Setting out once more from the Agora, and advancing up the street leading towards the east the first building on the left-hand was called Skias[301] contiguous to the senate-house: it was of a circular form with a roof like an umbrella, and erected about seven hundred and sixty years before Christ, by Theodoros of Samos, inventor of the art of casting statues in iron. Here the Spartan people held their assemblies even so late as the age of Pausanias, who relates that the lyre of Timotheus[302] the Milesian, confiscated as a punishment for his having added four strings to the seven already in use, was suspended in this building as a warning to all innovators. Near the Skias was another circular building erected by Epimenides, containing statues of Olympian Zeus and Aphrodite. On the other side apparently of the street, in front of the Skias, were the tombs of Idas and Lynceus, the temple of Kora Soteira, said to have been built by Orpheus, or Abaris the Hyperboræan, the tomb of Cynortas and the temple of Castor. Near these were the statues of Apollo Carneios, and Aphetæos, the latter of which marked the point whence the suitors of Penelope started in their race for a wife, running up the street Aphetæ, whence the name. Immediately beyond this was a square surrounded with porticoes, where all kinds of cheap wares were anciently sold. Further on stood altars of Zeus, Athena, and the Dioscuri, all surnamed Amboulioi; opposite which was the hill called Colona whereon was erected a temple of Dionysos, and close at hand a temenos sacred to the hero who conducted the god to Sparta. Not far from the Dionysion was a temple of Zeus Euanemos, giver of gentle breezes; and immediately to the right the heroon of Pleuron. On the summit of a hill at a little distance stood a temple of the Argive Hera, together with the fane erected in honour of Hera Hypercheiria, built by order of the oracle after the subsiding of an inundation of the Eurotas. In this edifice was a very ancient wooden statue of Aphrodite Hera. Close to the road which passed to the right of the hill was a statue of Etymocles many times victor in the Olympic games. In descending towards the Eurotas you beheld a wooden statue of Athena Alea, and a little above the banks a temple of Zeus Plousios. On the further side of the river were temples of Ares and Asclepios. Footnote 301: Σκιὰς, τὸ ᾠδεῖον ἐκαλεῖτο τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων κατὰ τὴν ἀρχαίαν φωνήν. κ. τ. λ.—Etym. Mag. 717. 36. seq. Footnote 302: Cf. Plut. Agis, § 10.