CHAPTER XXI.
Now the Athenians have statues in the theatre of their tragic and comic dramatists, mostly mediocrities, for except Menander there is no Comedian of first-rate powers, and Euripides and Sophocles are the great lights of Tragedy. And the story goes that after the death of Sophocles the Lacedæmonians made an incursion into Attica, and their leader saw in a dream Dionysus standing by him, and bidding him honour the new Siren with all the honours paid to the dead: and the dream seemed manifestly to refer to Sophocles and his plays. And even now the Athenians are wont to compare the persuasiveness of his poetry and discourses to a Siren’s song. And the statue of Æschylus was I think completed long after his death, and subsequently to the painting which exhibits the action at Marathon. And Æschylus used to tell the story that when he was quite a lad, he slept in a field watching the grapes, and Dionysus appeared to him and bade him write tragedy: and when it was day, he wished to obey the god, and found it most easy work. This was his own account. And on the South Wall, which looks from the Acropolis to the theatre, is the golden head of Medusa the Gorgon, with her ægis. And at the top of the theatre there is a crevice in the rocks up to the Acropolis: and there is a tripod also here. On it are pourtrayed Apollo and Artemis carrying off the sons of Niobe. I myself saw this Niobe when I ascended the mountain Sipylus: the rock and ravine at near view convey neither the idea of a woman, nor a woman mourning, but at a distance you may fancy to yourself that you see a woman all tears and with dejected mien.
As you go from the theatre to the Acropolis is the tomb of Calus. This Calus, his sister’s son and art-pupil, Dædalus murdered and fled to Crete: and afterwards escaped into Sicily to Cocalus. And the temple of Æsculapius, in regard to the statues of the god and his sons and also the paintings, is well worth seeing. And there is in it a spring, in which they say Halirrhothius the son of Poseidon was drowned by Ares for having seduced his daughter, and this was the first case of trial for murder. Here too among other things is a Sarmatic coat of mail: anyone looking at it will say that the Sarmatians come not a whit behind the Greeks in the arts. For they have neither iron that they can dig nor do they import it, for they have less idea of barter than any of the barbarians in those parts. This deficiency they meet by the following invention. On their spears they have bone points instead of iron, and bows and arrows of cornel wood, and bone points to their arrows: and they throw lassoes at the enemy they meet in battle, and gallop away and upset them when they are entangled in these lassoes. And they make their coats of mail in the following manner. Everyone rears a great many mares, being as they are a nomadic tribe, the land not being divided into private allotments, and indeed growing nothing but forest timber. These mares they use not only for war, and sacrifice to the gods of the country, but also for food. And after getting together a collection of hoofs they clean them and cut them in two, and make of them something like dragons’ scales. And whoever has not seen a dragon has at any rate seen a pine nut still green: anyone therefore comparing the state of the hoof to the incisions apparent on pine nuts would get a good idea of what I mean. These they perforate, and having sewn them together with ligaments of horses and oxen make them into coats of mail no less handsome and strong than Greek coats of mail: for indeed whether they are struck point-blank or shot at they are proof. But linen coats of mail are not equally useful for combatants, for they admit the keen thrust of steel, but are some protection to hunters, for the teeth of lions and panthers break off against them. And you may see linen coats of mail hung up in other temples and in the Gryneum, where is a most beautiful grove of Apollo, where the trees both cultivated and wild please equally both nose and eye.