Description of Greece

​He was condemned, not because he himself paid or accepted money, but because he committed another such outrage against the games. He did not arrive at the prescribed time, and it remained for him to be excluded from the contest by the Eleans, who obeyed the law; for Heraclides, himself also an Alexandrian by birth, proved that his excuse—that he was held back by contrary winds among the Cyclades islands—was a deception, showing that he was late because he was collecting money from the games in Ionia.

​Thus the Eleans excluded Apollonius and any other of the boxers who had come after the deadline, and they awarded the crown to Heraclides without a contest. Thereupon Apollonius bound on his boxing-straps as if for a fight, rushed in, and attacked Heraclides, who already had the wild olive crown on his head and had fled to the Hellanodicae for refuge. For this man, indeed, his light-mindedness was bound to bring great damage, and there are also ​two other statues of the art of our own times; for in the two hundred and twenty-sixth Olympiad they discovered that adult boxers, who were fighting for victory itself, had made an agreement for a bribe. For these acts a fine was imposed, and of the statues of Zeus that were made, one stands on the left of the entrance to the stadium, and the other of them on the right. The names of these boxers were Didas, and Sarapammon who gave them the money; they were of the same nome, the newest of those in Egypt, called the Arsinoite.

​It is a wonder anyway that someone should hold the god at Olympia in no account and either accept or give bribes for the contest; but it is of even greater wonder if indeed any of the Eleans themselves has already dared to do so. It is said that Damonicus, an Elean, dared to do so in the hundred and ninety-second Olympiad; for Polyctor, the son of Damonicus, and Sosander, a Smyrnaean by birth and namesake of his father, were matched to wrestle for the crown, and Damonicus, because he excessively desired the victory to be his son’s, gave money to the father of Sosander.

​But when the deeds done became known, the Hellanodicae imposed a fine, and they did not impose it on the boys, but directed their anger towards the fathers; for it was they who had committed the injustice. From this fine, statues were made; and one of them is dedicated in the gymnasium of the Eleans, and the other in the Altis before the portico called Poikile, because there were paintings on the walls in ancient times. There are some who also name this portico that of Echo; and if a man shouts, his voice is returned seven times by the echo, and sometimes even more.

​They say that a pancratiast of Alexandria, whose name was Sarapion, in the two hundred and first Olympiad, feared his competitors to such a degree that on the day before the pancratium was to be called, he ran away and fled. They record that this man was fined for cowardice, being the only one of all men, and of the Egyptians themselves. These that have been enumerated are the ones I found to have been made for such causes;