CHAPTER XXIII.
And the notable things in Elis are an old gymnasium, in which before they go to Olympia the athletes go through all the customary training. There are some lofty plane-trees inside a wall growing all along the course, and the whole enclosure is called Colonnade, because Hercules the son of Amphitryon used to exercise there, and all the thorns and weeds that grew there were plucked up every day. There is a course called by the people of the place sacred, set apart for the races, and there is another course where they practise for the races and the pentathlum. There is also in the gymnasium a place called Plethrium, where the Umpires pit the athletes together according to their ages or difference in their training, and put them to wrestling to test their capacities. And there are in the gymnasium altars to some of the gods, as Idæan Hercules under the title of Champion, and Eros, and the god whom the Athenians and people of Elis alike call Anteros, and Demeter and Proserpine. There is no altar to Achilles, but he has a cenotaph in accordance with an oracle. And at the commencement of the general festival on a given day, when the sun begins to set, the women of Elis among other rites in honour of Achilles are wont to wail and strike the breast.
And there is another enclosure, smaller than the gymnasium but adjacent to it, which they call from its shape the Square. And here the athletes practise their wrestling, and here they test the athletes who are past wrestling, sometimes even applying blows with mild whips. And one of the statues is erected here, which were made of Zeus out of the fine-money of Sosander of Smyrna and Polyctor of Elis. There is also a third enclosure used as a gymnasium, which is called Maltho from the softness of its floor, and this is given up to the lads all the time the general festival lasts. And in a corner of Maltho there is a statue of Hercules, merely the head and shoulders, and in one of the wrestling-places is a figure of Eros and Anteros, Eros has a branch of palm which Anteros is trying to take away. And on each side of the entrance to Maltho is the statue of a boy-boxer, and the Custos Rotulorum at Elis says that it is a native of Alexandria above the island Pharos, called Serapion, who came to Elis and gave the people food when they were short of corn. That was why he received these honours: and the date when he received the crown at Olympia, and did this kindness to the people at Elis, was the 217th Olympiad. In this gymnasium the people of Elis also have a council chamber, where they practise extempore rhetoric, and submit all kinds of writings to public criticism: it is called Lalichmium from the name of its originator. And round it are some shields hung up, well worth seeing, not made for purposes of war, but simply for ornament.
You go from the gymnasium to the baths by the street called Silence near the temple of Artemis the Lover of Youths. The goddess was so called from her proximity to the gymnasium. And the street was called Silence from the following circumstance. Some men in the army of Oxylus being sent forward to reconnoitre Elis, and having cheered one another on the road, when they got near the walls, passed round the word for silence, and to listen if they could hear any sound within the town, and so stole into the town without being observed by this street, and returned again to Ætolia after having got the wished for intelligence. And the street received its name from the silence of these spies.