Description of Greece

​These matters are indeed as previously stated. Inside the temple of Hera there is a statue of Zeus, and the statue of Hera is seated upon a throne; and he stands beside her, wearing a beard and having a helmet upon his head, and these are simple works. Next to these, the Horae seated upon thrones were made by Smilis of Aegina. Beside them stands a statue of Themis as the mother of the Horae, a work of Dorycleidas, a Lacedaemonian by birth, and a pupil of Dipoenus and Scyllis.

​The Hesperides, five in number, were made by Theocles, who was also a Lacedaemonian, the son of Hegylus, and he himself is said to have studied under Scyllis and Dipoenus. The Athena wearing a helmet and having a spear and a shield they say is the work of Medon, a Lacedaemonian, and they say he was a brother of Dorycleidas and was taught by the same masters.

​As for Core and Demeter, Apollo and Artemis, the former two are seated opposite one another, while Apollo stands opposite Artemis who is standing. There are also dedicated here Leto, Tyche, Dionysus, and a winged Nike; who made these I cannot declare, but they also seem to me to be among the most ancient. The statues catalogued are of ivory and gold, but in later times they dedicated other things to the Heraeum: a stone Hermes carrying the infant Dionysus, which is the art of Praxiteles, and a bronze Aphrodite, the work of Cleon of Sicyon.

​The teacher of this Cleon, named Antiphanes, was a pupil of Periclytus, and Periclytus was a disciple of Polyclitus of Argos. A gilded naked boy sits in front of Aphrodite; Boethus of Chalcedon carved it. There were also transferred to that place from the so-called Philippeum, these also being of gold and ivory, Eurydice the wife of Aridaeus and Olympias the wife of Philip.

​The chest is made of cedar, and upon it are figures, some of ivory, some of gold, and some carved from the cedar itself; in this chest his mother hid Cypselus, who became tyrant of Corinth, when the Bacchiadae were making diligent search to find him after his birth. On account of the escape of Cypselus, his descendants, called Cypselidae, dedicated the chest at Olympia; and the Corinthians of that time called chests “cypselae,” from which they say they also gave the name Cypselus to the child.

​On most of the figures upon the chest there are inscriptions, written in ancient characters; and some of them run straight, while other arrangements of the letters the Greeks call boustrophedon. It is of this kind: from the end of the verse the second of the verses turns back, just as in the double race-course. The inscriptions on the chest are also written in other ways, with winding patterns difficult to decipher. To one who begins to examine it from below, the first space on the chest presents the following.