1. Pindar, Olympian Odes, 9.89-9.90 (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
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2. Pindar, Pythian Odes, 8.79 (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
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3. Herodotus, Histories, 1.32, 6.107-6.108, 6.116 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
| 1.32. Thus Solon granted second place in happiness to these men. Croesus was vexed and said, “My Athenian guest, do you so much despise our happiness that you do not even make us worth as much as common men?” Solon replied, “Croesus, you ask me about human affairs, and I know that the divine is entirely grudging and troublesome to us. ,In a long span of time it is possible to see many things that you do not want to, and to suffer them, too. I set the limit of a man's life at seventy years; ,these seventy years have twenty-five thousand, two hundred days, leaving out the intercalary month. But if you make every other year longer by one month, so that the seasons agree opportunely, then there are thirty-five intercalary months during the seventy years, and from these months there are one thousand fifty days. ,Out of all these days in the seventy years, all twenty-six thousand, two hundred and fifty of them, not one brings anything at all like another. So, Croesus, man is entirely chance. ,To me you seem to be very rich and to be king of many people, but I cannot answer your question before I learn that you ended your life well. The very rich man is not more fortunate than the man who has only his daily needs, unless he chances to end his life with all well. Many very rich men are unfortunate, many of moderate means are lucky. ,The man who is very rich but unfortunate surpasses the lucky man in only two ways, while the lucky surpasses the rich but unfortunate in many. The rich man is more capable of fulfilling his appetites and of bearing a great disaster that falls upon him, and it is in these ways that he surpasses the other. The lucky man is not so able to support disaster or appetite as is the rich man, but his luck keeps these things away from him, and he is free from deformity and disease, has no experience of evils, and has fine children and good looks. ,If besides all this he ends his life well, then he is the one whom you seek, the one worthy to be called fortunate. But refrain from calling him fortunate before he dies; call him lucky. ,It is impossible for one who is only human to obtain all these things at the same time, just as no land is self-sufficient in what it produces. Each country has one thing but lacks another; whichever has the most is the best. Just so no human being is self-sufficient; each person has one thing but lacks another. ,Whoever passes through life with the most and then dies agreeably is the one who, in my opinion, O King, deserves to bear this name. It is necessary to see how the end of every affair turns out, for the god promises fortune to many people and then utterly ruins them.” 6.107. So they waited for the full moon, while the foreigners were guided to Marathon by Hippias son of Pisistratus. The previous night Hippias had a dream in which he slept with his mother. ,He supposed from the dream that he would return from exile to Athens, recover his rule, and end his days an old man in his own country. Thus he reckoned from the dream. Then as guide he unloaded the slaves from Eretria onto the island of the Styrians called Aegilia, and brought to anchor the ships that had put ashore at Marathon, then marshalled the foreigners who had disembarked onto land. ,As he was tending to this, he happened to sneeze and cough more violently than usual. Since he was an elderly man, most of his teeth were loose, and he lost one of them by the force of his cough. It fell into the sand and he expended much effort in looking for it, but the tooth could not be found. ,He groaned aloud and said to those standing by him: “This land is not ours and we will not be able to subdue it. My tooth holds whatever share of it was mine.” 6.108. Hippias supposed that the dream had in this way come true. As the Athenians were marshalled in the precinct of Heracles, the Plataeans came to help them in full force. The Plataeans had put themselves under the protection of the Athenians, and the Athenians had undergone many labors on their behalf. This is how they did it: ,when the Plataeans were pressed by the Thebans, they first tried to put themselves under the protection of Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides and the Lacedaemonians, who happened to be there. But they did not accept them, saying, “We live too far away, and our help would be cold comfort to you. You could be enslaved many times over before any of us heard about it. ,We advise you to put yourselves under the protection of the Athenians, since they are your neighbors and not bad men at giving help.” The Lacedaemonians gave this advice not so much out of goodwill toward the Plataeans as wishing to cause trouble for the Athenians with the Boeotians. ,So the Lacedaemonians gave this advice to the Plataeans, who did not disobey it. When the Athenians were making sacrifices to the twelve gods, they sat at the altar as suppliants and put themselves under protection. When the Thebans heard this, they marched against the Plataeans, but the Athenians came to their aid. ,As they were about to join battle, the Corinthians, who happened to be there, prevented them and brought about a reconciliation. Since both sides desired them to arbitrate, they fixed the boundaries of the country on condition that the Thebans leave alone those Boeotians who were unwilling to be enrolled as Boeotian. After rendering this decision, the Corinthians departed. The Boeotians attacked the Athenians as they were leaving but were defeated in battle. ,The Athenians went beyond the boundaries the Corinthians had made for the Plataeans, fixing the Asopus river as the boundary for the Thebans in the direction of Plataea and Hysiae. So the Plataeans had put themselves under the protection of the Athenians in the aforesaid manner, and now came to help at Marathon. 6.116. They sailed around Sunium, but the Athenians marched back to defend the city as fast as their feet could carry them and got there ahead of the foreigners. Coming from the sacred precinct of Heracles in Marathon, they pitched camp in the sacred precinct of Heracles in Cynosarges. The foreigners lay at anchor off Phalerum, the Athenian naval port at that time. After riding anchor there, they sailed their ships back to Asia. |
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4. Thucydides, The History of The Peloponnesian War, 1.8.1, 1.13.6, 1.16.1, 1.23.1, 1.73.4, 1.89-1.118, 1.96.1, 1.97.2, 1.98.1, 1.118.1, 2.34-2.46, 2.34.2-2.34.4, 2.34.6, 2.63.2, 3.104, 4.50.1-4.50.2, 5.1, 5.32.1 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
| 1.8.1. The islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians and Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was proved by the following fact. During the purification of Delos by Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and it was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow. 1.13.6. Subsequently the Ionians attained to great naval strength in the reign of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, and of his son Cambyses, and while they were at war with the former commanded for a while the Ionian sea. Polycrates also, the tyrant of Samos, had a powerful navy in the reign of Cambyses with which he reduced many of the islands, and among them Rhenea, which he consecrated to the Delian Apollo. About this time also the Phocaeans, while they were founding Marseilles, defeated the Carthaginians in a sea-fight. 1.16.1. Various, too, were the obstacles which the national growth encountered in various localities. The power of the Ionians was advancing with rapid strides, when it came into collision with Persia, under King Cyrus, who, after having dethroned Croesus and overrun everything between the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had reduced the cities of the coast; the islands being only left to be subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy. 1.23.1. The Median war, the greatest achievement of past times, yet found a speedy decision in two actions by sea and two by land. The Peloponnesian war was prolonged to an immense length, and long as it was it was short without parallel for the misfortunes that it brought upon Hellas . 1.73.4. We assert that at Marathon we were at the front, and faced the barbarian single-handed. That when he came the second time, unable to cope with him by land we went on board our ships with all our people, and joined in the action at Salamis . This prevented his taking the Peloponnesian states in detail, and ravaging them with his fleet; when the multitude of his vessels would have made any combination for self-defence impossible. 1.96.1. The Athenians having thus succeeded to the supremacy by the voluntary act of the allies through their hatred of Pausanias, fixed which cities were to contribute money against the barbarian, which ships; their professed object being to retaliate for their sufferings by ravaging the king's country. 