Description of Greece

​Next to these are the dedications of the Eleans: Philip the son of Amyntas, Alexander the son of Philip, and both Seleucus and Antigonus; for the former indeed, their images are on horseback, but for Antigonus, the image is a man on foot.

​Not far from the mentioned kings stands Theagenes, the son of Timosthenes, a Thasian; and the Thasians say that Theagenes was not the son of Timosthenes, but that while Timosthenes was priest of the Thasian Heracles, a phantom resembling Timosthenes associated with the mother of Theagenes. And they say that when the boy was in his ninth year, as he was going home from his teachers, he pulled up a bronze statue of some god or other which was dedicated in the marketplace—for he delighted in the statue—and having placed it upon one of his shoulders, he carried it to his own home.

​And when the citizens were angry with him for what he had done, a certain distinguished man among them, who was advanced in age, did not allow them to kill the boy, but ordered him to carry the statue back from his house to the marketplace; and when he carried it back, there was immediately great fame of the boy for his strength, and the deed was celebrated throughout all Greece.

​As for all the deeds of Theagenes that pertain to the Olympic contest, my narrative has already shown the most famous of them: how he defeated Euthymus the boxer, and how a fine was imposed on Theagenes by the Eleans. At that time indeed, the victory in the pancratium is said to have been won without a contest for the first time we know of by a man from Mantinea named Dromeus; but in the Olympiad next to this one, Theagenes, competing in the pancratium, was victorious.

​He had also three victories at Pytho, these indeed in boxing, and nine at the Nemean and ten at the Isthmian games, in a mixture of pancratium and boxing. And in Phthia of the Thessalians, he let go of his zeal for boxing or the pancratium, and was concerned how he might also become famous among the Greeks in the foot-race, and he conquered those who entered for the long-distance race; and he had, in my opinion, an ambition directed towards Achilles, to win a victory in the foot-race in the homeland of the fleetest of those called heroes. In all, he won one thousand four hundred crowns.

​When he departed from among men, a certain man of those who had been hostile to him in life used to come every night to the statue of Theagenes and scourge the bronze, as though outraging Theagenes himself; and the statue, falling upon him, stopped his insolence, but the sons of the dead man prosecuted the statue for murder. And the Thasians cast the statue into the sea, following the opinion of Draco, who, having written laws on murder for the Athenians, banished even inanimate things, if indeed one of them fell and killed a man.

​In course of time, when the land yielded no fruit for the Thasians, they sent sacred envoys to Delphi, and the god gave them an oracle to receive back the exiled. And those who were received back in accordance with this word provided no cure for the barrenness; therefore they came a second time to the Pythia, saying that although they had done what was oracle-given, the anger of the gods remained.

​Then the Pythia answered them: “But you have left your great Theagenes unremembered.” And when they were at a loss by what device they might recover the statue of Theagenes, they say that fishermen, having put out to the sea for a catch of fish, enclosed the statue in their net and brought it back to land. And the Thasians, having dedicated it where it lay also from the beginning, are accustomed to sacrifice to him as to a god.

​I know that in many other places, both among the Greeks and among barbarians, statues of Theagenes are set up, and that he heals diseases and has honors from the inhabitants. And the statue of Theagenes is in the Altis, the work of Glaucias of Aegina.