Description of Greece

​There are for the Athenians in the theater statues of both tragedy and comedy poets, most of them of the less famous. For except Menander, there was no comedy poet of those who had reached fame. Of the famous tragedy poets, Euripides and Sophocles are placed. It is said that when Sophocles died, the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica, and their leader saw Dionysus standing over him, commanding him to honor “the new Siren” with all the honors established for the dead. And the dream seemed to him to relate to Sophocles and the poetry of Sophocles, and even now people are still accustomed to liken the alluring quality of poems and prose to a Siren.

​I think that the statue of Aeschylus was made much later than his death and also than the painting which depicts the battle at Marathon. Aeschylus said that when he was a youth, he fell asleep in a field while guarding grapes, and Dionysus stood over him and commanded him to write tragedy; and when it was day—for he wished to obey—he found it very easy when he made the attempt.

​He indeed said these things. On the so-called South Wall, which is turned from the Acropolis toward the theater, there is dedicated a gilded head of Medusa the Gorgon, and around it an aegis is made. At the top of the theater there is a cave in the rocks under the Acropolis; and on this also stands a tripod. In it are Apollo and Artemis destroying the children of Niobe. This Niobe I myself also saw when I went up to Mount Sipylus. When you are near, it is a rock and a cliff, presenting to one who is close no shape of a woman, either in mourning or otherwise; but if you go further away, you will think you see a weeping and downcast woman.

​As you go at Athens from the theater to the Acropolis, Kalos is buried. Daedalus, having murdered this Kalos, who was his sister’s son and a pupil in his art, fled to Crete, and later escaped to Sicily to Cocalus. The sanctuary of Asclepius is worthy of a visit, both for the statues, as many as have been made of the god and his children, and for the paintings. In it is a spring, beside which they say Halirrothius, the son of Poseidon, having dishonored Alcippe, the daughter of Ares, was killed by Ares, and that the first trial for murder took place because of this.

​Here, among other things, is dedicated a Sauromatian breastplate; looking at this, anyone will say that the barbarians are no less skilled in arts than the Greeks. For the Sauromatians have no iron of their own dug up, nor do they import it; for they are the least social of the barbarians in those parts. Therefore, to meet this lack, they have invented the following: on their spears they wear bone points instead of iron, and bows of cornel-wood, and arrows with bone heads on the arrows. And casting lassos around as many of the enemy as they happen to meet, they turn their horses and overthrow those caught in the lassos.

​They make their breastplates in this manner. Each man rears many horses, since the land is not divided into private plots nor does it bear anything except wild forest, as they are nomads. These they use not only for war, but they also sacrifice them to their local gods and otherwise use them for food. Having collected the hooves, cleaned them, and split them , they make from them things like the scales of dragons. Anyone who has not yet seen a dragon has at least seen a pine-cone while still green. He would not be mistaken if he compared the work made from the hoof to the incisions appearing on the fruit of the pine. Having bored holes through these and sewn them together with the sinews of horses and oxen, they use breastplates that are neither inferior in beauty to those of the Greeks nor weaker. For they withstand both being struck in close combat and being hit by missiles.

​Linen breastplates are not equally useful to those who fight, for they allow even iron to pass through when forced. But they help those who hunt, for both the teeth of lions and leopards break off in them. Linen breastplates can be seen dedicated in other sanctuaries and also in Gryneum, where there is a most beautiful grove of Apollo, of both cultivated trees and of those unproductive ones which afford some pleasure of scent or sight.