Description of Greece

​From the Greek mainland, the headland of Sounion in the land of Attica projects towards the Cyclades islands and the Aegean Sea. For one who has sailed past the headland, there is both a harbor and a temple of Athena of Sounion on the summit of the cape. Sailing further onward, there is Laurium, where the Athenians once had silver mines, and a small, uninhabited island called the Island of Patroclus. For Patroclus, who sailed as admiral of the Egyptian triremes, built a wall and threw up a palisade on it; these ships had been sent by Ptolemy, the son of Ptolemy the son of Lagus, to help the Athenians, at the time when Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, having invaded with an army, was ravaging their territory and at the same time blockading them by sea from the water.

​Piraeus was a deme from of old, but before Themistocles became archon of the Athenians, it was not a harbor. Phalerum—for here the sea is closest to the city—was their harbor, and they say that Menestheus set sail from there with his ships for Troy, and before him Theseus did the same to pay satisfaction to Minos for the death of Androgeos. But when Themistocles became archon, since Piraeus seemed to him to be more convenient for those who sailed and to possess three harbors instead of the single one at Phalerum, he established this as their port. Even down to my time there were docks, and near the largest harbor is the tomb of Themistocles. For they say that the Athenians repented of their treatment of Themistocles, and that his relatives took up his bones and brought them back from Magnesia. It is clear that the children of Themistocles both returned from exile and dedicated a painting in the Parthenon, in which Themistocles is depicted.

​Most worthy of seeing among the things in Piraeus is the sanctuary of Athena and Zeus. Both of the statues are of bronze; Zeus holds a scepter and a Victory, while Athena holds a spear. Here, Arcesilaus painted Leosthenes and his children—this Leosthenes who, leading the Athenians and all the Greeks, defeated the Macedonians in battle both in Boeotia and again outside Thermopylae, and, forcing them, shut them up in Lamia opposite Mount Oeta. And behind the long stoa, where the market is established for those near the sea—for there is another market further from the harbor—behind this stoa by the sea stand Zeus and Demos, the work of Leochares. Near the sea Conon built a temple of Aphrodite, after defeating the Lacedaemonian triremes near Cnidus in the Carican peninsula. For the Cnidians worship Aphrodite especially, and they have sanctuaries of the goddess; the oldest indeed is of Doritis, and after this that of Acraea, while the newest is the one which the majority call Cnidian, but the Cnidians themselves call Euploia.

​The Athenians have also other harbors, one at Munychia with a temple of Munychian Artemis, and another at Phalerum, as I have already said before, and near it a temple of Demeter. Here there is also a temple of Athena Sciras, and a temple of Zeus further off, and altars of the gods named Unknown, and of heroes, and of the children of Theseus and of Phaleros; for the Athenians say that this Phaleros sailed with Jason to Colchis. There is also an altar of Androgeos, the son of Minos, and it is called the altar of the Hero; but those who make it their care to know the local traditions more clearly than others know that it belongs to Androgeos.

​Twenty stades away is the headland of Colias; to this place, when the fleet of the Medes was destroyed, the wave carried the wreckage. Here there is a statue of Aphrodite of Colias and the goddesses called Genetyllides; and I think that the goddesses whom the Phocaeans in Ionia call Gennaides are the same as those at Colias. —On the road from Phalerum to Athens there is a temple of Hera having neither doors nor a roof; they say that Mardonius, the son of Gobryas, burned it. The statue now there is, as they say, the work of Alcamenes; this, at least, the Mede could not have damaged.