1.33.1 At some distance from Marathon is Brauron, where, they say that Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, landed carrying the statue [agalma] of Artemis when she fled from Tauroi; leaving the statue [agalma] there she came to Athens also and afterwards to Argos. There is indeed an old wooden image of Artemis here, but who in my opinion have the one taken from the barbarians I will set forth in another place.

1.33.2 About sixty stadium-lengths from Marathon as you go along the road by the sea to Oropos stands Rhamnous. The houses [oikēseis] for human habitation are on the coast, but a little way inland is a sacred space [hieron] of Nemesis, who of all the gods [theoi] is the most inexorable toward humans who-commit-outrage [hubristai]. It is thought that the wrath [mēnīma] of this goddess [(he) theos] countered the barbarians [= Persians] who landed at Marathon. Scornfully thinking that nothing stood in the way of their capturing Athens, they were bringing a piece of Parian marble for the making [poiēsis] of a trophy [tropaion], as if their task were already finished.

1.33.3 Of this marble Pheidias made a statue [agalma] of Nemesis, and on the head of the goddess [theos (feminine) ] is a garland [stephanos] picturing deer and small statues [agalmata] of Nike. In her left hand she holds an apple branch, in her right hand a cup on which are crafted the figures of Aethiopians. As to the Aethiopians, I could hazard no guess myself, nor could I accept the statement of those who are convinced that the Aethiopians have been carved upon the cup because of the river Okeanos. For the Aethiopians, they say, dwell near it, and Okeanos is the father of Nemesis.

1.33.4 It is not the river Okeanos, but the farthest part of the sea navigated by man, near which dwell the Iberians and the Celts, and Okeanos surrounds the island of Britain. But of the Aethiopians beyond Syene, those who live farthest in the direction of the Red Sea are the Ichthyophagoi (Fish-eaters), and the gulf round which they live is called after them. The most righteous of them inhabit the city Meroe and what is called the Aethiopian plain. These are they who show the Table of the Sun,^* and they have neither sea nor river except the Nile.

1.33.5 There are other Aethiopians who are neighbors of the Mauroi and extend as far as the Nasamones. For the Nasamones, whom Herodotus calls the Atlantes, and those who profess to know the measurements of the earth, named the Lixitai, are the Libyans who live the farthest close to Mount Atlas, and they do not till the ground at all, but live on wild vines. But neither these Aethiopians nor yet the Nasamones have any river. For the water near Atlas, which provides a beginning to three streams, does not make any of the streams a river, as the sand swallows it all up at once. So the Aethiopians dwell near no river Okeanos.

1.33.6 The water from Atlas is muddy, and near the source were crocodiles of not less than two cubits, which when the men approached dashed down into the spring. The thought has occurred to many that it is the reappearance of this water out of the sand which gives the Nile to Egypt. Mount Atlas is so high that its peaks are said to touch the sky [ouranos], but is inaccessible because of the water and the presence everywhere of trees. Its region indeed near the Nasamones is known, but we know of nobody yet who has sailed along the parts facing the sea. I must now resume.

1.33.7 Neither this nor any other ancient statue [agalma] of Nemesis has wings, for not even the holiest [hagiōtata] wooden-images [xoana] of the people of Smyrna have them, but those who came later, wishfully thinking that the goddess [theos (feminine)] appears-in-epiphanies [epi-phainesthai] mostly as a consequence of passionate-love [erân], make [poieîn] wings for Nemesis as they do for Eros [‘passionate-love’ personified] . I will now go go through what has been artistically-worked [ergazesthai] into the pedestal of the statue [agalma], having made such preliminary remarks as I have made for the sake of clarity. The Greeks [Hellēnes] say that Nemesis was the mother of Helen, while Leda breast-fed her and raised [trephein] her. And, along these same lines, they as well as everyone else say that the father of Helen is not Tyndareus but Zeus.

1.33.8 Having heard these things Pheidias has represented Helen as being led to Nemesis by Leda, and he has represented Tyndareus and his children with a man Hippeus by name standing by with a horse. There are Agamemnon and Menelaos and Pyrrhos, the son of Achilles and first husband of Hermione, the daughter of Helen. Orestes was passed over because of his crime against his mother, yet Hermione stayed by his side in everything and bore him a child. Next upon the pedestal is one called Epochus and another youth; the only thing I heard about them was that they were brothers of Oinoe, from whom the deme [dēmos] has its name.