Description of Greece

​For the Aegians there is, near the marketplace, a temple to Apollo and Artemis in common, and in the marketplace a sanctuary of Artemis, represented as an archer, and the grave of Talthybius the herald. Another monument has been heaped up for Talthybius in Sparta as well, and both cities make offerings to him as a hero.

​By the sea in Aegium there is a sanctuary of Aphrodite, and after it one of Poseidon, one of Core daughter of Demeter, and a fourth to Zeus Homagyrios (the Assembler). Here there are statues of Zeus, Aphrodite, and Athena. The surname Homagyrios was given to Zeus because Agamemnon gathered in this place those most worthy of account in Greece, to take counsel in common in what way they ought to make war against the empire of Priam. Other things also redound to the praise of Agamemnon, and especially that with those who followed him from the beginning, and without any later army arriving, he sacked Troy and all the surrounding cities.

​Next to Zeus Homagyrios is a sanctuary of Panachaean Demeter. The beach on which these mentioned sanctuaries of the Aegians stand provides abundant water, sweet to look at and to drink from a spring. They also have a sanctuary of Soteria (Salvation). No one except the priests is allowed to see her image, but they do other things of this sort: taking local cakes from the goddess, they cast them into the sea, and say they are sending them to Arethusa in Syracuse.

​There are also other statues in Aegium made of bronze, a Zeus as a boy in age, and Heracles, this one too not yet having a beard, the work of Ageladas of Argos. Priests are chosen annually for these, and each of the statues remains at the house of the priest. In older times, the boy who won the prize for beauty was chosen from among the boys to be priest to Zeus; but when his beard began to grow, the honor of beauty passed to another boy. These were their customs; and at Aegium even in my time the assembly of the Achaeans still gathers, just as the Amphictyons meet at Thermopylae and Delphi.

​Going further, there is the river Selinus, and forty stades distant from Aegium, on the sea, is a place called Helice. There the city of Helice once stood, and the Ionians had a most holy sanctuary of Heliconian Poseidon. It has remained a custom with them, even when they were expelled by the Achaeans to Athens and later from Athens reached the coastal regions of Asia, to worship Heliconian Poseidon; and for the Milesians, as you go to the spring Biblis, there is an altar of Heliconian Poseidon before the city, and likewise in Teos there is an enclosure and an altar to the Heliconian worthy of seeing.

​There are also verses composed by Homer concerning Helice and Heliconian Poseidon. But at a later time, when the Achaeans of this place dragged suppliants away from the sanctuary and killed them, the wrath of Poseidon was not delayed, but an earthquake immediately descending upon their land made both the structure of their buildings and, along with the structure, the very ground of the city invisible for future generations.

​Now, as for other matters regarding earthquakes, as many as have exceeded in size and extend over the longest stretch of the earth, the god is accustomed generally to give signs beforehand in the same way—for either continuous heavy rains or droughts happen before the earthquakes for a rather long time, and the air, contrary to the season of the year at the time, becomes hotter in winter, and in summer, with a mist, the disk of the sun presents a color contrary to what is customary, either rather red or inclining slightly to blacker;