Description of Greece

​The small demes of Attica, as each happened to be settled, present the following things for remembrance. For the Halimousians there is a temple of Demeter Thesmophoros and Kore, and in Zoster on the sea there is an altar of Athena, Apollo, Artemis, and Leto. Now they do not say that Leto gave birth to her children there, but that she loosened her girdle (zoster) as she was about to give birth, and that because of this the name was given to the place. And for the Prospaltians, for them too there is a temple of Kore and Demeter, and for the Anagyrasians a temple of the Mother of the Gods; and in Kephale the Dioscuri are especially worshiped, for those in this place call them the Great Gods.

​In Prasiai there is a temple of Apollo. Thither the first-fruits of the Hyperboreans are said to go; and that the Hyperboreans hand them over to the Arimaspians, and the Arimaspians to the Issedonians, and from them the Scythians carry them to Sinope, and from there they are carried through the Greeks to Prasiai, and the Athenians are the ones who bring them to Delos. And they say that the first-fruits are hidden in wheat straw, and are known by no one. And there is a tomb of Erysichthon at Prasiai, as he was being carried back from Delos after his sacred mission (theoria), his death having occurred to him during the voyage.

​As for Cranaus, who ruled over the Athenians, that Amphictyon expelled him, although he was his father-in-law, has been told by me still earlier; but they say that he, having fled with his partisans to the deme of Lamptrai, died there and was buried, and even down to my time there is a tomb of Cranaus among the Lamptrians. And the tomb of Ion, the son of Xuthus—for he too dwelt among the Athenians, and was their war-archon (polemarch) during the war against the Eleusinians—is in Potamoi of the country.

​These things, indeed, are so said. But for the Phlyasians and the Myrrhinusians, for the former there are altars of Apollo Dionysodotos and Artemis Selasphoros, and of Dionysus Anthios and the Ismenian nymphs, and of Earth, whom they call the Great Goddess; and another temple has altars of Demeter Anesidora, Zeus Ktesios, Athena Tithrone, Kore Protogone, and the goddesses called the August (Semnai). And the wooden image in Myrrhinus is that of Kolaenis. The Athmonians worship Amarysia Artemis;

​and in inquiring, I found that the guides knew nothing certain about them, but I myself make a conjecture in this way. There is an Amarynthos in Euboea; for those there too worship Amarysia, and the Athenians also celebrate a festival of Amarysia in no way less splendidly than the Euboeans; I believe, therefore, that the name arose among the Athmonians for this reason, and that the Kolaenis in Myrrhinus is named after Kolaenos. It has already been written by me that many of those in the demes say that they were ruled by kings even before the reign of Cecrops; and Kolaenos is the name of a man who ruled—as the Myrrhinusians say—before Cecrops became king.

​There is also the deme of Acharnae; these people worship, among the gods, Apollo Agyieus and Heracles. And there is an altar of Athena Hygieia; and they call Athena “Hippia”, and Dionysus “Melpomenos”, and “Kissos” (Ivy) as the same god, saying that the ivy plant first appeared there.