Description of Greece

Pausanias

Pausanias. Pausanias Description of Greece, Volumes 1-4. Jones, W.H.S. (William Henry Samuel), translator; Ormerod, Henry Arderne, translator. London, New York: W. Heinemann, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1918-1935.

The statue of Ptolemy, the son of Ptolemy Lagus, was dedicated by Aristolaus, a Macedonian. There is also dedicated a statue of a victorious boy boxer, Butas of Miletus, son of Polyneices; a statue too of Callicrates of Magnesia on the Lethaeus, who received two crowns for victories in the race in armour. The statue of Callicrates is the work of Lysippus.

Enation won a victory in the boys' foot-race, and Alexibius in the pentathlum. The native place of Alexibius was Heraea in Arcadia, and Acestor made his statue. The inscription on the statue of Enation does not state his native place, though it does state that he was of Arcadian descent. Two Colophonians, Hermesianax son of Agoneus and Eicasius son of Lycinus and the daughter of Hermesianax, both won the boys' wrestling-match. The statue of Hermesianax was dedicated by the commonwealth of Colophon.

Near these are Eleans who beat the boys at boxing, Choerilus the work of Sthennis of Olynthus, and Theotimus the work of Daitondas of Sicyon. Theotimus was a son of Moschion, who took part in the expedition of Alexander the son of Philip against Dareius and the Persians. There are two more from Elis, Archidamus who was victorious with a four-horse chariot and Eperastus the son of Theogonus, victor in the race in armour.

That he was the soothsayer of the clan of the Clytidae, Eperastus declares at the end of the inscription:

  1. Of the stock of the sacred-tongued Clytidae I boast to be,
  2. Their soothsayer, the scion of the god-like Melampodidae.
For Mantius was a son of Melampus, the son of Amythaon, and he had a son Oicles, while Clytius was a son of Alcmaeon, the son of Amphiaraus, the son of Oicles. Clytius was the son of Alcmaeon by the daughter of Phegeus, and he migrated to Elis because he shrank from living with his mother's brothers, knowing that they had compassed the murder of Alcmaeon.

Mingled with the less illustrious offerings we may see the statues of Alexinicus of Elis, the work of Cantharus of Sicyon, who won a victory in the boys' wrestling-match, and of Gorgias of Leontini. This statue was dedicated at Olympia by Eumolpus, as he himself says, the grandson of Deicrates who married the sister of Gorgias.

This Gorgias[*](fl. 427 B.C) was a son of Charmantides, and is said to have been the first to revive the study of rhetoric, which had been altogether neglected, in fact almost forgotten by mankind. They say that Gorgias won great renown for his eloquence at the Olympic assembly, and also when he accompanied Tisias on an embassy to Athens. Yet Tisias improved the art of rhetoric, in particular he wrote the most persuasive speech of his time to support the claim of a Syracusan woman to a property.

However, Gorgias surpassed his fame at Athens; indeed Jason, the tyrant of Thessaly, placed him before Polycrates, who was a shining light of the Athenian school. Gorgias, they say, lived to be one hundred and five years old. Leontini was once laid waste by the Syracusans, but in my time was again inhabited.