CHAPTER XXXV.
And the Athenians have various islands not far from Attica, one called after Patroclus, about which I have already given an account, and another a little beyond Sunium, as you sail leaving Attica on the left: here they say Helen landed after the capture of Ilium, so the Island is called Helena. And Salamis lies over against Eleusis and extends towards Megaris. The name Salamis was they say originally given to this island from Salamis the mother of Asopus, and afterwards the Æginetans under Telamon inhabited the island: and Philæus, the son of Eurysaces and grandson of Ajax, became an Athenian and handed it over to Athens. And many years afterwards the Athenians expelled the people of Salamis, condemning them for having been slack of duty in the war with Cassander, and for having surrendered their city to the Macedonians more from choice than compulsion: and Ascetades (who had been chosen as Governor of Salamis) they condemned to death, and swore that for all time they would remember this treason of the people of Salamis. And there are yet ruins of the market, and a temple of Ajax, and his statue in ebony. And divine honours are to this day paid by the Athenians to Ajax and Eurysaces: the latter has also an altar at Athens. And a stone is shown at Salamis not far from the harbour: on which they say Telamon sate and gazed at the vessel in which his sons were sailing away to Aulis, to join the general expedition of the Greeks against Ilium. And the natives of Salamis say that after the death of Ajax a flower first appeared on their island: white and red, smaller than the lily especially in its petals, with the same letters on it as the hyacinth.[8] And I have heard the tradition of the Æolians (who afterwards inhabited Ilium) as to the controversy about the arms of Achilles, and they say that after the shipwreck of Odysseus these arms were washed ashore by the sea near the tomb of Ajax. And some particulars as to his great size were given me by a Mysian. He told me that the sea washed his tomb which was on the seashore, and made entrance to it easy, and he bade me conjecture the huge size of his body by the following detail. His kneepans, (which the doctors call mills,) were the size of the quoits used by any lad practising for the Pentathlum. I do not wonder at the size of those who are called Cabares, who, remotest of the Celts, live in a region thinly peopled from the extreme cold, for their corpses are not a bit bigger than Egyptian ones. I will now relate some remarkable cases of dead bodies. Among the Magnesians at Lethæus one of the citizens, called Protophanes, was victor on the same day at Olympia in the pancratium and in the wrestling: some robbers broke into his tomb, thinking to find something valuable there, and after them came others to see his corpse: his ribs were not separated as is usual, but he was all bone from his shoulders to the lowest ribs, which are called by the doctors false ribs. And the Milesians have in front of their city the island Lade, which breaks off into two little islands, one of which is called Asterius. And they say that Asterius was buried here, and that he was the son of Anax, and Anax was the son of Earth: his corpse is two cubits, no less. The following circumstance also appears to me wonderful. In Upper Lydia there is a small town called the Gates of Temenus. Some bones were discovered here, when a piece of cliff broke off in a storm, in shape like those of a man, but on account of their size no one would have thought them a man’s. And forthwith a rumour spread among the populace that it was the dead body of Geryon the son of Chrysaor, and that a man’s seat fashioned in stone on the hillside was his seat. And they called the mountain torrent Oceanus, and said that people ploughing often turned up horns of oxen, for the story goes that Geryon bred most excellent oxen. But when I opposed their theory, and proved to them that Geryon lived at Gades, and that he has no known tomb but a tree of various forms, hereupon the Lydian Antiquarians told the real truth, that it was the dead body of Hyllus, and that Hyllus was the son of Earth, and gave his name to the river Hyllus. They said also that Hercules on account of his former intercourse with Omphale called his son Hyllus after the same river.