CHAPTER XX.
There are also here besides the chest several votive offerings, as a bed of no great size adorned with much ivory, and the quoit of Iphitus, and the table on which the crowns for the victors are deposited. The bed was they say a plaything of Hippodamia: and the quoit of Iphitus has written on it the armistice between the people of Elis and the Olympians not straight down it, but all round the quoit: and the table is of ivory and gold, the design of Colotes, who was they say a native of Heraclea. And those who take interest in artificers say that he was a Parian and the pupil of Pasiteles, who was himself the pupil of....[73] There too are statues of Hera, and Zeus, and the Mother of the Gods, and Hermes, and Apollo, and Artemis. And behind is a representation of the games. On one side is Æsculapius and Hygiea, one of the daughters of Æsculapius, and Ares and Contest by him, and on another is Pluto and Dionysus and Proserpine and some Nymphs, one of them with a ball. And Pluto has his key, with which (they say) what is called Hades is locked, and then no one can return from it.
An account which I received from Aristarchus, the Interpreter of Antiquities at Olympia, I must not omit. He said that in his youth, when the people of Elis restored the roof of the temple of Hera, the body of a dead man in heavy armour, who had been badly wounded, was found between the sham roof and the roof on which the tiles lay. This man was a combatant in the battle fought inside Altis between the Lacedæmonians and the people of Elis. For the people of Elis climbed up to the temples of the gods, and all high buildings alike, for the purpose of defence. This man therefore probably got up into that place, in a fainting condition from his wounds, and, on his death, neither the heat of summer nor the chills of winter would be likely to injure his dead body, as he lay stowed away and covered up. And Aristarchus added, that they carried the corpse outside Altis and buried it armour and all.
And the pillar, which the people of Elis call the pillar of Œnomaus, is as you go from the great altar to the temple of Zeus, and there are 4 pillars on the left and a roof over them. These pillars support a wooden one worn out by age, and only held together by iron clamps. This pillar was once according to tradition in the house of Œnomaus: and when the god struck the house with lightning, the fire consumed all the house but this one pillar. And a brazen tablet contains some Elegiac lines referring to this.
“I am the only vestige, stranger, of a famous house, I once was a pillar in Œnomaus’ house, but now near Zeus I am in iron clamps in honour: the destructive fire has not consumed me.”
Another curious thing happened on the spot in my time. A senator of Rome won the prize at Olympia, and wishing some record of his victory to survive in the shape of a brazen statue with an inscription, dug for a foundation, close to this pillar of Œnomaus, and the diggers found fragments of arms and bridles and bits. These I myself saw dug up.
The temple, which is large in size and of Doric architecture, they call to this day the Temple of the Mother, preserving its ancient name, though there is no statue in it of the Mother of the Gods, but only some statues of Roman Emperors. It is inside Altis, and there is a round building called Philip’s House, on the top of which is a brazen poppy as a clamp for the beams. This building is on the left hand as you go to the Town Hall, and is built of baked brick, and there are some pillars round it. It was built for Philip after the fatal defeat of the Greeks at Chæronea. And there are statues there of Philip, and Alexander, and Amyntas the father of Philip. They are by Leochares in ivory and gold, like the statues of Olympias and Eurydice.