Description of Greece

​Dropion, son of Leon, king of the Paeonians, sent to Delphi a bronze head of a bison, a Paeonian bull. These bisons are the most difficult of wild beasts to capture alive, and no nets could be so strong as to withstand their charge. They are hunted in the following manner. When the hunters find a sloping ground descending into a hollow, first they secure it all round with a strong fence, and secondly they cover the slope and the level ground near its end with freshly flayed hides; and if they happen to lack hides, they make even dry skins slippery for themselves by means of oil.

​After this, those who are best at horsemanship drive the bisons into the designated place; and they, slipping immediately on the very first hides, roll down the slope until they are carried down to the flat ground. Cast down there, they are neglected at first; but on about the fourth or fifth day, hunger and exhaustion have already removed most of their spirit, and those whose art it is to tame them offer to them, while they are still lying there, ​the fruit of the cultivated pine, having first selected it from the smallest husks. For the time being at least, the beasts would not touch any other food; finally, they secure them with bonds and lead them away.

​And while they capture them in the manner described, opposite the bronze head of the bison is a statue clad in a breastplate with a chlamys over the breastplate; the Delphians say it is a dedicatory offering of the Andrians, representing Andreas, their founder. The statues of Apollo, Athena, and Artemis are dedicatory offerings of the Phocians, taken from the Thessalians, who are their neighbors—except in so far as the Epicnemidian Locrians separate them—and are always hostile.

​Dedications were also made by the Thessalians of Pharsalus, by the Macedonians who inhabit the city of Dium under Pieria, and by the Cyrenaeans of the Greek race in Libya; the latter dedicated the chariot and upon the chariot a statue of Ammon, the Macedonians of Dium dedicated the Apollo who is grasping the hind, and the Pharsalians dedicated Achilles on horseback, with Patroclus running beside the horse. The Corinthians of the Dorian race also built a treasury;

​and the gold from the Lydians was deposited there. The statue of Heracles is a dedicatory offering of the Thebans, from when they fought the Phocians in the war called Sacred. There are also bronze statues dedicated by the Phocians, when in the second encounter they routed the cavalry from Thessaly. The Phliasians brought to Delphi a bronze Zeus, and along with the Zeus a statue of Aegina. From Mantinea in Arcadia there is a bronze Apollo as a dedicatory offering; this is not far from the treasury of the Corinthians.

​Heracles and Apollo are grasping the tripod and entering into a struggle for it; Leto and Artemis restrain Apollo, and Athena restrains Heracles from his anger. This also is a dedicatory offering of the Phocians, from when Tellias of Elis led them against the Thessalians. The other statues indeed were made jointly by Diyllus and Amyclaeus, but the Athena and Artemis were wrought by Chionis; they say that these artists were Corinthians.

​It is said by the Delphians that when Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, came to the oracle, the prophetess Xenoclea refused to give him an oracle because of the murder of Iphitus; but he, lifting up the tripod, carried it out of the temple, whereupon the prophetess said: “Another Heracles then, the Tirynthian, not the Canobian;” for even earlier the Egyptian Heracles had arrived at Delphi. On that occasion the son of Amphitryon returned the tripod to Apollo and was instructed by Xenoclea in all that he required. The poets, having adopted the story, sing of the fight of Heracles with Apollo for the tripod.

​The Greeks dedicated in common, from the spoils of the deed at Plataea, a golden tripod resting on a bronze serpent. So much of the offering as was bronze was still preserved even to my time; however, the leaders of the Phocians did not leave the gold in the same condition.

​The Tarentines sent to Delphi yet another tithe from the barbarian Peucetians; the offerings are the work of Onatas of Aegina and Ageladas of Argos, consisting of statues of both infantry and cavalry, and of Opis, king of the Iapygians, who had come as an ally to the Peucetians. He is represented as having been killed in the battle, and standing over him as he lies are the hero Taras and Phalanthus of Lacedaemon, and not far from Phalanthus a dolphin; for they say that before Phalanthus arrived in Italy, he suffered shipwreck in the Crisaean Sea and was brought ashore by a dolphin.