Pausanias: Description of Greece Book 10 - Phocis 1-16

[10.1.1] I. It is plain that such part of Phocis as is around Tithorea and Delphi was so named in very ancient days after a Corinthian, Phocus, a son of Ornytion. Not many years afterwards, the name established itself as the received title of what is today called Phocis, when the Aeginetans had disembarked on the land with Phocus the son of Aeacus.

[10.1.2] Opposite the Peloponnesus, and in the direction of Boeotia, Phocis stretches to the sea, and touches it on one side at Cirrha, the port of Delphi, and on the other at the city of Anticyra. In the direction of the Lamian Gulf there are between Phocis and the sea only the Hypocnemidian Locrians. By these is Phocis bounded in this direction, by Scarpheia on the other side of Elateia, and by Opus and its port Cynus beyond Hyampolis and Abae.

[10.1.3] The most renowned exploits of the Phocian people were undertaken by the whole nation. They took part in the Trojan war, and fought against the Thessalians before the Persian invasion of Greece, when they accomplished some noteworthy deeds.

Expecting that the Thessalians would invade their land at Hyampolis, they buried there earthen water-pots, covered these with earth, and so waited for the Thessalian cavalry. Ignorant of the Phocian stratagem, the Thessalians without knowing it drove their horses on to the water-pots, where stumbling into them the horses were lamed, and threw or killed their riders.

[10.1.4] The Thessalians, more enraged than ever against the Phocians, gathered levies from all their cities and marched out against them. Whereupon the Phocians, greatly terrified at the army of the Thessalians, especially at the number of their cavalry and the practised discipline of both mounts and riders, despatched a mission to Delphi, praying the god that they might escape the danger that threatened them. The oracle given them was this:–

      I will match in fight mortal and immortal,
      And to both will I give victory, but more to the mortal.

[10.1.5] On receiving this oracle, the Phocians sent three hundred picked men with Gelon in command to make an attack on the enemy. The night was just falling, and the orders given were to reconnoiter without being observed, to return to the main body by the least known route, and to remain strictly on the defensive. These picked men along with their leader Gelon, trampled on by horses and butchered by their enemies, perished to a man at the hands of the Thessalians.

[10.1.6] Their disaster created such panic among the Phocians in the camp that they actually gathered together in one spot their women, children, movable property, and also their clothes, gold, silver and images of the gods, and making a vast pyre they left in charge a force of thirty men.

[10.1.7] These were under orders that, should the Phocians chance to be worsted in the battle, they were first to put to death the women and the children, then to lay them like victims with the valuables on the pyre, and finally to set it alight and perish themselves, either by each other's hands or by charging the cavalry of the Thessalians. Hence all forlorn hopes are called by the Greeks “Phocian despair.” On this occasion the Phocians forthwith proceeded to attack the Thessalians.

[10.1.8] The commander of their cavalry was Daiphantes of Hyampolis, of their infantry Rhoeus of Ambrossus. But the office of commander-in-chief was held by Tellias, a seer of Elis, upon whom rested all the Phocians' hopes of salvation.

[10.1.9] When the battle joined, the Phocians had before their eyes what they had resolved to do to their women and children, and seeing that their own salvation trembled in the balance, they dared the most desperate deeds, and, with the favour of heaven, achieved the most famous victory of that time.

[10.1.10] Then did all Greece understand the oracle given to the Phocians by Apollo. For the watchword given in battle on every occasion by the Thessalian generals was Itonian Athena, and by the Phocian generals Phocus, from whom the Phocians were named. Because of this engagement the Phocians sent as offerings to Delphi statues of Apollo, of Tellias the seer, and of all their other generals in the battle, together with images of their local heroes. The figures were the work of the Argive Aristomedon.

[10.1.11] Afterwards the Phocians discovered a stratagem quite as clever as their former ones. For when the armies were lying opposite each other at the pass into Phocis, five hundred picked men of Phocis, waiting until the moon was full, attacked the Thessalians on that night, first smearing themselves with chalk and, in addition to the chalk, putting on white armour. It is said that there then occurred a wholesale slaughter of the Thessalians, who thought this apparition of the night to be too unearthly to be an attack of their enemies. It was Tellias of Elis who devised this stratagem also for the Phocians to use against the Thessalians.

[10.2.1] II. When the Persian army crossed into Europe, it is said that the Phocians were forced to join the Great King, but deserted the Persian cause and ranged themselves with the Greeks at the battle of Plataea. Subsequently it happened that a fine was inflicted on them by the Amphictyons. I cannot find out the truth of the story, whether the fine was inflicted because of the misdeeds of the Phocians, or whether the Thessalians exacted the fine from the Phocians because of their ancient hatred.

[10.2.2] As they were disheartened at the greatness of the fine, Philomelus, son of Theotimus, than whom no Phocian stood higher in rank, his country being Ledon, a city of Phocis, took charge and tried to persuade them to seize the sanctuary at Delphi, pointing out that the amount of the sum to be paid was beyond their resources. He stated, among other plausible arguments, that Athens and Sparta had always been favorable to them, and that if Thebes or any other state made war against them, they would have the better owing to their courage and resources.

[10.2.3] When Philomelus put all this before them, the Phocians were nothing loath, either because their judgment was blinded by heaven, or because their nature was to put gain before religion. The seizure of Delphi by the Phocians occurred when Heracleides was president at Delphi and Agathocles archon at Athens, in the fourth year of the hundred and fifth Olympiad,1 when Prorus of Cyrene was victorious in the foot-race.

[10.2.4] When they had seized the sanctuary, the best mercenaries in Greece at once mustered to join them, while the Thebans, at variance before, declared open war against them. The war lasted ten successive years, and during this long time victory often fell to the Phocians and their mercenaries, and often the Thebans proved the better. An engagement took place at the town of Neon, in which the Phocians were worsted, and in the rout Philomelus threw himself down a high precipice, and so lost his life. This was the very punishment fixed by the Amphictyons for spoilers of the sanctuary.

[10.2.5] After the death of Philomelus the Phocians gave the command to Onomarchus, while Philip, son of Amyntas, made an alliance with the Thebans. Philip had the better of the encounter, and Onomarchus fleeing to the coast was there shot down by his own troops, who considered their defeat due to his lack of enterprise and inexperience as a general.

[10.2.6] Such was the end which fate brought upon Onomarchus, and his brother Phaylus was chosen as commander-in-chief. It is said that no sooner had this Phaylus come to rule over the Phocians when he saw the following vision in a dream. Among the votive offerings to Apollo was a representation in bronze of a man's body in an advanced stage of decay, with the flesh already fallen off, and nothing left but the bones. The Delphians said that it was an offering of Hippocrates the physician. Now the thought came to Phaylus that he resembled this offering. Forthwith he was attacked by a wasting disease, which so fulfilled the omen of the dream.

[10.2.7] On the death of Phaylus the sovereignty of the Phocians devolved on Phalaecus his son. Phalaecus, accused of appropriating to his own use the sacred treasures, was deposed, and crossing with a fleet to Crete, accompanied by such Phocians as sided with him and by a part of his mercenaries, he sat down to besiege Cydonia, which refused to accede to his demand for money, and perished along with the greater part of his army.

