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[1] Crossing the Anigros and going to Olympia by the straight road, not far away on the right of the road, you reach a high district with a city called Samia on it. This they say Polysperkhon the Aetolian used as a fortified post against the Arcadians.
[2] As to the ruins of Arene, no Messenian and no Eleian could point them out to me with certainty. Those who care to do so may make all sorts of different guesses about it, but the most plausible account seemed to me that of those who held that in the heroic age and even earlier, Samikon was called Arene. These quoted too the words of the
Iliad:
There is a river Minyeios flowing into the sea near Arene.
[3] These ruins are very near to the Anigros; and although it might be questioned whether Samikon was called Arene, yet the Arcadians are agreed that of old the Anigros was called the Minyeios. One might well hold that the Neda near the sea was made the boundary between Elis and Messenia at the time of the return of the Herakleidai to the Peloponnesus.
[4] After the Anigros, if you travel for a considerable distance through a district that is generally sandy and grows wild pines, you will see behind you on the left the ruins of Skillos. It was one of the cities of Triphylia, but in the war between Pisa and Elis, the citizens of Skillos openly helped Pisa against her enemy, and for this reason, the Eleians utterly destroyed it.
[5] The Lacedaemonians afterwards separated Skillos from Elis and gave it to Xenophon, the son of Grylos, when he had been exiled from Athens. The reason for his banishment was that he had taken part in an expedition which Cyrus, the greatest enemy of the Athenian people, had organized against their friend, the king [
basileus] of the Persians [
Persai].
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Cyrus, in fact, with his seat at Sardis, had been providing Lysander, the son of Aristokritos, and the Lacedaemonians with money for their fleet. Xenophon, accordingly, was banished, and having made Skillos his home, he built in honor of Ephesian Artemis a temple with a sanctuary and a sacred enclosure.
[6] Skillos is also a hunting-ground for wild boars and deer, and the land is crossed by a river called the Selinous. The guides of Elis said that the Eleians recovered Skillos again, and that Xenophon was tried by the Olympic Council for accepting the land from the Lacedaemonians and, obtaining pardon from the Eleians, dwelled securely in Skillos. Moreover, at a little distance from the sanctuary was shown a tomb, and upon the tomb is a statue of marble from the Pentelic quarry. The neighbors say that it is the tomb of Xenophon.
[7] As you go from Skillos along the road to Olympia, before you cross the Alpheios, there is a mountain with high, precipitous cliffs. It is called Mount Typaion. It is a law of Elis to cast down it any women who are caught present at the Olympic Games or even on the other side of the Alpheios on the days prohibited to women. However, they say that no woman has been caught, except Kallipateira only; some, however, give the lady the name of Pherenikē and not Kallipateira.
[8] She, being a widow, disguised herself exactly like a gymnastic trainer, and brought her son to compete at Olympia. Peisirodos, so her son was called, was victorious, and Kallipateira, as she was jumping over the enclosure in which they keep the trainers shut up, bared her person. So her sex was discovered, but they let her go unpunished out of respect for her father, her brothers, and her son, all of whom had been victorious at Olympia. But a law was passed that in the future, trainers should strip before entering the arena.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .