Description of Greece

The sanctuary of the Dioscuri is ancient. They them selves are represented as standing, while their sons are seated on horses. Here Polygnotus[*](fl. 465 B.C.) has painted the marriage of the daughters of Leucippus, was a part of the gods' history, but Micon those who sailed with Jason to the Colchians, and he has concentrated his attention upon Acastus and his horses.

Above the sanctuary of the Dioscuri is a sacred enclosure of Aglaurus. It was to Aglaurus and her sisters, Herse and Pandrosus, that they say Athena gave Erichthonius, whom she had hidden in a chest, forbidding them to pry curiously into what was entrusted to their charge. Pandrosus, they say, obeyed, but the other two (for they opened the chest) went mad when they saw Erichthonius, and threw themselves down the steepest part of the Acropolis. Here it was that the Persians climbed and killed the Athenians who thought that they understood the oracle[*](That the Athenians were to trust their “wooden walls,” i.e. their ships.) better than did Themistocles, and fortified the Acropolis with logs and stakes.[*](480 B.C.)

Hard by is the Prytaneum (Town-hall), in which the laws of Solon are inscribed, and figures are placed of the goddesses Peace and Hestia (Hearth), while among the statues is Autolycus the pancratiast.[*](See Paus. 1.35.6.) For the likenesses of Miltiades and Themistocles have had their titles changed to a Roman and a Thracian.