Greek Texts & Translations

The people of Attica, reviving after the Peloponnesian war and the plague, raised themselves again only to be struck down a few years later by the ascendancy of Macedonia. From Macedonia the wrath of Alexander swooped like a thunderbolt on Thebes of Boeotia. The Lacedaemonians suffered injury through Epaminondas of Thebes and again through the war with the Achaeans. And when painfully, like a shoot from a mutilated and mostly withered trunk, the Achaean power sprang up, it was cut short, while still growing, by the cowardice ^note of its generals.

At a later time, when the Roman imperial power devolved upon Nero, he gave to the Roman people the very prosperous island of Sardinia in exchange for Greece, and then bestowed upon the latter complete freedom. When I considered this act of Nero it struck me how true is the remark of Plato, the son of Ariston, who says that the greatest and most daring crimes are committed, not by ordinary men, but by a noble soul ruined by a perverted education. ^note

The Greeks, however, were not to profit by the gift. For in the reign of Vespasian, the next emperor after Nero, they became embroiled in a civil war; Vespasian ordered that they should again pay tribute and be subject to a governor, saying that the Greek people had forgotten how to be free.

To resume after my researches into Achaean history. The boundary between Achaia and Elis is the river Larisus, and by the river is a temple of Larisaean Athena; about thirty stades distant from the Larisus is Dyme, an Achaean city. This was the only Achaean city that in his wars Philip the son of Demetrius made subject to him, and for this reason Sulpicius, another Roman governor, handed over Dyme to be sacked by his soldiery. Afterwards Augustus annexed it to Patrae.

Its more ancient name was Paleia, but the Ionians changed this to its modern name while they still occupied the city; I am uncertain whether they named it after Dyme, a native woman, or after Dymas, the son of Aegimius. But nobody is likely to be led into a fallacy by the inscription on the statue of Oebotas at Olympia. Oebotas was a man of Dyme, who won the foot-race at the sixth Festival ^note and was honored, because of a Delphic oracle, with a statue erected in the eightieth Olympiad ^note. On it is an inscription which says:—

This Oebotas, an Achaean, the son of Oenias, by winning the foot-race,
Added to the renown of his fatherland Paleia.
This inscription should mislead nobody, although it calls the city Paleia and not Dyme. For it is the custom of Greek poets to use ancient names instead of more modern ones, just as they surname Amphiaraus and Adrastus Phoronids, and Theseus an Erechthid.

A little before the city of Dyme there is, on the right of the road, the grave of Sostratus. He was a native youth, loved they say by Heracles, who outliving Sostratus made him his tomb and gave him some hair from his head as a primal offering. Even today there is a slab on the top of the mound, with a figure of Heracles in relief. I was told that the natives also sacrifice to Sostratus as to a hero.

The people of Dyme have a temple of Athena with an extremely ancient image; they have as well a sanctuary built for the Dindymenian mother and Attis. As to Attis, I could learn no secret about him, ^note but Hermesianax, the elegiac poet, says in a poem that he was the son of Galaus the Phrygian, and that he was a eunuch from birth. The account of Hermesianax goes on to say that, on growing up, Attis migrated to Lydia and celebrated for the Lydians the orgies of the Mother; that he rose to such honor with her that Zeus, being wroth at it, ^note sent a boar to destroy the tillage of the Lydians.

Then certain Lydians, with Attis himself, were killed by the boar, and it is consistent with this that the Gauls who inhabit Pessinus abstain from pork. But the current view about Attis is different, the local legend about him being this. Zeus, it is said, let fall in his sleep seed upon the ground, which in course of time sent up a demon, with two sexual organs, male and female. They call the demon Agdistis. But the gods, fearing ^note Agdistis, cut off the male organ.