1.97.2. My excuse for relating these events, and for venturing on this digression, is that this passage of history has been omitted by all my predecessors, who have confined themselves either to Hellenic history before the Median war, or to the Median war itself. Hellanicus, it is true, did touch on these events in his Athenian history; but he is somewhat concise and not accurate in his dates. Besides, the history of these events contains an explanation of the growth of the Athenian empire. 1.98.1. First the Athenians besieged and captured Eion on the Strymon from the Medes, and made slaves of the inhabitants, being under the command of Cimon, son of Miltiades. 1.118.1. After this, though not many years later, we at length come to what has been already related, the affairs of Corcyra and Potidaea, and the events that served as a pretext for the present war. 2.34.2. Three days before the ceremony, the bones of the dead are laid out in a tent which has been erected; and their friends bring to their relatives such offerings as they please. 2.34.3. In the funeral procession cypress coffins are borne in cars, one for each tribe; the bones of the deceased being placed in the coffin of their tribe. Among these is carried one empty bier decked for the missing, that is, for those whose bodies could not be recovered. 2.34.4. Any citizen or stranger who pleases, joins in the procession: and the female relatives are there to wail at the burial. 2.34.6. After the bodies have been laid in the earth, a man chosen by the state, of approved wisdom and eminent reputation, pronounces over them an appropriate panegyric; after which all retire. 2.63.2. Besides, to recede is no longer possible, if indeed any of you in the alarm of the moment has become enamored of the honesty of such an unambitious part. For what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it perhaps was wrong, but to let it go is unsafe. 5.32.1. About the same time in this summer Athens succeeded in reducing Scione, put the adult males to death, and making slaves of the women and children, gave the land for the Plataeans to live in. She also brought back the Delians to Delos, moved by her misfortunes in the field and by the commands of the god at Delphi . |
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5. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, 4.62 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 4.62. 1. Deucalion, the eldest of the sons of Minos, while he was ruler of Crete, formed an alliance with the Athenians and united his own sister Phaedra in marriage to Theseus. After the marriage Theseus sent his son Hippolytus, who had been born to him by the Amazon, to Troezen to be reared among the brothers of Aethra, and by Phaedra he begat Acamas and Demophon.,2. A short time after this Hippolytus returned to Athens for the celebration of the mysteries, and Phaedra, becoming enamoured of him because of his beauty, at that time, after he had returned to Troezen, erected a temple of Aphroditê beside the acropolis at the place whence one can look across and see Troezen, but at a later time, when she was stopping together with Theseus at the home of Pittheus, she asked Hippolytus to lie with her. Upon his refusal to do so Phaedra, they say, was vexed, and on her return to Athens she told Theseus that Hippolytus had proposed lying with her.,3. And since Theseus had his doubts about the accusation, he sent for Hippolytus in order to put him to the test, whereupon Phaedra, fearing the result of the examination, hanged herself; as for Hippolytus, who was driving a chariot when he heard of the accusation, he was so distraught in spirit that the horses got out of control and ran away with him, and in the event the chariot was smashed to bits and the youth, becoming entangled in the leathern thongs, was dragged along till he died.,4. Hippolytus, then, since he had ended his life because of his chastity, received at the hands of the Troezenians honours equal to those offered to the gods, but Theseus, when after these happenings he was overpowered by a rival faction and banished from his native land, met his death on foreign soil. The Athenians, however, repenting of what they had done, brought back his bones and accorded him honours equal to those offered to the gods, and they set aside in Athens a sacred precinct which enjoyed the right of sanctuary and was called after him the Theseum. |
