Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

CHAPTER II.

And the statue of the pancratiast next is by Lysippus. He carried off the victory as pancratiast from the rest of the Acarnanians, and was the first of his own countrymen. Xenarches was his name and he was the son of Philandridas. And the Lacedæmonians, after the invasion of the Medes, turned their attention more than any other Greeks to breeding horses. For besides those that I have already mentioned, there are statues of several other Spartan horse-breeders, next to the effigy of the Acarnanian athlete, as Xenarches, and Lycinus, and Arcesilaus, and Lichas his son. Xenarches also had further victories at Delphi and Argos and Corinth. And Lycinus brought colts to Olympia, and as one of them was rejected, he used his colts in the race of full-grown horses and won the prize. And he set up two statues at Olympia, by the Athenian Myro. And Arcesilaus and his son Lichas had two victories at Olympia, and Lichas, as the Lacedæmonians were at that time excluded from the games, entered himself for the chariot-race as a Theban, and bound the victorious charioteer with a riband. For this the Umpires scourged him. And it was on account of this Lichas that the Lacedæmonians under Agis invaded Elis, when the fight took place at Altis. And at the end of the war Lichas erected his statue here, but the records of the people of Elis about the victors at Olympia say that the Theban people, not Lichas, won the victory.

And near Lichas is the seer of Elis, Thrasybulus, the son of Æneas of the family of the Iamidæ, who practised divination for the Mantineans against the Lacedæmonians under Agis the son of King Eudamidas, I shall enter into the circumstances more fully in my account about the Arcadians. And on the effigy of Thrasybulus there is a spotted lizard creeping on his right shoulder, and a dog lies near him cut in half as a victim and shewing its liver. Divination by kids and lambs and calves is clearly an old practice among mankind, the Cyprians seem also to have added divination by swine. But no nations are accustomed to practise divination by dogs. Therefore it was apparently a peculiarity of Thrasybulus to introduce this kind of divination. And the seers called the Iamidæ were descendants of Iamus, who, as Pindar tells us in one of his Odes, was the son of Apollo, and learnt his divination from him.

And close to the effigy of Thrasybulus is one of Timosthenes, a native of Elis, who won the prize for boys in the course, and one of the Milesian Antipater, the son of Clinopater, who beat all the boys in boxing. And some Syracusans, who offered sacrifices at Olympia on behalf of Dionysius, bribed the father of Antipater to let his son be declared a Syracusan. But Antipater, despising the tyrant’s bribe, declared himself a Milesian, and inscribed on his effigy that he was a Milesian, and the first Ionian that had had his effigy at Olympia. It was by Polycletus, and Timosthenes’ was by Eutychides of Sicyon, a pupil of Lysippus. This Eutychides made a statue of Fortune for the Syrians by the Orontes, which is greatly honoured by the people of that district.

And in Altis near the effigy of Timosthenes are statues of Timon and his son Æsypus, the lad on horseback. For he won the prize on his racer, while Timon was proclaimed victor in the chariot race. These statues were made by Dædalus of Sicyon, who also erected a trophy for the people of Elis, after their victory over the Laconians at Altis. And the inscription over the Samian boxer states that Myco was his trainer, and that the Samians are the best of the Ionians both as athletes and naval heroes, but gives no information about the particular boxer.

And next is the statue of the Messenian Damiscus, who was victor at Olympia when he was only 12. It is a very remarkable coincidence, that, when the Messenians were exiles from the Peloponnese, their luck at Olympia also failed. For except Leontiscus and Symmachus, who were Sicilian Messenians from the Strait, no Messenian either from Sicily or Naupactus was victor at Olympia, and the Sicilians say they were not Messenians but old inhabitants of Zancle. However when the Messenians returned to the Peloponnese, their luck also at Olympia returned. For in the year after the restoration to Messene, when the people of Elis celebrated the Olympian games, this Damiscus won the prize from all the boys in the course, and afterwards won victories both at Nemea and at the Isthmus in the pentathlum.