Description of Greece

​Next to the statue of Lysander is an Ephesian boxer, who defeated the boys who came against him—his name was Athenaeus—and Sostratos of Sicyon, a man pancratiast, who had the surname Acrochersites. For he, grasping the extremities of his opponent’s hands, would bend and break them, and would not let go until he perceived that the opponent had given up.

​He achieved twelve victories in total at Nemea and the Isthmus combined, and at Olympia and Pytho, two at the latter and three at Olympia. The hundred and fourth Olympiad—for this was the first one Sostratos won—the Eleans do not record, because they themselves did not host the games, but the Pisans and Arcadians hosted them instead of them.

​Beside Sostratos is made Leontiskos, a man wrestler, being by race from Sicily and from Messene on the strait. He was crowned by the Amphictyons and twice by the Eleans, and his wrestling is said to have been of the same kind as the pancratium of Sostratos of Sicyon. For indeed, Leontiskos did not know how to throw his wrestling opponents, but won by bending their fingers.

​Pythagoras of Rhegium, who was as good as any other in the art of sculpture, made his statue. They say that he was taught by Clearchus, who was also of Rhegium, and a pupil of Eucheirus. They say that Eucheirus was a Corinthian, and that he studied under Syadras and Chartas, who were Spartans.

​Let the boy binding his head with a fillet also be introduced into my account, for the sake of Pheidias and the skill of Pheidias in his statues, since otherwise we do not know whose image Pheidias made. Satyros of Elis, whose father was Lysianax, and of the family of the Iamidae, won five times at Nemea as a boxer, twice at Pytho, and twice at Olympia; his statue is the work of Silanion of Athens. Another sculptor of the Attic school, Polyclis, a pupil of Stadieus of Athens, made a boy pancratiast of Ephesus, Amyntas, the son of Hellanicus.

​For Chilon, the Achaean of Patrae, there were two Olympic victories in the men’s wrestling, one at Delphi, four at the Isthmus, and three at Nemea. He was buried by the common league of the Achaeans, and it befell him to meet the end of his life in war. The inscription in Olympia also bears witness to me: “I, as a sole wrestler, won the Olympics twice, and the Pythian games among the men, thrice at Nemea, and four times at the sea-girt Isthmus—Chilon, the son of Chilon of Patrae, whom the host of the Achaeans buried, when he perished in war, on account of his virtue.” The inscription, indeed, made clear this much.

​If I must estimate the war in which Chilon fell, making a conjecture based on the age of Lysippus who made the statue, it appears to me to be either Chaeronea, where all the Achaeans served together, or that, fighting in defense of his own virtue and daring, he alone of the Achaeans fought against Antipater and the Macedonians around Lamia in Thessaly.

​Next to Chilon are dedicated two statues: to one of them the name is Molpion, and the inscription says that he was crowned by the Eleans; of the other, on which there is no inscription, they remember that it is Aristotle from Thracian Stageira, and either a pupil or some military man dedicated it, since he was powerful with Antipater and previously with Alexander.

​Sodamas from Assos in the Troad, which lies under Mount Ida, was the first of the Aeolians of this region to win the foot-race among the boys at Olympia. Beside Sodamas stands Archidamus, the son of Agesilaus, king of the Lacedaemonians. Before this King Archidamus, I found that the Lacedaemonians had dedicated a statue of no one in foreign lands; but they sent a statue of Archidamus to Olympia, in my opinion, on account of his other deeds and especially his death, because fate overtook him in a foreign land, and of the kings in Sparta he alone is known to have missed a tomb.

​These things have been shown more fully by us in the Lacedaemonian history. For Euanthes of Cyzicus there were victories in boxing, one Olympic victory among the men, and at Nemea and the Isthmus among the boys. Beside Euanthes is made a horse-breeding man and his chariot, and a young maiden mounted upon the chariot; the man’s name is Lampos, and his fatherland was the youngest of the cities in Macedonia, which is named after its founder, Philip, the son of Amyntas.

​For Cyniscus, the boy boxer from Mantinea, Polyclitus made the statue. Ergoteles, the son of Philanor, who won two victories in the long race at Olympia, and as many others at Pytho, the Isthmus, and Nemea, was not originally a Himeraean as the inscription upon him says, but is said to have been a Cretan from Knossos. Having been banished from Knossos by factionalists and having come to Himera, he obtained citizenship and found many other things for his honor. Consequently, as was natural, he was destined to be proclaimed a Himeraean in the contests.