Description of Greece

​Tithorea is distant from Delphi, as one may estimate, by a hundred and eighty stades for one going by the road through Parnassus; but the other road, which is not entirely mountainous but also suitable for vehicles, was said to be of still more stades. I know that different accounts concerning the name of the city have been given by Herodotus in his history of the invasion of the Mede, and by Bacis in his oracles.

​For Bacis indeed called the people here Tithoreans; but the account of Herodotus concerning them says that when the barbarian was advancing, the inhabitants here fled up to the summit, and that Neon was the name of the city, but Tithorea of the peak of Parnassus. It seems, then, that in the course of time, first for the whole district, and afterwards, when they were resettled from their villages, the name Tithorea prevailed also for the city, so that it was no longer called Neon. The locals say that the name Tithorea was given after a nymph Tithorea, of the kind which in ancient times, according to the tradition of the poets, grew from other trees and especially from oaks.

​But one generation before I was born, fortune turned the affairs in Tithorea to the worse. There is indeed the structure of a theater and the enclosure of an older marketplace; and the things in the city that have especially come down to memory are a grove, a temple, and a statue of Athena; and there is the tomb of Antiope and of Phocus. And my narrative concerning the Thebans showed indeed how Antiope went mad through the anger of Dionysus, and for what reason she drew upon herself the wrath of the god, and it showed also how she lived with Phocus, who had fallen in love with her, ​the son of Ornytion, and that she is buried together with Phocus, and what things are said by Bacis the prophet as common to this tomb and to that of Zethus and Amphion in Thebes. Now, of the things in the town worthy of record, there was nothing else except those mentioned; but a river flowing past the city of the Tithoreans provides them with drinking water when they go down to the bank and draw the water; and its name is Cachales.

​Seventy stades distant from Tithorea is a temple of Asclepius, and he is called Archagetas; and he receives honors from the Tithoreans themselves, and equally from the rest of the Phocians. Within the enclosure, indeed, for the suppliants and for those who are servants of the god, there are dwellings here; and in the middle are both the temple and a statue made of stone, having a beard, and in size over two feet; a couch lies to the right of the statue, and they are accustomed to sacrifice to him all things alike except goats.

​About forty stades distant from the temple of Asclepius is an enclosure and a sacred shrine (adyton) of Isis, the most holy of all that the Greeks have constructed for the Egyptian goddess. For neither do the Tithoreans think it right to dwell around there, nor is there entry into the shrine for any others except those whom Isis herself, having favored them, calls through dreams. The same thing is done also by the underworld gods in the cities above the Maeander; for to whomsoever they wish to enter their shrines, they send to them visions of dreams.