonia.
[2] The statues of Herodotus of Clazomenae and of Philinus, son of Hegepolis, of Cos, were dedicated by their respective cities. The Clazomenians dedicated a statue of Herodotus because he was the first Clazomenian to be proclaimed victor at Olympia, his victory being in the boys' foot-race. The Coans dedicated a statue of Philinus because of his great renown, for he won at Olympia five victories in running, at Pytho four victories, at Nemea four, and at the Isthmus eleven.
[3] The statue of Ptolemy, the son of Ptolemy Lagus, was dedicated by Aristolaus, a Macedonian. There is also dedicated a statue of a victorious boy boxer, Butas of Miletus, son of Polyneices; a statue too of Callicrates of Magnesia on the Lethaeus, who received two crowns for victories in the race in armour. The statue of Callicrates is the work of Lysippus.
[4] Enation won a victory in the boys' foot-race, and Alexibius in the pentathlum. The native place of Alexibius was Heraea in Arcadia, and Acestor made his statue. The inscription on the statue of Enation does not state his native place, though it does state that he was of Arcadian descent. Two Colophonians, Hermesianax son of Agoneus and Eicasius son of Lycinus and the daughter of Hermesianax, both won the boys' wrestling-match. The statue of Hermesianax was dedicated by the commonwealth of Colophon.
[5]
Near these are Eleans who beat the boys at boxing, Choerilus the work of Sthennis of Olynthus, and Theotimus the work of Daitondas of Sicyon. Theotimus was a son of Moschion, who took part in the expedition of Alexander the son of Philip against Dareius and the Persians. There are two more from Elis, Archidamus who was victorious with a four-horse chariot and Eperastus the son of Theogonus, victor in the race in armour.
[6]
That he was the soothsayer of the clan of the Clytidae, Eperastus declares at the end of the inscription:“Of the stock of the sacred-tongued Clytidae I boast to be,
Their soothsayer, the scion of the god-like Melampodidae.
”For Mantius was a son of Melampus, the son of Amythaon, and he had a son Oicles, while Clytius was a son of Alcmaeon, the son of Amphiaraus, the son of Oicles. Clytius was the son of Alcmaeon by the daughter of Phegeus, and he migrated to Elis because he shrank from living with his mother's brothers, knowing that they had compassed the murder of Alcmaeon.
[7]
Mingled with the less illustrious offerings we may see the statues of Alexinicus of Elis, the work of Cantharus of Sicyon, who won a victory in the boys' wrestling-match, and of Gorgias of Leontini. This statue was dedicated at Olympia by Eumolpus, as he himself says, the grandson of Deicrates who married the sister of Gorgias.
[8] This Gorgias41 was a son of Charmantides, and is said to have been the first to revive the study of rhetoric, which had been altogether neglected, in fact almost forgotten by mankind. They say that Gorgias won great renown for his eloquence at the Olympic assembly, and also when he accompanied Tisias on an embassy to Athens. Yet Tisias improved the art of rhetoric, in particular he wrote the most persuasive speech of his time to support the claim of a Syracusan woman to a property.
[9] However, Gorgias surpassed his fame at Athens; indeed Jason, the tyrant of Thessaly, placed him before Polycrates, who was a shining light of the Athenian school. Gorgias, they say, lived to be one hundred and five years old. Leontini was once laid waste by the Syracusans, but in my time was again inhabited.
18.
There is also a bronze statue of Cratisthenes of Cyrene, and on the chariot stand Victory and Cratisthenes himself. It is thus plain that his victory was in the chariot-race. The story goes that Cratisthenes was the son of Mnaseas the runner, surnamed the Libyan by the Greeks. His offerings at Olympia are the work of Pythagoras of Rhegium.
[2]
Here too I remember discovering the statue of Anaximenes, who wrote a universal history of ancient Greece, including the exploits of Philip the son of Amyntas and the subsequent deeds of Alexander. His honor at Olympia was due to the people of Lampsacus. Anaximenes bequeathed to posterity the following anecdotes about himself. Alexander, the son of Philip, no meek and mild person but a most passionate monarch, he circumvented by the following artifice.
[3] The people of Lampsacus favoured the cause of the Persian king, or were suspected of doing so, and Alexander, boiling over with rage against them, threatened to treat them with utmost rigor. As their wives, their children, and their country itself were in great danger, they sent Anaximenes to intercede for them, because he was known to Alexander himself and had been known to Philip before him. Anaximenes approached, and when Alexander learned for what cause he had come, they say that he swore by the gods of Greece, whom he named, that he would verily do the opposite of what Anaximenes asked.
[4] Thereupon Anaximenes said, “Grant me, O king, this favour. Enslave the women and children of the people of Lampsacus, raze the whole city even to the ground, and burn the sanctuaries of their gods.” Such were his words; and Alexander, finding no way to counter the trick, and bound by the compulsion of his oath, unwillingly pardoned the people of Lampsacus.
[5] Anaximenes is also known to have retaliated on a personal enemy in a very clever but very ill-natured way. He had a natural aptitude for rhetoric and for imitating the style of rhetoricians. Having a quarrel with Theopompus the son of Damasistratus, he wrote a treatise abusing Athenians, Lacedaemonians and Thebans alike. He imitated the style of Theopompus with perfect accuracy, inscribed his name upon the book and sent it round to the cities. Though Anaximenes was the author of the treatise, hatred of Theopompus grew throughout the length of Greece.
[6] Moreover, Anaximenes was the first to compose extemporary speeches, though I cannot believe that he was the author of the epic on Alexander.
Sotades at the ninety-ninth Festival42 was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans.
[7]
The first athletes to have their statues dedicated at Olympia were Praxidamas of Aegina, victorious at boxing at the fifty-ninth Festival43, and Rexibius the Opuntian, a successful pancratiast at the sixty-first Festival44. These statues stand near the pillar of Oenomaus, and are made of wood, Rexibius of figwood and the Aeginetan of cypress, and his statue is less decayed than the other.
19.
There is in the Altis to the north of the Heraeum a terrace of conglomerate, and behind it stretches Mount Cronius. On this terrace are the treasuries, just as at Delphi certain of the Greeks have made treasuries for Apollo. There is at Olympia a treasury called the treasury of the Sicyonians, dedicated by Myron, who was tyrant of Sicyon.
[2] Myron built it to commemorate a victory in the chariot-race at the thirty-third Festival.45 In the treasury he made two chambers, one Dorian and one in the Ionic style. I saw that they were made of bronze; whether the bronze is Tartessian, as the Eleans declare, I do not know.
[3] They say that Tartessus is a river in the land of the Iberians, running down into the sea by two mouths, and that between these two mouths lies a city of the same name. The river, which is the largest in Iberia, and tidal, those of a later day called Baetis, and there are some who think that Tartessus was the ancient name of Carpia, a city of the Iberians.
[4] On the smaller of the chambers at Olympia are inscriptions, which inform us that the weight of the bronze is five hundred talents, and that the dedicators were Myron and the Sicyonian people. In this chamber are kept three quoits, being used for the contest of the pentathlum. There is also a bronze-plated shield, adorned with paintings on the inner side, and along with the shield are a helmet and greaves. An inscription on the armour says that they were dedicated by the Myanians as first-fruits to Zeus. Various conjectures have been made as to who these Myanians were.
[5] I happened to remember that Thucydides46 in his history mentions various cities of the Locrians near Phocis, and among them the Myonians. So the Myanians on the shield are in my opinion the same folk as the Myonians on the Locrian mainland. The letters on the shield are a little distorted, a fault due to the antiquity of the votive offering.
[6]
There are placed here other offerings worthy to be recorded, the sword of Pelops with its hilt of gold, and the ivory horn of Amaltheia, an offering of Miltiades the son of Cimon, who was the first of his house to rule in the Thracian Chersonesus. On the horn is an inscription in old Attic characters:“To Olympian Zeus was I dedicated by the men of Chersonesus
After they had taken the fortress of Aratus.
Their leader was Miltiades.
”There stands also a box-wood image of Apollo with its head plated with gold. The inscription says that it was dedicated by the Locrians who live near the Western Cape, and that the artist was Patrocles of Crotona, the son of Catillus.
[7]
Next to the treasury of the Sicyonians is the treasury of the Carthaginians, the work of Pothaeus, Antiphilus and Megacles. In it are votive offerings—a huge image of Zeus and three linen breast-plates, dedicated by Gelo and the Syracusans after overcoming the Phoenicians in either a naval or a land battle.
[8]
The third of the treasuries, and the fourth as well, were dedicated by the Epidamnians.... It shows the heavens upheld by Atlas, and also Heracles and the apple-tree of the Hesperides, with the snake coiled round the apple-tree. These too are of cedar-wood, and are works of Theocles, son of Hegylus. The inscription on the heavens says that his son helped him to make it. The Hesperides （they were removed by the Eleans） were even in my time in the Heraeum; the treasury was made for the Epidamnians by Pyrrhus and his sons Lacrates and Hermon.
[9]
The Sybarites too built a treasury adjoining that of the Byzantines. Those who have studied the history of Italy and of the Italian cities say that Lupiae, situated between Brundusium and Hydrus, has changed its name, and was Sybaris in ancient times. The harbor is artificial, being a work of the emperor Hadrian.
[10]
Near the treasury of the Sybarites is the treasury of the Libyans of Cyrene. In it stand statues of Roman emperors. Selinus in Sicily was destroyed by the Carthaginians in a war, but before the disaster befell them the citizens made a treasury dedicated to Zeus of Olympia. There stands in it an image of Dionysus with face, feet and hands of ivory.
[11] In the treasury of the Metapontines, which adjoins that of the Selinuntians, stands an Endymion; it too is of ivory except the drapery. How it came about that the Metapontines were destroyed I do not know, but to-day nothing is left of Metapontum but the theater and the circuit of the walls.
[12] The Megarians who are neighbors of Attica built a treasury and dedicated in it offerings, small cedar-wood figures inlaid with gold, representing the fight of Heracles with Achelous. The figures include Zeus, Deianeira, Achelous, Heracles, and Ares helping Achelous. There once stood here an image of Athena, as being an ally of Heracles, but it now stands by the Hesperides in the Heraeum.
[13] On the pediment of the treasury is carved the war of the giants and the gods, and above the pediment is dedicated a shield, the inscription declaring that the Megarians dedicated the treasury from spoils taken from the Corinthians. I think that the Megarians won this victory when Phorbas, who held a life office, was archon at Athens. At this time Athenian offices were not yet annual, nor had the Eleans begun to record the Olympiads.
[14] The Argives are said to have helped the Megarians in the engagement with the Corinthians. The treasury at Olympia was made by the Megarians years47 after the battle, but it is to be supposed that they had the offerings from of old, seeing that they were made by the Lacedaemonian Dontas, a pupil of Dipoenus and Scyllis.
[15] The last of the treasuries is right by the stadium, the inscription stating that the treasury, and the images in it,were dedicated by the people of Gela. The images, however, are no longer there.
20.
Mount Cronius, as I have already said, extends parallel to the terrace with the treasuries on it. On the summit of the mountain the Basilae, as they are called, sacrifice to Cronus at the spring equinox, in the month called Elaphius among the Eleans.
[2] At the foot of Mount Cronius, on the north...,48 between the treasuries and the mountain, is a sanctuary of Eileithyia, and in it Sosipolis,49 a native Elean deity, is worshipped. Now they surname Eileithyia Olympian, and choose a priestess for the goddess every year. The old woman who tends Sosipolis herself too by an Elean custom lives in chastity, bringing water for the god's bath and setting before him barley cakes kneaded with honey.
[3] In the front part of the temple, for it is built in two parts, is an altar of Eileithyia and an entrance for the public; in the inner Part Sosipolis is worshipped, and no one may enter it except the woman who tends the god, and she must wrap her head and face in a white veil. Maidens and matrons wait in the sanctuary of Eileithyia chanting a hymn; they burn all manner of incense to the god, but it is not the custom to pour libations of wine. An oath is taken by Sosipolis on the most important occasions.
[4] The story is that when the Arcadians had invaded the land of Elis, and the Eleans were set in array against them, a woman came to the Elean generals, holding a baby to her breast, who said that she was the mother of the child but that she gave him, because of dreams, to fight for the Eleans. The Elean officers believed that the woman was to be trusted, and placed the child before the army naked.
[5] When the Arcadians came on, the child turned at once into a snake. Thrown into disorder at the sight, the Arcadians turned and fled, and were attacked by the Eleans, who won a very famous victory, and so call the god Sosipolis. On the spot where after the battle the snake seemed to them to go into the ground they made the sanctuary. With him the Eleans resolved to worship Eileithyia also, because this goddess to help them brought her son forth unto men.
[6] The tomb of the Arcadians who were killed in the battle is on the hill across the Cladeus to the west. Near to the sanctuary of Eileithyia are the remains of the sanctuary of Heavenly Aphrodite, and there too they sacrifice upon the altars.
[7]
There is within the Altis by the processional entrance the Hippodameium, as it is called, about a quarter of an acre of ground surrounded by a wall. Into it once every year the women may enter, who sacrifice to Hippodameia, and do her honor in other ways. The story is that Hippodameia withdrew to Midea in Argolis, because Pelops was very angry with her over the death of Chrysippus. The Eleans declare that subsequently, because of an oracle, they brought the bones of Hippodameia to Olympia.
[8] At the end of the statues which they made from the fines levied on athletes, there is the entrance called the Hidden Entrance. Through it umpires and competitors are wont to enter the stadium. Now the stadium is an embankment of earth, and on it is a seat for the presidents of the games. Opposite the umpires is an altar of white marble;
[9] seated on this altar a woman looks on at the Olympic games, the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, which office the Eleans bestow from time to time on different women. Maidens are not debarred from looking on at the games. At the end of the stadium, where is the starting-place for the runners, there is, the Eleans say, the tomb of Endymion.
[10]
When you have passed beyond the stadium, at the point where the umpires sit, is a place set apart for the horse-races, and also the starting-place for the horses. The starting-place is in the shape of the prow of a ship, and its prow is turned towards the course. At the point where the prow adjoins the porch of Agnaptus it broadens and a bronze dolphin on a rod has been made at the very point of the ram.
[11] Each side of the starting-place is more than four hundred feet in length, and in the sides are built stalls. These stalls are assigned by lot to those who enter for the races. Before the chariots or race-horses is stretched a cord as a barrier. An altar of unburnt brick, plastered on the outside, is made at every Festival as near as possible to the center of the prow,
[12] and a bronze eagle stands on the altar with his wings stretched out to the fullest extent. The man appointed to start the racing sets in motion the mechanism in the altar, and then the eagle has been made to jump upwards, so as to become visible to the spectators, while the dolphin falls to the ground.
[13] First on either side the barriers are withdrawn by the porch of Agnaptus, and the horses standing thereby run off first. As they run they reach those to whom the second station has been allotted, and then are withdrawn the barriers at the second station. The same thing happens to all the horses in turn, until at the ram of the prow they are all abreast. After this it is left to the charioteers to display their skill and the horses their speed.
[14]
It was Cleoetas who originally devised the method of starting, and he appears to have been proud of the discovery, as on the statue at Athens he wrote the inscription:—“Who first invented the method of starting the horses at Olympia,
He made me, Cleoetas the son of Aristocles.
”It is said that after Cleoetas some further device was added to the mechanism by Aristeides.
[15]
The race-course has one side longer than the other, and on the longer side, which is a bank, there stands, at the passage through the bank, Taraxippus, the terror of the horses. It has the shape of a round altar, and as they run along the horses are seized, as soon as they reach this point, by a great fear without any apparent reason. The fear leads to disorder; the chariots generally crash and the charioteers are injured. Consequently the charioteers offer sacrifice, and pray that Taraxippus may show himself propitious to them.
[16] The Greeks differ in their view of Taraxippus. Some hold that it is the tomb of an original inhabitant who was skilled in horsemanship; they call him Olenius, and say that after him was named the Olenian rock in the land of Elis. Others say that Dameon, son of Phlius, who took part in the expedition of Heracles against Augeas and the Eleans, was killed along with his charger by Cteatus the son of Actor, and that man and horse were buried in the same tomb.
[17] There is also a story that Pelops made here an empty mound in honor of Myrtilus, and sacrificed to him in an effort to calm the anger of the murdered man, naming the mound50 Taraxippus （Frightener of horses） because the mares of Oenomaus were frightened by the trick of Myrtilus. Some say that it is Oenomaus himself who harms the racers in the course. I have also heard some attach the blame to Alcathus, the son of Porthaon. Killed by Oenomaus because he wooed Hippodameia, Alcathus, they say, here got his portion of earth; having been unsuccessful on the course, he is a spiteful and hostile deity to chariot-drivers.
[18] A man of Egypt said that Pelops received something from Amphion the Theban and buried it where is what they call Taraxippus, adding that it was the buried thing which frightened the mares of Oenomaus, as well as those of every charioteer since. This Egyptian thought that Amphion and the Thracian Orpheus were clever magicians, and that it was through their enchantments that the beasts came to Orpheus, and the stones came to Amphion for the building of the wall. The most probable of the stories in my opinion makes Taraxippus a surname of Horse Poseidon.
[19] There is another Taraxippus at the Isthmus, namely Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus. They say that he was killed by his horses, when Acastus held his contests in honor of his father. At Nemea of the Argives there was no hero who harmed the horses, but above the turning-point of the chariots rose a rock, red in color, and the flash from it terrified the horses, just as though it had been fire. But the Taraxippus at Olympia is much worse for terrifying the horses. On one turning-post is a bronze statue of Hippodameia carrying a ribbon, and about to crown Pelops with it for his victory.
21.
The other side of the course is not a bank of earth but a low hill. At the foot of the hill has been built a sanctuary to Demeter surnamed Chamyne. Some are of opinion that the name is old, signifying that here the earth gaped51 for the chariot of Hades and then closed up52 once more. Others say that Chamynus was a man of Pisa who opposed Pantaleon, the son of Omphalion and despot at Pisa, when he plotted to revolt from Elis; Pantaleon, they say, put him to death, and from his property was built the sanctuary to Demeter.
[2] In place of the old images of the Maid and of Demeter new ones of Pentelic marble were dedicated by Herodes the Athenian.
In the gymnasium at Olympia it is customary for pentathletes and runners to practise, and in the open has been made a basement of stone. Originally there stood on the basement a trophy to commemorate a victory over the Arcadians. There is also another enclosure, less than this, to the left of the entrance to the gymnasium, and the athletes have their wrestling-schools here. Adjoining the wall of the eastern porch of the gymnasium are the dwellings of the athletes, turned towards the southwest.
[3] On the other side of the Cladeus is the grave of Oenomaus, a mound of earth with a stone wall built round it, and above the tomb are ruins of buildings in which Oenomaus is said to have stabled his mares.
The boundaries which now separate Arcadia and Elis originally separated Arcadia from Pisa, and are thus situated. On crossing the river Erymanthus at what is called the ridge of Saurus are the tomb of Saurus and a sanctuary of Heracles, now in ruins. The story is that Saurus used to do mischief to travellers and to dwellers in the neighborhood until he received his punishment at the hands of Heracles.
[4] At this ridge which has the same name as the robber, a river, falling into the Alpheius from the south, just opposite the Erymanthus, is the boundary between the land of Pisa and Arcadia; it is called the Diagon. Forty stades beyond the ridge of Saurus is a temple of Asclepius, surnamed Demaenetus after the founder. It too is in ruins. It was built on the height beside the Alpheius.
[5] Not far from it is a sanctuary of Dionysus Leucyanites, whereby flows a river Leucyanias. This river too is a tributary of the Alpheius; it descends from Mount Pholoe. Crossing the Alpheius after it you will be within the land of Pisa.
[6]
In this district is a hill rising to a sharp peak, on which are the ruins of the city of Phrixa, as well as a temple of Athena surnamed Cydonian. This temple is not entire, but the altar is still there. The sanctuary was founded for the goddess, they say, by Clymenus, a descendant of Idaean Heracles, and he came from Cydonia in Crete and from the river Jardanus. The Eleans say that Pelops too sacrificed to Cydonian Athena before he set about his contest with Oenomaus.
[7] Going on from this point you come to the water of Parthenia, and by the river is the grave of the mares of Marmax. The story has it that this Marmax was the first suitor of Hippodameia to arrive, and that he was killed by Oenomaus before the others; that the names of his mares were Parthenia and Eripha; that Oenomaus slew the mares after Marmax, but granted burial to them also, and that the river received the name Parthenia from the mare of Marmax.
[8] There is another river called Harpinates, and not far from the river are, among the other ruins of a city Harpina, its altars. The city was founded, they say, by Oenomaus, who named it after his mother Harpina.
[9]
A little farther on is a high mound of earth, the grave of the suitors of Hippodameia. Now Oenomaus, they say, laid them in the ground near one another with no token of respect. But afterwards Pelops raised a high monument to them all, to honor them and to please Hippodamaeia. I think too that Pelops wanted a memorial to tell posterity the number and character of the men vanquished by Oenomaus before Pelops himself conquered him.
[10] According to the epic poem called the Great Eoeae the next after Marmax to be killed by Oenomaus was Alcathus, son of Porthaon; after Alcathus came Euryalus, Eurymachus and Crotalus. Now the parents and fatherlands of these I was unable to discover, but Acrias, the next after them to be killed, one might guess to have been a Lacedaemonian and the founder of Acriae. After Acrias they say that Oenomaus slew Capetus, Lycurgus, Lasius, Chalcodon and Tricolonus, who, according to the Arcadians, was the descendant and namesake of Tricolonus, the son of Lycaon.
[11] After Tricolonus there met their fate in the race Aristomachus and Prias, and then Pelagon, Aeolius and Cronius. Some add to the aforesaid Erythras, the son of Leucon, the son of Athamas, after whom was named Erythrae in Boeotia, and Eioneus, the son of Magnes the son of Aeolus. These are the men whose monument is here, and Pelops, they say, sacrificed every year to them as heroes, when he had won the sovereignty of Pisa.
22.
Going forward about a stade from the grave one sees traces of a sanctuary of Artemis, surnamed Cordax because the followers of Pelops celebrated their victory by the side of this goddess and danced the cordax, a dance peculiar to the dwellers round Mount Sipylus. Not far from the sanctuary is a small building containing a bronze chest, in which are kept the bones of Pelops. Of the wall and of the rest of the building there were no remains, but vines were planted over all the district where Pisa stood.
[2] The founder of the city, they say, was Pisus, the son of Perieres, the son of Aeolus. The people of Pisa brought of themselves disaster on their own heads by their hostility to the Eleans, and by their keenness to preside over the Olympic games instead of them. At the eighth Festival53 they brought in Pheidon of Argos, the most overbearing of the Greek tyrants, and held the games along with him, while at the thirty-fourth Festival54 the people of Pisa, with their king Pantaleon the son of Omphalion, collected an army from the neighborhood, and held the Olympic games instead of the Eleans.
[3] These Festivals, as well as the hundred and fourth55, which was held by the Arcadians, are called “Non-Olympiads” by the Eleans, who do not include them in a list of Olympiads. At the forty-eighth Festival56, Damophon the son of Pantaleon gave the Eleans reasons for suspecting that he was intriguing against them, but when they invaded the land of Pisa with an army he persuaded them by prayers and oaths to return quietly home again.
[4] When Pyrrhus, the son of Pantaleon, succeeded his brother Damophon as king, the people of Pisa of their own accord made war against Elis, and were joined in their revolt from the Eleans by the people of Macistus and Scillus, which are in Triphylia, and by the people of Dyspontium, another vassal community. The list were closely related to the people of Pisa, and it was a tradition of theirs that their founder had been Dysponteus the son of Oenomaus. It was the fate of Pisa, and of all her allies, to be destroyed by the Eleans.
[5] Of Pylus in the land of' Elis the ruins are to be seen on the mountain road from Olympia to Elis, the distance between Elis and Pylus being eighty stades. This Pylus was founded, as I have already said,57 by a Megarian called Pylon, the son of Cleson. Destroyed by Heracles and refounded by the Eleans, the city was doomed in time to be without inhabitants. Beside it the river Ladon flows into the Peneius.
[6]
The Eleans declare that there is a reference to this Pylus in the passage of Homer:“And he was descended from the river
Alpheius, that in broad stream flows through the land of the Pylians.
”Hom. Il. 5.544
The Eleans convinced me that they are right. For the Alpheius does flow through this district, and the passage cannot refer to another Pylus. For the land of the Pylians over against the island Sphacteria simply cannot in the nature of things be crossed by the Alpheius, and, moreover, we know of no city in Arcadia named Pylus.
[7]
Distant from Olympia about fifty stades is Heracleia, a village of the Eleans, and beside it is a river Cytherus. A spring flows into the river, and there is a sanctuary of nymphs near the spring. Individually the names of the nymphs are Calliphaeia, Synallasis, Pegaea and Iasis, but their common surname is the Ionides. Those who bathe in the spring are cured of all sorts of aches and pains. They say that the nymphs are named after Ion, the son of Gargettus, who migrated to this place from Athens.
[8]
If you wish to go to Elis through the plain, you will travel one hundred and twenty stades to Letrini, and one hundred and eighty from Letrini to Elis. Originally Letrini was a town, and Letreus the son of Pelops was its founder; but in my time were left a few buildings, with an image of Artemis Alpheiaea in a temple.
[9] Legend has it that the goddess received the surname for the following reason. Alpheius fell in love with Artemis, and then, realizing that persuasive entreaties would not win the goddess as his bride, he dared to plot violence against her. Artemis was holding at Letrini an all-night revel with the nymphs who were her playmates, and to it came Alpheius. But Artemis had a suspicion of the plot of Alpheius, and smeared with mud her own face and the faces of the nymphs with her. So Alpheius, when he joined the throng, could not distinguish Artemis from the others, and, not being able to pick her out, went away without bringing off his attempt.
[10] The people of Letrini called the goddess Alpheian because of the love of Alpheius for her. But the Eleans, who from the first had been friends of Letrini, transferred to that city the worship of Artemis Elaphiaea established amongst themselves, and held that they were worshipping Artemis Alpheiaea, and so in time the Alpheiaean goddess came to be named Elaphiaea.
[11] The Eleans, I think, called Artemis Elaphiaea from the hunting of the deer （elaphos）. But they themselves say that Elaphius was the name of a native woman by whom Artemis was reared. About six stades distant from Letrini is a lake that never dries up, being just about three stades across.
23.
One of the noteworthy things in Elis is an old gymnasium. In this gymnasium the athletes are wont to go through the training through which they must pass before going to Olympia. High plane-trees grow between the tracks inside a wall. The whole of this enclosure is called Xystus, because an exercise of Heracles, the son of Amphitryo, was to scrape up （anaxuein） each day all the thistles that grew there.
[2] The track for the competing runners, called by the natives the Sacred Track, is separate from that on which the runners and pentathletes practise. In the gymnasium is the place called Plethrium. In it the umpires match the competitors according to age and skill; it is for wrestling that they match them.
[3] There are also in the gymnasium altars of the gods, of Idaean Heracles, surnamed Comrade, of Love, of the deity called by Eleans and Athenians alike Love Returned, of Demeter and of her daughter. Achilles has no altar, only a cenotaph raised to him because of an oracle. On an appointed day at the beginning of the festival, when the course of the sun is sinking towards the west, the Elean women do honor to Achilles, especially by bewailing him.
[4]
There is another enclosed gymnasium, but smaller, adjoining the larger one and called Square because of its shape. Here the athletes practise wrestling, and here, when they have no more wrestling to do, they are matched in contests with the softer gloves. There is also dedicated here one of the images made in honor of Zeus out of the fines imposed upon Sosander of Smyrna and upon Polyctor of Elis.
[5] There is also a third enclosed gymnasium, called Maltho from the softness of its floor, and reserved for the youths for the whole time of the festival. In a corner of the Maltho is a bust of Heracles as far as the shoulders, and in one of the wrestling-schools is a relief showing Love and Love Returned, as he is called. Love holds a palm-branch, and Love Returned is trying to take the palm from him.
[6] On each side of the entrance to the Maltho stands an image of a boy boxer. He was by birth, so the Guardian of the Laws at Elis told me, from Alexandria over against the island Pharos, and his name was Sarapion; arriving at Elis when the townsfolk were suffering from famine he supplied them with food. For this reason these honors were paid him here. The time of his crown at Olympia and of his benefaction to the Eleans was the two hundred and seventeenth Festival58.
[7] In this gymnasium is also the Elean Council House, where take place exhibitions of extempore speeches and recitations of written works of all kinds. It is called Lalichmium, after the man who dedicated it. About it are dedicated shields, which are for show and not made to be used in war.
