Description of Greece

​From Stiris to Ambrossus is about sixty stades; the road is flat, a plain lying in the midst of mountains. Vines occupy the greater part of the plain, and in the land of the Ambrossians there also grow shrubs, though not continuously like the vines; this shrub the Ionians and the rest of the Greeks call coccus, but the Galatians above Phrygia name it hys in their native tongue. This coccus grows to the size of the shrub called rhamnus; its leaves are darker and softer than those of the mastic tree, but in other respects it resembles the mastic.

​Its fruit is like the fruit of the nightshade, and in size it is about that of a bitter vetch. There breeds in the fruit of the coccus a small insect; if this should reach the air when the fruit is ripe, it flies away at once and would look like a gnat. But as it is, before the insect stirs, they gather the fruit of the coccus, and the blood of the insect serves as a dye for wool.

​Ambrossus lies under Mount Parnassus, and on the other side of it is Delphi; they say the city got its name from a hero Ambrossus. The Thebans, when entering upon the war against the Macedonians and Philip, surrounded Ambrossus with a double wall. It is made of local stone, black in color and extremely strong. Each circle of the wall is in width a little less than a fathom, and the height is two fathoms and a half, where the wall has not suffered damage.

​The distance from the outer circle to the second is a fathom. The construction of towers or battlements, or anything else for the embellishment of a wall, was entirely omitted by them, as they were building the wall solely for immediate defense. The Ambrossians have a marketplace of no great size, and most of the stone statues in it are broken.

​For one turning toward Anticyra, the road is at first uphill. When you have ascended about two stades, there is a level place, and on the right of the road is a sanctuary of Artemis surnamed Dictynna. This goddess the Ambrossians hold in the highest honor; the image is of Aeginetan workmanship and is made of black stone. The road from the sanctuary of Dictynna to Anticyra is downhill all the way. They say that in older times the name of the city was Cyparissus, and that Homer in the list of Phocians chose to put that name, although it was already at that time called Anticyra; for Anticyreus was of the same age as Heracles.

​The city lies opposite the ruins of Medeon; and I showed at the beginning of my account of Phocis that the Anticyreans committed sacrilege against the sanctuary in Delphi. The Anticyreans were driven from their homes both by Philip, the son of Amyntas, and for a second time by Otilius the Roman, because they too were subjects of Philip, the son of Demetrius, when he ruled the Macedonians; Otilius had been dispatched from Rome to defend the Athenians against Philip.

​The mountains above Anticyra are extremely rocky, and in them hellebore grows in great abundance. The black variety of it purges the bowels of men, while the other, the white, is of a nature to purge by vomiting; the drug for purging is the root of the hellebore.

​The Anticyreans have bronze statues in their marketplace, and they have at the harbor a sanctuary of Poseidon of no great size, built of selected stones; the inside is plastered. The image is standing and made of bronze, stepping on a dolphin with one of its feet; on this same side it has its hand upon its thigh, and in the other hand is a trident.

​Beyond the gymnasium in which their baths have been made, there is another ancient gymnasium; a bronze statue stands in it; the inscription upon it says that Xenodamus, a pancratiast from Anticyra, won an Olympic victory among men. If the inscription speaks the truth, Xenodamus would appear to have received the wild-olive crown in the two hundred and eleventh Olympiad; and this Olympiad alone of them all is omitted in the records of the Eleans.

​Above the marketplace there is a spring of water in a well; as a shelter from the sun, the well has a roof and pillars supporting the roof. Not far above the well is a tomb built of ordinary stones; they say that the sons of Iphitus are buried here, one having returned safely from Ilium and died at home, while they say that Schedius met his end in the land of Troy, but his bones also were brought home.