The surrounding mountains were
celebrated for their number and size and beauty, far beyond any
which still exist, having in them also many wealthy villages of
country folk, and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food
enough for every animal, wild or tame, and much wood of various
sorts, abundant for each and every kind of work.
I will now describe the plain, as it was fashioned by nature
and by the labours of many generations of kings through long ages.
It was for the most part rectangular and oblong, and where
falling out of the straight line followed the circular ditch. The
depth, and width, and length of this ditch were incredible, and
gave the impression that a work of such extent, in addition to so
many others, could never have been artificial. Nevertheless I
must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of a
hundred, feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was
carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia
in length. It received the streams which came down from the
mountains, and winding round the plain and meeting at the city,
was there let off into the sea. Further inland, likewise,
straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from it
through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to
the sea: these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and
by them they brought down the wood from the mountains to the
city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting
transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city.
Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth-in winter
having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in summer the
water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the
canals.
As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to
find a leader for the men who were fit for military service, and
the size of a lot was a square of ten stadia each way, and the
total number of all the lots was sixty thousand. And of the
inhabitants of the mountains and of the rest of the country there
was also a vast multitude, which was distributed among the lots
and had leaders assigned to them according to their districts and
villages. The leader was required to furnish for the war the
sixth portion of a war-chariot, so as to make up a total of ten
thousand chariots; also two horses and riders for them, and a
pair of chariot-horses without a seat, accompanied by a horseman
who could fight on foot carrying a small shield, and having a
charioteer who stood behind the man-at-arms to guide the two
horses; also, he was bound to furnish two heavy armed soldiers,
two slingers, three stone-shooters and three javelin-men, who
were light-armed, and four sailors to make up the complement of
twelve hundred ships. Such was the military order of the royal
city-the order of the other nine governments varied, and it would
be wearisome to recount their several differences.
As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement
from the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in
his own city had the absolute control of the citizens, and, in
most cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he
would. Now the order of precedence among them and their mutual
relations were regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the
law had handed down. These were inscribed by the first kings on a
pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the
island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were
gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately,
thus giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number. And
when they were gathered together they consulted about their
common interests, and enquired if any one had transgressed in
anything and passed judgment and before they passed judgment they
gave their pledges to one another on this wise:-There were bulls
who had the range of the temple of Poseidon; and the ten kings,
being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to
the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable
to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons but with staves and
nooses; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar
and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon
the sacred inscription.
