Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

CHAPTER XXVII.

In the temple of Athene Polias is a Hermes of wood, (said to be a votive offering of Cecrops,) almost hidden by myrtle leaves. And of the antique votive offerings worthy of record, is a folding chair the work of Dædalus, and spoils taken from the Persians, as a coat of mail of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Platæa, and a scimetar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Masistius we know was killed by the Athenian cavalry: but as Mardonius fought against the Lacedæmonians and was killed by a Spartan, they could not have got it at first hand, nor is it likely that the Lacedæmonians would have allowed the Athenians to carry off such a trophy. And about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the country when it was contested by Poseidon. And they record also that this olive was burnt when the Persians set fire to Athens, but though burnt it grew the same day two cubits. And next to the temple of Athene is the temple of Pandrosus; who was the only one of the three sisters who didn’t peep into the forbidden chest. Now the things I most marvelled at are not universally known. I will therefore write of them as they occur to me. Two maidens live not far from the temple of Athene Polias, and the Athenians call them the carriers of the holy things: for a certain time they live with the goddess, but when her festival comes they act in the following way by night. Putting upon their heads what the priestess of Athene gives them to carry, (neither she nor they know what these things are,) these maidens descend, by a natural underground passage, from an enclosure in the city sacred to Aphrodite of the Gardens. In the sanctuary below they deposit what they carry, and bring back something else closely wrapped up. And these maidens they henceforth dismiss, and other two they elect instead of them for the Acropolis. And near the temple of Athene is an old woman, about a cubit in size, well-modelled, with an inscription saying that she is the handmaid Lysimache, and there are large brazen statues of two men standing apart as for a fight: the one they call Erechtheus and the other Eumolpus. And yet all that know Athenian Antiquities are aware that it was Eumolpus’ son, Immaradus, that was slain by Erechtheus. And at the base are statues of Tolmides’ prophet, and Tolmides himself, who was the Athenian Admiral, and did great damage especially to the maritime region of the Peloponnesians, and burnt the dockyards of the Lacedæmonians at Gythium, and took Bœæ in the neighbouring country, and the island of Cytherus, and made a descent on Sicyonia, and, when the Sicyonians fought against him as he was ravaging their land, routed them and pursued them up to the city. And afterwards when he returned to Athens, he conducted colonies of the Athenians to Eubœa and Naxos, and attacked the Bœotians with a land force: and, having laid waste most of the country, and taken Chæronea after a siege, when he got to Haliartia was himself killed in battle and his whole army defeated. Such I learnt were the fortunes of Tolmides. And there are old statues of Athene: they are entire but rather grimy, and too weak to bear a knock, for fire passed upon them when Xerxes found the city bare of fighting men, as they had all gone to man the fleet. There is also a representation of a boar-hunt, (about which I know nothing for certain unless it is the Calydonian boar,) and of the fight between Cycnus and Hercules. This Cycnus they say killed among others the Thracian Lycus in a prize fight: but was himself slain by Hercules near the river Peneus.

Of the legends that they tell at Trœzen about Theseus one is that Hercules, visiting Pittheus at Trœzen, threw down during dinner his lion’s skin, and that several Trœzenian lads came into the room with Theseus, who was seven years of age at most. They say that all the other boys when they saw the lion’s skin fled helter skelter, but Theseus not being afraid kept his ground, and plucked an axe from one of the servants, and began to attack it fiercely, thinking the skin was a live lion. This is the first Trœzenian legend about him. And the next is that Ægeus put his boots and sword under a stone as means of identifying his son, and then sailed away to Athens, and Theseus when he was eighteen lifted the stone and removed what Ægeus had left there. And this legend is worked in bronze, all but the stone, in the Acropolis. They have also delineated another exploit of Theseus. This is the legend. A bull was ravaging the Cretan territory both elsewhere and by the river Tethris. In ancient times it appears wild beasts were more formidable to men, as the Nemean and Parnasian lions, and dragons in many parts of Greece, and boars at Calydon and Erymanthus and Crommyon in Corinth, of whom it was said that some sprang out of the ground, and others were sacred to the gods, and others sent for the punishment of human beings. And this bull the Cretans say Poseidon sent into their land, because Minos, who was master of the Grecian sea, held Poseidon in no greater honour than any other god. And they say that this bull crossed over from Crete to the Peloponnese, and that one of the twelve Labours of Hercules was to fetch it to Eurystheus. And when it was afterwards let go on the Argive plain, it fled through the Isthmus of Corinth, and into Attica to the township of Marathon, and killed several people whom it met, and among them Androgeos the son of Minos. And Minos sailed to Athens, (for he could not be persuaded that the Athenians had had no hand in the death of Androgeos,) and did great damage, until it was covenanted to send annually seven maidens and seven boys to Crete to the Minotaur, who was fabled to live in the Labyrinth at Gnossus. As to the bull that had got to Marathon, it is said to have been driven by Theseus into the Acropolis, and sacrificed to Athene. And the township of Marathon has a representation of it.