Greek Texts & Translations

When the fighting was now taking place by sanctuaries and houses, and in the narrow lanes, between detached bodies in different parts of the town, Pyrrhus left by himself was wounded in the head. It is said that his death ^note was caused by a blow from a tile thrown by a woman. The Argives however declare that it was not a woman who killed him but Demeter in the likeness of a woman. This is what the Argives themselves relate about his end, and Lyceas, the guide for the neighborhood, has written a poem which confirms the story. They have a sanctuary of Demeter, built at the command of the oracle, on the spot where Pyrrhus died, and in it Pyrrhus is buried.

I consider it remarkable that of those styled Aeacidae three met their end by similar heaven-sent means; if, as Homer says, Achilles was killed by Alexander, son of Priam, and by Apollo, if the Delphians were bidden by the Pythia to slay Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, and if the end of the son of Aeacides was such as the Argives say and Lyceas has described in his poem. The account, how ever, given by Hieronymus the Cardian is different, for a man who associates with royalty cannot help being a partial historian. If Philistus was justified in suppressing the most wicked deeds of Dionysius, because he expected his return to Syracuse, surely Hieronymus may be fully forgiven for writing to please Antigonus.

The Greeks who dispute most the Athenian claim to antiquity and the gifts they say they have received from the gods are the Argives, just as among those who are not Greeks the Egyptians compete with the Phrygians. It is said, then, that when Demeter came to Argos she was received by Pelasgus into his home, and that Chrysanthis, knowing about the rape of the Maid, related the story to her. Afterwards Trochilus, the priest of the mysteries, fled, they say, from Argos because of the enmity of Agenor, came to Attica and married a woman of Eleusis, by whom he had two children, Eubuleus and Triptolemus. That is the account given by the Argives. But the Athenians and those who with them. . . know that Triptolemus, son of Celeus, was the first to sow seed for cultivation.

Some extant verses of Musaeus, if indeed they are to be included among his works, say that Triptolemus was the son of Oceanus and Earth; while those ascribed to Orpheus (though in my opinion the received authorship is again incorrect) say that Eubuleus and Triptolemus were sons of Dysaules, and that because they gave Demeter information about her daughter the sowing of seed was her reward to them. But Choerilus, an Athenian, who wrote a play called Alope, says that Cercyon and Triptolemus were brothers, that their mother was the daughter of Amphictyon, while the father of Triptolemus was Rarus, of Cercyon, Poseidon. After I had intended to go further into this story, and to describe the contents of the sanctuary at Athens, called the Eleusinium, I was stayed by a vision in a dream. I shall therefore turn to those things it is lawful to write of to all men.

In front of this temple, where is also the statue of Triptolemus, is a bronze bull being led as it were to sacrifice, and there is a sitting figure of Epimenides of Cnossus ^note, who they say entered a cave in the country and slept. And the sleep did not leave him before the fortieth year, and afterwards he wrote verses and purified Athens and other cities. But Thales who stayed the plague for the Lacedaemonians was not related to Epimenides in any way, and belonged to a different city. The latter was from Cnossus, but Thales was from Gortyn, according to Polymnastus of Colophon, who com posed a poem about him for the Lacedaemonians.

Still farther of is a temple to Glory, this too being a thank-offering for the victory over the Persians, who had landed at Marathon. This is the victory of which I am of opinion the Athenians were proudest; while Aeschylus, who had won such renown for his poetry and for his share in the naval battles before Artemisium and at Salamis, recorded at the prospect of death nothing else, and merely wrote his name, his father's name, and the name of his city, and added that he had witnesses to his valor in the grove at Marathon and in the Persians who landed there.