Description of Greece

The Plataeans have also a sanctuary of Athena surnamed Warlike; it was built from the spoils given them by the Athenians as their share from the battle of Marathon. It is a wooden image gilded, but the face, hands and feet are of Pentelic marble. In size it is but little smaller than the bronze Athena on the Acropolis, the one which the Athenians also erected as first-fruits of the battle at Marathon; the Plataeans too had Pheidias for the maker of their image of Athena.

In the temple are paintings: one of them, by Polygnotus, represents Odysseus after he has killed the wooers; the other, painted by Onasias, is the former expedition of the Argives, under Adrastus, against Thebes. These paintings are on the walls of the fore-temple, while at the feet of the image is a portrait of Arimnestus, who commanded the Plataeans at the battle against Mardonius, and yet before that at Marathon.

There is also at Plataea a sanctuary of Demeter, surnamed Eleusinian, and a tomb of Leitus, who was the only one to return home of the chiefs who led Boeotians to Troy. The spring Gargaphia was filled in by the Persian cavalry under Mardonius, because the Greek army encamped against them got therefrom their drinking-water. Afterwards, however, the Plataeans recovered the water.

On the road from Plataea to Thebes is the river Oeroe, said to have been a daughter of the Asopus. Before crossing the Asopus, if you turn aside to lower ground in a direction parallel to the river, after about forty stades you come to the ruins of Scolus. The temple of Demeter and the Maid among the ruins is not finished, and only half-finished are the images of the goddesses. Even to-day the Asopus is the boundary between Thebes and Plataea.

The first to occupy the land of Thebes are said to have been the Ectenes, whose king was Ogygus, an aboriginal. From his name is derived Ogygian, which is an epithet of Thebes used by most of the poets. The Ectenes perished, they say, by pestilence, and after them there settled in the land the Hyantes and the Aones, who I think were Boeotian tribes and not foreigners.

When the Phoenician army under Cadmus invaded the land these tribes were defeated; the Hyantes fled from the land when night came, but the Aones begged for mercy, and were allowed by Cadmus to remain and unite with the Phoenicians. The Aones still lived in village communities, but Cadmus built the city which even at the present day is called Cadmeia. Afterwards the city grew, and so the Cadmeia became the citadel of the lower city of Thebes. Cadmus made a brilliant marriage, if, as the Greek legend says, he indeed took to wife a daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. His daughters too have made him a name; Semele was famed for having a child by Zeus, Ino for being a divinity of the sea.

In the time of Cadmus, the greatest power, next after his, was in the hands of the Sparti, namely, Chthonius, Hyperenor, Pelorus and Udaeus; but it was Echion who, for his great valor, was preferred by Cadmus to be his son-in-law. As I was unable to discover anything new about these men, I adopt the story that makes their name result from the way in which they came into being. When Cadnius migrated to the Illyrian tribe of the Encheleans, Polydorus his son got the kingdom.

Now Pentheus the son of Echion was also powerful by reason of his noble birth and friendship with the king. Being a man of insolent character who had shown impiety to Dionysus, he was punished by the god. Polydorus had a son, Labdacus. When Polydorus was about to die, Labdacus was still a child, and so he was entrusted, along with the government, to the care of Nycteus.

The sequel of this story, how Nycteus died, and how the care of the boy with the sovereignty of Thebes devolved on Lycus, the brother of Nycteus, I have already set forth in my account of Sicyon.[*](See 2.6.1) When Labdacus grew up, Lycus handed over to him the reins of government; but Labdacus too died shortly afterwards, and Lycus again became guardian, this time to Laius, the son of Labdacus.