[8]
The way from the gymnasium to the baths passes through the Street of Silence and beside the sanctuary of Artemis Philomeirax. The goddess is so surnamed because she is neighbor to the gymnasium; the street received, they say, the name of Silence for the following reason. Men of the army of Oxylus were sent to spy out what was happening in Elis. On the way they exhorted each other, when they should be near the wall, themselves to keep a strict silence, but to listen attentively if perchance they might learn aught from the people in the town. These men by this street reached the town unobserved, and after hearing all they wished they went back again to the Aetolians. So the street received its name from the silence of the spies.
24.
One of the two ways from the gymnasium leads to the market-place, and to what is called the Umpires' Room; it is above the grave of Achilles, and by it the umpires are wont to go to the gymnasium. They enter before sunrise to match the runners, and at midday for the pentathlum and for such contests as are called heavy.
[2]
The market-place of Elis is not after the fashion of the cities of Ionia and of the Greek cities near Ionia; it is built in the older manner, with porticoes separated from each other and with streets through them. The modern name of the market-place is Hippodromus, and the natives train their horses there. Of the porticoes the southern is in the Doric style, and it is divided by the pillars into three parts. In it the umpires generally spend the day.
[3] At the pillars they also cause altars to be made to Zeus, and in the open market-place are the altars, in number not many; for, their construction being improvised, they are without difficulty taken to pieces. As you enter the market-place at this portico the Umpires' Room is on your left, parallel to the end of the portico. What separates it from the market-place is a street. In this Umpires' Room dwell for ten consecutive months the umpires elect, who are instructed by the Guardians of the Law as to their duties at the festival.
[4]
Near to the portico where the umpires pass the day is another portico, between the two being one street. The Eleans call it the Corcyrean, because, they say, the Corcyreans landed in their country and carried off part of the booty, but they themselves took many times as much booty from the land of the Corcyreans, and built the portico from the tithe of the spoils.
[5] The portico is in the Doric style and double, having its pillars both on the side towards the market-place and on the side away from it. Down the center of it the roof is supported, not by pillars, but by a wall, beside which on either side have been dedicated statues. On the side of the portico towards the market-place stands a statue of Pyrrhon, son of Pistocrates, a sophist who never brought himself to make a definite admission on any matter. The tomb also of Pyrrhon is not far from the town of the Eleans. The name of the place is Petra, and it is said that Petra was a township in ancient times.
[6] The most notable things that the Eleans have in the open part of the market-place are a temple and image of Apollo Healer. The meaning of the name would appear to be exactly the same as that of Averter of Evil, the name current among the Athenians. In another part are the stone images of the sun and of the moon; from the head of the moon project horns, from the head of the sun, his rays. There is also a sanctuary to the Graces; the images are of wood, with their clothes gilded, while their faces, hands and feet are of white marble. One of them holds a rose, the middle one a die, and the third a small branch of myrtle.
[7] The reason for their holding these things may be guessed to be this. The rose and the myrtle are sacred to Aphrodite and connected with the story of Adonis, while the Graces are of all deities the nearest related to Aphrodite. As for the die, it is the plaything of youths and maidens, who have nothing of the ugliness of old age. On the right of the Graces is an image of Love, standing on the same pedestal.
[8] Here there is also a temple of Silenus, which is sacred to Silenus alone, and not to him in common with Dionysus. Drunkenness is offering him wine in a cup. That the Silenuses are a mortal race you may infer especially from their graves, for there is a tomb of a Silenus in the land of the Hebrews, and of another at Pergamus.
[9] In the market-place of Elis I saw something else, a low structure in the form of a temple. It has no walls, the roof being supported by pillars made of oak. The natives agree that it is a tomb, but they do not remember whose it is. If the old man I asked spoke the truth, it would be the tomb of Oxylus.
[10] There is also in the market-place a building for the women called the Sixteen, where they weave the robe for Hera.
Adjoining the market-place is an old temple surrounded by pillars; the roof has fallen down, and I found no image in the temple. It is dedicated to the Roman emperors.
25.
Behind the portico built from the spoils of Corcyra is a temple of Aphrodite, the precinct being in the open, not far from the temple. The goddess in the temple they call Heavenly; she is of ivory and gold, the work of Pheidias, and she stands with one foot upon a tortoise. The precinct of the other Aphrodite is surrounded by a wall, and within the precinct has been made a basement, upon which sits a bronze image of Aphrodite upon a bronze he-goat. It is a work of Scopas, and the Aphrodite is named Common. The meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat I leave to those who care to guess.
[2]
The sacred enclosure of Hades and its temple （for the Eleans have these among their possessions） are opened once every year, but not even on this occasion is anybody permitted to enter except the priest. The following is the reason why the Eleans worship Hades; they are the only men we know of so to do. It is said that, when Heracles was leading an expedition against Pylus in Elis, Athena was one of his allies. Now among those who came to fight on the side of the Pylians was Hades, who was the foe of Heracles but was worshipped at Pylus.
