Note 719 — Chapter LIV · TRUCE FOR ONE YEAR.—RENEWAL OF WAR AND BATTLE OF AMPHIPOLIS.—PEACE OF NIKIAS.

Thucyd. ii, 5; iv, 133; Pausan. ii, 17, 7; iii, 5, 6. Hellanikus (a contemporary of Thucydidês, but somewhat older, coming in point of age between him and Herodotus) had framed a chronological series of these priestesses of Hêrê, with a history of past events belonging to the supposed times of each. And such was the Pan-Hellenic importance of the temple at this time, that Thucydidês, when he describes accurately the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, tells us, as one of his indications of time, that Chrysis had then been forty-eight years priestess at the Heræum. To employ the series of Olympic prize-runners and Olympiads as a continuous distribution of time, was a practice which had not yet got footing.

The catalogue of these priestesses of Hêrê, beginning with mythical and descending to historical names, is illustrated by the inscription belonging to the temple of Halikarnassus in Boeckh, Corpus Inscr. No. 2655: see Boeckh’s Commentary, and Preller, Hellanici Fragmenta, pp. 34, 46.