Description of Greece

​Astylus of Croton is the work of Pythagoras, and he won three consecutive victories at Olympia in the stadium and the double course. But because in the last two victories he proclaimed himself a Syracusan to curry favor with Hieron, the son of Deinomenes, for this reason the Crotoniates condemned his house to be a prison and pulled down his statue which was dedicated at the sanctuary of Hera Lacinia.

​There is also dedicated at Olympia a stele telling of the victories of Chionis the Lacedaemonian. Those who believe that Chionis himself dedicated the stele, and that it was not the commonwealth of the Lacedaemonians, are indeed partakers of simplicity. For let it be assumed, indeed, as it is on the stele, that the race in armor did not yet exist; how then could Chionis know if the Eleans would at some future time add this to the laws? But those who say that the standing statue beside the stele is an image of Chionis, being the work of Myron the Athenian, have reached an even greater degree of simplicity than these.

​A Lycian man, Hermogenes of Xanthus, also achieved success in glory comparable to Chionis; he carried off the wild olive crown eight times in three Olympiads and was called “Horse” by the Greeks. You would also hold Polites in great admiration. This Polites was from Ceramus in Caria, and he displayed every kind of excellence of feet at Olympia. For from the longest and most enduring race, in a very short time indeed, he adapted himself to the shortest and swiftest, and having won the long race and immediately afterwards the stadium on the same day, he added the double course as a third victory for them.

​As for Polites [...] they are grouped by fours, according as each is drawn by lot, and they do not let them all start the race at once; but those who win in each group run again for the prizes; and thus the one who is crowned will carry off two victories for the stadium. However, the most famous achievements in running belong to Leonidas of Rhodes. For during four Olympiads he maintained the peak of his speed, and he won twelve victories in the races in total.

​Not far from the stele of Chionis at Olympia stands Scaeus, the son of Duris, a Samian, who won in the boys’ boxing ; the statue is the work of Hippias, the son of [...], and the inscription upon it indicates that Scaeus conquered when the Samian democracy was in exile from the island, and that the occasion was when [they brought] the democracy back to their own land.

​Beside the tyrant is dedicated Diallus, the son of Pollis, of Smyrnaeon descent, and this Diallus says that he was the first of the Ionians to win the crown of the boys’ pancratium at Olympia. As for Thersilochus of Corcyra and Aristion, the son of Theophilus, of Epidaurus, the latter winning in the men’s boxing, and Thersilochus in the boys’, Polycleitus of Argos made their statues.

​Bycelus, who was the first Sicyonian to win in the boys’ boxing, is the work of Canachus of Sicyon, who was a pupil of Polycleitus of Argos. Beside Bycelus stands a man in armor nicknamed “the Libyan,” Mnaseas of Cyrene; Pythagoras of Rhegium made his statue. As for Agemachus of Cyzicus, the inscription upon him indicates that he was [a boxer] from the Asian continent, and [that the statue] was made in Argos.

​Though Naxos, once founded in Sicily by the Chalcidians from the Euripus, has not even ruins left to our time, let Tisandrus, the son of Cleocritus, have the chief credit that the name of Naxos still exists for posterity. For Tisandrus defeated boxers four times in the men’s class at Olympia, and he had as many victories at Pytho; and at that time neither the Corinthians nor the Argives had public records of all those who had conquered at the Nemean and Isthmian games.

​The mare of Phidolas the Corinthian had the name, as the Corinthians remember, of Aura, but it happened that she threw her rider at the very beginning of the race. Nevertheless, running in good order, she turned around the turning-post, and when she heard the trumpet, she quickened her pace further, and reaching the Hellanodicae first, she knew she had won and stopped running. The Eleans proclaimed Phidolas victor and permitted him to dedicate this mare.

​The sons of Phidolas also won a victory with a race-horse, and the horse is represented on a stele, and there is an inscription upon it: “The swift-running Lycus once at the Isthmus, and with two victories here, crowned the house of the sons of Phidolas.” However, the inscription does not agree with the Elean records concerning the Olympic victors; for in the Elean records the victory of the sons of Phidolas is in the sixty-eighth Olympiad, and not beyond this.

​Let anyone know these things to be so. As for the Elean men, Agathinus, the son of Thrasybulus, and Telemachus, the statue of Telemachus was for a victory with horses, while the Achaeans of Pellene dedicated Agathinus. The Athenian democracy also dedicated Aristophon, the son of Lysinus, who conquered in the men’s pancratium at the Olympic games.