Description of Greece

​The marketplace is in its shape very like a brick, and in it there is a temple of Aphrodite called “in the brick” and a stone statue. On the stelae there are represented in relief, on the one Antiphanes, Crisus, Tyronidas, and Pyrrias, who, having established laws for the Tegeans, have honors from them even to this day. On the other stele is represented Iasius holding a horse and carrying a branch of a palm in his right hand; they say that Iasius won with a horse at Olympia, when Heracles the Theban established the Olympic games.

​At Olympia indeed a crown of wild olive is given to the victor, and at Delphi of laurel, of the former I have already given the reason in my account of the Eleans, and of the latter I shall make it clear in what follows; at the Isthmus the pine and at Nemea celery were established in connection with the sufferings of Palaemon and Archemorus. But most games have a crown of palm, and everywhere a palm is placed in the right hand of the victor.

​It was established on the following grounds: they say that Theseus, on his return from Crete, held games for Apollo at Delos, and himself crowned the victors with the palm. This they say had its beginning from there; and Homer also made mention of the palm in Delos in the supplication of Odysseus to the daughter of Alcinous.

​There is also a statue of Ares in the marketplace of the Tegeans. This is carved in relief on a stele, and they call him Gynaecothoenas (Feaster of Women). For during the Laconian war and the first invasion of Charillus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, the women took up arms for themselves and lay in ambush under the hill which in our time they call Phylactris; and when the armies met and many deeds of daring, worthy of mention, were shown by the men on both sides, they say that the ​women appeared to them and were the ones who effected this rout of the Lacedaemonians, and that Marpessa, surnamed Choera, surpassed the other women in daring, and that Charillus himself was captured among the Spartans; and that having been released without ransom, and having given an oath to the Tegeans that the Lacedaemonians would never again march against Tegea, he transgressed the oath, while the women sacrificed to Ares for the victory by themselves without the men, and did not share the meat of the victim with the men. On account of these things the surname was given to Ares.

​There is also made an altar of Zeus Teleios and a square statue; for the Arcadians appear to me to take an extraordinary pleasure in this shape. And there are monuments here of Tegeates, the son of Lycaon, and of Maera, the wife of Tegeates; they say that Maera was the daughter of Atlas, of whom Homer also made mention in the speech of Odysseus to Alcinous about the journey to Hades and how many souls of the dead he saw there.

​Eileithyia—for the Tegeans have a temple and statue of her too in the marketplace—they surname Auge on her knees, saying that Aleus delivered his daughter to Nauplius with orders to take her away to the sea and drown her, and that as she was being led away she fell on her knees and so gave birth to the child at the place where the sanctuary of Eileithyia is. This story is different from another story, which says that Auge gave birth secretly from her father and that Telephus was exposed on Mount Parthenius and that a hind gave milk to the exposed child; but this story is none the less told by the Tegeans as well.

​Near the sanctuary of Eileithyia is an altar of Ge (Earth), and next to the altar is a stele of white marble; on it Polybius, the son of Lycortas, is represented, and on another stele Elatus, one of the sons of Arcas, is carved.