Description of Greece

The inscription on Cleogenes the son of Silenus declares that he was a native, and that he won a prize with a riding-horse from his own private stable. Hard by Cleogenes are set up Deinolochus, son of Pyrrhus, and Troilus, son of Alcinous. These also were both Eleans by birth, though their victories were not the same. Troilus, at the time that he was umpire, succeeded in winning victories in the chariot-races, one for a chariot drawn by a full-grown pair and another for a chariot drawn by foals. The date of his victories was the hundred and second Festival[*](372 B.C.).

After this the Eleans passed a law that in future no umpire was to compete in the chariot-races. The statue of Troilus was made by Lysippus. The mother of Deinolochus had a dream, in which she thought that the son she clasped in her bosom had a crown on his head. For this reason Deinolochus was trained to compete in the games and outran the boys. The artist was Cleon of Sicyon.

As for Cynisca, daughter of Archidamus, her ancestry and Olympic victories, I have given an account thereof in my history of the Lacedaemonian kings.[*](See Paus. 3.8.) By the side of the statue of Troilus at Olympia has been made a basement of stone, whereon are a chariot and horses, a charioteer, and a statue of Cynisca herself, made by Apelles; there are also inscriptions relating to Cynisca.

Next to her also have been erected statues of Lacedaemonians. They gained victories in chariot-races. Anaxander was the first of his family to be proclaimed victor with a chariot, but the inscription on him declares that previously his paternal grandfather received the crown for the pentathlum. Anaxander is represented in an attitude of prayer to the god, while Polycles, who gained the surname of Polychalcus, likewise won a victory with a four-horse chariot, and his statue holds a ribbon in the right hand.

Beside him are two children; one holds a wheel and the other is asking for the ribbon. Polycles, as the inscription on him says, also won the chariot-race at Pytho, the Isthmus and Nemea.

The statue of a pancratiast was made by Lysippus. The athlete was the first to win the pancratium not only from Stratus itself but from the whole of Acarnania, and his name was Xenarces the son of Philandrides. Now after the Persian invasion the Lacedaemonians became keener breeders of horses than any other Greeks. For beside those I have already mentioned, the following horse-breeders from Sparta have their statues set up after that of the Acarnanian athlete Xenarces,[*](Xenarces has already appeared in the first sentence of this chapter as the name of the Acarnanian. The repetition of the name within a few lines suggests that in the first sentence the word Χενάρκης has displaced some other name, now lost to us.) Lycinus, Arcesilaus, and Lichas his son.

Xenarces succeeded in winning other victories, at Delphi, at Argos and at Corinth. Lycinus brought foals to Olympia, and when one of them was disqualified, entered his foals for the race for full-grown horses, winning with them. He also dedicated two statues at Olympia, works of Myron[*](Myron flourished about 460 B.C., and the race for foals was not introduced till 384 B.C. Hence, either the Greek text must be emended, or some other Myron, and not the earlier sculptor of that name, must be referred to here.) the Athenian. As for Arcesilaus and his son Lichas, the father won two Olympic victories; his son, because in his time the Lacedaemonians were excluded from the games, entered his chariot in the name of the Theban people, and with his own hands bound the victorious charioteer with a ribbon. For this offence he was scourged by the umpires,

and on account of this Lichas the Lacedaemonians invaded Elis in the reign of King Agis, when a battle took place within the Altis. When the war was over Lichas set up the statue in this place, but the Elean records of Olympic victors give as the name of the victor, not Lichas, but the Theban people.

Near Lichas stands an Elean diviner, Thrasybulus, son of Aeneas of the Iamid family, who divined for the Mantineans in their struggle against the Lacedaemonians under Agis, son of Eudamidas, their king. I shall have more to say about this in my account of the Arcadians.[*](See Paus. 8.10.5.) On the statue of Thrasybulus is a spotted lizard crawling towards his right shoulder, and by his side lies a dog, obviously a sacrificial victim, cut open and with his liver exposed.

Divination by kids, lambs or calves has, we all know, been established among men from ancient times, and the Cyprians have even discovered how to practise the art by means of pigs; but no peoples are wont to make any use of dogs in divining. So Thrasybulus apparently established a method of divination peculiar to himself, by means of the entrails of dogs. The diviners called Iamidae are descended from Iamus, who, Pindar says in an ode,[*](Pind. O. 6.43 foll.) was a son of Apollo and received the gift of divination from him.

By the statue of Thrasybulus stands Timosthenes of Elis, winner of the foot-race for boys, and Antipater of Miletus, son of Cleinopater, conqueror of the boy boxers. Men of Syracuse, who were bringing a sacrifice from Dionysius to Olympia, tried to bribe the father of Antipater to have his son proclaimed as a Syracusan. But Antipater, thinking naught of the tyrant's gifts, proclaimed himself a Milesian and wrote upon his statue that he was of Milesian descent and the first Ionian to dedicate his statue at Olympia.

The artist who made this statue was Polycleitus, while that of Timosthenes was made by Eutychides of Sicyon, a pupil of Lysippus. This Eutychides made for the Syrians on the Orontes an image of Fortune, which is highly valued by the natives.

In the Altis by the side of Timosthenes are statues of Timon and of his son Aesypus, who is represented as a child seated on a horse. In fact the boy won the horse-race, while Timon was proclaimed victor in the chariot-race. The statues of Timon and of his son were made by Daedalus of Sicyon, who also made for the Eleans the trophy in the Altis commemorating the victory over the Spartans.

The inscription on the Samian boxer says that his trainer Mycon dedicated the statue and that the Samians are best among the Ionians for athletes and at naval warfare; this is what the inscription says, but it tells us nothing at all about the boxer himself.

Beside this is the Messenian Damiscus, who won an Olympic victory at the age of twelve. I was exceedingly surprised to learn that while the Messenians were in exile from the Peloponnesus, their luck at the Olympic games failed. For with the exception of Leontiscus and Symmachus, who came from Messene on the Strait, we know of no Messenian, either from Sicily or from Naupactus, who won a victory at Olympia. Even these two are said by the Sicilians to have been not Messenians but of old Zanclean blood.

However, when the Messenians came back to the Peloponnesus their luck in the Olympic games came with them. For at the festival celebrated by the Eleans in the year after the settlement of Messene, the foot-race for boys was won by this Damiscus, who afterwards won in the pentathlum both at Nemea and at the Isthmus.