1.43.6
After the sanctuary of Dionysus is a temple of Aphrodite, with an ivory image of Aphrodite surnamed Praxis (Action). This is the oldest object in the temple. There is also Persuasion and another goddess, whom they name Consoler, works of Praxiteles. By Scopas are Love and Desire and Yearning, if indeed their functions are as different as their names. Near the temple of Aphrodite is a sanctuary of Fortune, the image being one of the works of Praxiteles. In the temple hard by are Muses and a bronze Zeus by Lysippus.
1.43.7
The Megarians have also the grave of Coroebus. The poetical story of him, although it equally concerns Argos, I will relate here. They say that in the reign of Crotopus at Argos, Psamathe, the daughter of Crotopus, bore a son to Apollo, and being in dire terror of her father, exposed the child. He was found and destroyed by sheepdogs of Crotopus, and Apollo sent Vengeance to the city to punish the Argives. They say that she used to snatch the children from their mothers, until Coroebus to please the Argives slew Vengeance. Whereat as a second punishment plague fell upon them and stayed not. So Coroebus of his own accord went to Delphi to submit to the punishment of the god for having slain Vengeance.
1.43.8
The Pythia would not allow Coroebus to return to Argos, but ordered him to take up a tripod and carry it out of the sanctuary, and where the tripod should fall from his hands, there he was to build a temple of Apollo and to dwell himself. At Mount Gerania the tripod slipped and fell unawares. Here he dwelt in the village called the Little Tripods. The grave of Coroebus is in the market-place of the Megarians. The story of Psamathe and of Coroebus himself is carved on it in elegiac verses and further, upon the top of the grave is represented Coroebus slaying Vengeance. These are the oldest stone images I am aware of having seen among the Greeks.
ch. 44
1.44.1
Near Coroebus is buried Orsippus who won the footrace at Olympia by running naked when all his competitors wore girdles according to ancient custom. note They say also that Orsippus when general afterwards annexed some of the neighboring territory. My own opinion is that at Olympia he intentionally let the girdle slip off him, realizing that a naked man can run more easily than one girt.
1.44.2
As you go down from the market-place you see on the right of the street called Straight a sanctuary of Apollo Prostaterius (Protecting). You must turn a little aside from the road to discover it. In it is a noteworthy Apollo, Artemis also, and Leto, and other statues, made by Praxiteles. In the old gymnasium near the gate called the Gate of the Nymphs is a stone of the shape of a small pyramid. This they name Apollo Carinus, and here there is a sanctuary of the Eileithyiae.
Such are the sights that the city had to show.
1.44.3
When you have gone down to the port, which to the present day is called Nisaea, you see a sanctuary of Demeter Malophorus (Sheep-bearer or Apple-bearer). One of the accounts given of the surname is that those who first reared sheep in the land named Demeter Malophorus. The roof of the temple one might conclude has fallen in through age. There is a citadel here, which also is called Nisaea. Below the citadel near the sea is the tomb of Lelex, who they say arrived from Egypt and became king, being the son of Poseidon and of Libya, daughter of Epphus. Parallel to Nisaea lies the small island of Minoa, where in the war against Nisus anchored the fleet of the Cretans.
1.44.4
The hilly part of Megaris borders upon Boeotia, and in it the Megarians have built the city Pagae and another one called Aegosthena. As you go to Pagae, on turning a little aside from the highway, you are shown a rock with arrows stuck all over it, into which the Persians once shot in the night. In Pagae a noteworthy relic is a bronze image of Artemis surnamed Saviour, in size equal to that at Megara and exactly like it in shape. There is also a hero-shrine of Aegialeus, son of Adrastus. When the Argives made their second attack on Thebes he died at Glisas early in the first battle, and his relatives carried him to Pagae in Megaris and buried him, the shrine being still called the Aegialeum.
1.44.5
In Aegosthena is a sanctuary of Melampus, son of Amythaon, and a small figure of a man carved upon a slab. To Melampus they sacrifice and hold a festival every year. They say that he divines neither by dreams nor in any other way. Here is something else that I heard in Erenea, a village of the Megarians. Autonoe, daughter of Cadmus, left Thebes to live here owing to her great grief at the death of Actaeon, the manner of which is told in legend, and at the general misfortune of her father's house. The tomb of Autonoe is in this village.
