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[1] Those who think that the projections from the mouth of an elephant are not horns but teeth of the animal should consider both the elk, a beast of the Celtic land, and also the Ethiopian bull. Male elks have horns on their brows, but the female does not grow them at all. Ethiopian bulls grow their horns on their noses. Who therefore would be greatly surprised at horns growing out of an animal’s mouth?
[2] They may also correct their error from the following considerations. Horns drop off animals each year and grow again; the deer and the antelope undergo this experience, and so likewise does the elephant. But a tooth will never be found to grow again, at least after the animal is full-grown. So if the projections through the mouth were teeth and not horns, how could they grow up again? Again, a tooth refuses to yield to fire; but fire turns the horns of oxen and elephants from round to flat and also into other shapes. However, the hippopotamus and the boar have tusks growing out of the lower jaw, but we do not see horns growing out of jaws.
[3] So, be assured that an elephant’s horns descend through the temples from above, and so bend outwards. My statement is not hearsay; I once saw an elephant’s skull in the sanctuary of Artemis in Campania. The sanctuary is about thirty stadium-lengths from Capua, which is the capital of Campania. So the elephant differs from all other animals in the way its horns grow, just as its size and shape are peculiar to itself. And the Greeks in my opinion showed an unsurpassed zeal and generosity in honoring the gods, in that they imported ivory from India and Ethiopia to make images.
[4] In Olympia, there is a woolen curtain, adorned with Assyrian weaving and Phoenician purple, which was dedicated by Antiokhos, who also gave as offerings the golden
aegis with the Gorgon on it above the theater in Athens. This curtain is not drawn upwards to the roof as is that in the temple of Artemis at Ephesos, but it is let down to the ground by cords.
[5] The offerings inside, or in the front part of the temple include: a throne of Arimnestos, king of Etruria, who was the first barbarian to present an offering to the Olympic Zeus, and bronze horses of Kyniska, tokens of an Olympic victory. These are not as large as real horses and stand in the front part of the temple on the right as you enter. There is also a tripod, plated with bronze, upon which, before the table was made, were displayed the garlands for the victors.
[6] There are statues of ‘Kings’ [
basileis]: Hadrian, of Parian marble dedicated by the cities of the Achaean confederacy, and Trajan, dedicated by all the Greeks. This King [
basileus] subdued the Getai beyond Thrace, and made war on Osroes, the descendant of Arsaces and on the Parthians. Of his architectural achievements, the most remarkable are baths called after him, a large circular theater, a building for horse races which is actually two stadium-lengths long, and the Forum at Rome, worth seeing not only for its general beauty but especially for its roof made of bronze.
[7] Of the statues set up in the round buildings, the amber one represents Augustus the Roman emperor, the ivory one they told me was a portrait of Nikomedes, king of Bithynia. After him, the greatest city in Bithynia was renamed Nikomedeia;
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before him, it was called Astakos, and its first founder was Zypoetes, a Thracian by birth to judge from his name. This amber of which the statue of Augustus is made, when found native in the sand of the Eridanos, is very rare and precious to men for many reasons; the other “amber” is an alloy of gold and silver.
[8] In the temple at Olympia are four offerings of Nero—three garlands representing wild olive leaves, and one representing oak leaves. Here too are laid twenty-five bronze shields, which are for the armed men to carry in the race. Tablets too are set up, including one on which is written the oath sworn by the Eleians to the Athenians, the Argives, and the Mantineians that they would be their allies for a hundred years.
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Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .