Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

Holy Demeter, when she first vouchsafed

The fruit that mortals call the fig: since when

The race of Phytalus has deathless fame.”

And before crossing over the river Cephisus, is the tomb of Theodorus, one of the best tragic actors of his day. And there are two statues near the river, Mnesimaches, and his son cutting off his hair as a votive offering to the Cephisus. That it was an ancient custom for all the Greeks to cut off locks of their hair to rivers one would infer from the verses of Homer, who describes Peleus as vowing to cut off his hair to the river Spercheus if his son Achilles returned safe from Troy.[10]

On the other side of the Cephisus is an ancient altar to Milichian (i.e. mild) Zeus, where Theseus got purified after slaying the progeny of Phytalus. He had slain other robbers, and Sinis, who was his relation by Pittheus his maternal grandfather. And there are the tombs here of Theodectes the son of Phaselites, and of Mnesitheus. This last they say was a noted doctor, and dedicated several statues, and among them one of Iacchus. And by the roadside is a small temple called the temple of Cyamites (Bean-man): but I have no certain information, whether he first sowed beans, or whether they gave the name to some hero, because it was not lawful to ascribe the invention of beans to Demeter. And whoever has seen the Eleusinian mysteries, or has read the Orphic poems, knows what I mean. And of the tombs that are finest for size and beauty are two especially, one of a Rhodian who had migrated to Athens, the other of Pythionice, made by Harpalus a Macedonian, who had fled from Alexander and sailed to Europe from Asia, and coming to Athens was arrested by the Athenians, but escaped by bribing the friends of Alexander and others, and before this had married Pythionice, whose extraction I don’t know, but she was a courtesan both at Athens and Corinth. He was so enamoured of her that, when she died, he raised this monument to her, the finest of all the ancient works of art in Greece.

And there is a temple in which are statues of Demeter and Proserpine and Athene and Apollo: but originally the temple was built to Apollo alone. For they say that Cephalus the son of Deioneus went with Amphitryon to the Teleboæ, and was the first dweller in the island which is now called from him Cephallenia: and that he fled from Athens, and lived for some time at Thebes, because he had murdered his wife Procris. And in the tenth generation afterwards Chalcinus and Dætus his descendants sailed to Delphi, and begged of the god permission to return to Athens: and he ordered them first to sacrifice to Apollo on the spot where they should see a trireme on land moving. And when they got to the mountain called Pœcilus a dragon appeared eagerly running into its hole: and here they sacrificed to Apollo, and afterwards on their arrival at Athens the Athenians made them citizens. Next to this is a temple of Aphrodite, and before it a handsome wall of white stone.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Now the channels called Rheti are like rivers only in their flow, for their water is sea water. And one might suppose that they flow from the Euripus near Chalcis underground, falling into a sea with a lower level. These Rheti are said to be sacred to Proserpine and Demeter, and their priests only may catch the fish in them. And they were, as I hear, in old times the boundaries between the territory of the Eleusinians and Athenians. And the first inhabitant on the other side of the Rheti was Crocon, and that district is called to this day the kingdom of Crocon. This Crocon the Athenians say married Sæsara the daughter of Celeus. This at least is the tradition of the occupants of the township of Scambonidæ. Crocon’s tomb indeed I could not find, but Eumolpus’ tomb the Athenians and Eubœans both show. This Eumolpus they say came from Thrace, and was the son of Poseidon and Chione: and Chione was they say the daughter of Boreas and Orithyia. Homer has not indeed given us his pedigree, but he calls him in his poem a noble man. And in the battle between the people of Eleusis and the Athenians Erechtheus the king of Athens was slain, and also Immaradus the son of Eumolpus: and peace was concluded on these conditions, that the people of Eleusis should be in all other respects Athenians, but should have the private management of their Mysteries. And the rites of the two goddesses, Demeter and Proserpine, were performed by the daughters of Celeus. Pamphus and Homer alike call them by the names Diogenea, and Pammerope, and Sæsara. But on the death of Eumolpus Ceryx the youngest son was the only one left, who (the heralds say) was not the son of Eumolpus at all, but the son of Hermes by Aglaurus the daughter of Cecrops.

There is also a hero-chapel to Hippothoon, from whom a tribe gets its name, and near it one to Zarex, who is said to have learnt music of Apollo. But my own idea is that Zarex was a stranger, a Lacedæmonian who had come into Attica, and that the city Zarex in Laconia by the sea was called after him. But if the hero Zarex was a native of Attica, I know nothing about him. And the river Cephisus flows near the Eleusinian territory with greater speed than before: and here is a place called Erineus, where Pluto they say descended, when he carried off Proserpine. On the banks of this river Theseus slew the robber Polypemon, who was surnamed Procrustes. And the Eleusinians have a temple to Triptolemus, and to Propylæan Artemis, and to Father Poseidon, and a well called Callichorus, where the Eleusinian women first danced and sang songs to the goddess. And the Rharian plain was the first sown and the first that produced crops according to tradition, and this is the reason why it is the custom to use barley from it to make cakes for the sacrifices. Here is shown Triptolemus’ threshing-floor and altar. But what is inside the sacred wall I am forbidden by a dream to divulge, for those who are uninitiated, as they are forbidden sight of them, so also clearly may not hear of the mysteries. And the hero Eleusis, from whom the city gets its name, was according to some the son of Hermes and Daira the daughter of Oceanus, others make him the son of Ogygus. For the ancients, when they had no data for their pedigrees, invented fictitious ones, and especially in the pedigrees of heroes.

And as you turn from Eleusis to Bœotia the boundary of Attica is the Platæan district. That was the old boundary between the Athenians and the people of Eleutheræ. But when the people of Eleutheræ became Athenians then Mount Cithæron in Bœotia became the boundary. And the people of Eleutheræ became Athenians not by compulsion, but from hatred to the Thebans and a liking for the Athenian form of government. In this plain too is a temple of Dionysus, and a statue of the god was removed thence to Athens long ago: the one at Eleutheræ now is an imitation of it. And at some distance is a small grotto, and near it a spring of cold water. And it is said that Antiope gave birth to twins and left them in this grotto, and a shepherd finding them near the spring gave them their first bath in it, having stript them of their swaddling clothes. And there was still in my day remains of a wall and buildings at Eleutheræ. This makes it clear that it was a town built a little above the plain towards Mount Cithæron.