Description of Greece

​Not long afterwards, those Corinthians who were in exile on account of their Lacedaemonian sympathies celebrated the Isthmian games. At that time, those in the city remained quiet through fear of Agesilaus; but when he withdrew to Sparta, they too in this way celebrated the Isthmian games with the Argives. Agesilaus came again with an army against Corinth; and—for the Hyacinthia was approaching—he dismissed the Amyclaeans to go home and perform the customary rites for Apollo and Hyacinthus. The Athenians and Iphicrates, attacking this detachment on the road, destroyed them.

​Agesilaus also arrived in Aetolia to help the Aetolians when they were hard pressed in war by the Acarnanians, and he forced the Acarnanians to make peace, when they were not far from having captured Calydon and the other towns of the Aetolians. At a later time, he sailed to Egypt as well, to help the Egyptians who had revolted from the King; and there are many deeds accomplished by Agesilaus in Egypt that are worthy of mention. And—for indeed he was already an old man—death overtook him on the journey; and the Lacedaemonians, when his body was brought home to them, buried him, honoring him more than any other of their kings.

​While Archidamus, the son of Agesilaus, was king, the Phocians seized the sanctuary at Delphi. To help the Phocians in their war against the Thebans, allied forces indeed came privately for money; but by public agreement, both the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians aided them, the latter remembering some ancient service on the part of the Phocians, and the Lacedaemonians, though they too alleged friendship as a pretext, did so, in my opinion, out of hatred for the Thebans. And Theopompus, the son of Damasistratus, said that Archidamus himself shared in the money, and furthermore, that Deinicha, the wife of Archidamus, by receiving gifts from the rulers of the Phocians, made Archidamus more ready to enter into the alliance with them.

​Indeed, I do not count it as a credit to him to have accepted sacred money and to have aided men who plundered the most famous of oracles, but this much credit belongs to him: the Phocians were daring to put to death the Delphians of military age, to reduce the women and children to slavery, and to raze the city itself to the ground; Archidamus, therefore, interceded for them that they should not suffer these things at the hands of the Phocians.

​He also crossed over to Italy later to help the Tarentines in their war against the neighboring barbarians; and he died there at the hands of the barbarians, and the anger of Apollo prevented his body from receiving a burial. Of this Archidamus, his elder son Agis met his death fighting against the Macedonians and Antipater, while Eudamidas, the younger, reigned over the Lacedaemonians while they were at peace. The fortunes of Agis the son of Eudamidas, and of Eurydamidas the son of Agis, have already been detailed for me by the Sicyonian narrative.

​To those going from the Hermas, this whole district is full of oak trees. The name Scotitas was given to the place not because of the thickness of the trees, but because Zeus has the surname Scotitas, and on the left of the road, about ten stades away if you turn off, is a sanctuary of Zeus Scotitas. Returning thence, if you go on a little and turn again to the left, there is an image of Heracles and a trophy; Heracles was said to have set it up after killing Hippocoon and his sons.

​The third branch leading from the straight road on the right brings you to Caryae and to the sanctuary of Artemis. For Caryae is a place sacred to Artemis and the Nymphs, and an image of Artemis Caryatis stands there in the open air. Here the Lacedaemonian maidens hold choral dances every year, and a local dance is established among them. If you turn back and go along the highway, there are the ruins of Sellasia; this town, as I wrote previously, the Achaeans reduced to slavery after defeating the Lacedaemonians and Cleomenes, the king who was the son of Leonidas, in battle.

​In Thornax—for you will come to this if you go forward—there is an image of Apollo Pythaeus, made after the same fashion as the one at Amyclae; what its shape is, I will describe in my account of the latter. For to the Lacedaemonians the affairs of the Amyclaean Apollo are more famous, so that they even used the gold, which Croesus the Lydian sent to Apollo Pythaeus, to adorn the image at Amyclae.