Description of Greece

​In the Troezenian territory there is an isthmus extending far into the sea, on which is situated Methana, a small town on the coast. There is a temple of Isis here, and on the marketplace is a statue of Hermes, and the other is of Heracles. About thirty stades from the town are hot springs; they say that when Antigonus, son of Demetrius, was king of the Macedonians, then for the first time the water appeared, and that what appeared at first was not water, but a great fire boiled up from the earth, and when this had died down, the water flowed, which indeed rises up even to our day, hot and terribly salty. For one who bathes there, there is no cold water nearby, nor is it safe to plunge into the sea and swim, because it produces, among other sea monsters, a great number of sea-dogs.

​What I marvelled at most in Methana, I will write this too. The south-west wind, Lips, falling upon the vines as they are budding from the Saronic Gulf, dries up their buds; so, while the wind is still blowing down, two men, having torn in two a cock with entirely white feathers, run in opposite directions around the vines, each carrying half of the cock; and when they arrive at the same place from which they started, they bury it there.

​This is what they have devised against the Lips; but the small islands that lie off the land, being nine in number, they call the islands of Pelops, and they say that when the god rains, one of them is not rained upon. Whether this is so I do not know, but the people around Methana said so, since I have already seen men averting hail with sacrifices and incantations.

​Now Methana is an isthmus of the Peloponnese; inside the isthmus, Hermione is adjacent to the territory of the Troezenians. The Hermionians say that the founder of the ancient city was Hermion, son of Europs. But Europs—for he was indeed the son of Phoroneus—Herophanes of Troezen asserted to be illegitimate; for never would the rule in Argos have passed to Argos, the son of Niobe and daughter’s son of Phoroneus, if Phoroneus had had a legitimate child present.

​But for my part, even if Europs was legitimate, and his fate overtook him before Phoroneus, I know well that his child was not likely to carry equal weight with Niobe’s child, who was reputed to be the son of Zeus. Later, Dorians from Argos also settled in Hermione; but I do not think there was a war between them, for it would have been mentioned by the Argives.

​There is a road to Hermione from Troezen by the rock which was previously called the altar of Zeus Sthenius, but after Theseus took up the tokens, people of today call it the rock of Theseus. As you go along the mountain road by this rock, there is a temple of Apollo surnamed Platanistius, and there is a place called Eileoi, in which are sanctuaries of Demeter and of the Maid, daughter of Demeter; and the parts toward the sea, on the borders of the Hermionid, there is a sanctuary of Demeter surnamed Thermasia.