Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.

by active approximately 150-175 Pausanias

CHAPTER XXIV.

Another way out of the gymnasium leads to the market-place, and to what is called the Umpires’ Hall beyond the tomb of Achilles, and it is by this way that the Umpires are accustomed to enter the gymnasium. And they enter the gymnasium to pit together the runners before the sun gets too powerful, and at noon they call the competitors together for the pentathlum and the arduous contests.

And the market-place at Elis is not like that of the Ionians, or of the Greek cities in Ionia, but is built after a more antique type, with porticoes and streets at regular intervals. And the name of the market-place in our day is Hippodrome, and there the people of the place exercise their horses. The architecture of the portico facing South is Doric, and it is divided into 3 portions by pillars: it is there that the Umpires mostly spend the day. And there are altars erected to Zeus, and several other altars in the open air in the market-place, and they are easily removed as they are only improvised altars. And at the end of this portico, on the left as you go to the market-place, is the Umpires’ Hall, and a street separates it from the market-place. In this Umpires’ Hall those who are chosen as Umpires live ten months together, and are instructed by the Custodes Rotulorum in all things that appertain to the games. And near the portico where the Umpires spend the day is another portico, called the Corcyræan, and a street runs between the two porticoes. It was so called because when the Corcyræans invaded Elis in their ships, the people of Elis they say drove them off and took much booty from them, and built their portico with a tenth of the spoil. And the architecture of the portico is Doric: it has a double row of pillars, one towards the market-place, the other in the opposite direction. In the middle are no pillars, but a wall supports the roof, and there are statues on either side of this wall. And at the end of the portico near the market-place is a statue of Pyrrho the son of the Sophist Pistocrates, who had great persuasiveness on any topic. Pyrrho’s tomb is at no great distance from Elis, at a place called Petra, an old hamlet according to tradition. And the people of Elis have in the open air near the market-place a most noble temple and statue of Apollo the Healer. This would probably be much the same title as his Athenian title of Averter of Evil.[81] And on another side are stone statues to the Sun and Moon, she has horns on her head, he has his beams. There is also a temple to the Graces, and their wooden statues, their dresses gilt, and their heads hands and feet of white marble, and one of them holds a rose, the second dice, and the third a small branch of myrtle. The meaning of which things we may conjecture thus. The rose and myrtle are sacred to Aphrodite, and have a place in the legend of Adonis, and the Graces have most intimate connection with Aphrodite: and dice are playthings of striplings and maidens, who have not yet lost all grace through old age. And on the right of the Graces is a statue of Eros on the same pedestal. There is also there a temple of Silenus, dedicated to Silenus alone, and not in common to him and Dionysus, and Drunkenness is filling his cup. That the Sileni are mortal we should infer from their tombs, for there is the tomb of one Silenus in the country of the Hebrews, and of another at Pergamum.[82] And in the market-place the people of Elis have the following remarkable thing, which I have myself seen, in the shape of a temple. It is no great height, and has no walls, and the roof is supported by pillars made of oak. The people of the country say that it is a monument, but whose they do not record, but if the account of the old man whom I asked be correct, it would be the monument of Oxylus. There is also in the market-place a room for the 16 matrons, where they weave the shawl for Hera.[83]

CHAPTER XXV.

And next the market-place is an ancient temple, a colonnade with pillars all round. The roof is fallen in with age, and there is no statue remaining. It was dedicated to the Roman Emperors.

And behind the Corcyræan Portico is a temple of Aphrodite, and a grove in the open air sacred to her, not far from the temple. The statue of the goddess in the temple is called Celestial Aphrodite, and is by Phidias in ivory and gold, she has one foot on a tortoise. Her grove is surrounded by a wall, and inside the grove is a basement on which is a brazen statue by Scopas of the Pandemian Aphrodite sitting on a brazen he-goat. The meaning of the tortoise and he-goat I leave my readers to guess.

And the sacred precincts and temple of Pluto (for the people of Elis have both) are opened once every year, but no one may enter them even then but the sacrificing priest. And as far as we know the men of Elis are the only ones that honour Pluto, for the following reason. When Hercules led an army against Pylos in Elis they say Athene cooperated with him. Then it was that Pluto came and helped the people of Pylos out of hostility to Hercules, and was accordingly honoured at Pylos. And they cite as their witness Homer’s lines in the Iliad.[84]

“Mighty Pluto also endured the swift arrow, when this man, the son of Ægis-bearing Zeus, wounded him at Pylos, and gave him pain among the dead.”

Nor if in the expedition of Agamemnon and Menelaus against Ilium Poseidon, according to the tradition of Homer, helped the Greeks, was it against probability that Pluto should have helped the people of Pylos in the opinion of the same poet. Anyway the people of Elis erected this temple to Pluto as being friendly to them and hostile to Hercules. And once every year they are accustomed to open the temple to indicate, I think, that men once descend to Pluto’s gloomy realm. The people of Elis have also a temple to Fortune, and in the portico of this temple is a huge statue of wood, gilt all over except the head the hands and the toes, which are of white marble. Here too Sosipolis is honoured on the left of Fortune, in a rather small shrine: represented, according to the appearance of him seen in a dream, as a boy with a particoloured cloak on covered with stars, and in one of his hands the horn of Amalthea.

And in that part of the town where the people of Elis have most of their population, there is a statue not larger than life of a beardless man, who has his feet crossed, and leans against his spear with both his hands, his dress is of wool and linen and flax. This statue is said to be of Poseidon, and was worshipped of old at Samicum in Triphylia. And it was honoured even still more when removed to Elis, and they give it the name of Satrapes and not Poseidon, having learnt this name from their neighbours at Patræ. And Satrapes is the surname of Corybas.