Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists
C. D. Yonge, B.A., Ed.

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There is the Isthmiacum also, and there was a kind of crown bearing this name, which Aristophanes has thought worthy of mention in his Fryers, where he speaks thus—

What then are we to do? We should have taken
A white cloak each of us; and then entwining
Isthmiaca on our brows, like choruses,
Come let us sing the eulogy of our master.

But Silenus, in his Dialects, says, “The Isthmian garland.” And Philetas says, “στέφανος. There is an ambiguity here as to whether it refers to the head or to the main world.¹ We also use the word ἴσθμιον, as applied to a well, or to a dagger.” But Timachidas and Simmias, who are both Rhodians, explain one word by the other. They say, ἴσθμιον, στέφανον: and this word is also mentioned by Callixenus, who is himself also a Rhodian, in his History of Alexandria, where he writes as follows—

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