Description of Greece

​Let this much be said on these matters. After the statue of Euthymus stand Pytharchos, a Mantinean stadium-runner, and Charmides, an Elean boxer, who won victories as boys. When you have looked at these too, you will come to the statues of the Rhodian athletes, Diagoras and his family. They were dedicated next to one another in the following order: Akousilaos, having won the crown in boxing among men, and Dorieus, the youngest, having won in the pankration in three successive Olympiads. And even before Dorieus, Damagetos had defeated those who entered the pankration.

​These are brothers and sons of Diagoras, and near them is placed Diagoras himself, who won a victory in boxing among men. The statue of Diagoras was made by the Megarian Kallikles, son of Theokosmos, who made the cult-statue of Zeus in Megara. The children of Diagoras’ daughters also practiced boxing and gained Olympic victories: namely, among men, Eucles, who was the son of Kallianax and of Diagoras’ daughter Kallipateira; and among boys, Peisirodos, whom his mother, having assumed the guise of a male trainer, herself brought to the contest at the Olympic games.

​This Peisirodos also stands in the Altis near his mother’s father. They say that Diagoras came to Olympia together with his sons, Akousilaos and Damagetos; and when the young men won, they carried their father through the assembly, while he was pelted with flowers by the Greeks and called happy on account of his children. Diagoras was of Messenian descent originally on the female side, being sprung from the daughter of Aristomenes.

​For Dorieus, the son of Diagoras, besides at Olympia, there were eight victories at the Isthmian games, and at the Nemean games one short of eight; and it is also said that he won at the Pythian games without a contest. Both he and Peisirodos were proclaimed as Thurians, because they were driven out of Rhodes by political opponents and went to Italy to the Thurians. Sometime later Dorieus returned to Rhodes; and he appears most clearly of all men to have favored the Lacedaemonian cause, so that he even fought in a sea-battle against the Athenians with his own ships, until, captured by Attic triremes, he was brought alive to the Athenians.

​Before Dorieus was brought to them, the Athenians had shown anger and threats against him; but when they assembled in the assembly and saw a man so great and who had reached such fame in the guise of a captive, their mind towards him changed, and they let him go free, doing no unpleasant deed to him, though it was in their power to do many things to him and with justice.

What relates to the death of Dorieus is told by Androtion in his Attic history, namely that at that time the King’s navy was at Kaunos, and Conon was general over it; and that the people of the Rhodians, persuaded by Conon, changed their alliance from the Lacedaemonians to that of the King and the Athenians; and that Dorieus was at that time away from Rhodes, in the districts in the interior of the Peloponnese; and that he was arrested by Lacedaemonian men and brought to Sparta, and having been convicted of wrongdoing by the Lacedaemonians, the penalty of death was imposed upon him.

​If Androtion told the true story, he seems to me to wish to bring the Lacedaemonians to an equal footing with the Athenians, because there is also against the Athenians an accusation of rashness in respect to Thrasyllos and those who were generals with Thrasyllos at Arginusae. Diagoras indeed and his family reached such a height of fame.

​There were also Olympic victories for Alkainetos himself, the son of Theantos, of Lepreum, and for his children. Alkainetos himself, as a boxer, won among men, and even earlier among boys; and it happened that Hellanikos, the son of Alkainetos, and Theantos were proclaimed for boxing among boys, the former in the eighty-ninth Olympiad, and the latter, Theantos, in the one following it; and statues of all of them are situated in Olympia.

​Near the sons of Alkainetos stand Gnathon, of Dipaea in the territory of Maenalus, and Lykinos, an Elean; it was also their lot to win in boxing among boys at Olympia. The epigram upon Gnathon says that he was extremely young when he won; and his statue is the work of Kallikles of Megara.

​A man from Stymphalus named Dromeus, who indeed showed this very deed in the long race, had two victories at Olympia, and as many others at Pytho, and three at the Isthmian games, and five at Nemea. It is said that he was the first to think of eating meat; up to then, the food for athletes was cheese from baskets. Pythagoras made the statue of this man, while Polykleitos made the one next to it, representing Pythokles, an Elean pentathlete.