Description of Greece

​The city of the Epidaurians itself offered the following most remarkable things for record: there is a sanctuary of Asclepius and statues of the god himself and of Epione, and they say Epione is the wife of Asclepius; these are in the open air, made of Parian stone. There are temples in the city of Dionysus, and a grove of Artemis; you might liken Artemis to one hunting. A sanctuary of Aphrodite has also been built; and the one near the harbor, on a cape stretching out into the sea, they say is of Hera. Athena on the acropolis, a wooden image worth seeing, they surname Cissaea.

​The Aeginetans inhabit the island opposite the territory of Epidaurus. They say that from the beginning there were no men in it; but when Zeus brought Aegina, the daughter of Asopus, to the desert island, this name was given to it instead of Oenone, and when Aeacus had grown up and asked Zeus for inhabitants, they say that Zeus thus sent up the men from the earth for him. They cannot name any other who ruled as king in the land except Aeacus, since we know that not even any of the children of Aeacus remained there, it having happened to Peleus and Telamon to flee on account of the murder of Phocus, while the children of Phocus in turn settled around Parnassus in what is now called Phocis.

​But the name was already beforehand in the land, since Phocus, the son of Ornytion, had come to it a generation earlier. In the time of this Phocus, the region around Tithorea and Parnassus was called Phocis; but in the time of the son of Aeacus, the name prevailed over all who are neighbors to the Minyans of Orchomenus and reach down to Scarphea of the Locrians.

​From Peleus arose the kings in Epirus, and of the children of Telamon, the family of Ajax is more obscure, as he lived as a private man, except in so far as Miltiades, who led the Athenians to Marathon, and Cimon the son of Miltiades rose to glory; but the descendants of Teucer remained ruling over the Cyprians as kings down to Evagoras. Asius, the epic poet, says that Panopeus and Crisus were born to Phocus; and of Panopeus was born Epeius, who made the wooden horse, as Homer represented, and Pylades was the third descendant of Crisus, being the son of Strophius, the son of Crisus, and of Anaxibia, the sister of Agamemnon. Such are the families of those called the Aeacidae, but they departed elsewhere from the beginning.

​But at a later time, a portion of the Argives who had seized Epidaurus together with Deiphontes, having crossed over to Aegina and become co-dwellers with the ancient Aeginetans, established the customs and speech of the Dorians in the island. When the Aeginetans had advanced to great power, so as to become superior to the Athenians in ships, and in the Persian war to furnish the greatest number of vessels after the Athenians, their prosperity did not remain to the end, but having been expelled by the Athenians, they inhabited Thyrea in Argolis, which the Lacedaemonians gave to them. And they recovered the island when the Athenian triremes were captured at the Hellespont, but it was no longer possible for them to advance to an equal level of wealth or power.