tired of eating-all these that sacred island which then beheld the
light of the sun, brought forth fair and wondrous and in infinite
abundance. With such blessings the earth freely furnished them;
meanwhile they went on constructing their temples and palaces and
harbours and docks. And they arranged the whole country in the
following manner:
First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the
ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace. And at
the very beginning they built the palace in the habitation of the god
and of their ancestors, which they continued to ornament in successive
generations, every king surpassing the one who went before him to the
utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold
for size and for beauty. And beginning from the sea they bored a canal
of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty
stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone,
making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and
leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find
ingress. Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which
parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out
of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as to
leave a way underneath for the ships; for the banks were raised
considerably above the water. Now the largest of the zones into which
a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the
zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two zones,
the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one
which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The
island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia.
All this including the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part
of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side,
placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The
stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the
centre island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as
the inner side. One kind was white, another black, and a third red,
and as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double docks,
having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings
were simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying
the colour to please the eye, and to be a natural source of delight.
The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone,
they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall
they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel,
flashed with the red light of orichalcum.
The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed on this
wise:-in the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and
Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an
enclosure of gold; this was the spot where the family of the ten
princes first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought
the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to
be an offering to each of the ten. Here was Poseidon's own temple
which was a stadium in length, and half a stadium in width, and of a
proportionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance. All the
outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they
covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of
the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with
gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the walls and
pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple they
placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a
chariot-the charioteer of six winged horses-and of such a size that he
touched the roof of the building with his head; around him there were
a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the
number of them by the men of those days. There were also in the
interior of the temple other images which had been dedicated by
private persons. And around the temple on the outside were placed
statues of gold of all the descendants of the ten kings and of their
wives, and there were many other great offerings of kings and of