Description of Greece

The sanctuary of Thearian Apollo, they told me, was set up by Pittheus; it is the oldest I know of. Now the Phocaeans, too, in Ionia have an old temple of Athena, which was once burnt by Harpagus the Persian, and the Samians also have an old one of Pythian Apollo; these, however, were built much later than the sanctuary at Troezen. The modern image was dedicated by Auliscus, and made by Hermon of Troezen. This Hermon made also the wooden images of the Dioscuri.

Under a portico in the market-place are set up women; both they and their children are of stone. They are the women and children whom the Athenians gave to the Troezenians to be kept safe, when they had resolved to evacuate Athens and not to await the attack of the Persians by land. They are said to have dedicated likenesses, not of all the women—for, as a matter of fact, the statues are not many—but only of those who were of high rank.

In front of the sanctuary of Apollo is a building called the Booth of Orestes. For before he was cleansed for shedding his mother's blood, no citizen of Troezen would receive him into his home; so they lodged him here and gave him entertainment while they cleansed him, until they had finished the purification. Down to the present day the descendants of those who cleansed Orestes dine here on appointed days. A little way from the booth were buried, they say, the means of cleansing, and from them grew up a bay tree, which, indeed, still remains, being the one before this booth.

Among the means of cleansing which they say they used to cleanse Orestes was water from Hippocrene (Horse's Fount) for the Troezenians too have a fountain called the Horse's, and the legend about it does not differ from the one which prevails in Boeotia. For they, too, say that the earth sent up the water when the horse Pegasus struck the ground with his hoof, and that Bellerophontes came to Troezen to ask Pittheus to give him Aethra to wife, but before the marriage took place he was banished from Corinth.

Here there is also a Hermes called Polygius. Against this image, they say, Heracles leaned his club. Now this club, which was of wild olive, taking root in the earth (if anyone cares to believe the story), grew up again and is still alive; Heracles, they say, discovering the wild olive by the Saronic Sea, cut a club from it. There is also a sanctuary of Zeus surnamed Saviour, which, they say, was made by Aetius, the son of Anthas, when he was king. To a water they give the name River of Gold. They say that when the land was afflicted with a drought for nine years, during which no rain fell, all the other waters dried up, but this River of Gold even then continued to flow as before.