Geography (Books 6-14)

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9.5.11.1
As for the Dolopians, the poet himself says clearly enough that they were situated in the farthermost parts of Phthia, and that both these and the Phthiotae were under the same leader, Peleus; for “I dwelt,” he says, “in the farthermost part of Phthia, being lord over the Dolopians, whom Peleus gave me.” The country borders on Pindus, and on the region round Pindus, most of which belongs to the Thessalians. For both on account of the fame and of the predominance of the Thessalians and the Macedonians, the countries of those Epeirotes who were their nearest neighbors were made, some willingly and the others unwillingly, parts of Thessaly or Macedonia; for instance, the Athamanes, the Aethices, and the Talares were made parts of Thessaly, and the Orestae, the Pelagonians, and the Elimiotae of Macedonia.
9.5.12.1
The Pindus Mountain is large, having the country of the Macedonians on the north, the Perrhaebian immigrants on the west, the Dolopians on the south, and Hestiaeotis on the east; and this last is a part of Thessaly. The Talares, a Molossian tribe, a branch of those who lived in the neighborhood of Mount Tomarus, lived on Mount Pindus itself, as did also the Aethices, amongst whom, the poet says, the Centaurs were driven by Peirithoüs; but history now tells us that they are “extinct.” The term “extinct” is to be taken in one of two meanings; either the people vanished and their country has become utterly deserted, or else merely their ethnic name no longer exists and their political organization no longer remains what it was. When, therefore, any present political organization that survives from an earlier time is utterly insignificant, I hold that it is not worth mentioning, either itself or the new name it has taken; but when it affords a fair pretext for being mentioned, I must needs give an account of the change.
9.5.13.1
It remains for me to tell the order of the places on the coast that were subject to Achilles, beginning at Thermopylae; for I have already spoken of the Locrian and the Oetaean countries. Thermopylae, then, is separated from Cenaeum by a strait seventy stadia wide; but, to one sailing along the coast beyond Pylae, it is about ten stadia from the Spercheius; and thence to Phalara twenty stadia; and above Phalara, fifty stadia from the sea, is situated the city of the Lamians; and then next, after sailing fifty stadia along the coast, one comes to Echinus, which is situated above the sea; and in the interior from the next stretch of coast, twenty stadia distant from it, is Larisa Cremaste (it is also called Larisa Pelasgia).
9.5.14.1
Then one comes to Myonnesus, a small island; and then to Antron, which was subject to Protesilaüs. So much, then, for the portion that was subject to Achilles. But since the poet, through naming both the leaders and the cities subject to them, has divided Thessaly into numerous well-known parts and arranged in order the whole circuit of it, I, following him again, as above, shall go on to complete the remainder of my geographical description of the country. Now he enumerates next in order after those who were subject to Achilles those who were subject to Protesilaüs; and these are also the people who come next in order after the stretch of coast which was subject to Achilles as far as Antron. Therefore, the territory that was subject to Protesilaüs is in the boundaries of the country that comes next in order, that is, it lies outside the Maliac Gulf, but still inside Phthiotis, though not inside the part of Phthiotis that was subject to Achilles. Now Phylace is near Phthiotic Thebes, which itself is subject to Protesilaüs. And Halus, also, and Larisa Cremaste, and Demetrium, are subject to him, all being situated to the east of the Othrys Mountain. Demetrium he speaks of as “sacred precinct of Demeter,” and calls it “Pyrasus.” Pyrasus was a city with a good harbor; at a distance of two stadia it had a sacred precinct and a holy temple, and was twenty stadia distant from Thebes. Thebes is situated above Pyrasus, but the Crocian Plain is situated in the interior back of Thebes near the end of Othrys; and it is through this plain that the Amphrysus flows. Above this river are the Itonus, where is the temple of the Itonian, after which the temple in Boeotia is named, and the Cuarius Rivers. But I have already spoken of this river and of Arne in my description of Boeotia. These places are in Thessaliotis, one of the four portions of all Thessaly, in which were not only the regions that were subject to Eurypylus, but also Phyllus, where is the temple of Phyllian Apollo, and Ichnae, where the Ichnaean Themis is held in honor. Cierus, also, was tributary to it, and so was the rest of that region as far as Athamania. Near Antron, in the Euboean strait, is a submarine reef called “Ass of Antron”; and then one comes to Pteleum and Halus; and then to the temple of Demeter; and to Pyrasus, which has been razed to the ground; and, above it, to Thebes; and then to Cape Pyrrha, and to two isles near it, one of which is called Pyrrha and the other Deucalion. And it is somewhere here that Phthiotis ends.
