Book 6
17.6
That he was the soothsayer of the clan of the Clytidae, Eperastus declares at the end of the inscription:Of the stock of the sacred-tongued Clytidae I boast to be,Their soothsayer, the scion of the god-like Melampodidae.For Mantius was a son of Melampus, the son of Amythaon, and he had a son Oicles, while Clytius was a son of Alcmaeon, the son of Amphiaraus, the son of Oicles. Clytius was the son of Alcmaeon by the daughter of Phegeus, and he migrated to Elis because he shrank from living with his mother's brothers, knowing that they had compassed the murder of Alcmaeon.
17.7
Mingled with the less illustrious offerings we may see the statues of Alexinicus of Elis, the work of Cantharus of Sicyon, who won a victory in the boys' wrestling-match, and of Gorgias of Leontini. This statue was dedicated at Olympia by Eumolpus, as he himself says, the grandson of Deicrates who married the sister of Gorgias.
17.8
This Gorgiasfl. 427 B.C was a son of Charmantides, and is said to have been the first to revive the study of rhetoric, which had been altogether neglected, in fact almost forgotten by mankind. They say that Gorgias won great renown for his eloquence at the Olympic assembly, and also when he accompanied Tisias on an embassy to Athens. Yet Tisias improved the art of rhetoric, in particular he wrote the most persuasive speech of his time to support the claim of a Syracusan woman to a property.
17.9
However, Gorgias surpassed his fame at Athens; indeed Jason, the tyrant of Thessaly, placed him before Polycrates, who was a shining light of the Athenian school. Gorgias, they say, lived to be one hundred and five years old. Leontini was once laid waste by the Syracusans, but in my time was again inhabited.