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6. Plutarch, Cimon, 8.5-8.6 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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7. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.15.3, 1.17.6, 1.29.3-1.29.9, 1.29.12-1.29.13, 1.29.15, 1.33.7-1.33.8, 3.3.7 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 1.15.3. At the end of the painting are those who fought at Marathon; the Boeotians of Plataea and the Attic contingent are coming to blows with the foreigners. In this place neither side has the better, but the center of the fighting shows the foreigners in flight and pushing one another into the morass, while at the end of the painting are the Phoenician ships, and the Greeks killing the foreigners who are scrambling into them. Here is also a portrait of the hero Marathon, after whom the plain is named, of Theseus represented as coming up from the under-world, of Athena and of Heracles. The Marathonians, according to their own account, were the first to regard Heracles as a god. of the fighters the most conspicuous figures in the painting are Callimachus, who had been elected commander-in-chief by the Athenians, Miltiades, one of the generals, and a hero called Echetlus, of whom I shall make mention later. 1.17.6. Now Menestheus took no account of the children of Theseus, who had secretly withdrawn to Elephenor in Euboea, but he was aware that Theseus, if ever he returned from Thesprotia, would be a doughty antagonist, and so curried favour with his subjects that Theseus on re covering afterwards his liberty was expelled. So Theseus set out to Deucalion in Crete . Being carried out of his course by winds to the island of Scyros he was treated with marked honor by the inhabitants, both for the fame of his family and for the reputation of his own achievements. Accordingly Lycomedes contrived his death. His close was built at Athens after the Persians landed at Marathon, when Cimon, son of Miltiades, ravaged Scyros, thus avenging Theseus' death, and carried his bones to Athens . 1.29.3. Such are their sanctuaries here, and of the graves the first is that of Thrasybulus son of Lycus, in all respects the greatest of all famous Athenians, whether they lived before him or after him. The greater number of his achievements I shall pass by, but the following facts will suffice to bear out my assertion. He put down what is known as the tyranny of the Thirty 403 B.C., setting out from Thebes with a force amounting at first to sixty men; he also persuaded the Athenians, who were torn by factions, to be reconciled, and to abide by their compact. His is the first grave, and after it come those of Pericles, Chabrias Died 357 B.C. and Phormio. A famous Athenian admiral who fought well in the early part of the Peloponnesian War. 1.29.4. There is also a monument for all the Athenians whose fate it has been to fall in battle, whether at sea or on land, except such of them as fought at Marathon. These, for their valor, have their graves on the field of battle, but the others lie along the road to the Academy, and on their graves stand slabs bearing the name and parish of each. First were buried those who in Thrace, after a victorious advance as far as Drabescus c. 465 B.C., were unexpectedly attacked by the Edonians and slaughtered. There is also a legend that they were struck by lightning. 1.29.5. Among the generals were Leagrus, to whom was entrusted chief command of the army, and Sophanes of Decelea, who killed when he came to the help of the Aeginetans Eurybates the Argive, who won the prize in the pentathlon A group of five contests: leaping, foot-racing, throwing the quoit, throwing the spear, wrestling. at the Nemean games. This was the third expedition which the Athenians dispatched out of Greece . For against Priam and the Trojans war was made with one accord by all the Greeks; but by them selves the Athenians sent armies, first with Iolaus to Sardinia, secondly to what is now Ionia, and thirdly on the present occasion to Thrace . 1.29.6. Before the monument is a slab on which are horsemen fighting. Their names are Melanopus and Macartatus, who met their death fighting against the Lacedaemonians and Boeotians on the borders of Eleon and Tanagra . There is also a grave of Thessalian horsemen who, by reason of an old alliance, came when the Peloponnesians with Archidamus invaded Attica with an army for the first time 431 B.C., and hard by that of Cretan bowmen. Again there are monuments to Athenians: to Cleisthenes, who invented the system of the tribes at present existing 508 B.C., and to horsemen who died when the Thessalians shared the fortune of war with the Athenians. 1.29.7. Here too lie the men of Cleone, who came with the Argives into Attica 457 B.C. ; the occasion whereof I shall set forth when in the course of my narrative I come to the Argives. There is also the grave of the Athenians who fought against the Aeginetans before the Persian invasion. It was surely a just decree even for a democracy when the Athenians actually allowed slaves a public funeral, and to have their names inscribed on a slab, which declares that in the war they proved good men and true to their masters. There are also monuments of other men, their fields of battle lying in various regions. Here lie the most renowned of those who went against Olynthus 349 B.C., and Melesander who sailed with a fleet along the Maeander into upper Caria 430 B.C. ; 1.29.8. also those who died in the war with Cassander, and the Argives who once fought as the allies of Athens . It is said that the alliance between the two peoples was brought about thus. Sparta was once shaken by an earthquake, and the Helots seceded to Ithome . 