Description of Greece

​Zarax lies a hundred stades from Epidaurus; though in other respects a place with a good harbor, of the Free Laconian towns this one has been especially worn down, since Cleonymus, the son of Cleomenes, the son of Agesipolis, made this alone of the Laconian towns desolate; and the matters concerning Cleonymus have been told by me elsewhere. In Zarax there is nothing else, but at the end of the harbor there is a temple of Apollo and an image holding a lyre.

​For one who has gone forward about a hundred stades from Zarax along the sea, and has turned from there into the interior and gone up about ten stades, there are the ruins of a place called Cyphanta, and in them is a sacred cave of Asclepius, and the image is of stone. There is also a spring of cold water gushing from a rock; they say that Atalanta, when she was hunting here and was distressed by thirst, struck the rock with her spear, and thus the water flowed.

​Brasiae is the last of the Free Laconians on the sea in this direction, and they are distant from Cyphanta a voyage of two hundred stades. The people there say, agreeing with none of the Greeks, that Semele bore her child by Zeus, and having been discovered by Cadmus, she herself and Dionysus were cast into a chest; and they say that the chest was cast up by the wave onto their land, and that they buried Semele magnificently—for they did not find her still surviving—but brought up Dionysus.

​And on this account, they say, their city, which until then was called Oreatae, was renamed Brasiae after the casting up of the chest onto the land; and likewise even in our time, what is pushed onto the land by the wave is called by most people “cast up” (exebrasthai). The Brasiatae also add this: that Ino came to their country in her wanderings, and having come, she wished to become the nurse of Dionysus; and they point out the cave where Ino nurtured Dionysus, and they also call the plain the Garden of Dionysus.

​There are sanctuaries there, one of Asclepius and another of Achilles, and they hold a festival every year for Achilles. There is a small cape in Brasiae, projecting gently into the sea, and on it stand bronze images not larger than a foot, having felt caps (piloi) on their heads; I do not know whether they consider them to be the Dioscuri or Corybantes, but at any rate there are three, and the fourth is an image of Athena.

​On the right of Gythium is Las, ten stades from the sea and forty from Gythium. It is built now in the space between the mountains called Ilium, Asia, and Cnacadium, but formerly it lay on the summit of Mount Asia; and even now there are ruins of the ancient city, and before the walls an image of Heracles, and a trophy from the Macedonians, who were a part of Philip’s army when he invaded Laconia, and turning away from the rest, they plundered the coastal parts of the country.