When the Phigalians heard this oracular response, they honoured Demeter more than before, and got Onatas of Ægina, the son of Mico, for a great sum of money to make them a statue of the goddess. This Onatas made a brazen statue of Apollo for the people of Pergamus, most wonderful both for its size and artistic merit. And he having discovered a painting or copy of the ancient statue, but perhaps chiefly, so the story goes, from a dream he had, made a brazen statue of Demeter for the people of Phigalia, a generation after the Persian invasion of Greece. Here is the proof of the correctness of my date. When Xerxes crossed into Europe Gelon the son of Dinomenes was ruler of Syracuse and the rest of Sicily, and after his death the kingdom devolved upon his brother Hiero, and as Hiero died before he could give to Olympian Zeus the offerings he had vowed for the victories of his horses, Dinomenes his son gave them instead. Now Onatas made these, as the inscriptions at Olympia over the votive offering show. “Hiero having been formerly victor in your august contests, Olympian Zeus, once in the fourhorse chariot, and twice with a single horse, bestows on you these gifts: his son Dinomenes offers them in memory of his Syracusan father.” And the other inscription is as follows, “Onatas the son of Mico made me, a native of Ægina.” Onatas was therefore a contemporary of the Athenian Hegias and the Argive Ageladas. I went to Phigalia chiefly to see this Demeter, and I sacrificed to the goddess in the way the people of the country do, no victim but the fruit of the vine and other trees, and honeycombs, and wool in an unworked state with all its grease still on it, and these they lay on the altar built in front of the cave, and pour oil over all. This sacrifice is held every year at Phigalia both publicly and privately. A priestess conducts the ritual, and with her the youngest of the three citizens who are called Sacrificing Priests. Round the cave is a grove of oak trees, and warm water bubbles up from a spring. The statue made by Onatas was not there in my time, nor did most people at Phigalia know that it had ever existed, but the oldest of those I met with informed me that 3 generations before his time some stones from the roof fell on to it, and that it was crushed by them and altogether smashed up, and we can see plainly even now traces in the roof where the stones fell in. CHAPTER XLIII.