Description of Greece

​Along the road there is a wooden image of Athena Alea. Before crossing the Eurotas, a little above the bank, a temple of Zeus the Wealthy is pointed out. For those who have crossed, there is a temple of Cotylean Asclepius, which Heracles built; and he named him Cotylean Asclepius because his wound in the hip, which he received in the former battle against Hippocoon and his sons, was healed. Of all the things built along this road, the most ancient of them is the temple of Ares. This is on the left of the road, and they say that the Dioscuri brought the statue from Colchis.

​They nickname him Theritas after Thero, for they say she was the nurse of Ares. Perhaps they call him Theritas having heard it from the Colchians, since the Greeks at least do not know of Thero as a nurse of Ares. But in my opinion, the surname Theritas was given to Ares not because of the nurse, but because when a man has engaged in battle with an enemy, he must no longer have any gentleness, just as Homer has indeed written concerning Achilles: “And like a lion, he knows savage things. “ ​Therapne received its name from the daughter of Lelex, and in it there is a temple of Menelaus, and they say that Menelaus and Helen were buried here. But the Rhodians, not agreeing with the Lacedaemonians, say that when Menelaus was dead and Orestes was still wandering, Helen, being then driven out by Nicostratus and Megapenthes, came to Rhodes, since she was on friendly terms with Polyxo, the wife of Tlepolemus.

​For Polyxo too was Argive by birth, and having married Tlepolemus even earlier, she shared his flight to Rhodes, and was left behind at that time as ruler of the island with an orphan child. They say that this Polyxo, desiring at that time to take vengeance on Helen for the death of Tlepolemus, when she had her in her power, sent against her while she was bathing handmaidens disguised to look like the Erinyes; and these women indeed seized Helen and hanged her on a tree, and because of this the Rhodians have a temple of Helen of the Tree.

​But the story which I know the Crotoniates tell about Helen, and with which the Himeraeans also agree, of this too I will make mention. There is in the Euxine Sea, near the mouths of the Ister, an island sacred to Achilles; the name of the island is Leuce, and its circumference is twenty stades, and it is all overgrown with thick wood and full of wild and tame beasts, and there is a temple and statue of Achilles in it.

​To this island they say Leonymus of Croton was the first to sail. For when a war arose between the Crotoniates and the Locrians in Italy, and the Locrians, because of their relationship to the Opuntians, called upon Ajax the son of Oileus into the battles, Leonymus, commanding the Crotoniates, attacked the enemy at that point where he heard that Ajax was drawn up in front of them. He was wounded in the chest, and—for he was suffering from the wound—went to Delphi. When he came, the Pythia sent Leonymus to the island of Leuce, telling him that there Ajax would appear to him and heal his wound.

​In time, when he returned from Leuce cured, he said that he had seen Achilles, and had seen the son of Oileus and Ajax the son of Telamon, and that Patroclus and Antilochus were also with them; and that Helen was living with Achilles, and had commanded him to sail to Himera and report to Stesichorus that the loss of his sight was due to her wrath. Stesichorus on this account composed his recantation.