Description of Greece

But when fortune changed again, and Conon had won the naval action off Cnidus and the mountain called Dorium[*](394 B.C.), the Ionians likewise changed their views, and there are to be seen statues in bronze of Conon and of Timotheus both in the sanctuary of Hera in Samos and also in the sanctuary of the Ephesian goddess at Ephesus. It is always the same; the Ionians merely follow the example of all the world in paying court to strength.

Next to the statue of Lysander is an Ephesian boxer who beat the other boys, his competitors—his name was Athenaeus,—and also a man of Sicyon who was a pancratiast, Sostratus surnamed Acrochersites. For he used to grip his antagonist by the fingers[*](In Greek αἱ ἄκραι χεῖρες. Hence Acrochersites, “the fingerer.”) and bend them, and would not let go until he saw that his opponent had given in.

He won at the Nemean and Isthmian games combined twelve victories, three victories at Olympia and two at Pytho. The hundred and fourth Festival, when Sostratus won his first victory, is not reckoned by the Eleans, because the games were held by the Pisans and Arcadians and not by themselves.

Beside Sostratus is a statue of Leontiscus, a man wrestler, a native of Sicily from Messene on the Strait. He was crowned, they say, by the Amphictyons and twice by the Eleans, and his mode of wrestling was similar to the pancratium of Sostratus the Sicyonian. For they say that Leontiscus did not know how to throw his opponents, but won by bending their fingers.

The statue was made by Pythagoras of Rhegium, an excellent sculptor if ever there was one. They say that he studied under Clearchus, who was likewise a native of Rhegium, and a pupil of Eucheirus. Eucheirus, it is said, was a Corinthian, and attended the school of Syadras and Chartas, men of Sparta.

The boy who is binding his head with a fillet must be mentioned in my account because of Pheidias and his great skill as a sculptor, but we do not know whose portrait the statue is that Pheidias made. Satyrus of Elis, son of Lysianax, of the clan of the Iamidae, won five victories at Nemea for boxing, two at Pytho, and two at Olympia. The artist who made the statue was Silanion, an Athenian. Polycles, another sculptor of the Attic school, a pupil of Stadieus the Athenian, has made the statue of an Ephesian boy pancratiast, Amyntas the son of Hellanicus.