[3]
Homer is quoted in support of the story, who says in the Iliad:“And among them huge Hades suffered a wound from a swift arrow,
When the same man, the son of aegis-bearing Zeus,
Hit him in Pylus among the dead, and gave him over to pains.
”Hom. Il. 5.395-397If in the expedition of Agamemnon and Menelaus against Troy Poseidon was according to Homer an ally of the Greeks, it cannot be unnatural for the same poet to hold that Hades helped the Pylians. At any rate it was in the belief that the god was their friend but the enemy of Heracles that the Eleans made the sanctuary for him. The reason why they are wont to open it only once each year is, I suppose, because men too go down only once to Hades.
[4] The Eleans have also a sanctuary of Fortune. In a portico of the sanctuary has been dedicated a colossal image, made of gilded wood except the face, hands and feet, which are of white marble. Here Sosipolis too is worshipped in a small shrine on the left of the sanctuary of Fortune. The god is painted according to his appearance in a dream: in age a boy, wrapped in a star-spangled robe, and in one hand holding the horn of Amaltheia.
[5]
In the most thickly-populated part of Elis is a statue of bronze no taller than a tall man; it represents a beardless youth with his legs crossed, leaning with both hands upon a spear. They cast about it a garment of wool, one of flax and one of fine linen.
[6] This image was said to be of Poseidon, and to have been worshipped in ancient times at Samicum in Triphylia. Transferred to Elis it received still greater honor, but the Eleans call it Satrap and not Poseidon, having learned the name Satrap, which is a surname of Corybas, after the enlargement of Patrae.
26.
Between the market-place and the Menius is an old theater and a shrine of Dionysus. The image is the work of Praxiteles. Of the gods the Eleans worship Dionysus with the greatest reverence, and they assert that the god attends their festival, the Thyia. The place where they hold the festival they name the Thyia is about eight stades from the city. Three pots are brought into the building by the priests and set down empty in the presence of the citizens and of any strangers who may chance to be in the country. The doors of the building are sealed by the priests themselves and by any others who may be so inclined.
[2] On the morrow they are allowed to examine the seals, and on going into the building they find the pots filled with wine. I did not myself arrive at the time of the festival, but the most respected Elean citizens, and with them strangers also, swore that what I have said is the truth. The Andrians too assert that every other year at their feast of Dionysus wine flows of its own accord from the sanctuary. If the Greeks are to be believed in these matters, one might with equal reason accept what the Ethiopians above Syene say about the table of the sun.59
[3]
On the Acropolis of the Eleans is a sanctuary of Athena. The image is of ivory and gold. They say that the goddess is the work of Pheidias. On her helmet is an image of a cock, this bird being very ready to fight. The bird might also be considered as sacred to Athena the worker.
[4]
Cyllene is one hundred and twenty stades distant from Elis; it faces Sicily and affords ships a suitable anchorage. It is the port of Elis, and received its name from a man of Arcadia. Homer does not mention Cyllene in the list of the Eleans, but in a later part of the poem he has shown that Cyllene was one of the towns he knew.
[5]
“Pulydamas stripped Otus of Cyllene,
Comrade of Phyleides and ruler of the great-souled Epeans.
”Hom. Il. 15.518In Cyllene is a sanctuary of Asclepius, and one of Aphrodite. But the image of Hermes, most devoutly worshipped by the inhabitants, is merely the male member upright on the pedestal.
[6]
The land of Elis is fruitful, being especially suited to the growth of fine flax. Now while hemp and flax, both the ordinary and the fine variety, are sown by those whose soil is suited to grow it, the threads from which the Seres make the dresses are produced from no bark, but in a different way as follows. There is in the land of the Seres an insect which the Greeks call ser, though the Seres themselves give it another name.
[7] Its size is twice that of the largest beetle, but in other respects it is like the spiders that spin under trees, and furthermore it has, like the spider, eight feet. These creatures are reared by the Seres, who build them houses adapted for winter and for summer. The product of the creatures, a clue of fine thread, is found rolled round their feet.
[8] They keep them for four years, feeding them on millet, but in the fifth year, knowing that they have no longer to live, they give them green reed to eat. This of all foods the creature likes best; so it stuffs itself with the reed till it bursts with surfeit, and after it has thus died they find inside it the greater part of the thread. Seria is known to be an island lying in a recess of the Red Sea.
[9] But I have heard that it is not the Red Sea, but a river called Ser, that makes this island, just as in Egypt the Delta is surrounded by the Nile and by no sea. Such another island is Seria said to be. These Seres themselves are of Aethiopian race, as are the inhabitants of the neighboring islands, Abasa and Sacaea. Some say, however, that they are not Ethiopians but a mongrel race of Scythians and Indians.
[10]
Such are the accounts that are given. As you go from Elis to Achaia you come after one hundred and fifty-seven stades to the river Larisus, and in modern days this river forms the boundary between Elis and Achaia, though of old the boundary was Cape Araxus on the coast.
