Description of Greece

​And on the fourth band of the chest, as one goes around from the left, there is Boreas who has snatched Oreithyia—he has serpents’ tails instead of feet—and the contest of Heracles against Geryon; Geryon is three men joined to one another. There is also Theseus holding a lyre, and beside him Ariadne holding a crown. Beside Achilles and Memnon as they fight stand their mothers.

​There is also Melanion, and Atalanta beside him holding a fawn of a deer. And while Hector fights in single combat with Ajax according to the challenge, between them stands Eris, resembling a most ugly form; in addition to this, Calliphon of Samos also made an Eris in the temple of Artemis of Ephesus, when he painted the battle by the ships of the Greeks. And there are on the chest the Dioscuri, one of them not yet having a beard, and in the middle of them Helen.

​And Aethra, the daughter of Pittheus, thrown down to the ground under the feet of Helen, has a black garment, and the inscription over them is a hexameter verse and the addition of one name to the hexameter: “The sons of Tyndareus carry Helen off, and drag Aethra from Athens.”

​This verse indeed is thus made. And while Iphidamas, the son of Antenor, lies dead, Coön is fighting against Agamemnon on his behalf; and Phobos is upon Agamemnon’s shield, having the head of a lion. There are inscriptions, over the corpse of Iphidamas: “This is Iphidamas, and Coön fights for him;” and on the shield of Agamemnon: ” This is the Fear of mortals, and he who holds it is Agamemnon.” And Hermes also leads the goddesses to Alexander, the son of Priam, to be judged for their beauty, and there is an inscription also for these: “This Hermes shows to Alexander, as judge of beauty, Hera and Athena and Aphrodite.” And Artemis, I know not for what reason, has wings on her shoulders, and with her right hand she holds a leopard, and with the other of her hands a lion. And Ajax is also depicted dragging Cassandra from the statue of Athena, and there is also an inscription over it: “Ajax the Locrian drags Cassandra from Athena.”

​And of the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles is coming upon Polynices who has fallen on his knee. Behind Polynices stands a woman having teeth in no way gentler than those of a wild beast, and the nails of her hands are hooked; the inscription says that she is Ker, on the ground that Polynices has been carried off by destiny, while Eteocles’ end came with justice. And Dionysus is lying down in a cave, having a beard and a golden cup, and wearing a tunic reaching to his feet; and around him are trees: grapevines, apple trees, and pomegranates.

​The uppermost band—for they are five in number—presents no inscription, and it is left to conjecture as to the things wrought upon it. There are, then, in a cave a woman sleeping with a man on a couch, and we supposed them to be Odysseus and Circe, both by the number of the maidservants who are before the cave, and by what is being done by them; for the women are four, and they are working the works which Homer has mentioned in his verses. And there is a Centaur having not all his feet those of a horse, but his front feet those of a man.

​Next are pairs of horses, and women standing on the pairs of horses; and the horses have golden wings, and a man is giving armor to one of the women. These things they conjecture to refer to the death of Patroclus; for they say that the Nereids are on the pairs of horses, and that Thetis is receiving the armor from Hephaestus. And indeed, in other respects, he who gives the armor is not strong in his feet, and behind him follows a servant holding a pair of fire-tongs;

​and it is also said concerning the Centaur that he is Chiron, who having already departed from men and been deemed worthy to dwell with the gods, had come to provide some relief from grief to Achilles. And as for the maidens on mules, one holding the reins and the other having a veil placed over her head, they believe them to be Nausicaa, the daughter of Alcinous, and her maidservant, driving to the washing-places. As for the man shooting arrows at Centaurs, and having already killed some of them, it is clear both that the archer is Heracles and that the deed is Heracles’.

​As to who it was who wrought the chest, indeed, it was in no way possible for us to guess; but as for the inscriptions upon it, perhaps indeed some other person might have composed them, but our suspicion for the most part directed itself toward Eumelus of Corinth, both for other reasons and especially because of the processional song which he composed for Delos.