Description of Greece

​For the Thebans, nearest to the Neistan gate is the tomb of Menoeceus, the son of Creon; he killed himself voluntarily according to the oracle from Delphi, when Polynices and the army with him arrived from Argos. On this tomb of Menoeceus a pomegranate tree has grown; when the fruit is ripe, if you break open the outside, you can find the inside to be like blood. This pomegranate is indeed a flourishing tree; and the Thebans say that the vine grew first among them before any other men, but they no longer had any memorial to show for it.

​Not far from the tomb of Menoeceus, they say that the sons of Oedipus fought in single combat and died at each other’s hands; a pillar stands as a monument of their battle, and on it is a stone shield. A certain place is pointed out where the Thebans say that Hera, through some trick of Zeus, offered milk to Heracles while he was still an infant; this whole place is called the Dragging-place of Antigone, because when she was eager to lift the corpse of Polynices, no ease appeared to her, and so she secondarily planned to drag him, until she dragged and cast him upon the burning pyre of Eteocles.

​For those who have crossed the river called Dirce after the wife of Lycus—by whom story has it that Antiope was ill-treated, and because of this, Dirce met her death at the hands of Antiope’s sons—for those, then, who have crossed the Dirce, there are the ruins of the house of Pindar and a sanctuary of the Mother of Dindymus, a dedication of Pindar, the statue being the work of Aristomedes and Socrates, both Thebans. They are accustomed to open the sanctuary on one day in each year and no more; it was my fortune to arrive on this day, and I saw the statue of Pentelic marble, both it and the throne.

​Along the road from the Neistan gate, there is on the one hand a sanctuary of Themis with a statue of white marble, next to it that of the Fates, and next that of Zeus of the Market; this Zeus is made of stone, but the Fates have no statues. A little further off stands Heracles in the open air with the surname Nose-slitter, because, as the Thebans say, he cut off the noses of the heralds as an insult, who came from the Orchomenians to demand the tribute.

​Going forward twenty-five stades from there, there is a grove of Cabirian Demeter and Cora; those who have been initiated are allowed to enter. About seven stades from this grove is the sanctuary of the Cabiri. As to who the Cabiri are, and what kind of rites are performed for them and for the Mother, let me have pardon from curious minds for keeping silence about them.

​But nothing prevented me from declaring to all what kind of origin the Thebans say the rites had. For they say that once there was a city in this place, and men called Cabiri; and Demeter, having come to Prometheus, one of the Cabiri, and to Aetnaeus the son of Prometheus, deposited something in trust with them. What the trust was, and what was done concerning it, it did not seem holy for me to write; at any rate, the initiation is a gift of Demeter to the Cabiri.

​At the time of the expedition of the Epigoni and the capture of Thebes, the Cabiri were expelled by the Argives, and the initiation was also left off for some time. But later, Pelarge, the daughter of Potnieus, and Isthmiades, who lived with Pelarge, are said to have established the rites there again from the beginning, and to have transferred them to the place called Alexiarus;

​and because Pelarge initiated outside the ancient boundaries, Telondes and those who were left of the race of the Cabiritae returned again to the Cabirian land. To Pelarge, indeed, according to an oracle from Dodona, other honors and also the sacrifice of a pregnant victim were to be established. The wrath of the Cabiri is implacable to men, as has indeed been shown in many ways.

​For private persons in Naupactus dared to perform the rites done in Thebes in the same manner, and justice overtook them not long after. And of those of the army of Xerxes who were left around Boeotia with Mardonius, those of them who entered into the sanctuary of the Cabiri—perhaps indeed in hope of great wealth, but more, in my opinion, through disregard for the divine—to these it happened immediately to go mad, and they perished by throwing themselves into the sea and from the cliffs.

​And when Alexander, after he conquered in the battle, was giving Thebes itself and the whole Thebaid to the flames, men from Macedonia who came into the sanctuary of the Cabiri, as being in enemy land, were destroyed by thunderbolts and lightning from heaven.