A retranslation based on an original translation by W.H.S. Jones, 1918 (Scroll 2 with H.A. Ormerod), containing some of the footnotes added by Jones.
This retranslation is by Gregory Nagy | 2022.01.28*
Scroll I. Attica
{1.12.5} Pyrrhos was brought over to Sicily by an embassy of the Syracusans. The Carthaginians had crossed over and were destroying the Greek [Hellēnides] cities, and had set up a siege of Syracuse, the only city now remaining. When Pyrrhos heard this from the envoys he abandoned Tarentum and the Italiots on the coast, and crossing into Sicily forced the Carthaginians to raise the siege of Syracuse. In his self-conceit, although the Carthaginians, being Phoenicians of Tyre by ancient descent, were more experienced seafarers than any other barbarian people of that day, Pyrrhos was nevertheless encouraged to engage them in a naval battle, employing the people of Epeiros, the majority of whom, even after the capture of Troy, knew nothing of the sea nor even as yet how to use salt. Witness the words of Homer in the Odyssey:
{1.13.2} After the defeat in Italy, Pyrrhos gave his forces a rest and then declared war on Antigonos, his chief ground of complaint being the failure to send reinforcements to Italy. Overpowering the native troops of Antigonos and his Gallic mercenaries he pursued them to the coast cities, and himself reduced upper Macedonia and the Thessalians. The extent of the fighting and the decisive character of the victory of Pyrrhos are shown best by the Celtic armor dedicated in the sanctuary of Itonian Athena between Pherai and Larisa, with this inscription on them:
{1.13.3} hang up, Pyrrhos did, taking them from the bold Gauls [Galatai],
having destroyed the entire army of Antigonos. No big wonder [thauma],
since the Aiakidai are masters of the spear, even now as also in the past.
These shields then are here, but the shields of the Macedonians themselves he dedicated to Dodonian Zeus. They too have an inscription:
and they brought slavery upon the Greeks [Hellēnes].
Now ownerless they lie by the columns of the temple [nāos] of Zeus,
spoils from boastful Macedonia.
{1.37.2} A little way past the tomb of Themistocles is a precinct [temenos] that is sacred [hieron] to Lakios, a hero [hērōs], and there is a deme [dēmos] called after him, Lakiadai; also the tomb [mnēma] of Nikokles of Tarentum, who won a unique reputation as a citharode [kitharōidos = kitharā-singer]. There is also an altar [bōmos] of Zephyrus and a sanctuary [hieron] of Demeter and her daughter. With them Athena and Poseidon have honors [tīmai]. They say that in this place [khōrion] Phytalos welcomed Demeter in his home, for which act the goddess [theos (feminine)] gave him the fig tree. This story is borne out by the inscription on the tomb of Phytalos:
Demeter, when she first created revealed [phainein] the fruit-of-the-harvest [karpos] that comes in the season of harvesting.
It is the sacred [hierē] fig-tree [sukē], that is what the generation of mortals [thnētoi] have have given it as a name. [140]
Whence Phytalos and his lineage have received honors immortal.
Scroll II. Corinth
{2.3.4} Proceeding on the direct road to Lekhaion we see a bronze statue [agalma] of a seated Hermes. By him stands a ram, for Hermes is the god who is thought most to care for and to increase flocks, as Homer puts it in the Iliad:
Rich in flocks, for the god vouchsafed him wealth in abundance.
The story told at the mysteries of the Mother about Hermes and the ram I know but do not relate. After the image of Hermes come Poseidon, Leukothea, and Palaimon on a dolphin.
{2.6.4} On this matter Asios the son of Amphiptolemos [157] says in his poem:
Daughter of Asopos, the swift, deep-eddying river,
Having conceived of Zeus and Epopeus, shepherd of peoples. [158]
Homer traces their descent to the more august side of their family, and says that they were the first founders of Thebes, in my opinion distinguishing the lower city from the Kadmeia.
{2.7.1} From that time the Sikyonians became Dorians and their land a part of the Argive territory. The city built by Aigialeus on the plain was destroyed by Demetrios the son of Antigonos, [159] who founded the modern city near what was once the ancient citadel. The reason why the Sikyonians grew weak it would be wrong to seek; we must be content with Homer’s saying about Zeus:
When they had lost their power there came upon them an earthquake, which almost depopulated their city and took from them many of their famous sights. It damaged also the cities of Caria and Lycia, and the island of Rhodes was very violently shaken, so that it was thought that the Sibyl had had her utterance about Rhodes [160] fulfilled.
