1.35.1 There are islands not far from Attica. Of the one called the Island of Patroklos I have already given an account.^* There is another when you have sailed past Sounion with Attica on the left. On this they say that Helen landed after the capture of Troy,

1.35.2 and for this reason the name of the island is Helene. Salamis lies over against Eleusis, and stretches as far as the territory of Megara. It is said that the first to give this name to the island was Cychreus, who called it after his mother Salamis, the daughter of Asopos, and afterwards it was colonized by the Aeginetans with Telamon. Philaios the son of Eurysakes the son of Ajax, is said to have handed the island over to the Athenians, having been made an Athenian by them. Many years afterwards the Athenians drove out all the Salaminians, having discovered that they had been guilty of treachery in the war with Kassandros,^* and mainly of set purpose had surrendered to the Macedonians. They sentenced to death Aiskhetades, who on this occasion had been elected general for Salamis, and they swore never to forget the treachery of the Salaminians.

1.35.3 There are still the remains of a marketplace, a temple of Ajax and his statue [agalma] in ebony. Even at the present day the Athenians pay honors to Ajax himself and to Eurysakes, for there is an altar of Eurysakes also in Athens. In Salamis is shown a stone not far from the harbor, on which they say that Telamon sat when he gazed at the ship in which his children were sailing away to Aulis to take part in the joint expedition of the Greeks [Hellēnes].

1.35.4 Those who dwell about Salamis say that it was when Ajax died that the flower first appeared in their country. It is white and tinged with red, both flower and leaves being smaller than those of the lily; there are letters on it like to those on the iris. About the judgment concerning the armor I heard a story of the Aeolians who afterwards settled at Ilion, to the effect that when Odysseus suffered shipwreck the armor was cast ashore near the tomb of Ajax. As to the hero’s size, a Mysian was my informant.

1.35.5 He said that the sea flooded the side of the tomb facing the beach and made it easy to enter the tomb, and he told me to form an estimate of the size of the corpse in the following way. The bones on his knees, called by doctors the knee-pan, were in the case of Ajax as big as the discus of a boy in the pentathlon. I saw nothing to wonder at in the stature of those Celts who live farthest off on the borders of the land which is uninhabited because of the cold; these people, the Kabareîs, are no bigger than Egyptian corpses. But I will relate all that appeared to me worthy of viewing [théā.

1.35.6 For the Magnesians on the Lethaios, Protophanes, one of the citizens, won at Olympia in one day victories in the pankration^* and in wrestling. Into the tomb of this man robbers entered, thinking to gain some advantage, and after the robbers people came in to see the corpse, which had ribs not separated but joined together from the shoulders to the smallest ribs, those called by doctors bastard. Before the city of the Milesians is an island called Lade, and from it certain islets are detached. One of these they call the islet of Asterios, and say that Asterios was buried in it, and that Asterios was the son of Anax, and Anax the son of Earth. Now the corpse is not less than ten cubits.

1.35.7 But what really caused me surprise is this. There is a small city of upper Lydia called The Doors of Temenus. There a crest broke away in a storm, and there appeared bones the shape of which led one to suppose that they were human, but from their size one would never have thought it. At once the story spread among the multitude that it was the corpse of Geryon, the son of Khrysaor, and that the seat also was his. For there is a man’s seat carved on a rocky spur of the mountain. And a torrent they called the river Okeanos, and they said that men ploughing met with the horns of cattle, for the story is that Geryon reared excellent cows.

1.35.8 And when I criticized the account and pointed out to them that Geryon is at Gadeira, where there is, not his tomb, but a tree showing different shapes, the guides of the Lydians related the true story, that the corpse is that of Hyllos, a son of Earth, from whom the river is named. They also said that Hēraklēs from his sojourning with Omphale called his son Hyllos after the river.