Description of Greece

​The axes are a dedicatory offering, based on an ancient story, of Periclytus, son of Euthymachus, a Tenedian. They say that Cycnus was a son of Poseidon and ruled in Colonae; and Colonae was inhabited in the Troad, lying opposite the island of Leukophrys.

​Cycnus had a daughter named Hemithea and a son called Tennes by Procleia—who was a daughter of Clytius and a sister of Caletor, of whom Homer says in the Iliad that he died at the hands of Ajax when Caletor was bringing fire to the ship of Protesilaus—and when she had died before him, Philonome, daughter of Cragasus, who married him afterwards—for she had fallen in love with Tennes and failed in her desire—lied to her husband, claiming that she herself was unwilling, but Tennes had wished to lie with her. Cycnus was persuaded by the deception, and placing Tennes along with his sister in a chest, he cast them into the sea.

​And the children safely reached the island of Leukophrys, and the island received its present name from Tennes. But Cycnus—for he was not going to remain forever ignorant of his deception—sailed to his son to confess his own ignorance and beg pardon for his mistake; but when he anchored at the island and fastened the cables from his ship to some rock or tree, Tennes in his anger cut them off with an axe.

​Upon this, it became established as a saying directed against those who obstinately deny something, that so-and-so cut off such-and-such with a Tenedian axe. The Greeks say that Tennes was killed by Achilles while defending his homeland; and the Tenedians, in course of time, through weakness, attached themselves to those who possessed Alexandria in the Troad on the continent.

​The Greeks who fought against the King dedicated a bronze Zeus to Olympia, and also an Apollo to Delphi, from the exploits in the sea fights at Artemisium and Salamis. It is also said that Themistocles came to Delphi bringing Median spoils for Apollo; but when he asked concerning the offerings, whether he should dedicate them inside the temple, the Pythia ordered him to carry them away from the sanctuary altogether. And the oracle runs thus: “Place not within my temple the beautiful adornment of the Persian’s spoils; send it home with all speed.”

​We were therefore wondering whether he disdained to accept the gifts from the Medes from him alone. And some thought that the god would have rejected all things from the Persian equally, if they, like Themistocles, had asked Apollo before dedicating them. Others said that the god, knowing that Themistocles would become a suppliant of the Persian, refused on this account to take the gifts, lest by accepting them he should make the hatred from the Mede unending for the dedicator. But the expedition of the barbarian against Greece is to be found predicted in the oracles of Bacis, and even earlier still, verses had been made about it by Euclus.

​The dedicatory offering of the Delphians themselves, near the great altar, is a bronze wolf. And they say that a man who had plundered the treasures of the god hid himself along with the gold in that part of Parnassus where the wild trees grew thickest, and a wolf attacked him while he slept, and the man was killed by the wolf. The wolf then used to go daily into the city and howl; and since they supposed that it did not come to them without the hand of a god, they followed the beast, found the sacred gold, and dedicated a bronze wolf to the god.