9.5.15.1
Next the poet enumerates the peoples that were subject to Eumelus, that is, the adjacent seacoast, which from this point on belongs to Magnesia and the land of Pelasgiotis. Now Pherae is at the end of the Pelasgian plains on the side towards Magnesia; and these plains extend as far as Pelion, one hundred and sixty stadia. The seaport of Pherae is Pagasae, which is ninety stadia distant from Pherae and twenty from Iolcus. Iolcus has indeed been razed to the ground from early times, but it was from there that Pelias despatched Jason and the Argo. It was from the construction here of the ship Argo, according to mythology, that the place was called Pagasae, though some believe, more plausibly, that this name was given the place from its fountains, which are both numerous and of abundant flow. Nearby is Aphetae also, so named as being the “apheterium” of the Argonauts. Iolcus is situated above the sea seven stadia from Demetrias. Demetrias, which is on the sea between Nelia and Pagasae, was founded by Demetrius Poliorcetes, who named it after himself, settling in it the inhabitants of the nearby towns, Nelia and Pagasae and Ormenium, and also Rhizus, Sepias, Olizon, Boebe, and Iolcus, which are now villages belonging to Demetrias. Furthermore, for a long time this was both a naval station and a royal residence for the kings of the Macedonians; and it held the mastery over both Tempe and the two mountains, Pelion and Ossa, as I have already said. At present it is reduced in power, but still it surpasses all the cities in Magnesia. Lake Boebeïs is near Pherae, and also borders on the foothills of Pelion and the frontiers of Magnesia; and Boebe is a place situated on the lake. Just as seditions and tyrannies destroyed Iolcus after its power had been greatly increased, so they reduced Pherae also, which had once been raised to greatness by its tyrants and was then destroyed along with them. Near Demetrias flows the Anaurus River; and the adjoining shore is also called Iolcus. Here, too, they used to hold the Pylaic Festal Assembly. Artemidorus places the Pagasitic Gulf in the region subject to Philoctetes,farther away from Demetrias; and he says that the island Cicynethos and a town bearing the same name are in the gulf.
9.5.16.1
The poet next enumerates the cities subject to Philoctetes. Now Methone is different from the Thracian Methone, which was razed to the ground by Philip. I have mentioned heretofore the change of the names of these places, and of certain places in the Peloponnesus. And the other places enumerated by the poet are Thaumacia and Olizon and Meliboea, which are on the next stretch of seacoast. Off the country of the Magnetans lie numerous islands, but the only notable ones are Sciathos, Peparethos, and Icos, and also Halonnesos and Scyros, all having cities of the same name. But Scyros is the most notable, because of the family relation between Lycomedes and Achilles, and of the birth and nurture there of Neoptolemus the son of Achilles. In later times, when Philip had waxed powerful and saw that the Athenians dominated the sea and ruled over the islands, both these and the rest, he caused the islands that were near him to be most famous; for, since he was fighting for the hegemony, he always attacked those places which were close to him, and, just as he added to Macedonia most parts of the Magnetan country and of Thrace and of the rest of the land all round, so he also seized the islands off Magnesia and made those which were previously well-known to nobody objects of contention and hence well-known. Now Scyros is chiefly commended by the place it occupies in the ancient legends, but there are other things which cause it to be widely mentioned, as, for instance, the excellence of the Scyrian goats, and the quarries of the Scyrian variegated marble, which is comparable to the Carystian marble, and to the Docimaean or Synnadic, and to the Hierapolitic. For at Rome are to be seen monolithic columns and great slabs of the variegated marble; and with this marble the city is being adorned both at public and at private expense; and it has caused the quarries of white marble to be of little worth.
9.5.17.1
However, the poet, after proceeding thus far on the Magnetan seacoast, returns to Upper Thessaly; for, beginning at Dolopia and Pindus, he recounts the parts that stretch alongside Phthiotis, as far as Lower Thessaly: “And those who held Tricce and rocky Ithome.”These places belong in fact to Histiaeotis, though in earlier times Histiaeotis was called Doris, as they say; but when the Perrhaebians took possession of it, who had already subdued Histiaeotis in Euboea and had forced its inhabitants to migrate to the mainland, they called the country Histiaeotis after these Histiaeans, because of the large number of these people who settled there. They call Histiaeotis and Dolopia Upper Thessaly, which is in a straight line with Upper Macedonia, as is Lower Thessaly with Lower Macedonia. Now Tricce, where is the earliest and most famous temple of Asclepius, borders on the country of the Dolopians and the regions round Pindus. Ithome, which is called by the same name as the Messenian city, ought not, they say, to be pronounced in this way, but without the first syllable; for thus, they add, it was called in earlier times, though now its name has been changed to Ithome. It is a stronghold and is in reality a heap of stones; and it is situated between four strongholds, which lie in a square, as it were: Tricce, Metropolis, Pelinnaeum, and Gomphi. But Ithome belongs to the territory of the Metropolitans. Metropolis in earlier times was a joint settlement composed of three insignificant towns; but later several others were added to it, among which was Ithome. Now Callimachus, in his Iambics, says that, “of all the Aphrodites (for there was not merely one goddess of this name), Aphrodite Castnietis surpasses all in wisdom, since she alone accepts the sacrifice of swine.” And surely he was very learned, if any other man was, and all his life, as he himself states, wished to recount these things. But the writers of later times have discovered that not merely one Aphrodite, but several, have accepted this rite; and that among these was the Aphrodite at Metropolis, and that one of the cities included in the settlement transmitted to it the Onthurian rite. Pharcadon, also, is in Histiaeotis; and the Peneius and the Curalius flow through its territory. Of these rivers, the Curalius flows past the temple of the Itonian Athena and empties into the Peneius; but the Peneius itself rises in Pindus, as I have already said, and after leaving Tricce and Pelinnaeum and Pharcadon on the left flows past both Atrax and Larisa, and after receiving the rivers in Thessaliotis flows on through Tempe to its outlet. Historians place the Oechalia which is called the “city of Eurytus “ not only in this region, but also in Euboea and in Arcadia; and they give its name in different ways, as I have already said in my description of the Peloponnesus. They inquire concerning these, and particularly in regard to what Oechalia it was that was captured by Heracles, and concerning what Oechalia was meant by the poet who wrote The Capture of Oechalia These places, then, were classed by Homer as subject to the Asclepiadae.
9.5.18.1
Next he speaks of the country subject to Eurypylus: “and those who held the fountain Hypereia, and those who held Asterium and the white summits of Titanus.”Now at the present time Ormenium is called Orminium; it is a village situated at the foot of Pelion near the Pagasitic Gulf, one of the cities included in the settlement of Demetrias, as I have said. And Lake Boebeïs, also, must be near, since Boebe, as well as Ormenium itself, was one of the dependencies of Demetrias. Now Ormenium is distant by land twenty-seven stadia from Demetrias, whereas the site of Iolcus, which is situated on the road, is distant seven stadia from Demetrias and the remaining twenty stadia from Ormenium. The Scepsian says that Phoenix was from Ormenium, and that he fled thence from his father Amyntor the son of Ormenus into Phthia to Peleus the king; for this place, he adds, was founded by Ormenus the son of Cercaphus the son of Aeolus; and he says that both Amyntor and Euaemon were sons of Ormenus, and that Phoenix was son of the former and Eurypylus of the latter, but that the succession to the throne, to which both had equal right, was kept for Eurypylus, inasmuch as Phoenix had gone away from his homeland. Furthermore, the Scepsian writes thus, “as when first I left Ormenium rich in flocks,” instead of “I left Hellas, land of fair women.”But Crates makes Phoenix a Phocian, judging this from the helmet of Meges, which Odysseus used at the time of his night spying, concerning which the poet says, “Autolycus filched it from Eleon, from Amyntor the son of Ormenus, having broken into his close-built home.”For Eleon, he says, is a town of Parnassus; and Amyntor, son of Ormenus, means no other than the father of Phoenix; and Autolycus, who lived on Parnassus, must have broken into the house of a neighbor (as is the way of any housebreaker), and not into that of people far away. But the Scepsian says that there is no place called Eleon to be seen on Parnassus, though there is a place called Neon, founded in fact after the Trojan War, and also that housebreakings are not confined to neighbors only. And there are other arguments which one might give, but I hesitate to spend further time on this subject. Others write “from Heleon,” but Heleon is a place in Tanagria, and this reading would increase the absurdity of the statement, “Then I fled afar off through Hellas and came to Phthia.”The fountain Hypereia is in the middle of the city of the Pheraeans, which belonged to Eumelus. It is absurd, therefore, to assign the fountain to Eurypylus. Titanus was named from the fact in the case there; for the region near Arne and Aphetae has white soil. Asterium, also, is not far from these.
9.5.19.1
Continuous with this portion of Thessaly is the country of those who are called the subjects of Polypoetes: “And those who held Argissa and dwelt in Gyrtone, Orthe, and Elone and the white city Oloosson.”In earlier times the Perrhaebians inhabited this country, dwelling in the part near the sea and near the Peneius, extending as far as its outlet and Gyrton, a Perrhaebian city. Then the Lapiths humbled the Perrhaebians and thrust them back into the river country in the interior, and seized their country—I mean the Lapiths Ixion and his son Peirithoüs, the latter of whom also took possession of Pelion, forcing out the Centaurs, a wild folk, who had seized it. Now these “he thrust from Pelion and made them draw near to the Aethices,”and he gave over the plains to the Lapiths, though the Perrhaebians kept possession of some of them, those near Olympus, and also in some places lived completely intermingled with the Lapiths. Now Argissa, the present Argura, is situated on the Peneius; and forty stadia above it lies Atrax, which also is close to the river; and the Perrhaebians held the river country between the two places. Some have called Orthe the acropolis of the Phalannaeans; and Phalanna is a Perrhaebian city close to the Peneius near Tempe. Now the Perrhaebians, being overpowered by the Lapiths, for the most part emigrated to the mountainous country about Pindus and to the countries of the Athamaniam and Dolopians, but their country and all Perrhaebians who were left behind there were seized by the Larisaeans, who lived near the Peneius and were their neighbors and dwelt in the most fertile parts of the plains, though not in the very low region near the lake called Nessonis, into which the river, when it overflowed, would carry away a portion of the arable soil belonging to the Larisaeans. Later, however, they corrected this by means of embankments. The Larisaeans, then, kept possession of Perrhaebia and exacted tribute until Philip established himself as lord over the region. Larisa is also the name of a place on Ossa; another is Larisa Cremaste, by some called Pelasgia; and in Crete is a city Larisa, now joined to Hierapytna, whence the plain that lies below is now called Larisian Plain; and, in the Peloponnesus both Larisa, the citadel of the Argives, and the Larisus River, which is the boundary between the Eleian country and Dyme. Theopompus speaks of another city Larisa situated on the same common boundary; and in Asia is a Larisa Phryconis near Cyme; and also the Larisa near Hamaxitis in the Troad; and there is the Ephesian Larisa, and the Larisa in Syria; and there are Larisaean Rocks fifty stadia from Mitylene on the road to Methymne; and there is a Larisa in Attica; and a village Larisa thirty stadia distant from Tralleis, above the city, on the road which runs through Mesogis towards the Caÿster Plain near the temple of the Isodromian Mother, which in its topographical position and its goodly attributes is like Larisa Cremaste, for it has an abundance of water and of vineyards; and perhaps the Larisaean Zeus received his epithet from this place; and also on the left of the Pontus is a village called Larisa, between Naulochus and. . ., near the end of Mount Haemus. And Oloosson, called “white” from the fact that its soil is a white clay, and Elone, and Gonnus are Perrhaebian cities. But Elone changed its name to Leimone, and is now in ruins. Both are situated below Olympus, not very far from the Europus River, which the poet calls the Titaresius.
9.5.20.1
The poet next mentions both Titaresius and the Perrhaebians, when he says, “And Guneus led from Cyphus twenty-two ships. And there followed him the Enienians, and the Perrhaebians steadfast in war, who had established their homes round wintry Dodona, and dwelt in the fields about lovely Titaresius.”Now he speaks of these places as belonging to the Perrhaebians, places which fell into their possession as a part of Hestiaeotis. And also the cities subject to Polypoetes were in part Perrhaebian. However, he assigned them to the Lapiths because the two peoples lived intermingled with one another, and also because, although the Lapiths held possession of the plains and the Perrhaebian element there were for the most part subject to the Lapiths, the Perrhaebians held possession of the more mountainous parts near Olympus and Tempe, as, for example, Cyphus, and Dodona, and the region about the Titaresius; this river rises in the Titarius Mountain, which connects with Olympus, and flows into the territory of Perrhaebia which is near Tempe, and somewhere in that neighborhood unites with the Peneius. Now the water of the Peneius is pure, but that of the Titaresius is oily, because of some substance or other, so that it does not mingle with that of the Peneius, “but runs over it on the top like oil.”Because of the fact that the two peoples lived intermingled, Simonides uses the terms Perrhaebians and Lapiths of all the Pelasgiotes who occupy the region about Gyrton and the outlets of the Peneius and Mount Ossa and Mount Pelion, and the region about Demetrias, and the region in the plain, I mean Larisa, Crannon, Scotussa, Mopsium, Atrax, and the region about Lake Nessonis and Lake Boebeïs. Of these places the poet mentions only a few, because the rest of them had not yet been settled, or else were only wretched settlements, on account of the inundations which took place at various times. Indeed, he does not mention Lake Nessonis either, but Lake Boebeïs only (though it is much smaller), because the latter alone persisted, whereas the former, in all probability, was at times filled at irregular intervals and at times gave out altogether. Scotussa I have already mentioned in my account of Dodona and of the oracle in Thessaly, saying that originally it was near this place. In the territory of Scotussa there is a place called Cynoscephalae, near which Titus Quintius and the Romans, along with the Aetolians, in a great battle conquered Philip the son of Demetrius, king of the Macedonians.
9.5.21.1
Magnetis, also, has been treated by Homer in about the same way. For although he has already enumerated many of the places in Magnetis, none of these are called Magnetan by him except those two places, and even these are designated by him in a dim and indistinct way: “who dwelt about Peneius and Pelion with its shaking foliage.”Assuredly, however, about the Peneius and Pelion lived those who held Gyrton, whom he had already named, as also those who held Ormenium, and several other Perrhaebian peoples; and yet farther away from Pelion there were still Magnetans, beginning with those subject to Eumelus, at least according to the writers of later times. These writers, however, on account of the continual migrations, changes of political administrations, and intermixture of tribes, seem to have confused both the names and the tribes, so that they sometimes present difficult questions for the writers of today. For example, this has proved true, in the first place, in the case of Crannon and Gyrton; for in earlier times the Gyrtonians were called “Phlegyae,” from Phlegyas, the brother of Ixion, and the Crannonians “Ephyri,” so that it is a difficult question who can be meant by the poet when he says, “Verily these twain, going forth from Thrace, arm themselves to pursue the Ephyri, or to pursue the great-hearted Phlegyae.”
9.5.22.1
Again, the same thing is true in the case of the Perrhaebians and Aenianians. For Homer connected the two, as living near one another; and in fact we are told by the writers of later times that for a long time the habitation of the Aenianians was in the Dotian Plain. This plain is near the Perrhaebia just mentioned above, and Ossa and Lake Boebeïs; and while it is situated in the middle of Thessaly, yet it is enclosed all round by hills of its own. Concerning this plain Hesiod has spoken thus: “Or as the unwedded virgin who, dwelling on the holy Didyman Hills, in the Dotian Plain, in front of Amyrus, bathed her foot in Lake Boebeïs.” Now as for the Aenianians, most of them were driven into Oeta by the Lapiths; and there too they became predominant, having taken away certain parts of the country from the Dorians and the Malians as far as Heracleia and Echinus, although some remained in the neighborhood of Cyphus, a Perrhaebian mountain which had a settlement of the same name. As for the Perrhaebians, some of them drew together round the western parts of Olympus and stayed there, being neighbors to the Macedonians, but the greater part of them were driven out of their country into the mountains round Athamania and Pindus. But today little or no trace of them is preserved. At any rate, the Magnetans mentioned last by the poet in the Thessalian Catalogue should be regarded as those inside Tempe, extending from the Peneius and Ossa as far as Pelion, and bordering on the Pieriotae in Macedonia, who held the country on the far side of the Peneius as far as the sea. Now Homolium, or Homole (for it is spelled both ways), should be assigned to the Magnetans; as I have said in my description of Macedonia, it is close to Ossa, situated where the Peneius begins to discharge its waters through Tempe. And if one were to proceed as far as the seacoast nearest to Homolium, there is reason for assigning to them Rhizus and Erymnae, which were situated on that part of the seacoast which was subject to Philoctetes and on that which was subject to Eumelus. However, let this question remain undecided. And also the order of the places next thereafter as far as the Peneius is not plainly told by the poet; but since these places are without repute, neither should I myself regard the matter as of great importance. Cape Sepias, however, was afterwards celebrated both in tragedies and in hymns on account of the total destruction there of the Persian fleet. Sepias itself is a rocky cape, but between it and Casthanaea, a village situated at the foot of Pelion, is a beach where the fleet of Xerxes was lying in wait when, a violent east wind bursting forth, some of the ships were immediately driven high and dry on the beach and broken to pieces on the spot, and the others were carried along the coast to Ipni, one of the rugged places in the region of Pelion, or to Meliboea, or to Casthanaea, and destroyed. The whole voyage along the coast of Pelion is rough, a distance of about eighty stadia; and that along the coast of Ossa is equally long and rough. Between the two mountains is a gulf more than two hundred stadia in circuit, on which is Meliboea. The whole voyage along the coast from Demetrias to the Peneius, following the sinuosities of the gulfs, is more than one thousand stadia in length, and from the Sperchius eight hundred more, and from the Euripus two thousand three hundred and fifty. Hieronymus declares that the plain country of Thessaly and Magnetis is three thousand stadia in circuit, and that it was inhabited by Pelasgians, and that these were driven out of their country by the Lapiths, and that the present Pelasgian Plain, as it is called, is that in which are situated Larisa, Gyrtone, Pherae, Mopsium, Boebeïs, Ossa, Homole, Pelion, and Magnetis. Mopsium is named, not after Mopsus, the son of Manto the daughter of Teiresias, but after Mopsus the Lapith who sailed with the Argonauts. But Mopsopus, after whom the Attic Mopsopia is named, is a different person.
9.5.23.1
So much, then, for the several parts of Thessaly. But speaking of it as a whole, I may say that in earlier times it was called Pyrrhaea, after Pyrrha the wife of Deucalion, and Haemonia after Haemon, and Thessaly after Thessalus the son of Haemon. But some writers, dividing it into two parts, say that Deucalion obtained the portion towards the south and called it Pandora after his mother, and that the other part fell to Haemon, after whom it was called Haemonia, but that the former name was changed to Hellas, after Hellen the son of Deucalion, and the latter to Thessaly, after the son of Haemon. Some, however, say that descendants of Antiphus and Pheidippus, the sons of Thessalus the son of Heracles, invaded the country from Thesprotian Ephyra and named it after Thessalus, their own ancestor. And it has been said that the country too was once named Nessonis, like the lake, after Nesson the son of Thessalus.
10.1.1.1
Since Euboea lies parallel to the whole of the coast from Sunium to Thessaly, with the exception of the ends on either side, it would be appropriate to connect my description of the island with that of the parts already described before passing on to Aetolia and Acarnania, which are the remaining parts of Europe to be described.
10.1.2.1
In its length, then, the island extends parallel to the coast for a distance of about one thousand two hundred stadia from Cenaeum to Geraestus, but its breadth is irregular and generally only about one hundred and fifty stadia. Now Cenaeum lies opposite to Thermopylae and, to a slight extent, to the region outside Thermopylae, whereas Geraestus and Petalia lie towards Sunium. Accordingly, the island lies across the strait and opposite Attica, Boeotia, Locris,and the Malians. Because of its narrowness and of the above-mentioned length, it was named Macris by the ancients. It approaches closest to the mainland at Chalcis, where it juts out in a convex curve towards the region of Aulis in Boeotia and forms the Euripus. Concerning the Euripus I have already spoken rather at length, as also to a certain extent concerning the places which lie opposite one another across the strait, both on the mainland and on the island, on either side of the Euripus, that is, the regions both inside and outside the Euripus. But if anything has been left out, I shall now explain more fully. And first, let me explain that the parts between Aulis and the region of Geraestus are called the Hollows of Euboea; for the coast bends inwards, but when it approaches Chalcis it forms a convex curve again towards the mainland.
