Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

CHAPTER XVII.

And not far from that of Orthian Artemis is the temple of Ilithyia: this temple they say was built, and Ilithyia accounted a goddess, in obedience to the oracle at Delphi. And the Lacedæmonians have no citadel rising to a notable height, as the Cadmea at Thebes, or Larissa among the Argives: but as there are several hills in the city the highest of these is called the citadel. Here is erected a temple of Athene called Poliuchus and Chalciœcus. And this temple began to be built they say by Tyndareus: and after his death his sons wished to finish the building, and they had an opportunity in the spoils from Aphidna. But as they too died before the conclusion of the work, the Lacedæmonians many years afterwards completed the temple, and made a statue of Athene in brass. And the artificer was Gitiadas a native of Sparta, who also composed Doric poems and a hymn to the goddess. Many too of the Labours of Hercules are delineated in brass, and many of his successes on his own account, and several of the actions of Castor and Pollux, and their carrying off the daughters of Leucippus, and Hephæstus freeing his mother from her bonds. I have given an explanation of all these before, and the legends about them, in my account of Attica. There too are the Nymphs giving Perseus, as he is starting for Libya and Medusa, the invisible cap, and the sandals with which he could fly through the air. There too are representations of the birth of Athene, and of Amphitrite, and Poseidon, which are the largest and as it seems to me finest works of art.

There is also another temple there of Athene the Worker. At the South Porch there is also a temple of Zeus called the Arranger, and the tomb of Tyndareus in front of it. And the West Porch has two Eagles and two Victories to correspond, the votive offering of Lysander, and a record of his two famous exploits, the one near Ephesus when he defeated Antiochus, the pilot of Alcibiades, and the Athenian gallies, and the other at Ægos-potamoi where he crushed the Athenian navy. And at the left of Athene Chalciœcus they have built a temple of the Muses, because the Lacedæmonians do not go out to battle to the sound of the trumpet, but to the music of flutes and lyre and harp. And behind Athene Chalciœcus is the temple of Martial Aphrodite. Her wooden statues are as old as any among the Greeks.

And on the right of Athene Chalciœcus is a statue of Supreme Zeus, the most ancient of all brass statues, for it is not carved in one piece, but forged piece by piece and deftly welded together, and studs keep it together from falling to pieces. The artificer was they say Clearchus a man of Rhegium, who some say was the pupil of Dipœnus and Scyllis, others say of Dædalus. And at what is called the Scenoma there is a figure of a woman, the Lacedæmonians say it is Euryleonis, who won the prize at Olympia with a pair of horses.

And near the altar of Athene Chalciœcus are erected two figures of Pausanias the General at Platæa. His fate I shall not relate to people who know it, for what I have written before is quite sufficient. I shall merely therefore state what I heard from a man of Byzantium, that Pausanias was detected plotting, and was the only one of those that took sanctuary with Athene Chalciœcus that did not get indemnity, and that for no other reason than that he could not clear himself of the guilt of murder. For when he was at the Hellespont in command of the allied fleet, he got enamoured of a Byzantian maiden called Cleonice, and at nightfall a detachment of his men brought her to him. And Pausanias had fallen asleep, and when this maiden came into the room she knocked down inadvertently the light that was burning, and the noise woke him. And Pausanias, whose conscience smote him for having betrayed Greece, and who was therefore always in a state of nervous alarm and panic, was beside himself and stabbed the maiden with a scimetar. This guilt Pausanias could not clear himself from, though he endeavoured in every way to propitiate Zeus the Acquitter, and even went to Phigalia in Arcadia to the necromancers, but he paid to Cleonice and the deity the fit penalty. And the Lacedæmonians at the bidding of the oracle made brazen statues for the god Epidotes, and otherwise honoured him, because he it was who in the case of Pausanias turned aside the wrath of Zeus the god of Suppliants.