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
As one enters into the city there is a monument of Antiope the Amazon.
Pindar says that this Antiope was carried off by Pirithous and Theseus,
but the account by Hegias of Trœzen is as follows: that Hercules
besieging Themiscyra near the river Thermodon could not take it; but
that Antiope being enamoured of Theseus, (who was besieging the place
with Hercules), handed the place over to him. This is the account
Hegias has given. But the Athenians say that, when the Amazons came,
Antiope was shot by Molpadia with an arrow, and that Molpadia was slain
by Theseus. There is a monument also to Molpadia among the Athenians.
And as one ascends from the Piræus there are remains of the walls
which Conon re-erected after the sea-fight off Cnidus; for those which
Themistocles had built after the defeat of the Persians had been pulled
down during the rule of The Thirty Tyrants, as they were called. And
along the way the most notable tombs are those of Menander the son of
Diopeithes, and a cenotaph of Euripides without the body. For Euripides
was buried in Macedonia, having gone to the court of King Archelaus;
and the manner of his death, for it has been told by many, let it be as
they say. Poets even in those days lived with kings and earlier still,
for when Polycrates was tyrant at Samos Anacreon lived at his court,
and Æschylus and Simonides journeyed to Syracuse to the court of Hiero;
and to Dionysius, who was afterwards tyrant in Sicily, went Philoxenus;
and to Antigonus, king of the Macedonians, went Antagoras of Rhodes and
Aratus of Soli. On the other hand Hesiod and Homer either did not get
the chance of living at kings’ courts, or of their own accord didn’t
value it, the former because he lived in the country and shrank from
travelling, and the latter, having gone on his travels to very distant
parts, depreciated pecuniary assistance from the powerful in comparison
with the glory he had amongst most men, for from him too we have the
description of Demodocus’ being at the court of Alcinous, and that
Agamemnon left a poet with his wife. There is also a tomb not far from
the gates, with the statue of a soldier standing near a horse; who the
soldier is I don’t know, but Praxiteles modelled both the horse and the
soldier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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