CHAPTER XI

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On the left of the gate called Electris are the ruins of the house where they say Amphitryon dwelt, when he fled from Tiryns owing to the death of Electryon. And among the ruins is to be seen the bridal-bed of Alcmena, which was made they say for Amphitryon by Trophonius and Agamedes, as the inscription states,

“When Amphitryon was going to marry Alcmena, he contrived this bridal-bed for himself, and Anchasian Trophonius and Agamedes made it.”

This is the inscription which the Thebans say is written here: and they also show the monument of the sons of Hercules by Megara, giving a very similar account about their death to that which Stesichorus of Himera and Panyasis have written in their poems. But the Thebans add that Hercules in his madness wished also to kill Amphitryon, but sleep came upon him in consequence of a blow from a stone, and they say Athene threw the stone, which they call Composer. There too are some statues of women on a figure, rather indistinct from age, the Thebans call them Sorceresses, and say that they were sent by Hera to prevent Alcmena from childbirth. Accordingly they tried to do so, but Historis the daughter of Tiresias played a trick on them, she cried out in their hearing, and they thought Alcmena had just given birth to a child, so they went away deceived, and then they say Alcmena bare a boy.

Here too is a temple of Hercules called Champion, his statue is of white stone by Xenocritus and Eubius, both Thebans: the old wooden statue the Thebans think is by Dædalus and I think so too. He made it, so the story goes, in return for an act of kindness. For when he fled from Crete the boats he made were not large enough both for himself and Icarus his son, and he also employed sails, an invention not known in his day, that he might get the advantage of the boats of Minos (which were only rowed) by availing himself of a favourable wind, and he got off safe, but Icarus steering his boat rather awkwardly it upset they say, and he was drowned, and his dead body carried by the waves to an island beyond Samos which then had no name. And Hercules found and recognised the corpse, and buried it, where now is a mound of no great size, by the promontory that juts out into the Ægean Sea. And the island and the sea near it got their names from Icarus. And on the gables Praxiteles has carved most of the 12 Labours of Hercules, all in short but the killing of the Stymphelian birds, and the cleansing of the country of Elis, and instead of these is a representation of the wrestling with Antæus. And when Thrasybulus the son of Lycus and the Athenians with him put down the Thirty Tyrants, (they had started from Thebes on their return from exile), they offered to this temple of Hercules colossal statues of Athene and Hercules in Pentelican marble, by Alcamenes.

Near the temple of Hercules are a gymnasium and racecourse both called after the god. And beyond the stone Composer is an altar of Apollo Spodius, made of the ashes of the victims. There is divination there by omens, which kind of divination I know the people of Smyrna use more than all the other Greeks, for they have outside their walls beyond the city a Temple of Omens.

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