[10.3.1] III. In the tenth year after the seizure of the sanctuary, Philip put an end to the war, which was called both the Phocian War and the Sacred War, in the year when Theophilus was archon at Athens, which was the first of the hundred and eighth Olympiad2 at which Polycles of Cyrene was victorious in the foot-race. The cities of Phocis were captured and razed to the ground. The tale of them was Lilaea, Hyampolis, Anticyra, Parapotamii, Panopeus and Daulis. These cities were distinguished in days of old, especially because of the poetry of Homer.3

[10.3.2] The army of Xerxes, burning down certain of these, made them better known in Greece, namely Erochus, Charadra, Amphicleia, Neon, Tithronium and Drymaea. The rest of the Phocian cities, except Elateia, were not famous in former times, I mean Phocian Trachis, Phocian Medeon, Echedameia, Ambrossus, Ledon, Phlygonium and Stiris. On the occasion to which I have referred all the cities enumerated were razed to the ground and their people scattered in villages. The one exception to this treatment was Abae, whose citizens were free from impiety, and had had no share in the seizure of the sanctuary or in the war.

[10.3.3] The Phocians were deprived of their share in the Delphic sanctuary and in the Greek assembly, and their votes were given by the Amphictyons to the Macedonians. Subsequently, however, the Phocian cities were rebuilt, and their inhabitants restored from the villages to their native cities, save such as were prevented from being rebuilt by their original weakness and by their want of funds at the period of restoration. It was the Athenians and Thebans who brought back the inhabitants before the disaster of Chaeroneia befell the Greeks.

[10.3.4] The Phocians took part in the battle of Chaeroneia, and afterwards fought at Lamia and Crannon against the Macedonians under Antipater. No Greeks were keener defenders against the Gauls and the Celtic invaders than were the Phocians, who considered that they were helping the god of Delphi, and at the same time, I take it, that they were making amends for the old crimes they had committed.

[10.4.1] IV. Such were the memorable exploits of the Phocians. From Chaeroneia it is twenty stades to Panopeus, a city of the Phocians, if one can give the name of city to those who possess no government offices, no gymnasium, no theater, no market-place, no water descending to a fountain, but live in bare shelters just like mountain cabins, right on a ravine. Nevertheless, they have boundaries with their neighbors, and even send delegates to the Phocian assembly. The name of the city is derived, they say, from the father of Epeius, and they maintain that they are not Phocians, but were originally Phlegyans who fled to Phocis from the land of Orchomenus.

[10.4.2] A survey of the ancient circuit of Panopeus led me to guess it to be about seven stades. I was reminded of Homer's verses about Tityos,4 where he mentions the city of Panopeus with its beautiful dancing-floors, and how in the fight over the body of Patroclus he says that Schedius, son of Iphitus and king of the Phocians, who was killed by Hector, lived in Panopeus.5 It seemed to me that the reason why the king lived here was fear of the Boeotians; at this point is the easiest pass from Boeotia into Phocis, so the king used Panopeus as a fortified post.

[10.4.3] The former passage, in which Homer speaks of the beautiful dancing-floors of Panopeus, I could not understand until I was taught by the women whom the Athenians call Thyiads. The Thyiads are Attic women, who with the Delphian women go to Parnassus every other year and celebrate orgies in honor of Dionysus. It is the custom for these Thyiads to hold dances at places, including Panopeus, along the road from Athens. The epithet Homer applies to Panopeus is thought to refer to the dance of the Thyiads.

[10.4.4] At Panopeus there is by the roadside a small building of unburnt brick, in which is an image of Pentelic marble, said by some to be Asclepius, by others Prometheus. The latter produce evidence of their contention. At the ravine there lie two stones, each of which is big enough to fill a cart. They have the color of clay, not earthy clay, but such as would be found in a ravine or sandy torrent, and they smell very like the skin of a man. They say that these are remains of the clay out of which the whole race of mankind was fashioned by Prometheus.

[10.4.5] Here at the ravine is the tomb of Tityos. The circumference of the mound is just about one-third of a stade, and they say that the verse in the Odyssey:–

  Lying on the ground, and lie lay over nine roods, Hom. Od. 11.577

refers, not to the size of Tityos, but to the place where he lay, the name of which was Nine Roods.

[10.4.6] Cleon of Magnesia on the Hermus used to say that those men were incredulous of wonders who in the course of their own lives had not met yet greater marvels. He declared that Tityos and other monsters had been as tradition says they were. He happened, he said, to be at Cadiz, and he, with the rest of the crowd, sailed forth from the island in accordance with the command of Heracles;6 on their return to Cadiz they found cast ashore a man of the sea, who was about five roods in size, and burning away, because heaven had blasted him with a thunderbolt.

[10.4.7] So said Cleon. About twenty-seven stades distant from Panopeus is Daulis. The men there are few in number, but for size and strength no Phocians are more renowned even to this day. They say that the name of the city is derived from Daulis, a nymph, the daughter of the Cephisus. Others say that the place, on which the city was built, was wooded, and that such shaggy places (dasea) were called daula by the ancients. For this reason, they say, Aeschylus called the beard of Glaucus of Anthedon hypene daulos.

[10.4.8] Here in Daulis the women are said to have served up to Tereus his own son, which act was the first pollution of the dining-table among men. The hoopoe, into which the legend says Tereus was changed, is a bird a little larger than the quail, while the feathers on its head rise into the shape of a crest.

[10.4.9] It is noteworthy that in Phocis swallows neither hatch nor lay eggs; in fact no swallow would even make a nest in the roof of a house. The Phocians say that even when Philomela was a bird she had a terror of Tereus, and so kept away from his country. At Daulis is a sanctuary of Athena with an ancient image. The wooden image, of an even earlier date, the Daulians say was brought from Athens by Procne.

[10.4.10] In the territory of Daulis is a place called Tronis. Here has been built a shrine of the Founder hero. This founder is said by some to have been Xanthippus, a distinguished soldier; others say that he was Phocus, son of Ornytion, son of Sisyphus. At any rate, he is worshipped every day, and the Phocians bring victims and pour the blood into the grave through a hole, but the flesh they are wont to consume on the spot.

[10.5.1] V. There is also an ascent through Daulis to the summit of Parnassus, a longer one than that from Delphi, though not so difficult. Turning back from Daulis to the straight road to Delphi and going forwards, you see on the left of the road a building called the Phocian Building, where assemble the Phocian delegates from each city.

[10.5.2] The building is large, and within are pillars standing throughout its length. From the pillars rise steps to each wall, on which steps the Phocian delegates take their seats. At the end are neither pillars nor steps, but images of Zeus, Athena and Hera. That of Zeus is on a throne; on his right stands Hera, on his left Athena.

[10.5.3] Going forward from here you will come to a road called the Cleft Road, the very road on which7 Oedipus slew his father. Fate would have it that memorials of the sufferings of Oedipus should be left throughout the length and breadth of Greece. At his birth they pieced his ankles with goads and exposed him on Mount Cithaeron in Plataean territory. Corinth and the land at the Isthmus were the scene of his upbringing. Phocis and the Cleft Road received the pollution of his murdered father's blood. Thebes is even more notorious for the marriage of Oedipus and for the sin of Eteocles.

[10.5.4] The Cleft Road and the rash deed committed on it by Oedipus were the beginning of his troubles, and the tombs of Laius and the servant who followed him are still just as they were in the very middle of the place where the three roads meet, and over them have been piled unhewn stones. According to the story, it was Damasistratus, king of Plataea, who found the bodies lying and buried them.

[10.5.5] From here the high road to Delphi becomes both steeper and more difficult for the walker. Many and different are the stories told about Delphi, and even more so about the oracle of Apollo. For they say that in the earliest times the oracular seat belonged to Earth, who appointed as prophetess at it Daphnis, one of the nymphs of the mountain.

[10.5.6] There is extant among the Greeks an hexameter poem, the name of which is Eumolpia, and it is assigned to Musaeus, son of Antiophemus. In it the poet states that the oracle belonged to Poseidon and Earth in common; that Earth gave her oracles herself, but Poseidon used Pyrcon as his mouthpiece in giving responses. The verses are these:–

  Forthwith the voice of the Earth-goddess uttered a wise word,
  And with her Pyrcon, servant of the renowned Earth-shaker. [Musaeus], Eumolpia

They say that afterwards Earth gave her share to Themis, who gave it to Apollo as a gift. It is said that he gave to Poseidon Calaureia, that lies off Troezen, in exchange for his oracle.

[10.5.7] I have heard too that shepherds feeding their flocks came upon the oracle, were inspired by the vapor, and prophesied as the mouthpiece of Apollo. The most prevalent view, however, is that Phemonoe was the first prophetess of the god, and first sang in hexameter verse. Boeo, a native woman who composed a hymn for the Delphians, said that the oracle was established for the god by comers from the Hyperboreans, Olen and others, and that he was the first to prophesy and the first to chant the hexameter oracles.

[10.5.8] The verses of Boeo are:–

  Here in truth a mindful oracle was built
  By the sons of the Hyperboreans, Pagasus and divine Agyieus. Boeo, work unknown

After enumerating others also of the Hyperboreans, at the end of the hymn she names Olen:–

  And Olen, who became the first prophet of Phoebus,
  And first fashioned a song of ancient verses. Boeo, work unknown

Tradition, however, reports no other man as prophet, but makes mention of prophetesses only.

[10.5.9] They say that the most ancient temple of Apollo was made of laurel, the branches of which were brought from the laurel in Tempe. This temple must have had the form of a hut. The Delphians say that the second temple was made by bees from bees-wax and feathers, and that it was sent to the Hyperboreans by Apollo.

[10.5.10] Another story is current, that the temple was set up by a Delphian, whose name was Pteras, and so the temple received its name from the builder. After this Pteras, so they say, the city in Crete was named, with the addition of a letter, Apterei. The story that the temple was built of the fern (pteris) that grows on the mountains, by interweaving fresh stalks of it, I do not accept at all.

[10.5.11] It is no wonder that the third temple was made of bronze, seeing that Acrisius made a bedchamber of bronze for his daughter, the Lacedaemonians still possess a sanctuary of Athena of the Bronze House, and the Roman forum, a marvel for its size and style, possesses a roof of bronze. So it would not be unlikely that a temple of bronze was made for Apollo.

[10.5.12] The rest of the story I cannot believe, either that the temple was the work of Hephaestus, or the legend about the golden singers, referred to by Pindar in his verses about this bronze temple:–

  Above the pediment sang Golden Charmers. Pindar, work unknown

These words, it seems to me, are but an imitation of Homer's8 account of the Sirens. Neither did I find the accounts agree of the way this temple disappeared. Some say that it fell into a chasm in the earth, others that it was melted by fire.

[10.5.13] The fourth temple was made by Trophonius and Agamedes; the tradition is that it was made of stone. It was burnt down in the archonship of Erxicleides at Athens, in the first year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad,9 when Diognetus of Crotona was victorious. The modern temple was built for the god by the Amphictyons from the sacred treasures, and the architect was one Spintharus of Corinth.

[10.6.1] VI. They say that the oldest city was founded here by Parnassus, a son of Cleodora, a nymph. Like the other heroes, as they are called, he had two fathers; one they say was the god Poseidon, the human father being Cleopompus. After this Parnassus were named, they say, both the mountain and also the Parnassian glen. Augury from flying birds was, it is said, a discovery of Parnassus.

[10.6.2] Now this city, so the story goes on, was flooded by the rains that fell in the time of Deucalion. Such of the inhabitants as were able to escape the storm were led by the howls of wolves to safety on the top of Parnassus, being led on their way by these beasts, and on this account they called the city that they founded Lycoreia (Mountainwolf-city).

[10.6.3] Another and different legend is current that Apollo had a son Lycorus by a nymph, Corycia, and that after Lycorus was named the city Lycoreia, and after the nymph the Corycian cave. It is also said that Celaeno was daughter to Hyamus, son of Lycorus, and that Delphus, from whom comes the present name of the city, was a son of Celaeno, daughter of Hyamus, by Apollo.

[10.6.4] Others maintain that Castalius, an aboriginal, had a daughter Thyia, who was the first to be priestess of Dionysus and celebrate orgies in honor of the god. It is said that later on men called after her Thyiads all women who rave in honor of Dionysus. At any rate they hold that Delphus was a son of Apollo and Thyia. Others say that his mother was Melaena, daughter of Cephisus.

[10.6.5] Afterwards the dwellers around called the city Pytho, as well as Delphi, just as Homer10 so calls it in the list of the Phocians. Those who would find pedigrees for everything think that Pythes was a son of Delphus, and that because he was king the city was called Pytho. But the most widespread tradition has it that the victim of Apollo's arrows rotted here, and that this was the reason why the city received the name Pytho. For the men of those days used pythesthai for the verb “to rot,” and hence Homer in his poem says that the island of the Sirens was full of bones, because the men who heard their singing rotted (epythonto).

[10.6.6] The poets say that the victim of Apollo was a dragon posted by Earth to be a guard for the oracle. It is also said that he was a violent son of Crius, a man with authority around Euboea. He pillaged the sanctuary of the god, and he also pillaged the houses of rich men. But when he was making a second expedition, the Delphians besought Apollo to keep from them the danger that threatened them.

[10.6.7] Phemonoe, the prophetess of that day, gave them an oracle in hexameter verse:–

  At close quarters a grievous arrow shall Apollo shoot
  At the spoiler of Parnassus; and of his blood-guilt
  The Cretans shall cleanse his hands; but the renown shall never die.

[10.7.1] VII. It seems that from the beginning the sanctuary at Delphi has been plotted against by a vast number of men. Attacks were made against it by this Euboean pirate, and years afterwards by the Phlegyan nation; furthermore by Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, by a portion of the army of Xerxes, by the Phocian chieftains, whose attacks on the wealth of the god were the longest and fiercest, and by the Gallic invaders. It was fated too that Delphi was to suffer from the universal irreverence of Nero, who robbed Apollo of five hundred bronze statues, some of gods, some of men.

[10.7.2] The oldest contest and the one for which they first offered prizes was, according to tradition, the singing of a hymn to the god. The man who sang and won the prize was Chrysothemis of Crete, whose father Carmanor is said to have cleansed Apollo. After Chrysothemis, says tradition, Philammon won with a song, and after him his son Thamyris. But they say that Orpheus, a proud man and conceited about his mysteries, and Musaeus, who copied Orpheus in everything, refused to submit to the competition in musical skill.

[10.7.3] They say too that Eleuther won a Pythian victory for his loud and sweet voice, for the song that he sang was not of his own composition. The story is that Hesiod too was debarred from competing because he had not learned to accompany his own singing on the harp. Homer too came to Delphi to inquire about his needs, but even though he had learned to play the harp, he would have found the skill useless owing to the loss of his eye-sight.

[10.7.4] In the third year of the forty-eighth Olympiad,11 at which Glaucias of Crotona was victorious, the Amphictyons held contests for harping as from the beginning, but added competitions for flute-playing and for singing to the flute. The conquerors proclaimed were Melampus, a Cephallenian, for harping, and Echembrotus, an Arcadian, for singing to the flute, with Sacadas of Argos for flute-playing. This same Sacadas won victories at the next two Pythian festivals.

[10.7.5] On that occasion they also offered for the first time prizes for athletes, the competitions being the same as those at Olympia, except the four-horse chariot, and the Delphians themselves added to the contests running-races for boys, the long course and the double course. At the second Pythian Festival they no longer offered prizes for events, and hereafter gave a crown for victory. On this occasion they no longer included singing to the flute, thinking that the music was ill-omened to listen to. For the tunes of the flute were most dismal, and the words sung to the tunes were lamentations.

[10.7.6] What I say is confirmed by the votive offering of Echembrotus, a bronze tripod dedicated to the Heracles at Thebes. The tripod has as its inscription:–

      Echembrotus of Arcadia dedicated this pleasant gift to Heracles
      When he won a victory at the games of the Amphictyons,
      Singing for the Greeks tunes and lamentations.

In this way the competition in singing to the flute was dropped. But they added a chariot-race, and Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, was proclaimed victor in the chariot-race.

[10.7.7] At the eighth Pythian Festival they added a contest for harpists playing without singing; Agelaus of Tegea was crowned. At the twenty-third Pythian Festival they added a race in armour. For this Timaenetus of Phlius won the laurel, five Olympiads after Damaretus of Heraea was victorious. At the forty-eighth Pythian Festival they established a race for two-horse chariots, and the chariot won of Execestides the Phocian. At the fifth Festival after this they yoked foals to a chariot, and the chariot of Orphondas of Thebes came in first.

[10.7.8] The pancratium for boys, a race for a chariot drawn by two foals, and a race for ridden foals, were many years afterwards introduced from Elis. The first was brought in at the sixty-first Pythian Festival, and Iolaidas of Thebes was victorious. At the next Festival but one12 they held a race for a ridden foal, and at the sixty-ninth Festival a race for a chariot drawn by two foals; the victor proclaimed for the former was Lycormas of Larisa, for the latter Ptolemy the Macedonian. For the kings of Egypt liked to be called Macedonians, as in fact they were.

The reason why a crown of laurel is the prize for a Pythian victory is in my opinion simply and solely because the prevailing tradition has it that Apollo fell in love with the daughter of Ladon.

[10.8.1] VIII. Some are of opinion that the assembly of the Greeks that meets at Delphi was established by Amphictyon, the son of Deucalion, and that the delegates were styled Amphictyons after him. But Androtion, in his history of Attica, says that originally the councillors came to Delphi from the neighboring states, that the deputies were styled Amphictions (neighbors), but that as time went on their modern name prevailed.

[10.8.2] They say that Amphictyon himself summoned to the common assembly the following tribes of the Greek people:– Ionians, Dolopes, Thessalians, Aenianians, Magnesians, Malians, Phthiotians, Dorians, Phocians, Locrians who border on Phocis, living at the bottom of Mount Cnemis.

But when the Phocians seized the sanctuary, and the war came to an end nine years afterwards, there came a change in the Amphictyonic League. The Macedonians managed to enter it, while the Phocian nation and a section of the Dorians, namely the Lacedaemonians, lost their membership, the Phocians because of their rash crime, the Lacedaemonians as a penalty for allying themselves with the Phocians.

[10.8.3] When Brennus led the Gallic army against Delphi, no Greeks showed greater zeal for the war than the Phocians, and for this conduct of theirs recovered their membership of the League, as well as their old reputation. The emperor Augustus willed that the Nicopolitans, whose city is near Actium, should be members of the Amphictyonic League, that the Magnesians moreover and the Malians, together with the Aenianians and Phthiotians, should be numbered with the Thessalians, and that all their votes, together with those of the Dolopes, who were no longer a separate people, should be assigned to the Nicopolitans.

[10.8.4] The Amphictyons to-day number thirty. Nicopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly each send six deputies; the Boeotians, who in more ancient days inhabited Thessaly and were then called Aeolians, the Phocians and the Delphians, each send two; ancient Doris sends one.

[10.8.5] The Ozolian Locrians, and the Locrians opposite Euboea, send one each; there is also one from Euboea. Of the Peloponnesians, the Argives, Sicyonians, Corinthians and Megarians send one, as Nicopolis send deputies to every meeting of the Amphictyonic League; but each city of the nations mentioned has the privilege of sending members in turn after the lapse of periodic intervals.

[10.8.6] When you enter the city you see temples in a row. The first of them was in ruins, and the one next to it had neither images nor statues. The third had statues of a few Roman emperors; the fourth is called the temple of Athena Forethought. Of its two images the one in the fore-temple is a votive offering of the Massiliots, and is larger than the one inside the temple. The Massiliots are a colony of Phocaea in Ionia, and their city was founded by some of those who ran away from Phocaea when attacked by Harpagus the Persian. They proved superior to the Carthaginians in a sea war, acquired the territory they now hold, and reached great prosperity.

[10.8.7] The votive offering of the Massiliots is of bronze. The gold shield given to Athena Forethought by Croesus the Lydian was said by the Delphians to have been stolen by Philomelus. Near the sanctuary of Forethought is a precinct of the hero Phylacus. This Phylacus is reported by the Delphians to have defended them at the time of the Persian invasion.

[10.8.8] They say that in the open part of the gymnasium there once grew a wild wood, and that Odysseus, when as the guest of Autolycus he was hunting with the sons of Autolycus, received here from the wild boar the wound above the knee. Turning to the left from the gymnasium and going down not more, I think, than three stades, you come to a river named Pleistus. This Pleistus descends to Cirrha, the port of Delphi, and flows into the sea there.

[10.8.9] Ascending from the gymnasium along the way to the sanctuary you reach, on the right of the way, the water of Castalia, which is sweet to drink and pleasant to bathe in. Some say that the spring was named after a native woman, others after a man called Castalius. But Panyassis, son of Polyarchus, who composed an epic poem on Heracles, says that Castalia was a daughter of Achelous. For about Heracles he says:–

  Crossing with swift feet snowy Parnassus he reached the immortal water of Castalia, daughter of Achelous. Panyassis, work unknown

[10.8.10] I have heard another account, that the water was a gift to Castalia from the river Cephisus. So Alcaeus has it in his prelude to Apollo. The strongest confirmation of this view is a custom of the Lilaeans, who on certain specified days throw into the spring of the Cephisus cakes of the district and other things ordained by use, and it is said that these reappear in Castalia.

[10.9.1] IX. The city of Delphi, both the sacred enclosure of Apollo and the city generally, lies altogether on sloping ground. The enclosure is very large, and is on the highest part of the city. Passages run through it, close to one another. I will mention which of the votive offerings seemed to me most worthy of notice.

[10.9.2] The athletes and competitors in music that the majority of mankind have neglected, are, I think, scarcely worthy of serious attention; and the athletes who have left a reputation behind them I have set forth in my account of Elis.13 There is a statue at Delphi of Phaylus of Crotona. He won no victory at Olympia, but his victories at Pytho were two in the pentathlum and one in the foot-race. He also fought at sea against the Persian, in a ship of his own, equipped by himself and manned by citizens of Crotona who were staying in Greece.

[10.9.3] Such is the story of the athlete of Crotona. On entering the enclosure you come to a bronze bull, a votive offering of the Corcyraeans made by Theopropus of Aegina. The story is that in Corcyra a bull, leaving the cows, would go down from the pasture and bellow on the shore. As the same thing happened every day, the herdsman went down to the sea and saw a countless number of tunny-fish.

[10.9.4] He reported the matter to the Corcyraeans, who, finding their labour lost in trying to catch the tunnies, sent envoys to Delphi. So they sacrificed the bull to Poseidon, and straightway after the sacrifice they caught the fish, and dedicated their offerings at Olympia and at Delphi with a tithe of their catch.

[10.9.5] Next to this are offerings of the Tegeans from spoils of the Lacedaemonians: an Apollo, a Victory, the heroes of the country, Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, Arcas, who gave Arcadia its name, Elatus, Apheidas, and Azan, the sons of Arcas, and also Triphylus. The mother of this Triphylus was not Erato, but Laodameia, the daughter of Amyclas, king of Lacedaemon. There is also a statue dedicated of Erasus, son of Triphylus.

[10.9.6] They who made the images are as follows: The Apollo and Callisto were made by Pausanias of Apollonia; the Victory and the likeness of Arcas by Daedalus of Sicyon; Triphylus and Azan by Samolas the Arcadian; Elatus, Apheidas and Erasus by Antiphanes of Argos. These offerings were sent by the Tegeans to Delphi after they took prisoners the Lacedaemonians that attacked their city.14 15

[10.9.7] Opposite these are offerings of the Lacedaemonians from spoils of the Athenians: the Dioscuri, Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, and beside these Poseidon, Lysander, son of Aristocritus, represented as being crowned by Poseidon, Agias, soothsayer to Lysander on the occasion of his victory, and Hermon, who steered his flag-ship.

[10.9.8] This statue of Hermon was not unnaturally made by Theocosmus of Megara, who had been enrolled as a citizen of that city. The Dioscuri were made by Antiphanes of Argos; the soothsayer by Pison, from Calaureia, in the territory of Troezen; the Artemis, Poseidon and also Lysander by Dameas; the Apollo and Zeus by Athenodorus. The last two artists were Arcadians from Cleitor.

[10.9.9] Behind the offerings enumerated are statues of those who, whether Spartans or Spartan allies, assisted Lysander at Aegospotami.16 They are these:– Aracus of Lacedaemon, Erianthes a Boeotian . . . above Mimas, whence came Astycrates, Cephisocles, Hermophantus and Hicesius of Chios; Timarchus and Diagoras of Rhodes; Theodamus of Cnidus; Cimmerius of Ephesus and Aeantides of Miletus.

[10.9.10] These were made by Tisander, but the next were made by Alypus of Sicyon, namely:– Theopompus the Myndian, Cleomedes of Samos, the two Euboeans Aristocles of Carystus and Autonomus of Eretria, Aristophantus of Corinth, Apollodorus of Troezen, and Dion from Epidaurus in Argolis. Next to these come the Achaean Axionicus from Pellene, Theares of Hermion, Pyrrhias the Phocian, Comon of Megara, Agasimenes of Sicyon, Telycrates the Leucadian, Pythodotus of Corinth and Euantidas the Ambraciot; last come the Lacedaemonians Epicydidas and Eteonicus. These, they say, are works of Patrocles and Canachus.

[10.9.11] The Athenians refuse to confess that their defeat at Aegospotami was fairly inflicted, maintaining that they were betrayed by Tydeus and Adeimantus, their generals, who had been bribed, they say, with money by Lysander. As a proof of this assertion they quote the following oracle of the Sibyl:–

  And then on the Athenians will be laid grievous troubles
  By Zeus the high-thunderer, whose might is the greatest,
  On the war-ships battle and fighting,
  As they are destroyed by treacherous tricks, through the baseness of the captains.

The other evidence that they quote is taken from the oracles of Musaeus:–

  For on the Athenians comes a wild rain
  Through the baseness of their leaders, but some consolation will there be
  For the defeat; they shall not escape the notice of the city, but shall pay the penalty.

[10.9.12] So much for this belief. The struggle for the district called Thyrea17 between the Lacedaemonians and the Argives18 was also foretold by the Sibyl, who said that the battle would be drawn. But the Argives claimed that they had the better of the engagement, and sent to Delphi a bronze horse, supposed to be the wooden horse of Troy. It is the work of Antiphanes of Argos.

[10.10.1] X. On the base below the wooden horse is an inscription which says that the statues were dedicated from a tithe of the spoils taken in the engagement at Marathon. They represent Athena, Apollo, and Miltiades, one of the generals. Of those called heroes there are Erechtheus, Cecrops, Pandion, Leos, Antiochus, son of Heracles by Meda, daughter of Phylas, as well as Aegeus and Acamas, one of the sons of Theseus. These heroes gave names, in obedience to a Delphic oracle, to tribes at Athens. Codrus however, the son of Melanthus, Theseus, and Neleus, these are not givers of names to tribes.

[10.10.2] The statues enumerated were made by Pheidias, and really are a tithe of the spoils of the battle. But the statues of Antigonus, of his son Demetrius, and of Ptolemy the Egyptian, were sent to Delphi by the Athenians afterwards. The statue of the Egyptian they sent out of good-will; those of the Macedonians were sent because of the dread that they inspired.

[10.10.3] Near the horse are also other votive offerings of the Argives, likenesses of the captains of those who with Polyneices made war on Thebes: Adrastus, the son of Talaus, Tydeus, son of Oeneus, the descendants of Proetus, namely, Capaneus, son of Hipponous, and Eteoclus, son of Iphis, Polyneices, and Hippomedon, son of the sister of Adrastus. Near is represented the chariot of Amphiaraus, and in it stands Baton, a relative of Amphiaraus who served as his charioteer. The last of them is Alitherses.

[10.10.4] These are works of Hypatodorus and Aristogeiton, who made them, as the Argives themselves say, from the spoils of the victory which they and their Athenian allies won over the Lacedaemonians at Oenoe in Argive territory.19 From spoils of the same action, it seems to me, the Argives set up statues of those whom the Greeks call the Epigoni. For there stand statues of these also, Sthenelus, Alcmaeon, who I think was honored before Amphilochus on account of his age, Promachus also, Thersander, Aegialeus and Diomedes. Between Diomedes and Aegialeus is Euryalus.

[10.10.5] Opposite them are other statues, dedicated by the Argives who helped the Thebans under Epaminondas to found Messene. The statues are of heroes: Danaus, the most powerful king of Argos, and Hypermnestra, for she alone of her sisters kept her hands undefiled. By her side is Lynceus also, and the whole family of them to Heracles, and further back still to Perseus.

[10.10.6] The bronze horses and captive women dedicated by the Tarentines were made from spoils taken from the Messapians, a non-Greek people bordering on the territory of Tarentum, and are works of Ageladas the Argive. Tarentum is a colony of the Lacedaemonians, and its founder was Phalanthus, a Spartan. On setting out to found a colony Phalanthus received an oracle from Delphi, declaring that when he should feel rain under a cloudless sky (aethra), he would then win both a territory and a city.