{2.12.6} The Argives say that Phlias, who has given the land its third name, was the son of Ceisus, the son of Temenus. This account I can by no means accept, but I know that he is called a son of Dionysus, and that he is said to have been one of those who sailed on the Argo. The verses of the Rhodian poet confirm me in my opinion:
{2.14.3} But it is possible that Dysaules came to Phleious for some other reason than that given by the Phliasians. I do not believe either that he was related to Keleus, or that he was in any way distinguished at Eleusis, otherwise Homer would never have passed him by in his poems. For Homer is one of those who have written in honor of Demeter, and when he is making a list of those to whom the goddess taught the mysteries he knows nothing of an Eleusinian named Dysaules. These are the verses:
Also to mighty Eumolpos, to Keleus, leader of peoples,
Cult of the holy rites, to them all her mystery telling.
{2.20.10} This fight had been foretold by the Pythian priestess in the oracle quoted by Herodotus, who perhaps understood to what it referred and perhaps did not:
Driving away the male, and wins great glory in Argos,
Many an Argive woman will tear both cheeks in her sorrow.
Such are the words of the oracle referring to the exploit of the women.
{2.24.4} The reason for its three eyes one might infer to be this. That Zeus is king in the sky [ouranos] is a saying common to all men. As for him who is said to rule under the earth, there is a verse of Homer which calls him, too, Zeus:
The god in the sea, also, is called Zeus by Aeschylus, the son of Euphorion. So whoever made the image made it with three eyes, as signifying that this same god rules in all the three ‘allotments’ of the Universe, as they are called.
{2.33.2} Kalaureia, they say, was sacred to Apollo of old, at the time when Delphi was sacred to Poseidon. It is also said that the two gods exchanged the two places. They still say this, and quote an oracle:
Pythō, too, the holy, and Taenarum swept by the high winds.
At any rate, there is a holy sanctuary of Poseidon here, and it is served by a maiden priestess until she reaches an age fit for marriage.
Scroll III. Laconia
{3.2.4} and the next kings of this house, Doryssus, son of Labotas, and Agesilaos, son of Doryssus, were soon both killed. Lycurgus (Lykourgos) too laid down their laws for the Lacedaemonians in the reign of Artesilaos; some say that he was taught how to do this by the Pythian priestess, others that he introduced Cretan institutions. The Cretans say that these laws of theirs were laid down by Minos, and that Minos was not without divine aid in his deliberations concerning them. Homer too, I think, refers in riddling words to the legislation of Minos in the following verses:
Ruled as king, and enjoyed familiar converse with great Zeus.
{3.8.9} Yet further fuel for the controversy between Agesilaos and Leotykhides was supplied by the oracle that was delivered at Delphi to this effect:
Never let thy sound limbs give birth to a kingdom that lame is.
Too long then shalt thou lie in the clutches of desperate hardships;
Turmoil of war shall arise, o’erwhelming men in its billows.”
{3.19.8} They surname him Theritas after Thero, who is said to have been the nurse of Ares. Perhaps it was from the people of Kolkhis that they heard the name Theritas, since the Greeks know of no Thero, nurse of Ares. My own belief is that the surname Theritas [261] was not given to Ares because of his nurse, but because when a man meets an enemy in battle he must cast aside all gentleness, as Homer says of Achilles:
{3.20.6} I know also of the following rite which is performed here. By the sea was a city Helos, which Homer too has mentioned in his list of the Lacedaemonians:
It was founded by Helios [Hĕlios not Hēlios], the youngest of the sons of Perseus, and the Dorians afterwards reduced it by siege. Its inhabitants became the first slaves of the Lacedaemonian state, and were the first to be called Helots [heilōtes], as in fact heilōtesthey were. The slaves afterwards acquired, although they were Dorians of Messenia, also came to be called Helots, just as the entire lineage of people who were called Hellēnes [‘Greeks’] were named after the region in Thessaly once called Hellas.
