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.
CHAPTER XXXII.
And the mountains of Attica are Pentelicus, famous for its stonequarries, and Parnes, which affords good hunting of wild boars and bears, and Hymettus, which is the best place for bees next to the territory of the Alazones. For among the Alazones the bees are so tame that they live with the people, and go freely about for their food anywhere, and are not confined in hives: and they make honey anywhere, and it is so firm and compact that you cannot separate it from the comb. And on the mountains of Attica also are statues of the gods. At Pentelicus there is a statue of Athene, and at Hymettus one of Zeus of Hymettus: there are altars also to Rainy Zeus, and Apollo the Fore-seer. And at Parnes there is a brazen statue of Parnesian Zeus, and an altar to Semalean Zeus. There is also another altar at Parnes, and they sacrifice on it sometimes to Zeus the Rainy, sometimes to Zeus the Averter of Ill. There is also the small mountain called Anchesmus, and on it the statue of Anchesmian Zeus.
Before I turn to the description of the islands, I will enter again into the history of the townships. The township of Marathon is about equidistant from Athens and Carystus in Eubœa. It was this part of Attica that the Persians landed at, and were defeated, and lost some of their ships as they were putting out to sea in retreat. And in the plain is the tomb of the Athenians, and on it are pillars with the names of the dead according to their tribes. And another for the Platæans of Bœotia and their slaves: for this was the first engagement in which slaves fought. And there is apart a monument to Miltiades the son of Cimon, whose death occurred afterwards, when he failed to capture Paros, and was on that account put on his trial by the Athenians. Here every night one may hear horses neighing and men fighting: those who come on purpose to see the sight suffer for their curiosity, but if they are there as spectators accidentally the wrath of the gods harms them not. And the people of Marathon highly honour those that fell in the battle, calling them heroes, as also they pay honours to Marathon (from whom the township gets its name), and Hercules, whom they say they first of all the Greeks worshipped as a god. And it chanced, as they say, in the battle that a man of rustic appearance and dress appeared, who slew many of the Persians with a ploughshare, and vanished after the fight: and when the Athenians made enquiry of the oracle, the god gave no other answer, but bade them honour the hero Echetlæus. And a trophy of white stone was erected there. And the Athenians say that they buried the Persians, (it being a matter of decency to bury in the ground a man’s corpse,) but I could find no tomb. For there was no mound nor any other visible trace of burial. So they must have carried them to some hole and thrown them in pell mell. And there is at Marathon a fountain called Macaria, and this is the tradition about it. When Hercules fled from Eurystheus at Tiryns, he went to his friend Ceyx the king of Trachis. And when Hercules left mankind Eurystheus asked for his children, and Ceyx sent them to Athens, pleading his own weakness, and suggesting that Theseus might be able to protect them. And coming to Athens as suppliants, they brought about the first war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, as Theseus would not give them up to Eurystheus, though he begged hard for them. And they say that an oracle told the Athenians that one of the children of Hercules must voluntarily die, or else they would not get the victory. Hereupon Macaria, the daughter of Deianira and Hercules, sacrificed herself that the Athenians might conquer in the war, and the fountain gets its name from her. And there is at Marathon a lake for the most part muddy: into it the fugitive Persians fell not knowing the way, and most of the slaughter happened they say here. And above the lake are the mangers of the horses of Artaphernes in stone, and among the rocks vestiges of a tent. And a river flows from the lake, affording pleasant water to the herds that come to the lake, but at its outlet into the sea it is salt and full of sea fish. And at a little distance from the plain is a mountain of Pan, and a cave well worth seeing. The entrance to it is narrow, but when you get well in there are rooms and baths, and what is called Pan’s herd of goats, rocks very like goats in shape.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
And not far from Marathon is Brauron, where they say Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, landed in her flight from the Tauri, bringing with her the statue of Artemis, and, having left it here, went on to Athens and afterwards to Argos. Here is indeed an ancient statue of Artemis. But those who have the Tauric statue of the goddess in my opinion, I shall show in another part of my work. And about sixty stades from Marathon is Rhamnus, as you go along the shore to Oropus. And there are buildings near the sea for men, and a little way from the sea on the cliff is a temple of Nemesis, who is the most implacable of all the gods to haughty men. And it seems that those Persians who landed at Marathon met with vengeance from this goddess: for despising the difficulty of capturing Athens, they brought Parian marble to make a trophy of, as if they had already conquered. This marble Phidias made into a statue of Nemesis, and on the goddess’ head is a crown with some figures of stags, and some small statues of Victory: in one hand she has a branch of an apple tree, in the other a bowl, on which some Ethiopians are carved. As to these Ethiopians I could not myself conjecture what they referred to, nor could I accept the account of those who thought they knew, who say that they were carved on the bowl because of the river Oceanus: for the Ethiopians dwelt by it, and Oceanus was Nemesis’ father. For indeed Oceanus is not a river but a sea, the remotest sea sailed on by men, and on its shore live the Spaniards and Celts, and in it is the island of Britain. But the remotest Ethiopians live beyond Syene by the Red Sea, and are fisheaters, from which circumstance the gulf near which they live is called Fish-eater. But the most upright ones[7] inhabit the city Meroe, and what is called the Ethiopian plain: these shew the Table of the Sun, but have no sea or river except the Nile. And there are other Ethiopians (who live near the Mauri), that extend to the territory of the Nasamones. For the Nasamones, whom Herodotus calls the Atlantes, but geographers call Lixitæ, are the remotest of the Libyans who live near Mount Atlas. They sow nothing, and live on wild vines. And neither these Ethiopians nor the Nasamones have any river. For the water near Mount Atlas, though it flows in three directions, makes no river, for the sand sucks it all in. So the Ethiopians live by no river or ocean. And the water from Mount Atlas is muddy, and at its source there are crocodiles two cubits long, and when men approach they dive down into the water. And many have the idea that this water coming up again out of the sand makes the river Nile in Egypt. Now Mount Atlas is so high that its peaks are said to touch the sky, and it is inaccessible from the water and trees which are everywhere. The neighbourhood of the Nasamones has been explored, but we know of no one who has sailed by the parts near the sea. But let this account suffice. Neither this statue of Nemesis nor any other of the old statues of her are delineated with wings, not even the most holy statues at Smyrna: but in later times people, wishing to shew this goddess as especially following upon Love, gave Nemesis wings as well as Love. I shall describe what is at the base of the statue, only clearing up the following matter. They say Nemesis was the mother of Helen, but Leda suckled her and brought her up: but her father the Greeks generally think was Zeus and not Tyndareus. Phidias having heard this represented on the base of the statue Helen being carried by Leda to Nemesis, and Tyndareus and his sons, and a man called Hippeus with a horse standing by. There too are Agamemnon and Menelaus, and Pyrrhus the son of Achilles, the first husband of Hermione, the daughter of Helen. Orestes was passed over for the murder of his mother, though Hermione remained with him all her life and bore him a son. And next come Epochus, and another young man. I have heard nothing else of them than that they are the brothers of Œnoe, who gave her name to the township.