1.44.1 Near Koroibos is buried Orsippos who won the foot-race at Olympia by running naked when all his competitors wore waistbands according to ancient custom.^* They say also that Orsippos when general afterwards annexed some of the neighboring territory. My own opinion is that at Olympia he intentionally let the waistband slip off him, realizing that a naked man can run more easily than one who is wearing a waistband.

1.44.2 As one goes down from the marketplace [agorā] there is on the right of the street called Eutheia [‘Straight’] a sanctuary [hieron] of Apollo Prostaterios [‘Protecting’]. One must turn a little aside from the road to discover it. In it is an Apollo worthy of viewing [théā], and there is an Artemis also, and Leto, and other statues [agalmata], made by Praxiteles. In the old gymnasium near the gate [pulai] called the Nymphades is a stone [lithos] of the shape of a small pyramid. This they name Apollo Karinos, and at this place there is a sanctuary [hieron] of the Eileithuiai. Such are the sights that the city had for the showing [epideixis.

1.44.3 When one has gone down to the port [epineion], which to the present day is called Nisaia, there is a sanctuary [hieron] of Demeter Mālophoros. One of the accounts given of the surname [epiklēsis] is that those who first raised sheep [probata, = māla in the local dialect] in the land named Demeter Mālophoros [‘she who brings sheep’]. The roof of the sanctuary [hieron] one might conclude has fallen in through age. There is an acropolis here, which also is called Nisaia. Below the acropolis near the sea is the tomb [mnēma] of Lelex, who they say arrived from Egypt and became-king [basileusai], being the son of Poseidon and of Libya, daughter of Epaphos. Parallel to Nisaia lies the small island of Minoa, where in the war against Nisos anchored the fleet of the Cretans.

1.44.4 The mountainous part of the region of Megara borders upon Boeotia, and in it the people of Megara have built the city [polis] Pagai and another one called Aigosthena. As one goes to Pagai, on turning a little aside from the highway [leōphoros], one is shown a rock [petrā] with arrows stuck all over it, into which the Persians [Mēdoi] once shot in the night. In Pagai a relic worthy of viewing [théā] is a bronze statue [agalma] of Artemis surnamed Sōteira [‘Savior’], in size equal to that at Megara and exactly like it in pose [skhēma]. There is also a hero-shrine [hērōion] of Aigialeus, son of Adrastos. When the men of Argos made their second assault on Thebes he died at Glisas early in the first battle, and his near-and-dear carried [komizein] him to Pagai in the territory of Megara and buried him there. The hero-shrine [hērōion] is still now called the Aigialeion.

1.44.5 In Aigosthena is a sanctuary [hieron] of Melampous, son of Amythaon, and a small figure of a man carved upon a stele [stēlē]. To Melampous they sacrifice [thuein] and celebrate [agein] a festival [heortē] every year. They say that he divines neither by dreams nor in any other way. Here is something else that I heard in Ereneia, a district [kōmē] of the people of Megara. Autonoe, daughter of Kadmos, left Thebes to live here owing to her great grief at the death of Aktaion, as the story-is-told [legesthai], and at the general misfortune of her father’s house. The tomb [mnēma] of Autonoe is in this district [kōmē].

1.44.6 As one proceeds from Megara to Corinth, there are tombs [taphoi], including that of the aulos-player Telephanes of Samos.^* The tomb [taphos] is said to have been made [poieîn] by Kleopatra, daughter of Philip son of Amyntas. There is also the tomb [mnēma] of Kar, son of Phoroneus, which was originally a piled-up-mound [khōma] of earth, but afterwards, in accordance with what the god [theos] said-in-an-oracular-pronouncement [khrēsai], it was adorned [kosmeîn] with a kind of stone known as konkhītēs [‘in-which-seashells [konkhoi]-are-embedded’]. The people of Megara are the only Greeks [Hellēnes] to possess this kind of konkhītēs stone, and in the city also they have made [poieîn] many things out of it. It is very white, and softer than other stone; embedded in it through and through are seashells [konkhoi]. Such, then, is the stone itself. [As for rock formations that are also white...] There is a road called Skīrōnis—that is what it is called even to this day—and it is named after Skīrōn [= ‘he of the White Rock’]. This Skīrōn, when he was the military leader of the people of Megara, was the first, they say, to make [poieîn] it [= Skīrōnis] a road usable enough for men who outfit themselves for travel. But then ‘King’ [basileus] Hadrian broadened it, and made it more usable—so much so that even chariots [harmata] could pass each other going in opposite directions.

1.44.7 There are tales told with regard to those [white] rocks [petrai] that become ever more elevated as the road narrows. One of these [elevated white rock formations] is a rock called Molouris, and it is from here, they say, that Ino threw [rhiptein] herself into the sea while holding Melikertes, the younger of her children. Learkhos, the elder of them, had been killed by his father. It is said by some that Athamas did [drân] this in-a-state-of-madness [manēnai]; but others say that he vented on Ino and her children his uncontrollable rage [thūmos] when he learned about the famine [līmos] that befell the people of Orkhomenos and about the death—as he supposed—of Phrixos. He [= Athamas] supposed that all the things happened not because of divine power [tò theion] but because of plotting by Ino, the stepmother.

1.44.8 Then it was that she [= Ino] fled to the sea and precipitated [aphiénai] herself and her son from the Rock [Petrā] that is Molouris. The son, they say, was brought to land on the Isthmus of Corinth by a dolphin, and honors [tīmai] were given to Melikertes, thereafter renamed Palaimon. One of these honors, in-compensation-for [epi + dative case] him, was the celebrating [agein] of the competition [agōn] called the Isthmia. The Rock [Petrā] that is Molouris has been considered to be sacred [hierā] to the White Goddess [Leukotheā] and Palaimon. But the other rocks, as one travels further, are customarily-thought [nomizein] to be polluted [en-ageis], in that Skīrōn [= ‘he of the White Rock’], dwelling there [par-oikeîn], used to cast into the sea all the strangers [xenoi] he met. A turtle used to swim under the rocks [petrai] to seize those that fell in. Sea turtles are like land turtles except for their size and for the shape of their feet, which are like those of seals. Retribution [dikē] for these things overtook Skīrōn, for he was precipitated [aphiénai] into the same sea by Theseus.

1.44.9 [Digression...] On the top of a mountain [in Aegina] that is called The Mountain [Oros] is a shrine [nāos] of Zeus surnamed the Precipitator [Aphésios, derived from the verb aphiénai ‘precipitate’]. It is said that, on the occasion of the drought [aukhmos] that once afflicted the Greeks [Hellēnes], Aiakos in obedience to an oracular-instruction [logion] made-sacrifice [thuein] in Aegina to Zeus Pan-Hellēnios, and that Zeus made-precipitation [aphiénai], saving [komizen] them [from the drought] and thus getting the name Aphésios [derived from the verb aphiénai ‘release’]. [Back from the digression, to Megara ...] There are also statues [agalmata] of Aphrodite, Apollo, and Pan.

1.44.10 Farther on is the tomb [mnēma] of Eurystheus. They say that he fled from Attica after the battle with the Herakleidai and was killed here by Iolaos. Further down from this road is a sanctuary [hieron] of Apollo Lātōios, and then, after that, there are the limits [horoi] between Megara and Corinth, where they say that Hyllos, son of Hēraklēs, fought-in-single-combat [monomakheîn] with Ekhemos of Arcadia.