1.41.1 As one comes down from the acropolis, where the ground turns northwards, is the tomb of Alkmene, near the Olympieion. They say that as she was walking from Argos to Thebes she died on the way at Megara, and that the Herakleidai got into a dispute, some wishing to convey [komizein] the corpse [nekros] of Alkmene back to Argos, others wishing to take it to Thebes, as in Thebes were buried Amphitryon and the children of Hēraklēs that were mothered by Megara. But the god in Delphi gave them an oracle that it was better for them to bury Alkmene in Megara.

1.41.2 From this place the local guide took us to a place which he said was named Rhous (Stream), for that water once flowed here from the mountains above the city. But Theagenes, who was tyrant at that time, turned the water into another direction and made here an altar to Akhelōos. Close by is the tomb of Hyllos, son of Hēraklēs, who fought a duel with an Arcadian, Ekhemos the son of Aeropos. Who the Ekhemos was who killed Hyllos I will tell in another part of my narrative, but Hyllos also is buried at Megara. These events might correctly be called an expedition of the Herakleidai into the Peloponnesus in the reign of Orestes.

1.41.3 Not far from the tomb of Hyllos is a temple of Isis, and beside it one of Apollo and of Artemis. They say that Alkathoos made it after killing the lion from Kithairon, as he is called. By this lion they say many were killed, including Euhippos, the son of Megareus their king, whose elder son Timalkos had before this been killed by Theseus while on a campaign with the Dioskouroi against Aphidna. Megareus they say promised that he who killed the lion of Kithairon should marry his daughter and succeed him in the kingdom. Alkathoos therefore, son of Pelops, attacked the beast and overcame it, and when he came to the throne he built this sanctuary, surnaming Artemis as Agrotera [‘Huntress’] and Apollo Agraios [‘Hunter’].

1.41.4 Such is the account of the Megarians; but although I wish my account to agree with theirs, yet I cannot accept everything they say. I am ready to believe that a lion was killed by Alkathoos on Kithairon, but what historian has recorded that Timalkos the son of Megareus came with the Dioskouroi to Aphidna? And supposing he had gone there, how could one hold that he had been killed by Theseus, when Alcman wrote a poem on the Dioskouroi,^* in which he says that they captured Athens and carried into captivity the mother of Theseus, but Theseus himself was absent?

1.41.5 Pindar in his poems agrees with this account, saying that Theseus, wishing to be related to the Dioskouroi, carried off Helen and kept her until he departed to carry out with Peirithoös the marriage that they tell of. Whoever has studied genealogy finds the Megarians guilty of great silliness, since Theseus was a descendant of Pelops. The fact is that the Megarians know the true story but conceal it, not wishing it to be thought that their city was captured in the reign of Nisos, but that both Megareus, the son-in-law of Nisos, and Alkathoos, the son-in-law of Megareus, succeeded their respective fathers-in-law as king.

1.41.6 It is evident that Alkathoos arrived from Elis just at the time when Nisos had died and the people of Megara had lost everything. Witness-to-the-truth [marturion] of what I say is that he built the wall [teikhos] all over again, from the start, since the old enclosure [peribolos] [round the city] had been destroyed by the Cretans. Let so much suffice for memory [mnēmē] about Alkathoos and the lion, whether it was on Kithairon or elsewhere that the killing took place that caused him to make a temple [nāos] to Artemis Agrotera and Apollo Agraios. As one goes down from this sanctuary [hieron] there is the hero-shrine [hērōion] of Pandion. My narrative [logos] has already told how Pandion was buried on what is called the Rock [skopelos] of Athena Aithuia [‘Gannet’]. He receives honors [tīmai] from the people of Megara in the city as well.

1.41.7 Near the hero-shrine [hērōion] of Pandion is the tomb [mnēma] of Hippolyte. I will write down [graphein] the kinds of things that the people of Megara say with regard to her. When the Amazons, having made war against the Athenians because of Antiope, were defeated by Theseus, most of them met their death in the fighting, but Hippolyte, the sister of Antiope and on this occasion the leader of the women, escaped with a few others to Megara. Having failed so badly with her army and feeling disheartened [athumōs ekhein] at her present situation, given that she felt-there-was-no-way-out [aporeîn] with regard to getting back home in safety [sōtēriā] to Themiskyra, she died in her sorrow [lupē]. And, now that she was dead, the people of Megara buried her. The shape [skhēma] of her tomb [mnēma] is like an Amazonian shield [aspis].

1.41.8 Not far from this is the tomb of Tereus, who married Procne the daughter of Pandion. The Megarians say that Tereus was king of the region around what is called Pagai [‘springs’] of Megaris, but my opinion, which is confirmed by extant evidence, is that he ruled over Daulis beyond Khairōneia, for in ancient times the greater part of what is now called Greece [Hellas] was inhabited by barbarians. When Tereus did what he did to Philomela and Itys suffered at the hands of the women, Tereus found himself unable to seize them.

1.41.9 He committed suicide in Megara, and the Megarians forthwith raised him a barrow, and every year sacrifice to him, using in the sacrifice gravel instead of barley meal; they say that the bird called the hoopoe appeared here for the first time. The women came to Athens, and while lamenting their sufferings and their revenge, perished through their tears; their reported metamorphosis into a nightingale and a swallow is due, I think, to the fact that the note of these birds is plaintive and like a lamentation.