Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
This Byzes was a contemporary of Alyattes the Lydian and Astyages
(the son of Cyaxaras) the king of Persia. And there is a golden vase at
each end of the roof, and a golden Victory in the middle of the gable.
And underneath the Victory is a golden shield hung up as a votive
offering, with the Gorgon Medusa worked on it. The inscription on the
shield states who hung it up, and the reason why they did so. For this
is what it says.
“This temple’s golden shield is a votive offering from the
Lacedæmonians at Tanagra and their allies, a gift from the Argives the
Athenians and the Ionians, a tithe offering for success in war.”
The battle I mentioned in my account of Attica, when I described the
tombs at Athens. And in the same temple at Olympia, above the zone
that runs round the pillars on the outside, are 21 golden shields, the
offering of Mummius the Roman General, after he had beaten the Achæans
and taken Corinth, and expelled the Dorians from Corinth. And on the
gables in bas relief is the chariot race between Pelops and Œnomaus,
and both chariots in motion. And in the middle of the gable is a statue
of Zeus, and on the right hand of Zeus is Œnomaus with a helmet on his
head, and beside him his wife Sterope, one of the daughters of Atlas.
And Myrtilus, who was the charioteer of Œnomaus, is seated behind the
four horses. And next to him are two men whose names are not recorded,
but they are doubtless Œnomaus’ grooms, whose duty was to take care of
the horses. And at the end of the gable is a delineation of the river
Cladeus, next to the Alpheus held most in honour of all the rivers of
Elis. And on the left of the statue of Zeus are Pelops and Hippodamia
and the charioteer of Pelops and the horses, and two men who were
Pelops’ grooms. And where the gable tapers fine there is the Alpheus
delineated. And Pelop’s charioteer was according to the tradition of
the Trœzenians Sphærus, but the custodian at Olympia said that his name
was Cilla. The carvings on the gables in front are by Pæonius of Mende
in Thracia, those behind by Alcamenes, a contemporary of Phidias and
second only to him as statuary. And on the gables is a representation
of the fight between the Lapithæ and the Centaurs at the marriage
of Pirithous. Pirithous is in the centre, and on one side of him is
Eurytion trying to carry off Pirithous’ wife and Cæneus coming to the
rescue, and on the other side Theseus laying about among the Centaurs
with his battle-axe: and one Centaur is carrying off a maiden, another
a blooming boy. Alcamenes has engraved this story, I imagine, because
he learnt from the lines of Homer that Pirithous was the son of Zeus,
and knew that Theseus was fourth in descent from Pelops. There are
also in bas relief at Olympia most of the Labours of Hercules. Above
the doors of the temple is the hunting of the Erymanthian boar, and
Hercules taking the mares of Diomede the Thracian, and robbing the oxen
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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