{3.21.9} Him whom the people of Cythium name Old Man, saying that he lives in the sea, I found to be Nereus. They got this name originally from Homer, who says in a part of the Iliad, where Thetis is speaking:
Plunge, to behold the old man of the sea and the home of your father.
Here is also a gate called the Gate of Castor (Kastor), and on the citadel have been built a temple and image of Athena.
{3.25.2} but according to another account Pyrrhikos was one of the gods called Kouretes. Others say that Silenus came from Malea and settled here. That Silenus was brought up in Malea is clear from these words in an ode of Pindar:
Not that Pindar said his name was Pyrrhikos; that is a statement of the men of Malea.
Scroll IV. Messenia
{4.1.3} Before the battle which the Thebans fought with the Lacedaemonians at Leuktra, and the foundation of the present city of Messene under Ithome, I think that no city had the name Messene. I base this conclusion principally on Homer’s lines. [277] In the catalogue of those who came to Troy he enumerated Pylos, Arene and other towns, but called no town Messene. In the Odyssey he shows that the Messenians were a tribe and not a city by the following:
{4.1.4} He is still more clear when speaking about the bow of Iphitos:
in the dwelling of Ortilokhos.”
By the dwelling of Ortilokhos he meant the city of Pherai in Messene, and explained this himself in the visit of Peisistratos to Menelaos:
son of Ortilokhos.”
{4.1.6} But the mysteries of the Great Goddesses were raised to greater honor many years later than Kaukon by Lykos, the son of Pandion, an oak-wood, where he purified the celebrants, being still called the wood of Lykos. That there is a wood in this land so called is stated by Rhianus the Cretan:
{4.6.5} It was this Theopompos who put an end to the war, and my evidence is the lines of Tyrtaeus, which say:
Aristomenes then in my view belongs to the time of the second war, and I will relate his history when I come to this.
{4.9.2} A small town existed here, which they say Homer mentions in the Catalogue:
To this town they withdrew, extending the old circuit to form a sufficient protection for them all. The place was strong in other respects, for Ithome falls short of none of the mountains within the Isthmus in height and at this point was most difficult to climb.
{4.9.4} Tisis, reaching Ithome with all speed, delivered the oracle to the king, and soon afterwards died of his wounds. Euphaes assembled the Messenians and made known the oracle:
{4.12.1} The Lacedaemonians were distressed by the reverse that had befallen them. Their losses in the battle were great and included important men, and they were inclined to despair of all hope in the war. For this reason they sent envoys to Delphi, who received the following reply from the Pythia:
{4.12.3} Failing in their attempt, the Lacedaemonians next attempted to break up the Messenian alliance. But when repulsed by the Arcadians, to whom their ambassadors came first, they put off going to Argos. Aristodemos, hearing of the Lacedaemonian intrigues, also sent men to enquire of the god. And the Pythia replied to them:
At the time Aristodemos and the seers were at a loss to interpret the saying, but in a few years the god was like to reveal it and bring it to fulfillment.
{4.12.7} After this, as the twentieth year of the war was approaching, they resolved to send again to Delphi to ask concerning victory. The Pythia made answer to their question:
{4.13.6} Even then the Messenians were not inferior in courage and brave deeds, but all their generals were killed and their most notable men. After this they held out for some five months, but as the year was coming to an end deserted Ithome, the war having lasted twenty years in all, as is stated in the poems of Tyrtaeus:
{4.14.5} As to the wanton punishments which they inflicted on the Messenians, this is what is said in Tyrtaeus’ poems:
That they were compelled to share their mourning, he shows by the following:
{4.15.2} Tyrtaeus has not recorded the names of the kings then reigning in Lacedaemon, but Rhianos stated in his epic that Leotykhides was king at the time of this war. I cannot agree with him at all on this point. Though Tyrtaeus makes no statement, he may be regarded as having done so by the following; there are lines of his which refer to the first war:
{4.15.5} It was the view of Aristomenes that any man would be ready to die in battle if he had first done deeds worthy of record, but that it was his own especial task at the very beginning of the war to prove that he had struck terror into the Lacedaemonians and that he would be more terrible to them for the future. With this purpose he came by night to Lacedaemon and fixed on the temple of Athena of the Brazen House a shield inscribed
{4.16.6} The Lacedaemonians were thrown into despair after this blow and purposed to put an end to the war. But Tyrtaeus by reciting his poems contrived to dissuade them, and filled their ranks from the Helots to replace the slain. When Aristomenes returned to Andania, the women threw ribbons and flower blossoms over him, singing also a song which is sung to this day:
{4.17.11} The length of the siege is proved by these lines of the poet Rhianus, regarding the Lacedaemonians:
He reckons winters and summers, by ‘green herbs’ meaning the green wheat or the time just before harvest.
