Description of Greece

​As for the place, the Kerameikos, it has its name from the hero Keramos, he too being said to be the son of Dionysus and Ariadne; and first on the right is the so-called Royal Stoa, where the king sits, holding his annual office which is called the Kingship. On the tiling of this stoa there are statues of baked clay: Theseus throwing Sciron into the sea, and Hemera carrying Cephalus, who, they say, having become very beautiful, was carried off by Hemera who fell in love with him; and to him was born a son, Phaethon, whom later Aphrodite carried off and made guardian of her temple. These things both others and Hesiod have said in the poems on women.

​Near the stoa stand Conon and Timotheus, the son of Conon, and Evagoras king of the Cypriots, who also brought it about that the Phoenician triremes were given to Conon by King Artaxerxes; and he did this as an Athenian and by ancient descent from Salamis, since in tracing his genealogy he ascended to his ancestors Teucer and the daughter of Cinyras. Here stand Zeus surnamed Eleutherios and King Hadrian, who showed great benevolence both to his other subjects and especially to the city of the Athenians.

​And behind is built a stoa containing paintings of the so-called Twelve Gods; and on the opposite wall Theseus is painted, and Democracy and Demos (the People). The painting shows that Theseus was the one who established equal citizenship for the Athenians; and a report has also otherwise spread among the many, that Theseus handed over the affairs of state to the people, and that they continued under democracy from that time until Peisistratus rose up and became tyrant. Indeed, many other untrue things are said among the many, since they are ignorant of history and believe whatever they heard straight from childhood in choruses and tragedies to be trustworthy; and such things are also said concerning Theseus, although he himself ruled as king, and later, when Menestheus died, the descendants of Theseus continued as rulers down to the fourth generation. But if I liked to trace genealogies, I could have also enumerated those who ruled from Melanthus down to Cleidicus, the son of Aesimides.

​Here is also painted the exploit of the Athenians at Mantinea, who were sent to assist the Lacedaemonians. Others and Xenophon have written the history of the entire war, both the seizure of the Cadmea and the defeat of the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, and how the Boeotians invaded the Peloponnese, and the alliance that came to the Lacedaemonians from the Athenians; and in the painting is a battle of the cavalry, in which the most famous are Grylus, the son of Xenophon, among the Athenians, and in the Boeotian cavalry Epaminondas the Theban. Euphranor painted these pictures for the Athenians, and nearby in the temple he made the Apollo surnamed Patroos (Ancestral); and in front of the temple, Leochares made one statue, and Calamis made the other, whom they call Alexikakos (Averter of Evil). And they say that this name was given to the god because, according to an oracle from Delphi, he stayed the pestilence which was pressing upon them at the same time as the Peloponnesian War.

​There is also built a sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods, which Pheidias fashioned, and nearby the council-chamber of the so-called Five Hundred, who advise the Athenians for a year; and in it is placed a wooden image of Zeus Boulaeus (of the Council), and an Apollo, the work of Peisias, and a Demos, the work of Lyson. And Protogenes of Caunus painted the Thesmothetae (Lawgivers), and Olbiades painted Callippus, who led the Athenians to Thermopylae to guard against the invasion of the Galatians into Greece.