Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

CHAPTER XIV.

And as one enters the Odeum at Athens, there is a Dionysus and other things worth seeing. And near is a spring called the Nine Springs constructed so by Pisistratus: for there are wells all over the city but this is the only spring. And two temples have been built over the spring, one to Demeter and the other to Proserpine; in one of them is a statue to Triptolemus, about whom I will record the traditions, omitting what is said about Deiope. Now the Argives are those of the Greeks who chiefly dispute with the Athenians their rival claims to antiquity, and assert that they have received gifts from the gods, just as among the barbarians the Egyptians have similar disputes with the Phrygians. The story goes then that when Demeter came to Argos Pelasgus received her into his house, and that Chrysanthis, knowing of the rape of Proserpine, informed her of it: and afterwards Trochilus the initiating priest fled they say from Argos in consequence of the hatred of Agenor, and came to Attica, and there married a wife from Eleusis, and had children by her, Eubules and Triptolemus. This is the account of the Argives. But the Athenians and neighbouring tribes know that Triptolemus, the son of Celeus, was the first who sowed corn in the fields. And it is sung by Musæus, (if indeed the lines are by Musæus), that Triptolemus was the son of Ocean and Earth, and it is sung by Orpheus, (if these lines again are by Orpheus, which I doubt), that Dysaules was the father of Eubules and Triptolemus, and that Demeter taught them how to sow corn because they had given her information about the rape of her daughter. But the Athenian Chœrilus, in the play called “Alope,” says that Cercyon and Triptolemus were brothers, that their mother was a daughter of Amphictyon, and that the father of Triptolemus was Rharus, and the father of Cercyon Poseidon. And as I was intending to go further into the account, and narrate all things appertaining to the temple at Athens called the Eleusinium, a vision in the night checked me: but what it is lawful for me to write for everybody, to this I will turn. In front of this temple, where is also a statue of Triptolemus, there is a brazen bull being led to sacrifice, and Epimenides the Gnossian is pourtrayed in a sitting posture, who is recorded to have gone into a field and entered into a cave and slept there, and woke not from that sleep till forty years had rolled by, and afterwards wrote epic poems and visited Athens and other cities. And Thales, who stopped the plague at Lacedæmon, was no relation of his, nor of the same city as Epimenides: for the latter was a Gnossian, whereas Thales is declared to have been a Gortynian by the Colyphonian Polymnastus, who wrote a poem on him for the Lacedæmonians. And a little further is the temple of Euclea, (Fair Fame), a votive offering for the victory over the Persians at Marathon. And I think the Athenians prided themselves not a little on this victory: Æschylus, at any rate, on his death-bed, remembered none of his other exploits, though he was so remarkable as a Dramatist and had fought both at Artemisium and Salamis: and he wrote in the Poem he then composed his own name and the name of his city, and that he had as witnesses of his prowess the grove at Marathon and the Persians who landed there.

And beyond the Ceramicus and the portico called The Royal Portico is a temple of Hephæstus, and that a statue of Athene was placed in it I was not at all surprised at when I remembered the story about Erichthonius. But seeing that the statue of Athene had grey eyes, I found that this was a legend of the Libyans, who record that she was the daughter of Poseidon and the Tritonian Marsh, and that therefore her eyes were grey as those of Poseidon. And near is a temple of Celestial Aphrodite, who was first worshipped by the Assyrians, and after them by the Paphians of Cyprus, and by the Phœnicians who dwell at Ascalon in Palestine. And from the Phœnicians the people of Cythera learned her worship. And among the Athenians her worship was instituted by Ægeus, thinking that he had no children, (for he had none then), and that his sisters were unfortunate, owing to the wrath of the Celestial One. And her statue is still among us of Parian stone, the design of Phidias. And the Athenians have a township of the Athmoneans, who say that Porphyrion, who reigned even before Actæus, erected among them a temple to the Celestial Aphrodite. But the traditions of townships and the dwellers in cities are widely different.