{4.20.1} But in the eleventh year of the siege it was fated that Eira should be taken and the Messenians dispersed, and the god fulfilled for them an oracle given to Aristomenes and Theoklos. They had come to Delphi after the disaster at the Trench and asked concerning safety, receiving this reply from the Pythia:
{4.22.7} When this was declared to all, the Arcadians themselves stoned Aristocrates [Aristokrates] and urged the Messenians to join them. They looked to Aristomenes. But he was weeping, with his eyes fixed on the ground. So the Arcadians stoned Aristocrates [Aristokrates] to death and flung him beyond their borders without burial, and set up a tablet in the precinct of Zeus Lykaios with the words:
Hard it is for a man forsworn to hide from God.
Hail, king Zeus, and keep Arcadia safe.”
{4.27.4} Epameinondas was most strongly drawn to the foundation by the oracles of Bacis, who was inspired by the Nymphs and left prophecies regarding others of the Greeks as well as the return of the Messenians:
I have discovered that Bacis also told in what manner Eira would be captured, and this too is one of his oracles:
{4.30.4} Homer is the first whom I know to have mentioned Fortune in his poems. He did so in the Hymn to Demeter, where he enumerates the daughters of Okeanos, telling how they played with Kore the daughter of Demeter, and making Fortune one of them. The lines are:
{4.32.5} What I myself heard in Thebes gives probability to the Messenian account, although it does not coincide in all respects. The Thebans say that when the battle of Leuktra was imminent, they sent to other oracles and to enquire of the god of Lebadeia. The replies of the Ismenian and Ptoan Apollo are recorded, also the responses given at Abaiand at Delphi. Trophonios, they say, answered in hexameters:
{4.33.2} The statue of Zeus is the work of Ageladas [311] and was made originally for the Messenian settlers in Naupaktos. The priest is chosen annually and keeps the image in his house. [312] They keep an annual festival, the Ithomaia, and originally a musical contest was held. This can be gathered from the epic lines of Eumēlos and other sources. Eumēlos, in his processional hymn to Delos, says:
I think that he wrote the lines because he knew that they held a musical contest.
Scroll V. Elis, Part 1
{5.2.5} For Timon, a man of Elis, won victories in the pentathlon at the Greek Games, and at Olympia, there is even a statue of him, with an elegiac inscription giving the garlands he won and also the reason why he secured no Isthmian victory. The inscription sets forth the reason thus:
About the baleful death of the Molionidai.
{5.3.1} Enough of my discussion of this question. Hēraklēs afterwards took Elis and sacked it, with an army he had raised of Argives, Thebans and Arcadians. The Eleians were aided by the men of Pisa and of Pylos in Elis. The men of Pylos were punished by Hēraklēs, but his expedition against Pisa was stopped by an oracle from Delphi that goes like this:
This oracle proved the salvation of Pisa. To Phyleus Hēraklēs gave up the land of Elis and all the rest, more out of respect for Phyleus than because he wanted to do so: he allowed him to keep the prisoners, and Augeias to escape punishment.
{5.6.2} As to the ruins of Arene, no Messenian and no Eleian could point them out to me with certainty. Those who care to do so may make all sorts of different guesses about it, but the most plausible account seemed to me that of those who held that in the heroic age and even earlier, Samikon was called Arene. These quoted too the words of the Iliad:
{5.7.3} This account of Alpheios to Ortygia. But that the Alpheios passes through the sea and mingles his waters with the spring at this place, I cannot disbelieve as I know that the god at Delphi confirms the story. For when he dispatched Arkhias the Corinthian to found Syracuse, he uttered this oracle:
Over against Trinakria, where the mouth of Alpheios bubbles
Mingling with the springs of broad Arethousa.
For this reason, therefore, because the water of the Alpheios mingles with the Arethousa, I am convinced that the story arose of the river’s love-affair.
{5.10.4} At Olympia, a gilded caldron stands on each end of the roof, and a Nike, also gilded, is set in about the middle of the pediment. Under the image of Nike has been dedicated a golden shield with Medusa the Gorgon in relief. The inscription on the shield declares who dedicated it and the reason why they did so. It runs thus:
The Lacedaemonians and their allies dedicated it,
A gift taken from the Argives, Athenians, and Ionians,
The tithe offered for victory in war.
This battle I also mentioned in my write-up [sun-graphē] of Attica. Then I described the tombs that are in Athens.
{5.18.2} A beautiful woman is punishing an ugly one, choking her with one hand and with the other striking her with a staff. It is Justice who thus treats Injustice. Two other women are pounding in mortars with pestles; they are supposed to be wise in the lore of medicine, though there is no inscription to them. Who the man is who is followed by a woman is made plain by the hexameter verses, which run thus:
{5.18.4} There are also figures of Muses singing, with Apollo leading the song; these too have an inscription: This is Leto’s son, Prince Apollo, far-shooting; Around him are the Muses, a graceful choir, whom he is leading. Atlas too is supporting, just as the story has it, sky [ouranos] and earth upon his shoulders; he is also carrying the apples of the Hesperides. A man holding a sword is coming towards Atlas. This everybody can see is Hēraklēs, though he is not mentioned specially in the inscription, which reads:
{5.19.3} Aithra, the daughter of Pittheus, lies thrown to the ground under the feet at Helen. She is clothed in black, and the inscription upon the group is an hexameter line with the addition of a single word:
From Athens.
{5.19.4} Such is the way this line is constructed. Iphidamas, the son of Antenor, is lying, and Koön is fighting for him against Agamemnon. On the shield of Agamemnon is Fear, whose head is a lion’s. The inscription above the corpse of Iphidamas runs: Iphidamas, and this is Koön fighting for him. The inscription on the shield of Agamemnon runs:
There is also Hermes bringing to Alexander the son of Priam the goddesses of whose beauty he is to judge, the inscription on them being:
Concerning their beauty, Hērā, Athena and Aphrodite.
On what account Artemis has wings on her shoulders I do not know; in her right hand she grips a leopard, in her left a lion. Ajax too is represented dragging Cassandra from the statue [agalma] of Athena, and by him is also an inscription: Ajax of Lokris is dragging Cassandra from Athena.
{5.20.7} A bronze tablet in front of it has the following elegiac inscription:
I, who once was a column in the house of Oinomaos;
Now by Kronos’ son I lie with these bands upon me,
A precious thing, and the baleful flame of fire consumed me not.
In my time another incident took place, which I will relate.
{5.22.3} These are the work of Lykios, the son of Myron, and were dedicated by the people of Apollonia on the Ionian sea. There are also elegiac verses written in ancient characters under the feet of Zeus:
Those who took the territory of the Abantes established these memorials here with the help of the gods [theoi], tithe from Thronion.
The land called Abantis and the town of Thronion in it were a part of the Thesprotian mainland over against the Ceraunian mountains.
{5.24.11} Homer proves this point clearly. For the boar, on the slices of which Agamemnon swore that Briseis had not lain with him, Homer says was thrown by the herald into the sea:
And the boar Talthybios swung and cast into the great depth
Of the grey sea, to feed the fishes.
Such was the ancient custom. Before the feet of the Oath-god is a bronze plate, with elegiac verses inscribed upon it, the object of which is to strike fear into those who take false oaths.
{5.25.10} An inscription too is written on the pedestal:
Descendants of Pelops the godlike offspring of Tantalos.
Such is the inscription on the pedestal, but the name of the artist is written on the shield of Idomeneus:
{5.25.13} On the offering of the Thasians at Olympia there is an elegiac couplet:
This Onatas, though belonging to the Aeginetan school of sculpture, I shall place after none of the successors of Daidalos or of the Attic school.
{5.27.2} The offerings at Olympia are two horses and two charioteers, a charioteer standing by the side of each of the horses. The first horse and man are by Dionysius of Argos, the second are the work of Simon of Aegina. [359] On the side of the first of the horses is an inscription, the first part of which is not metrical. It runs thus:
An Arcadian of Mainalos, now of Syracuse.
