1.14.6
Above the Cerameicus and the portico called the King's Portico is a temple of Hephaestus. I was not surprised that by it stands a statue of Athena, be cause I knew the story about Erichthonius. But when I saw that the statue of Athena had blue eyes I found out that the legend about them is Libyan. For the Libyans have a saying that the Goddess is the daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis, and for this reason has blue eyes like Poseidon.
1.14.7
Hard by is a sanctuary of the Heavenly Aphrodite; the first men to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live at Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera. Among the Athenians the cult was established by Aegeus, who thought that he was childless (he had, in fact, no children at the time) and that his sisters had suffered their misfortune because of the wrath of Heavenly Aphrodite. The statue still extant is of Parian marble and is the work of Pheidias. One of the Athenian parishes is that of the Athmoneis, who say that Porphyrion, an earlier king than Actaeus, founded their sanctuary of the Heavenly One. But the traditions current among the Parishes often differ altogether from those of the city.
ch. 15
1.15.1
As you go to the portico which they call painted, because of its pictures, there is a bronze statue of Hermes of the Market-place, and near it a gate. On it is a trophy erected by the Athenians, who in a cavalry action overcame Pleistarchus, to whose command his brother Cassander had entrusted his cavalry and mercenaries. This portico contains, first, the Athenians arrayed against the Lacedaemonians at Oenoe in the Argive territory. note What is depicted is not the crisis of the battle nor when the action had advanced as far as the display of deeds of valor, but the beginning of the fight when the combatants were about to close.
1.15.2
On the middle wall are the Athenians and Theseus fighting with the Amazons. So, it seems, only the women did not lose through their defeats their reckless courage in the face of danger; Themiscyra was taken by Heracles, and afterwards the army which they dispatched to Athens was destroyed, but nevertheless they came to Troy to fight all the Greeks as well as the Athenians them selves. After the Amazons come the Greeks when they have taken Troy, and the kings assembled on account of the outrage committed by Ajax against Cassandra. The picture includes Ajax himself, Cassandra and other captive women.
1.15.3
At the end of the painting are those who fought at Marathon; the Boeotians of Plataea and the Attic contingent are coming to blows with the foreigners. In this place neither side has the better, but the center of the fighting shows the foreigners in flight and pushing one another into the morass, while at the end of the painting are the Phoenician ships, and the Greeks killing the foreigners who are scrambling into them. Here is also a portrait of the hero Marathon, after whom the plain is named, of Theseus represented as coming up from the under-world, of Athena and of Heracles. The Marathonians, according to their own account, were the first to regard Heracles as a god. Of the fighters the most conspicuous figures in the painting are Callimachus, who had been elected commander-in-chief by the Athenians, Miltiades, one of the generals, and a hero called Echetlus, of whom I shall make mention later.
1.15.4
Here are dedicated brazen shields, and some have an inscription that they are taken from the Scioneans and their allies note, while others, smeared with pitch lest they should be worn by age and rust, are said to be those of the Lacedaemonians who were taken prisoners in the island of Sphacteria. note
ch. 16
1.16.1
Here are placed bronze statues, one, in front of the portico, of Solon, who composed the laws for the Athenians note, and, a little farther away, one of Seleucus, whose future prosperity was foreshadowed by unmistakable signs. When he was about to set forth from Macedonia with Alexander, and was sacrificing at Pella to Zeus, the wood that lay on the altar advanced of its own accord to the image and caught fire without the application of a light. On the death of Alexander, Seleucus, in fear of Antigonus, who had arrived at Babylon, fled to Ptolemy, son of Lagus, and then returned again to Babylon. On his return he overcame the army of Antigonus and killed Antigonus himself, afterwards capturing Demetrius, son of Antigonus, who had advanced with an army.
