Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

CHAPTER XX.

Now there is a way from the Prytaneum called The Tripods, so called from some large temples of the gods there and some brazen tripods in them, which contain many works of art especially worthy of mention. For there is a Satyr on which Praxiteles is said to have prided himself very much: and when Phryne once asked which was the finest of his works, they say that he offered to give it her like a lover, but would not say which he thought his finest work. A servant of Phryne at this moment ran up, and said that most of Praxiteles’ works were destroyed by a sudden fire that had seized the building where they were, but that they were not all burnt. Praxiteles at once rushed out of doors, and said he had nothing to show for all his labour, if the flames had consumed his Satyr and Cupid. Phryne then bade him stay and be of good cheer, for he had suffered no such loss, but it was only her artifice to make him confess which were his finest works. She then selected the Cupid. And in the neighbouring temple is a boy Satyr handing a cup to Dionysus. And there is a painting by Thymilus of Cupid standing near Dionysus. But the most ancient temple of Dionysus is at the theatre. And inside the sacred precincts are two shrines of Dionysus and two statues of him, one by Eleuthereus, and one by Alcamenes in ivory and gold. There is a painting also of Dionysus taking Hephæstus to Heaven. And this is the story the Greeks tell. Hera exposed Hephæstus on his birth, and he nursing up his grievance against her sent her as a gift a golden seat with invisible bonds, so that when she sat in it she was a prisoner, and Hephæstus would not obey any of the gods, and Dionysus, whose relations with Hephæstus were always good, made him drunk and took him to Heaven. There are paintings also of Pentheus and Lycurgus paying the penalty for their insults to Dionysus, and of Ariadne asleep, Theseus putting out to sea, and Dionysus coming to carry her off. And there is near the temple of Dionysus and the theatre a work of art, said to have been designed in imitation of Xerxes’ tent. It is a copy, for the original one was burnt by Sulla the Roman general when he took Athens. And this is how the war came about. Mithridates was king of the barbarians in the neighbourhood of the Euxine Sea. Now his pretext for fighting against the Romans, and how he crossed into Asia, and the cities he reduced by war or won over by diplomacy, let those who wish to know the whole history of Mithridates concern themselves about all this: I shall merely relate the circumstances attending the capture of Athens. There was an Athenian called Aristion, whom Mithridates employed as ambassador to the Greek States: he persuaded the Athenians to prefer the friendship of Mithridates to that of the Romans. However he persuaded only the democracy and the fiercer spirits, for as to the more respectable Athenians they of their own accord joined the Romans. And in the battle that ensued the Romans were easily victorious, and pursued Aristion and the fleeing Athenians to the city, and Archelaus and the barbarians to the Piræus. Now Archelaus was the general of Mithridates, whom before this the Magnesians who inhabit Sipylus wounded, as he was ravaging their territory, and killed many of the barbarians. So Athens was blockaded, and Taxilus another general of Mithridates happened to be investing Elatea in the Phocian district, but when tidings of this came to him he withdrew his forces into Attica. And the Roman general learning this left part of his army to continue the siege of Athens, but himself went with the greater part of his force to encounter Taxilus in Bœotia. And the third day after news came to both the Roman camps, to Sulla that the walls at Athens had been carried, and to the force besieging Athens that Taxilus had been defeated at Chæronea. And when Sulla returned to Attica, he shut up in the Ceramicus all his Athenian adversaries, and ordered them to be decimated by lot. And Sulla’s rage against the Athenians not a whit relaxing, some of them secretly went to Delphi: and when they enquired if it was absolutely fated that Athens should be destroyed, the Pythian priestess gave them an oracular response about the bladder.[4] And Sulla after this had the same complaint with which I learn Pherecydes the Syrian was visited. And the conduct of Sulla to most of the Athenians was more savage than one would have expected from a Roman: but I do not consider this the cause of his malady, but the wrath of Zeus the God of Suppliants, because when Aristion fled for refuge to the temple of Athene he tore him away and put him to death. Athens being thus injured by the war with the Romans flourished again when Adrian was Emperor.