Book 45
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After sacrificing to Minerva, the tutelary deity in the Acropolis, he left for Corinth, which he reached on the following day. At that time, before its destruction, it was a glorious city. The citadel and the Isthmus presented a striking spectacle-the citadel inside the walls rising to a great height, with streams flowing everywhere, and the Isthmus separating by a narrow belt of land two seas, one to the east and the other to the west. Sicyon and Argos were the next places visited, both of them famous cities; and next to them Epidaurus, not so wealthy as those, but celebrated for the splendid temple of Aesculapius, five miles distant from the city, filled at the present day with the relics and vestiges of the offerings which then enriched it, offerings made to the god by the sick as a grateful reward for their recovery. From there he went on to Lacedaemon, a city memorable, not for the magnificence of its buildings, but for its discipline and its institutions. Passing through Megalopolis he went up to Olympia. Here among the different objects which attracted his attention, he was deeply impressed as he gazed on Jupiter, standing as it were before him, and he gave orders for a sacrifice to be prepared on an ampler scale than usual, just as if he were going to sacrifice in the Capitol.
