CHAPTER XXXI.
Now the small townships of Attica, founded by haphazard, have the following records. The Alimusii have a temple to Law-giving Demeter and her daughter Proserpine; and in Zoster [Belt] by the sea is an altar to Athene and Apollo and Artemis and Leto. They say that Leto did not give birth to her children here, but loosed her belt as if she were going to, and that was why the place got that name. The Prospaltii also have a temple to Proserpine and Demeter, and the Anagyrasians have a temple to the Mother of the Gods. And at Cephalæ Castor and Pollux are held in highest honour: for they call them the Great Gods.
And the people of Prasiæ have a temple of Apollo: here came (they say) the firstfruits of the Hyperboreans, handed over by them to the Arimaspians, and by the Arimaspians to the Issedones, and brought thence by the Scythians to Sinope, and thence carried by the Greeks to Prasiæ, and by the Athenians to Delos: these firstfruits are hidden in an ear of wheat, and may be looked at by nobody. At Prasiæ there is also a monument to Erysichthon, who died on his passage home, as he sailed back from Delos after his mission there. That Cranaus the king of the Athenians was expelled by Amphictyon, though he was his kinsman, I have before narrated: and they say that when he fled with his adherents to the Lamprian township he was killed and buried there: and his tomb is there to this day. And Ion the son of Xuthus, (for he too dwelt in Attica, and commanded the Athenians in the war against the Eleusinians,) has a tomb in the place called Potami.
So far tradition goes. And the Phlyenses have altars to Dionysus-giving Apollo and Lightgiving Artemis, and to Dionysus Crowned with flowers, and to the Nymphs of the River Ismenus, and to Earth whom they call the Great Goddess: and another temple has altars to Fruitbearing Demeter, and Zeus the Protector of Property, and Tithronian Athene, and Proserpine the Firstborn, and to the goddesses called The Venerable Ones, (i.e. the Eumenides.) And at Myrrhinus there is a statue to Colænian Artemis. And the Athmonenses worship Amarynthian Artemis. And when I enquired of the Interpreters and Experts as to these Goddesses, I could obtain no accurate information, but I conjecture as follows. Amarynthus is in Eubœa, and there too they worship the Amarynthian Artemis. And the Athenians at her feast bestow as much honour on her as the Eubœans. In this way I think she got her name among the Athmonenses, and Colænian Artemis at Myrrhinus from Colænus. I have written already elsewhere that it is the opinion of many in the townships that there were kings at Athens before Cecrops. Now Colænus is the name of a king who ruled at Athens before Cecrops, according to the tradition of the people of Myrrhinus. And there is a township at Acharnæ: the Acharnians worship among other gods Apollo of the Streets and Hercules. And there is an altar to Athene Hygiea: they also worship Athene by the name of Horse-lover, and Dionysus by that of Songster, and Ivy-God, for they say ivy grew here first.