Description of Greece

​For those who advance about seven stades along the straight road to Mases and turn to the left, there is a road to Halice. Halice is deserted in our time, but it too was once inhabited, and there is mention of the Halicians on the tablets of the Epidaurians which have the cures of Asclepius inscribed on them; but I know of no other trustworthy writing where there is mention either of the city of Halice or of the Halician men. At any rate, there is a road also to this city, running between Pron and another mountain called Thornax of old; they say that the mountain was renamed because of the transformation of Zeus into the cuckoo bird, which is said to have occurred here.

​Even to this day there are sanctuaries on the summits of the mountains, of Zeus on Coccygium, and of Hera on Pron. And near the peak of Coccygium there is a temple, but no doors were set on it, nor did it have a roof, nor was there any image in it; and the temple was said to be of Apollo. Beside it is a road to Mases for those who have turned aside from the straight road. As for Mases, which was a city of old, just as Homer also has represented in the Catalogue of the Argives, the Hermionians in our time used it as a seaport.

​From Mases there is a road on the right to a cape called Struthus. The distance from this cape along the ridges of the mountains is two hundred and fifty stades to a place called Philanorium and to Bolei; these Bolei are heaps of picked stones. Another place, which they name Didymi, is twenty stades distant from there; there is a temple of Apollo, and one of Poseidon, and besides these, one of Demeter, with standing statues of white stone.

​From here on is the land of the Argives which was once called Asinaia, and there are ruins of Asine on the sea. When the Lacedaemonians and their king Nicander, son of Charillus, son of Polydektes, son of Eunomus, son of Prytanis, son of Eurypontos, invaded Argolis with an army, the Asinaeans joined them in the invasion, and with them ravaged the land of the Argives. When the Lacedaemonian expedition returned home, the Argives and their king Eratus campaigned against Asine.

​And for a certain time the Asinaeans defended themselves from the wall and killed, among others, Lysistratus, who was among the most prominent of the Argives; but when the wall was being taken, they put their women and children into boats and abandoned their own country, while the Argives razed Asine to the ground, added the land to their own, and left only the temple of Pythaeus Apollo—which is still visible even now—and they buried Lysistratus near it.

​The sea at Lerna is forty stades, and no more, distant from the city of the Argives. As one goes down to Lerna, first on the road is the Erasinus, which empties into the Phrixus, and the Phrixus empties into the sea between Temenium and Lerna. Turning to the left from the Erasinus for about eight stades, there is a sanctuary of the Dioscuri Kings; their wooden images are made in the same manner as those in the city.

​Having returned to the straight road, you will cross the Erasinus and arrive at the river Chimarrus. Near it is an enclosure of stones, and they say that Pluto, having snatched Kore, the daughter of Demeter, descended here into his reputed subterranean kingdom. Lerna is, as my account has already said before, by the sea, and they perform the Lernaean mystery-rite to Demeter there.

​And there is a sacred grove beginning from a mountain which they call Pontinus; this mountain, Pontinus, does not allow the rain from heaven to flow away, but receives it into itself; and a river, Pontinus, also flows from it. And on the summit of the mountain there is a sanctuary of Athena Saitis, now only in ruins, and the foundations of the house of Hippomedon, who went to Thebes to avenge Polyneices, the son of Oedipus.