Description of Greece

​Above those already listed by me are the companions of Odysseus, Perimedes and Eurylochus, carrying victims; the victims are black rams. After them is a man sitting, and an inscription says that the man is Ocnus. He is represented as weaving a rope, and a female donkey stands by, eating up what of the rope has been woven from time to time. They say that this Ocnus was an industrious man, but had a spendthrift wife; and whatever he gathered by his labor was not long after consumed by her.

​It is on account of Ocnus’ wife, therefore, that they interpret Polygnotus to have wished to speak in riddles. I know also that when the Ionians see someone laboring at what brings no profit, it is said by them that this man is gathering Ocnus’ rope. But Ocnus is also what those among the seers who watch birds call a certain bird; and this Ocnus is the largest and most beautiful of herons, and if indeed any other bird is rare, this one is so too.

​Tityus also is painted, no longer being punished, but utterly wasted away by the continuous punishment, a dim and not even complete phantom. To one proceeding in order through the things in the painting, nearest to the one twisting the cord is Ariadne; she sits upon a rock, and looks at her sister Phaedra, who is swinging the rest of her body on a rope and holding on with both hands on either side of the rope. The attitude, although depicted in a more decorous way, suggested a conjecture of the end of Phaedra.

​As for Ariadne, Dionysus took her from Theseus, sailing against him with a larger fleet, either having fallen in with her by some divine chance or else having set an ambush for her on purpose. This Dionysus, in my opinion, was no other than the one who first marched on the Indians with an army, and first bridged the river Euphrates; and Zeugma was the name given to the city where the Euphrates was bridged in that territory, and there is still preserved there down to our time the cable with which he bridged the river, woven together with vine-twigs and ivy-shoots.

​Indeed, many things are said about Dionysus both by Greeks and by Egyptians; and under Phaedra is Chloris reclining on the knees of Thyia. Nor indeed will anyone be wrong who says that there was friendship between them when the women happened to be alive; for Chloris indeed was from Orchomenus in Boeotia, and the other was the daughter of Castalius from Parnassus. Others would also tell the story about them, that Poseidon united with Thyia, and Chloris married Neleus, the son of Poseidon.