Greek Texts & Translations

of Marpessa I shall make mention later. ^note The priest of Athena is a boy; I do not know how long his priesthood lasts, but it must be before, and not after, puberty. The altar for the goddess was made, they say, by Melampus, the son of Amythaon. Represented on the altar are Rhea and the nymph Oenoe holding the baby Zeus. On either side are four figures: on one, Glauce, Neda, Theisoa and Anthracia; on the other Ide, Hagno, Alcinoe and Phrixa. There are also images of the Muses and of Memory.

Not far from the temple is a stadium formed by a mound of earth, where they celebrate games, one festival called Aleaea after Athena, the other Halotia (Capture Festival) because they captured the greater part of the Lacedaemonians alive in the battle. To the north of the temple is a fountain, and at this fountain they say that Auge was outraged by Heracles, therein differing from the account of Auge in Hecataeus. Some three stades away from the fountain is a temple of Hermes Aepytus.

There is at Tegea another sanctuary of Athena, namely of Athena Poliatis (Keeper of the City) into which a priest enters once in each year. This sanctuary they name Eryma (Defence) saying that Cepheus, the son of Aleus, received from Athena a boon, that Tegea should never be captured while time shall endure, adding that the goddess cut off some of the hair of Medusa and gave it to him as a guard to the city.

Their story about Artemis, the same as is called Leader, is as follows. Aristomelidas, despot of Orchomenus in Arcadia, fell in love with a Tegean maiden, and, getting her somehow or other into his power, entrusted her to the keeping of Chronius. The girl, before she was delivered up to the despot, killed herself for fear and shame, and Artemis in a vision stirred up Chronius against Aristomelidas. He slew the despot, fled to Tegea, and made a sanctuary for Artemis.

The reason why at Olympia the victor receives a crown of wild-olive I have already explained in my account of Elis; ^note why at Delphi the crown is of bay I shall make plain later. ^note At the Isthmus the pine, and at Nemea celery became the prize to commemorate the sufferings of Palaemon and Archemorus. At most games, however, is given a crown of palm, and at all a palm is placed in the right hand of the victor.

The origin of the custom is said to be that Theseus, on his return from Crete, held games in Delos in honor of Apollo, and crowned the victors with palm. Such, it is said, was the origin of the custom. The palm in Delos is mentioned by Homer in the passage ^note where Odysseus supplicates the daughter of Alcinous.

There is also an image of Ares in the marketplace of Tegea. Carved in relief on a slab it is called Gynaecothoenas (He who entertains women). At the time of the Laconian war, when Charillus king of Lacedaemon made the first invasion, the women armed themselves and lay in ambush under the hill they call today Phylactris (Sentry Hill). When the armies met and the men on either side were performing many remarkable exploits,

the women, they say, came on the scene and put the Lacedaemonians to flight. Marpessa, surnamed Choera, surpassed, they say, the other women in daring, while Charillus himself was one of the Spartan prisoners. The story goes on to say that he was set free without ransom, swore to the Tegeans that the Lacedaemonians would never again attack Tegea, and then broke his oath; that the women offered to Ares a sacrifice of victory on their own account without the men, and gave to the men no share in the meat of the victim. For this reason Ares got his surname.