Description of Greece

This is one of the sayings told as a holy secret at the mysteries which they celebrate in honor of Hera. The story told by the people in Nauplia about the ass, how by nibbling down the shoots of a vine he caused a more plenteous crop of grapes in the future, and how for this reason they have carved an ass on a rock, because he taught the pruning of vines—all this I pass over as trivial.

From Lerna there is also another road, which skirts the sea and leads to a place called Genesium. By the sea is a small sanctuary of Poseidon Genesius. Next to this is another place, called Apobathmi (Steps). The story is that this is the first place in Argolis where Danaus landed with his daughters. From here we pass through what is called Anigraea, along a narrow and difficult road, until we reach a tract on the left which stretches down to the sea;

it is fertile in trees, especially the olive. As you go up inland from this is a place where three hundred picked Argives fought for this land with an equal number of specially chosen Lacedaemonian warriors[*](548 B.C.). All were killed except one Spartan and two Argives, and here were raised the graves for the dead. But the Lacedaemonians, having fought against the Argives with all their forces, won a decisive victory; at first they themselves enjoyed the fruits of the land, but afterwards they assigned it to the Aeginetans, when they were expelled from their island by the Athenians[*](431 B.C.). In my time Thyreatis was inhabited by the Argives, who say that they recovered it by the award of an arbitration[*](338 B.C.)

As you go from these common graves you come to Athene, where Aeginetans once made their home, another village Neris, and a third Eua, the largest of the villages, in which there is a sanctuary of Polemocrates. This Polemocrates is one of the sons of Machaon, and the brother of Alexanor; he cures the people of the district, and receives honors from the neighbours.

Above the villages extends Mount Parnon, on which the Lacedaemonian border meets the borders of the Argives and Tegeatae. On the borders stand stone figures of Hermes, from which the name of the place is derived. A river called Tanaus, which is the only one descending from Mount Parnon, flows through the Argive territory and empties itself into the Gulf of Thyrea.

After the figures of Hermes we reach Laconia on the west. According to the tradition of the Lacedaemonians themselves, Lelex, an aboriginal was the first king in this land, after whom his subjects were named Leleges. Lelex had a son Myles, and a younger one Polycaon. Polycaon retired into exile, the place of this retirement and its reason I will set forth elsewhere. On the death of Myles his son Eurotas succeeded to the throne. He led down to the sea by means of a trench the stagnant water on the plain, and when it had flowed away, as what was left formed a river-stream, he named it Eurotas.[*](Eurotas = the fair-flowing.)

Having no male issue, he left the kingdom to Lacedaemon, whose mother was Taygete, after whom the mountain was named, while according to report his father was none other than Zeus. Lacedaemon was wedded to Sparta, a daughter of Eurotas. When he came to the throne, he first changed the names of the land and its inhabitants, calling them after himself, and next he founded and named after his wife a city, which even down to our own day has been called Sparta.

Amyclas, too, son of Lacedaemon, wished to leave some memorial behind him, and built a town in Laconia. Hyacinthus, the youngest and most beautiful of his sons, died before his father, and his tomb is in Amyclae below the image of Apollo. On the death of Amyclas the empire came to Aigalus, the eldest of his sons, and afterwards, when Aigalus died, to Cynortas. Cynortas had a son Oebalus.