Description of Greece

Here is built also a sanctuary of the Mother of the gods; the image is by Pheidias[*](490-432 B.C.). Hard by is the council chamber of those called the Five Hundred, who are the Athenian councillors for a year. In it are a wooden figure of Zeus Counsellor and an Apollo, the work of Peisias,[*](The dates of these artists are unknown.) and a Demos by Lyson. The thesmothetae (lawgivers) were painted by Protogenes[*](A contemporary of Alexander the Great.) the Caunian, and Olbiades[*](An unknown painter.) portrayed Callippus, who led the Athenians to Thermopylae to stop the incursion of the Gauls into Greece.[*](279 B.C.)

These Gauls inhabit the most remote portion of Europe, near a great sea that is not navigable to its extremities, and possesses ebb and flow and creatures quite unlike those of other seas. Through their country flows the river Eridanus, on the bank of which the daughters of Helius (Sun) are supposed to lament the fate that befell their brother Phaethon. It was late before the name “Gauls” came into vogue; for anciently they were called Celts both amongst themselves and by others. An army of them mustered and turned towards the Ionian Sea, dispossessed the Illyrian people, all who dwelt as far as Macedonia with the Macedonians themselves, and overran Thessaly. And when they drew near to Thermopylae, the Greeks in general made no move to prevent the inroad of the barbarians, since previously they had been severely defeated by Alexander and Philip. Further, Antipater and Cassander[*](Antipater and Cassander were successors of Alexander the Great.) afterwards crushed the Greeks, so that through weakness each state thought no shame of itself taking no part in the defence of the country.

But the Athenians, although they were more exhausted than any of the Greeks by the long Macedonian war, and had been generally unsuccessful in their battles, nevertheless set forth to Thermopylae with such Greeks as joined them, having made the Callippus I mentioned their general. Occupying the pass where it was narrowest, they tried to keep the foreigners from entering Greece; but the Celts, having discovered the path by which Ephialtes of Trachis once led the Persians, over whelmed the Phocians stationed there and crossed Oeta unperceived by the Greeks.[*](480 B.C.)