{5.27.12} The offering of the Mendeans in Thrace came very near to beguiling me into the belief that it was a representation of a competitor in the pentathlon. It stands by the side of Anauchidas of Elis, and it holds ancient jumping-weights. An elegiac couplet is written on its thigh:
Sipte seems to be a Thracian fortress and city. The Mendeans themselves are of Greek descent, coming from Ionia, and they live inland at some distance from the sea that is by the city of Ainos.
Scroll VI. Elis, Part 2
{6.3.14} A statue of Lysander, son of Aristokritos, a Spartan, was dedicated in Olympia by the Samians, and the first of their inscriptions runs:
I stand, dedicated at public expense by the Samians.”
So this inscription informs us who dedicated the statue; the next is in praise of Lysander himself:
Lysander, have you won, and are famed for valor.”
{6.4.6} Khilon, an Achaean of Patrai, won two prizes for men wrestlers at Olympia, one at Delphi, four at the Isthmus, and three at the Nemean Games. He was buried at the public expense by the Achaeans, and his fate it was to lose his life on the field of battle. My statement is borne out by the inscription at Olympia:
Three times at Nemeā, and four times at the Isthmus near the sea;
Khilon of Patrai, son of Khilon, whom the Achaean folk
Buried for my valor when I died in battle.”
{6.8.2} As to the boxer, by name Damarkhos, an Arcadian of Parrhasia, I cannot believe (except, of course, his Olympic victory) what romancers say about him, how he changed his shape into that of a wolf at the sacrifice of Lycaean [Wolf] Zeus, and how nine years after he became a man again. Nor do I think that the Arcadians either record this of him, otherwise it would have been recorded as well in the inscription at Olympia, which runs:
Parrhasian by birth from Arcadia.”
{6.9.8} The response given by the Pythian priestess was, they say, as follows:
Honor him with sacrifices as being no longer a mortal.”
So from this time have the Astypalaians paid honors to Kleomedes as to a hero.
{6.9.9} By the side of the chariot of Gelon is dedicated a statue of Philon, the work of the Aeginetan Glaukias. About this, Philon Simonides, the son of Leoprepes composed a very neat elegiac couplet:
The son of Glaukos, and I won two Olympic victories for boxing.”
There is also a statue of Agametor of Mantineia, who beat the boys at boxing.
{6.10.5} Who made the statue of Theopompos the wrestler we do not know, but those of his father and grandfather are said by the inscription to be by Eutelidas and Khrysothemis, who were Argives. It does not, however, declare the name of their teacher, but runs as follows:
Argives, who learned their art from those who lived before.”
Ikkos, the son of Nikolaidas of Tarentum, won the Olympic garland in the pentathlon and afterwards is said to have become the best trainer of his day.
{6.10.7} There are inscribed the names of the horses, Phoenix and Korax, and on either side are the horses by the yoke, on the right Knakias, on the left Samos. This inscription in elegiac verse is on the chariot:
After winning with his horses a victory in the glorious Games of Zeus.”
{6.11.8} Whereupon the Pythian priestess replied to them:
And when they could not think of a contrivance to recover the statue of Theagenes, fishermen, they say, after putting out to sea for a catch of fish caught the statue in their net and brought it back to land. The Thasians set it up in its original position, and are accustomed to sacrifice to him as to a god.
{6.13.10} The sons also of Pheidolas were winners in the horse race, and the horse is represented on a slab with this inscription:
Garlanded the house of the sons of Pheidolas.”
But the inscription is at variance with the Eleian records of Olympic victors. These records give a victory to the sons of Pheidolas at the sixty-eighth Festival but at no other. You may take my statements as accurate.
{6.14.10} For Sacadas won in the Games introduced by the Amphiktyones before a garland was awarded for success, and after this victory two others for which garlands were given, but at the next six Pythian Festivals Pythokritos of Sikyon was victor, being the only aulos player so to distinguish himself. It is also clear that at the Olympic Festival, he fluted six times for the pentathlon. For these reasons, the slab at Olympia was erected in honor of Pythokritos, with the inscription on it: