Greek Texts & Translations

On the road from Megara to Corinth are graves, including that of the Samian flute-player Telephanes, ^note said to have been made by Cleopatra, daughter of Philip, son of Amyntas. There is also the tomb of Car, son of Phoroneus, which was originally a mound of earth, but afterwards, at the command of the oracle, it was adorned with mussel stone. The Megarians are the only Greeks to possess this stone, and in the city also they have made many things out of it. It is very white, and softer than other stone; in it throughout are sea mussels. Such is the nature of the stone. The road called Scironian to this day and named after Sciron, was made by him when he was war minister of the Megarians, and originally they say was constructed for the use of active men. But the emperor Hadrian broadened it, and made it suitable even for chariots to pass each other in opposite directions.

There are legends about the rocks, which rise especially at the narrow part of the road. As to the Molurian, it is said that from it Ino flung her self into the sea with Melicertes, the younger of her children. Learchus, the elder of them, had been killed by his father. One account is that Athamas did this in a fit of madness; another is that he vented on Ino and her children unbridled rage when he learned that the famine which befell the Orchomenians and the supposed death of Phrixus were not accidents from heaven, but that Ino, the step-mother, had intrigued for all these things.

Then it was that she fled to the sea and cast herself and her son from the Molurian Rock. The son, they say, was landed on the Corinthian Isthmus by a dolphin, and honors were offered to Melicertes, then renamed Palaemon, including the celebration of the Isthmian games. The Molurian dock they thought sacred to Leucothea and Palaemon; but those after it they consider accursed, in that Sciron, who dwelt by them, used to cast into the sea all the strangers he met. A tortoise used to swim under the rocks to seize those that fell in. Sea tortoises are like land tortoises except in size and for their feet, which are like those of seals. Retribution for these deeds overtook Sciron, for he was cast into the same sea by Theseus.

On the top of the mountain is a temple of Zeus surnamed Aphesius (Releaser). It is said that on the occasion of the drought that once afflicted the Greeks Aeacus in obedience to an oracular utterance sacrificed in Aegina to Zeus God of all the Greeks, and Zeus rained and ended the drought, gaining thus the name Aphesius. Here there are also images of Aphrodite, Apollo, and Pan.

Farther on is the tomb of Eurystheus. The story is that he fled from Attica after the battle with the Heracleidae and was killed here by Iolaus. When you have gone down from this road you see a sanctuary of Apollo Latous, after which is the boundary between Megara and Corinth, where legend says that Hyllus, son of Heracles, fought a duel with the Arcadian Echemus.