Description of Greece

​Behind the portico built from the spoils of Corcyra is a temple of Aphrodite, and her precinct in the open air is not far distant from the temple. And the image in the temple they call Urania; it is of ivory and gold, the work of Pheidias, and she stands with one foot upon a tortoise. The other precinct is surrounded by a stone wall, and within the precinct a pedestal has been made, and upon the pedestal a bronze image of Aphrodite sits upon a bronze goat; this is the work of Scopas, and they call her Pandemos. As for the meaning of the tortoise and the goat, I leave it to those who wish to conjecture.

​The sacred enclosure and temple of Hades—for the Eleans indeed have an enclosure and temple of Hades—is opened once in each year, but even then no one is permitted to enter except the priest. Of the men we know, the Eleans alone worship Hades, and they do so for the following reason. They say that when Heracles was leading an army against Pylos in Elis, Athena also was present with him as a helper; therefore Hades also arrived to fight on the side of the Pylians out of hostility to Heracles, since he had honors in Pylos.

​They also bring forward Homer as a witness to their story, who made in the Iliad: “And giant Hades among them endured a swift arrow, when the same man, the son of aegis-bearing Zeus, having shot him in Pylos among the dead, gave him over to pains.” And if, during the expedition of Agamemnon and Menelaus against Troy, Poseidon was an ally to the Greeks according to the word of Homer, it would not be unlikely, according to the opinion of the same poet, that Hades also should defend the Pylians. At any rate, the Eleans made the sanctuary for the god because he was well-disposed to them and hostile to Heracles; and they hold the custom of opening it once every year because, I suppose, for men also the descent to Hades happens but once.

​For the Eleans there is also a sanctuary of Tyche; in a portico of the sanctuary is dedicated an image great in size, a wooden image gilded except for the face and the extremities of the hands and feet, and these are of white stone. There Sosipolis also has honors on the left of Tyche, in a building not large; according to the vision of a dream, the god is represented in a painting, in age a boy, wrapped in a chlamys variegated with stars, and in one hand he holds the horn of Amaltheia.

​Where the city of the Eleans is most crowded with people, there is for them a bronze statue of a man, not larger than a tall man, not yet having a beard, crossing one of his feet over the other, and leaning with both hands upon a spear; they cast about him clothing of wool, of flax, and of fine linen.

​This statue was said to be of Poseidon, and to have had honors in ancient times at Samicum in Triphylia; but having been brought to Elis, it came to even greater honor, but they give it the name Satrapes and not Poseidon, having been taught the name of Satrapes after the settlement of the Patraeans among them; and Satrapes is an epithet of Corybas.