Now the small townships of Attica, founded by haphazard, have the
following records. The Alimusii have a temple to Law-giving Demeter and
her daughter Proserpine; and in Zoster [_Belt_] by the sea is an altar
to Athene and Apollo and Artemis and Leto. They say that Leto did not
give birth to her children here, but loosed her belt as if she were
going to, and that was why the place got that name. The Prospaltii also
have a temple to Proserpine and Demeter, and the Anagyrasians have a
temple to the Mother of the Gods. And at Cephalæ Castor and Pollux are
held in highest honour: for they call them the Great Gods.
And the people of Prasiæ have a temple of Apollo: here came (they
say) the firstfruits of the Hyperboreans, handed over by them to the
Arimaspians, and by the Arimaspians to the Issedones, and brought
thence by the Scythians to Sinope, and thence carried by the Greeks to
Prasiæ, and by the Athenians to Delos: these firstfruits are hidden
in an ear of wheat, and may be looked at by nobody. At Prasiæ there
is also a monument to Erysichthon, who died on his passage home, as
he sailed back from Delos after his mission there. That Cranaus the
king of the Athenians was expelled by Amphictyon, though he was his
kinsman, I have before narrated: and they say that when he fled with
his adherents to the Lamprian township he was killed and buried there:
and his tomb is there to this day. And Ion the son of Xuthus, (for he
too dwelt in Attica, and commanded the Athenians in the war against
the Eleusinians,) has a tomb in the place called Potami.
So far tradition goes. And the Phlyenses have altars to
Dionysus-giving Apollo and Lightgiving Artemis, and to Dionysus
Crowned with flowers, and to the Nymphs of the River Ismenus, and to
Earth whom they call the Great Goddess: and another temple has altars
to Fruitbearing Demeter, and Zeus the Protector of Property, and
Tithronian Athene, and Proserpine the Firstborn, and to the goddesses
called _The Venerable Ones_, (_i.e._ the Eumenides.) And at Myrrhinus
there is a statue to Colænian Artemis. And the Athmonenses worship
Amarynthian Artemis. And when I enquired of the Interpreters and
Experts as to these Goddesses, I could obtain no accurate information,
but I conjecture as follows. Amarynthus is in Eubœa, and there too they
worship the Amarynthian Artemis. And the Athenians at her feast bestow
as much honour on her as the Eubœans. In this way I think she got her
name among the Athmonenses, and Colænian Artemis at Myrrhinus from
Colænus. I have written already elsewhere that it is the opinion of
many in the townships that there were kings at Athens before Cecrops.
Now Colænus is the name of a king who ruled at Athens before Cecrops,
according to the tradition of the people of Myrrhinus. And there is a
township at Acharnæ: the Acharnians worship among other gods Apollo of
the Streets and Hercules. And there is an altar to Athene Hygiea: they
also worship Athene by the name of _Horse-lover_, and Dionysus by that
of _Songster_, and _Ivy-God_, for they say ivy grew here first.