Description of Greece

At the time when Xerxes crossed over into Europe, Gelon the son of Deinomenes was despot of Syracuse and of the rest of Sicily besides. When Gelon died, the kingdom devolved on his brother Hieron. Hieron died before he could dedicate to Olympian Zeus the offerings he had vowed for his victories in the chariot-race, and so Deinomenes his son paid the debt for his father.

These too are works of Onatas, and there are two inscriptions at Olympia. The one over the offering is this:—

1. Having won victories in thy grand games, Olympian Zeus,
2. Once with the four-horse chariot, twice with the race-horse,
3. Hieron bestowed on thee these gifts: his son dedicated them,
4. Deinomenes, as a memorial to his Syracusan father.

The other inscription is:—

1. Onatas, son of Micon, fashioned me,
2. Who had his home in the island of Aegina.

It was mainly to see this Demeter that I came to Phigalia. I offered no burnt sacrifice to the goddess, that being a custom of the natives. But the rule for sacrifice by private persons, and at the annual sacrifice by the community of Phigalia, is to offer grapes and other cultivated fruits, with honeycombs and raw wool still full of its grease. These they place on the altar built before the cave, afterwards pouring oil over them.

They have a priestess who performs the rites, and with her is the youngest of their “sacrificers,” as they are called, who are citizens, three in number. There is a grove of oaks around the cave, and a cold spring rises from the earth. The image made by Onatas no longer existed in my time, and most of the Phigalians were ignorant that it had ever existed at all.

The oldest, however, of the inhabitants I met said that three generations before his time some stones had fallen on the image out of the roof; these crushed the image, destroying it utterly. Indeed, in the roof I could still discern plainly where the stones had broken away.