10.1.3.1
The island was called, not only Macris, but also Abantis; at any rate, the poet, although he names Euboea, never names its inhabitants “Euboeans,” but always “Abantes”: And those who held Euboea, the courage-breathing Abantes . . .And with him followed the Abantes. Aristotle says that Thracians, setting out from the Phocian Aba, recolonized the island and renamed those who held it “Abantes.” Others derive the name from a hero, just as they derive “Euboea” from a heroine. But it may be, just as a certain cave on the coast which fronts the Aegaean, where Io is said to have given birth to Epaphus, is called Böos Aule, that the island got the name Euboea from the same cause. The island was also called Oche; and the largest of its mountains bears the same name. And it was also named Ellopia, after Ellops the son of Ion. Some say that he was the brother of Aïclus and Cothus; and he is also said to have founded Ellopia, a place in Oria, as it is called, in Histiaeotis near the mountain Telethrius, and to have added to his dominions Histiaea, Perias, Cerinthus, Aedepsus, and Orobia; in this last place was an oracle most averse to falsehood (it was an oracle of Apollo Selinuntius). The Ellopians migrated to Histiaea and enlarged the city, being forced to do so by Philistides the tyrant, after the battle of Leuctra. Demosthenes says that Philistides was set up by Philip as tyrant of the Oreitae too; for thus in later times the Histiaeans were named, and the city was named Oreus instead of Histiaea. But according to some writers, Histiaea was colonized by Athenians from the deme of the Histiaeans, as Eretria was colonized from that of the Eretrians. Theopompus says that when Pericles overpowered Euboea the Histiaeans by agreement migrated to Macedonia, and that two thousand Athenians who formerly composed the deme of the Histiaeans came and took up their abode in Oreus.
10.1.4.1
Oreus is situated at the foot of the mountain Telethrius in the Drymus, as it is called, on the River Callas, upon a high rock; and hence, perhaps, it was because the Ellopians who formerly inhabited it were mountaineers that the name Oreus was assigned to the city. It is also thought that Orion was so named because he was reared there. Some writers say that the Oreitae had a city of their own, but because the Ellopians were making war on them they migrated and took up their abode with the Histiaeans; and that, although they became one city, they used both names, just as the same city is called both Lacedaemon and Sparta. As I have already said, Histiaeotis in Thessaly was also named after the Histiaeans who were carried off from here into the mainland by the Perrhaebians.
10.1.5.1
Since Ellopia induced me to begin my description with Histiaea and Oreus, let me speak of the parts which border on these places. In the territory of this Oreus lies, not only Cenaeum, near Oreus, but also, near Cenaeun, Dium and Athenae Diades, the latter founded by the Athenians and lying above that part of the strait where passage is taken across to Cynus; and Canae in Aeolis was colonized from Dium. Now these places are in the neighborhood of Histiaea; and so is Cerinthus, a small city by the sea; and near it is the Budorus River, which bears the same name as the mountain in Salamis which is close to Attica.
10.1.6.1
Carystus is at the foot of the mountain Oche; and near it are Styra and Marmarium, in which latter are the quarry of the Carystian columns and a temple of Apollo Marmarinus; and from here there is a passage across the strait to Halae Araphenides. In Carystus is produced also the stone which is combed and woven, so that the woven material is made into towels, and, when these are soiled, they are thrown into fire and cleansed, just as linens are cleansed by washing. These places are said to have been settled by colonists from the Marathonian Tetrapolis and by Steirians. Styra was destroyed in the Malian war by Phaedrus, the general of the Athenians; but the country is held by the Eretrians. There is also a Carystus in the Laconian country, a place belonging to Aegys, towards Arcadia; whence the Carystian wine of which Alcman speaks.
10.1.7.1
Geraestus is not named in the Catalogue of Ships, but still the poet mentions it elsewhere: and at night they landed at Geraestus.And he plainly indicates that the place is conveniently situated for those who are sailing across from Asia to Attica, since it comes near to Sunium. It has a temple of Poseidon, the most notable of those in that part of the world, and also a noteworthy settlement.
10.1.8.1
After Geraestus one comes to Eretria, the greatest city in Euboea except Chalcis; and then to Chalcis, which in a way is the metropolis of the island, being situated on the Euripus itself. Both are said to have been founded by the Athenians before the Trojan War. And after the Trojan War, Aïclus and Cothus, setting out from Athens, settled inhabitants in them, the former in Eretria and the latter in Chalcis. There were also some Aeolians from the army of Penthilus who remained in the island, and, in ancient times, some Arabians who had crossed over with Cadmus. Be this as it may, these cities grew exceptionally strong and even sent forth noteworthy colonies into Macedonia; for Eretria colonized the cities situated round Pallene and Athos, and Chalcis colonized the cities that were subject to Olynthus, which later were treated outrageously by Philip. And many places in Italy and Sicily are also Chalcidian. These colonies were sent out, as Aristotle states, when the government of the Hippobatae, as it is called, was in power; for at the head of it were men chosen according to the value of their property, who ruled in an aristocratic manner. At the time of Alexander’s passage across, the Chalcidians enlarged the circuit of the walls of their city, taking inside them both Canethus and the Euripus, and fortifying the bridge with towers and gates and a wall.
