5.7.1 By the time you reach Olympia, the Alpheios is a large and very pleasant river to see, being fed by several tributaries, including seven very important ones. The Helisson joins the Alpheios passing through Megalopolis; the Brentheates comes out of the territory of that city; past Gortyna, where is a sanctuary of Asklepios, flows the Gortynios; from Melainai, between the territories of Megalopolis and Heraia, comes the Bouphagos; from the land of the Clitorians [people of Kleitor], the Ladon; from Mount Erymanthos, a stream with the same name as the mountain. These come down into the Alpheios from Arcadia; the Kladeos comes from Elis to join it. The source of the Alpheios itself is in Arcadia, and not in Elis.

5.7.2 There is another thing told about the Alpheios. They say that there was a hunter called Alpheios, who fell in love with Arethousa, who was herself a huntress. Arethousa, unwilling to marry, crossed, they say, to the island opposite Syracuse called Ortygia,and there turned from a woman to a spring. Alpheios too was changed by his love into the river.

5.7.3 This account of Alpheios to Ortygia. But that the Alpheios passes through the sea and mingles his waters with the spring at this place, I cannot disbelieve as I know that the god at Delphi confirms the story. For when he dispatched Arkhias the Corinthian to found Syracuse, he uttered this oracle:

5.7.4 Those Greeks or Egyptians who have gone up into Ethiopia beyond Syene as far as the Ethiopian city of Meroe all say that the Nile enters a lake, and passes through it as though it were dry land, and that after this, it flows through lower Ethiopia into Egypt before coming down into the sea at Pharos. And in the land of the Hebrews, as I can myself bear witness, the river Jordan passes through a lake called Tiberias, and then, entering another lake called the Dead Sea, it disappears in it.

5.7.5 The Dead Sea has the opposite qualities to those of any other water. Living creatures float in it naturally without swimming; dying creatures sink to the bottom. Hence, the lake is barren of fish; their danger stares them in the face, and they flee back to the water which is their native element. The peculiarity of the Alpheios is shared by a river of Ionia. The source of it is on Mount Mykale, and having gone through the intervening sea, the river rises again opposite Brankhidai at the harbor called Panormos.

5.7.6 These things then are as I have described them. As for the Olympic Games, the most learned antiquaries of Elis say that Kronos was the first king in the sky [ouranos] and that in his honor, a temple was built in Olympia by the men of that age, who were named the Golden Generation. When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Dactyls of Ida, who are the same as those called Kouretes. They came from Cretan Ida—Hēraklēs, Paionaios, Epimedes, Iasios and Idas.

5.7.7 Hēraklēs, being the eldest, matched his brothers, as a game, in a running race, and garlanded the winner with a branch of wild olive, of which they had such a copious supply that they slept on heaps of its leaves while still green. It is said to have been introduced into Greece by Hēraklēs from the land of the Hyperboreans, men living beyond the home of the North Wind.

5.7.8 Olen the Lycian, in his hymn to Akhaïia, was the first to say that from these Hyperboreans, Akhaïia came to Delos. When Melanopos of Cyme composed an ode to Opis and Hekaerge declaring that these, even before Akhaïia, came to Delos from the Hyperboreans.

5.7.9 And Aristeas of Prokonnesos—for he too made mention of the Hyperboreans—may perhaps have learned even more about them from the Issedones, to whom he says in his poem that he came. Hēraklēs of Ida, therefore, has the reputation of being the first to have held, on the occasion I mentioned, the Games, and to have called them Olympic. So he established the custom of holding them every fifth^* year, because he and his brothers were five in number.

5.7.10 Now, some say that Zeus wrestled here with Kronos himself for the throne while others say that he held the Games in honor of his victory over Kronos. The record of victors includes Apollo, who outran Hermes and beat Ares at boxing. It is for this reason, they say, that the Pythian aulos song is played while the competitors in the pentathlon are jumping; for the aulos song is sacred to Apollo, and Apollo won Olympic victories.