[10.10.7] At first he neither examined the oracle himself nor informed one of his interpreters, but came to Italy with his ships. But when, although he won victories over the barbarians, he succeeded neither in taking a city nor in making himself master of a territory, he called to mind the oracle, and thought that the god had foretold an impossibility. For never could rain fall from a clear and cloudless sky. When he was in despair, his wife, who had accompanied him from home, among other endearments placed her husband's head between her knees and began to pick out the lice. And it chanced that the wife, such was her affection, wept as she saw her husband's fortunes coming to nothing.

[10.10.8] As her tears fell in showers, and she wetted the head of Phalanthus, he realized the meaning of the oracle, for his wife's name was Aethra. And so on that night he took from the barbarians Tarentum, the largest and most prosperous city on the coast. They say that Taras the hero was a son of Poseidon by a nymph of the country, and that after this hero were named both the city and the river. For the river, just like the city, is called Taras.

[10.11.1] XI. Near the votive offering of the Tarentines is a treasury of the Sicyonians, but there is no treasure to be seen either here or in any other of the treasuries. The Cnidians brought the following images to Delphi: Triopas, founder of Cnidus, standing by a horse, Leto, and Apollo and Artemis shooting arrows at Tityos, who has already been wounded in the body.

[10.11.2] These stand by the treasury of the Sicyonians. The Siphnians too made a treasury, the reason being as follows. Their island contained gold mines, and the god ordered them to pay a tithe of the revenues to Delphi. So they built the treasury, and continued to pay the tithe until greed made them omit the tribute, when the sea flooded their mines and hid them from sight.

[10.11.3] The people of Lipara too dedicated statues to commemorate a naval victory over the Etruscans. These people were colonists from Cnidus, and the leader of the colony is said to have been a Cnidian, whose name was Pentathlus according to a statement made by the Syracusan Antiochus, son of Xenophanes, in his history of Sicily. He says also that they built a city on Cape Pachynum in Sicily, but were hard pressed in a war with the Elymi and Phoenicians, and driven out, but occupied the islands, from which they expelled the inhabitants if they were not still uninhabited, still called, as they are called by Homer,20 the Islands of Aeolus.

[10.11.4] Of these islands they dwell in Lipara, on which they built a city, but Hiera, Strongyle and Didymae they cultivate, crossing to them in ships. On Strongyle fire is to be seen rising out of the ground, while in Hiera fire of its own accord bursts out on the summit of the island, and by the sea are baths, comfortable enough if the water receive you kindly,21 but if not, painful to enter because of the heat.

[10.11.5] The Thebans have a treasury built from the spoils of war, and so have the Athenians. Whether the Cnidians built to commemorate a victory or to display their prosperity I do not know, but the Theban treasury was made from the spoils taken at the battle of Leuctra, and the Athenian treasury from those taken from the army that landed with Datis at Marathon. The inhabitants of Cleonae were, like the Athenians, afflicted with the plague, and obeying an oracle from Delphi sacrificed a he-goat to the sun while it was still rising. This put an end to the trouble, and so they sent a bronze he-goat to Apollo. The Syracusans have a treasury built from the spoils taken in the great Athenian disaster, the Potidaeans in Thrace built one to show their piety to the god.

[10.11.6] The Athenians also built a portico out of the spoils they took in their war against the Peloponnesians and their Greek allies. There are also dedicated the figure-heads of ships and bronze shields. The inscription on them enumerates the cities from which the Athenians sent the first-fruits: Elis, Lacedaemon, Sicyon, Megara, Pellene in Achaia, Ambracia, Leucas, and Corinth itself. It also says that from the spoils taken in these sea-battles a sacrifice was offered to Theseus and to Poseidon at the cape called Rhium. It seems to me that the inscription refers to Phormio, son of Asopichus, and to his achievements.22

[10.12.1] XII. There is a rock rising up above the ground. On it, say the Delphians, there stood and chanted the oracles a woman, by name Herophile and surnamed Sibyl. The former Sibyl I find was as ancient as any; the Greeks say that she was a daughter of Zeus by Lamia, daughter of Poseidon, that she was the first woman to chant oracles, and that the name Sibyl was given her by the Libyans.

[10.12.2] Herophile was younger than she was, but nevertheless she too was clearly born before the Trojan war, as she foretold in her oracles that Helen would be brought up in Sparta to be the ruin of Asia and of Europe, and that for her sake the Greeks would capture Troy. The Delians remember also a hymn this woman composed to Apollo. In her poem she calls herself not only Herophile but also Artemis, and the wedded wife of Apollo, saying too sometimes that she is his sister, and sometimes that she is his daughter.

[10.12.3] These statements she made in her poetry when in a frenzy and possessed by the god. Elsewhere in her oracles she states that her mother was an immortal, one of the nymphs of Ida, while her father was a human. These are the verses:–

  I am by birth half mortal, half divine;
  An immortal nymph was my mother, my father an eater of corn;
  On my mother's side of Idaean birth, but my fatherland was red
  Marpessus, sacred to the Mother, and the river Aidoneus.

[10.12.4] Even to-day there remain on Trojan Ida the ruins of the city Marpessus, with some sixty inhabitants. All the land around Marpessus is reddish and terribly parched, so that the light and porous nature of Ida in this place is in my opinion the reason why the river Aidoneus sinks into the ground, rises to sink once more, finally disappearing altogether beneath the earth. Marpessus is two hundred and forty stades distant from Alexandria in the Troad.

[10.12.5] The inhabitants of this Alexandria say that Herophile became the attendant of the temple of Apollo Smintheus, and that on the occasion of Hecuba's dream she uttered the prophecy which we know was actually fulfilled. This Sibyl passed the greater part of her life in Samos, but she also visited Clarus in the territory of Colophon, Delos and Delphi. Whenever she visited Delphi, she would stand on this rock and sing her chants.

[10.12.6] However, death came upon her in the Troad, and her tomb is in the grove of the Sminthian with these elegiac verses inscribed upon the tomb-stone:–

  Here I am, the plain-speaking Sibyl of Phoebus,
  Hidden beneath this stone tomb.
  A maiden once gifted with voice, but now for ever voiceless,
  By hard fate doomed to this fetter.
  But I am buried near the nymphs and this Hermes,
  Enjoying in the world below a part of the kingdom I had then.

The Hermes stands by the side of the tomb, a square-shaped figure of stone. On the left is water running down into a well, and the images of the nymphs.

[10.12.7] The Erythraeans, who are more eager than any other Greeks to lay claim to Herophile, adduce as evidence a mountain called Mount Corycus with a cave in it, saying that Herophile was born in it, and that she was a daughter of Theodorus, a shepherd of the district, and of a nymph. They add that the surname Idaean was given to the nymph simply because the men of those days called idai places that were thickly wooded. The verse about Marpessus and the river Aidoneus is cut out of the oracles by the Erythraeans.

[10.12.8] The next woman to give oracles in the same way, according to Hyperochus of Cumae, a historian, was called Demo, and came from Cumae in the territory of the Opici. The Cumaeans can point to no oracle given by this woman, but they show a small stone urn in a sanctuary of Apollo, in which they say are placed the bones of the Sibyl.

[10.12.9] Later than Demo there grew up among the Hebrews above Palestine a woman who gave oracles and was named Sabbe. They say that the father of Sabbe was Berosus, and her mother Erymanthe. But some call her a Babylonian Sibyl, others an Egyptian.

[10.12.10] Phaennis, daughter of a king of the Chaonians, and the Peleiae (Doves) at Dodona also gave oracles under the inspiration of a god, but they were not called by men Sibyls. To learn the date of Phaennis and to read her oracles . . . for Phaennis was born when Antiochus was establishing his kingship immediately after the capture of Demetrius.23 The Peleiades are said to have been born still earlier than Phemonoe, and to have been the first women to chant these verses:–

  Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus shall be; O mighty Zeus.
  Earth sends up the harvest, therefore sing the praise of earth as Mother.

[10.12.11] It is said that the men who uttered oracles were Euclus of Cyprus, the Athenians Musaeus, son of Antiophemus, and Lycus, son of Pandion, and also Bacis, a Boeotian who was possessed by nymphs. I have read the oracles of all these except those of Lycus.

These are the women and men who, down to the present day, are said to have been the mouthpiece by which a god prophesied. But time is long, and perhaps similar things may occur again.

[10.13.1] XIII. A bronze head of the Paeonian bull called the bison was sent to Delphi by the Paeonian king Dropion, son of Leon. These bisons are the most difficult beasts to capture alive, and no nets could be made strong enough to hold out against their rush. They are hunted in the following manner. When the hunters have found a place sinking to a hollow, they first strengthen it all round with a stout fence, and then they cover the slope and the level part at the end with fresh skins, or, if they should chance to be without skins, they make dry hides slippery with olive oil.

[10.13.2] Next their best riders drive the bisons together into the place I have described. These at once slip on the first skins and roll down the slope until they reach the level ground, where at the first they are left to lie. On about the fourth or fifth day, when the beasts have lost most of their spirit through hunger and distress,

[10.13.3] those of the hunters who are professional tamers bring to them as they lie fruit of the cultivated pine, first peeling off the inner husk; for the moment the beasts would touch no other food. Finally they tie ropes round them and lead them off.

[10.13.4] This is the way in which the bisons are caught. Opposite the bronze head of the bison is a statue of a man wearing a breastplate, on which is a cloak. The Delphians say that it is an offering of the Andrians, and a portrait of Andreus, their founder. The images of Apollo, Athena, and Artemis were dedicated by the Phocians from the spoils taken from the Thessalians, their enemies always, who are their neighbors except where the Epicnemidian Locrians come between.

[10.13.5] The Thessalians too of Pharsalus dedicated an Achilles on horseback, with Patroclus running beside his horse: the Macedonians living in Dium, a city at the foot of Mount Pieria, the Apollo who has taken hold of the deer; the people of Cyrene, a Greek city in Libya, the chariot with an image of Ammon in it. The Dorians of Corinth too built a treasury, where used to be stored the gold from Lydia.24

[10.13.6] The image of Heracles is a votive offering of the Thebans, sent when they had fought what is called the Sacred War against the Phocians. There are also bronze statues, which the Phocians dedicated when they had put to flight the Thessalian cavalry in the second engagement.25 The Phliasians brought to Delphi a bronze Zeus, and with the Zeus an image of Aegina. The Mantineans of Arcadia dedicated a bronze Apollo, which stands near the treasury of the Corinthians.

[10.13.7] Heracles and Apollo are holding on to the tripod, and are preparing to fight about it. Leto and Artemis are calming Apollo, and Athena is calming Heracles. This too is an offering of the Phocians, dedicated when Tellias of Elis led them against the Thessalians. Athena and Artemis were made by Chionis, the other images are works shared by Diyllus and Amyclaeus. They are said to be Corinthians.

[10.13.8] The Delphians say that when Heracles the son of Amphitryon came to the oracle, the prophetess Xenocleia refused to give a response on the ground that he was guilty of the death of Iphitus. Whereupon Heracles took up the tripod and carried it out of the temple. Then the prophetess said:–

  Then there was another Heracles, of Tiryns, not the Canopian.

For before this the Egyptian Heracles had visited Delphi. On the occasion to which I refer the son of Amphitryon restored the tripod to Apollo, and was told by Xenocleia all he wished to know. The poets adopted the story, and sing about a fight between Heracles and Apollo for a tripod.

[10.13.9] The Greeks in common dedicated from the spoils taken at the battle of Plataea a gold tripod set on a bronze serpent. The bronze part of the offering is still preserved, but the Phocian leaders did not leave the gold as they did the bronze.

[10.13.10] The Tarentines sent yet another tithe to Delphi from spoils taken from the Peucetii, a non-Greek people. The offerings are the work of Onatas the Aeginetan, and Ageladas the Argive, and consist of statues of footmen and horsemen – Opis, king of the Iapygians, come to be an ally to the Peucetii. Opis is represented as killed in the fighting, and on his prostrate body stand the hero Taras and Phalanthus of Lacedaemon, near whom is a dolphin. For they say that before Phalanthus reached Italy, he suffered shipwreck in the Crisaean sea, and was brought ashore by a dolphin.

[10.14.1] XIV. The axes were dedicated by Periclytus, son of Euthymachus, a man of Tenedos, and allude to an old story. Cycnus, they say, was a son of Poseidon, and ruled as king in Colonae, a city in the Troad situated opposite the island Leucophrys.

[10.14.2] He had a daughter, by name Hemithea, and a son, called Tennes, by Procleia, who was a daughter of Clytius and a sister of Caletor. Homer in the Iliad26 says that this Caletor, as he was putting the fire under the ship of Protesilaus, was killed by Ajax. Procleia died before Cycnus, and his second wife, Philonome, daughter of Cragasus, fell in love with Tennes. Rejected by him she falsely accused him before her husband, saying that he had made love to her, and she had rejected him. Cycnus was deceived by the trick, placed Tennes with his sister in a chest and launched it out to sea.

[10.14.3] The young people came safely to the island Leucophrys, and the island was given its present name from Tennes. Cycnus, however, was not to remain for ever ignorant of the trick, and sailed to his son to confess his ignorance and to ask for pardon for his mistake. He put in at the island and fastened the cables of his ship to something – a rock or a tree – but Tennes in a passion cut them adrift with an axe.

[10.14.4] For this reason a by-word has arisen, which is used of those who make a stern refusal: “So and so has cut whatever it may be with an axe of Tenedos.” The Greeks say that while Tennes was defending his country he was killed by Achilles. In course of time weakness compelled the people of Tenedos to merge themselves with the Alexandrians on the Troad mainland.

[10.14.5] The Greeks who fought against the king, besides dedicating at Olympia a bronze Zeus, dedicated also an Apollo at Delphi, from spoils taken in the naval actions at Artemisium and Salamis. There is also a story that Themistocles came to Delphi bringing with him for Apollo some of the Persian spoils. He asked whether he should dedicate them within the temple, but the Pythian priestess bade him carry them from the sanctuary altogether. The part of the oracle referring to this runs as follows:–

  The splendid beauty of the Persian's spoils
  Set not within my temple. Despatch them home speedily.

[10.14.6] Now I greatly marveled that it was from Themistocles alone that the priestess refused to accept Persian spoils. Some thought that the god would have rejected alike all offerings from Persian spoils, if like Themistocles the others had inquired of Apollo before making their dedication. Others said that the god knew that Themistocles would become a suppliant of the Persian king, and refused to take the gifts so that Themistocles might not by a dedication render the Persian's enmity unappeasable. The expedition of the barbarian against Greece we find foretold in the oracles of Bacis, and Euclus wrote his verses about it at an even earlier date.

[10.14.7] Near the great altar is a bronze wolf, an offering of the Delphians themselves. They say that a fellow robbed the god of some treasure, and kept himself and the gold hidden at the place on Mount Parnassus where the forest is thickest. As he slept a wolf attacked and killed him, and every day went to the city and howled. When the people began to realize that the matter was not without the direction of heaven, they followed the beast and found the sacred gold. So to the god they dedicated a bronze wolf.

[10.15.1] XV. A gilt statue of Phryne was made by Praxiteles, one of her lovers, but it was Phryne herself who dedicated the statue. The offerings next to Phryne include two images of Apollo, one dedicated from Persian spoils by the Epidaurians of Argolis, the other dedicated by the Megarians to commemorate a victory over the Athenians at Nisaea. The Plataeans have dedicated an ox, an offering made at the time when, in their own territory, they took part, along with the other Greeks, in the defence against Mardonius, the son of Gobryas. Then there are another two images of Apollo, one dedicated by the citizens of Heracleia on the Euxine, the other by the Amphictyons when they fined the Phocians for tilling the territory of the god.

[10.15.2] The second Apollo the Delphians call Sitalcas, and he is thirty-five cubits high. The Aetolians have statues of most of their generals, and images of Artemis, Athena and two of Apollo, dedicated after their conclusion of the war against the Gauls. That the Celtic army would cross from Europe to Asia to destroy the cities there was prophesied by Phaennis in her oracles a generation before the invasion occurred:–

[10.15.3]

  Then verily, having crossed the narrow strait of the Hellespont,
  The devastating host of the Gauls shall pipe; and lawlessly
  They shall ravage Asia; and much worse shall God do
  To those who dwell by the shores of the sea
  For a short while. For right soon the son of Cronos
  Shall raise them a helper, the dear son of a bull reared by Zeus,
  Who on all the Gauls shall bring a day of destruction.

By the son of a bull she meant Attalus, king of Pergamus, who was also styled bull-horned by an oracle.

[10.15.4] Statues of cavalry leaders, mounted on horses, were dedicated in Apollo's sanctuary by the Pheraeans after routing the Attic cavalry.

The bronze palm-tree, as well as a gilt image of Athena on it, was dedicated by the Athenians from the spoils they took in their two successes on the same day at the Eurymedon, one on land, and the other with their fleet on the river. The gold on this image was, I noticed, damaged in parts.

[10.15.5] I myself put the blame on rogues and thieves. But Cleitodemus, the oldest writer to describe the customs of the Athenians, says in his account of Attica that when the Athenians were preparing the Sicilian expedition a vast flock of crows swooped on Delphi, pecked this image all over, and with their beaks tore away its gold. He says that the crows also broke off the spear, the owls, and the imitation fruit on the palm-tree.

[10.15.6] Cleitodemus describes other omens that told the Athenians to beware of sailing against Sicily. The Cyrenaeans have dedicated at Delphi a figure of Battus in a chariot; he it was who brought them in ships from Thera to Libya. The reins are held by Cyrene, and in the chariot is Battus, who is being crowned by Libya. The artist was a Cnossian, Amphion the son of Acestor.

[10.15.7] It is said that, after Battus had founded Cyrene, he was cured of his stammering27 in the following way. As he was passing through the territory of the Cyrenaeans, in the extreme parts of it, as yet desert, he saw a lion, and the terror of the sight compelled him to cry out in a clear and loud voice. Not far from the Battus the Amphictyons have set up yet another Apollo from the fine they inflicted on the Phocians for their sin against the god.

[10.16.1] XVI. Of the offerings sent by the Lydian kings I found nothing remaining except the iron stand of the bowl of Alyattes. This is the work of Glaucus the Chian, the man who discovered how to weld iron. Each plate of the stand is fastened to another, not by bolts or rivets, but by the welding, which is the only thing that fastens and holds together the iron.

[10.16.2] The shape of the stand is very like that of a tower, wider at the bottom and rising to a narrow top. Each side of the stand is not solid throughout, but the iron cross-strips are placed like the rungs of a ladder. The upright iron plates are turned outwards at the top, so forming a seat for the bowl.

[10.16.3] What is called the Omphalus (Navel) by the Delphians is made of white marble, and is said by the Delphians to be the center of all the earth. Pindar28 in one of his odes supports their view.

[10.16.4] There is here an offering of the Lacedaemonians, made by Calamis, depicting Hermione, daughter of Menelaus, who married Orestes, son of Agamemnon, having previously been wedded to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. The Aetolians have dedicated a statue of Eurydamus, general of the Aetolians, who was their leader in the war against the army of the Gauls.

[10.16.5] On the mountains of Crete there is still in my time a city called Elyrus. Now the citizens sent to Delphi a bronze goat, which is suckling the babies, Phylacides and Philander. The Elyrians say that these were children of Apollo by the nymph Acacallis, and that Apollo mated with Acacallis in the house of Carmanor in the city of Tarrha.

[10.16.6] The Euboeans of Carystus too set up in the sanctuary of Apollo a bronze ox, from spoils taken in the Persian war. The Carystians and the Plataeans dedicated oxen, I believe, because, having repulsed the barbarian, they had won a secure prosperity, and especially a land free to plough. The Aetolian nation, having subdued their neighbors the Acarnanians, sent statues of generals and images of Apollo and Artemis.

[10.16.7] I learnt a very strange thing that happened to the Liparaeans in a war with the Etruscans. For the Liparaeans were bidden by the Pythian priestess to engage the Etruscans with the fewest possible ships. So they put out against the Etruscans with five triremes. Their enemies, refusing to admit that their seamanship was unequal to that of the Liparaeans, went out to meet them with an equal number of ships. These the Liparaeans captured, as they did a second five that came out against them, overcoming too a third squadron of five, and likewise a fourth. So they dedicated at Delphi images of Apollo equal in number to the ships that they had captured.

[10.16.8] Echecratides of Larisa dedicated the small Apollo, said by the Delphians to have been the very first offering to be set up.

1. 357 B.C 2. 348 B.C 3. See Hom. Il. 2.520 4. See Hom. Od. 11.581 5. See Hom. Il. 17.307 foll. 6. Probably referring to a custom that all foreigners should leave Cadiz at certain times, probably at the festival of Heracles. The monster may have been a wooden effigy burnt on these occasions (Frazer). 7. With the proposed emendation: “on this road.” 8. See Hom. Od. 12.44 9. 548 B.C 10. Hom. Il. 2.519

11. 586 B.C 12. 310 B.C 13. Paus. 6.1-18 14. 369 B.C 15. It is probable that these offerings were made by the Arcadians, and not by the Tegeans. (See Frazer's note.) 16. 405 B.C 17. Pausanias seems to refer to a battle in 548 B.C., but the date of the artist Antiphanes makes it more probable that the horse was dedicated to commemorate a later battle fought in 424 B.C. 18. 548 or 424 B.C 19. 463-458 B.C 20. See Hom. Od. 10.1.

21. “If you let yourself gently into the water” (Frazer). 22. 429 B.C 23. 281-280 B.C 24. Dedicated by Gyges and by Croesus, kings of Lydia. 25. See Paus. 10.1.10. 26. Hom. Il. 15.420. 27. Battos means the Stammerer. 28. Pind. P. 4.74