Description of Greece

​The statue in Tegea in our time was brought from the deme of the Manthyrenses, and it had the surname Hippia among the Manthyrenses, because according to their story, when the battle of the gods against the giants took place, she drove her chariot of horses against Enceladus. However, the name Alea has prevailed for this one too both among the other Greeks and among the Peloponnesians themselves. By the statue of Athena, on one side Asclepius and on the other Hygeia are standing, made of Pentelic marble, works of Scopas of Paros.

​The most remarkable of the votive offerings in the temple are, on the one hand, the hide of the Calydonian boar, which has been rotted away by time and was by now completely bare of hair. There are also the chains hanging, except for those which rust has destroyed, wearing which the prisoners of the Lacedaemonians used to dig the plain for the Tegeans. Also dedicated are a sacred couch of Athena, and a portrait of Auge represented in painting, and the weapon of Marpessa, a Tegean woman surnamed Choera.

​We shall make mention of this woman later as well. Serving as priest to Athena is a boy for how long a time I do not know, but before reaching puberty and not beyond, he holds the priesthood. They say that the altar was made for the goddess by Melampus, son of Amythaon. Represented on the altar, Rhea and the nymph Oenoe hold Zeus while still an infant child, and on either side there are nymphs, four in number: on one side Glauce, Neda, Theisoa, and Anthracia, and on the other Ide, Hagno, Alcinoe, and Phrixa. Statues of the Muses and of Mnemosyne have also been made.

​Not far from the temple is a stadium made of a mound of earth, and they hold games there, calling one Aleaea after Athena, and the other Halotia, because they captured most of the Lacedaemonians alive in the battle. To the north of the temple there is a spring, and they say that by this spring Auge was violated by Heracles, not agreeing with Hecataeus in what concerns her. About three stadia away from the spring is the temple of Hermes of Aepytus.

​The Tegeans also have another sanctuary of Athena Poliatis, and once in each year the priest enters into it; they call this sanctuary Eryma (the Defense), saying that Cepheus, son of Aleus, received a gift from Athena that Tegea should be untakeable for all time, and they say that the goddess, having cut off some of the hair of Medusa for the defense of the city, gave it to him.

​Concerning Artemis, who is the same as Hegemone, they tell the following story. Aristomelidas held the tyranny over the Orchomenians in Arcadia, and having fallen in love with a Tegean maiden and having got her into his power in some way or other, he entrusted her custody to Chronius. She, before being brought to the tyrant, killed herself out of fear and shame; and an apparition of Artemis aroused Chronius against Aristomelidas. Having slain him and fled to Tegea, he built a sanctuary for Artemis.