461 B.C. After the secession the Lacedaemonians sent for help to various places, including Athens, which dispatched picked troops under the command of Cimon, the son of Miltiades. These the Lacedaemonians dismissed, because they suspected them. 1.29.9. The Athenians regarded the insult as intolerable, and on their way back made an alliance with the Argives, the immemorial enemies of the Lacedaemonians. Afterwards, when a battle was imminent at Tanagra 457 B.C., the Athenians opposing the Boeotians and Lacedaemonians, the Argives reinforced the Athenians. For a time the Argives had the better, but night came on and took from them the assurance of their victory, and on the next day the Lacedaemonians had the better, as the Thessalians betrayed the Athenians. 1.29.12. The names of the generals are inscribed with the exception of Nicias, and among the private soldiers are included the Plataeans along with the Athenians. This is the reason why Nicias was passed over, and my account is identical with that of Philistus, who says that while Demosthenes made a truce for the others and excluded himself, attempting to commit suicide when taken prisoner, Nicias voluntarily submitted to the surrender. 413 B.C. For this reason Nicias had not his name inscribed on the slab, being condemned as a voluntary prisoner and an unworthy soldier. 1.29.13. On another slab are the names of those who fought in the region of Thrace and at Megara 445 B.C., and when Alcibiades persuaded the Arcadians in Mantinea and the Eleans to revolt from the Lacedaemonians 420 B.C., and of those who were victorious over the Syracusans before Demosthenes arrived in Sicily . Here were buried also those who fought in the sea-fights near the Hellespont 409 B.C., those who opposed the Macedonians at Charonea 338 B.C., those who marched with Cleon to Amphipolis 422 B.C., those who were killed at Delium in the territory of Tanagra 424 B.C., the men Leosthenes led into Thessaly, those who sailed with Cimon to Cyprus 449 B.C., and of those who with Olympiodorus See Paus. 1.26.3 . expelled the garrison not more than thirteen men. 1.29.15. Here also are buried Conon and Timotheus, father and son, the second pair thus related to accomplish illustrious deeds, Miltiades and Cimon being the first; Zeno too, the son of Mnaseas and Chrysippus Stoic philosophers. of Soli, Nicias the son of Nicomedes, the best painter from life of all his contemporaries, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who killed Hipparchus, the son of Peisistratus; there are also two orators, Ephialtes, who was chiefly responsible for the abolition of the privileges of the Areopagus 463-1 B.C., and Lycurgus, A contemporary of Demosthenes. the son of Lycophron; 1.33.7. Neither this nor any other ancient statue of Nemesis has wings, for not even the holiest wooden images of the Smyrnaeans have them, but later artists, convinced that the goddess manifests herself most as a consequence of love, give wings to Nemesis as they do to Love. I will now go onto describe what is figured on the pedestal of the statue, having made this preface for the sake of clearness. The Greeks say that Nemesis was the mother of Helen, while Leda suckled and nursed her. The father of Helen the Greeks like everybody else hold to be not Tyndareus but Zeus. 1.33.8. Having heard this legend Pheidias has represented Helen as being led to Nemesis by Leda, and he has represented Tyndareus and his children with a man Hippeus by name standing by with a horse. There are Agamemnon and Menelaus and Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles and first husband of Hermione, the daughter of Helen. Orestes was passed over because of his crime against his mother, yet Hermione stayed by his side in everything and bore him a child. Next upon the pedestal is one called Epochus and another youth; the only thing I heard about them was that they were brothers of Oenoe, from whom the parish has its name. 3.3.7. Similar to the oracle about the bones of Orestes was the one afterwards given to the Athenians, that they were to bring back Theseus from Scyros to Athens otherwise they could not take Scyros. Now the bones of Theseus were discovered by Cimon the son of Miltiades, who displayed similar sharpness of wit, and shortly afterwards took Scyros. |
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