10.1.9.1
Above the city of the Chalcidians is situated the Lelantine Plain. In this plain are fountains of hot water suited to the cure of diseases, which were used by Cornelius Sulla, the Roman commander. And in this plain was also a remarkable mine which contained copper and iron together, a thing which is not reported as occurring elsewhere; now, however, both metals have given out, as in the case of the silver mines at Athens. The whole of Euboea is much subject to earthquakes, but particularly the part near the strait, which is also subject to blasts through subterranean passages, as are Boeotia and other places which I have already described rather at length. And it is said that the city which bore the same name as the island was swallowed up by reason of a disturbance of this kind. This city is also mentioned by Aeschylus in his Glaucus Pontius: Euboeïs, about the bending shore of Zeus Cenaeus, near the very tomb of wretched Lichas.In Aetolia, also, there is a place called by the same name Chalcis: and Chalcis near the sea, and rocky Calydon,and in the present Eleian country: and they went past Cruni and rocky Chalcis,that is, Telemachus and his companions, when they were on their way back from Nestor’s to their homeland.
10.1.10.1
As for Eretria, some say that it was colonized from Triphylian Macistus by Eretrieus, but others say from the Eretria at Athens, which now is a marketplace. There is also an Eretria near Pharsalus. In the Eretrian territory there was a city Tamynae, sacred to Apollo; and the temple, which is near the strait, is said to have been founded by Admetus, at whose house the god served as an hireling for a year. In earlier times Eretria was called Melaneïs and Arotria. The village Amarynthus, which is seven stadia distant from the walls, belongs to this city. Now the old city was razed to the ground by the Persians, who “netted” the people, as Herodotus says, by means of their great numbers, the barbarians being spread about the walls (the foundations are still to be seen, and the place is called Old Eretria); but the Eretria of today was founded on it. As for the power the Eretrians once had, this is evidenced by the pillar which they once set up in the temple of Artemis Amarynthia. It was inscribed thereon that they made their festal procession with three thousand heavy-armed soldiers, six hundred horsemen, and sixty chariots. And they ruled over the peoples of Andros, Teos, Ceos, and other islands. They received new settlers from Elis; hence, since they frequently used the letter r, not only at the end of words, but also in the middle, they have been ridiculed by comic writers. There is also a village Oechalia in the Eretrian territory, the remains of the city which was destroyed by Heracles; it bears the same name as the Trachinian Oechalia and that near Tricce, and the Arcadian Oechalia, which the people of later times called Andania, and that in Aetolia in the neighborhood of the Eurytanians.
10.1.11.1
Now at the present time Chalcis by common consent holds the leading position and is called the metropolis of the Euboeans; and Eretria is second. Yet even in earlier times these cities were held in great esteem, not only in war, but also in peace; indeed, they afforded philosophers a pleasant and undisturbed place of abode. This is evidenced by the school of the Eretrian philosophers, Menedemus and his disciples, which was established in Eretria, and also, still earlier, by the sojourn of Aristotle in Chalcis, where he also ended his days.
10.1.12.1
Now in general these cities were in accord with one another, and when differences arose concerning the Lelantine Plain they did not so completely break off relations as to wage their wars in all respects according to the will of each, but they came to an agreement as to the conditions under which they were to conduct the fight. This fact, among others, is disclosed by a certain pillar in the Amarynthium, which forbids the use of long distance missiles. In fact among all the customs of warfare and of the use of arms there neither is, nor has been, any single custom; for some use long distance missiles, as, for example, bowmen and slingers and javelin-throwers, whereas others use close-fighting arms, as, for example, those who use sword, or outstretched spear; for the spear is used in two ways, one in hand-to-hand combat and the other for hurling like a javelin; just as the pike serves both purposes, for it can be used both in close combat and as a missile for hurling, which is also true of the sarissa and the hyssus.
10.1.13.1
The Euboeans excelled in “standing” combat, which is also called “close” and “hand-to-hand” combat; and they used their spears outstretched, as the poet says: spearmen eager with outstretched ashen spears to shatter corselets.Perhaps the javelins were of a different kind, such as probably was the “Pelian ashen spear,” which, as the poet says,Achilles alone knew how to hurl;and he who said,And the spear I hurl farther than any other man can shoot an arrow,means the javelin-spear. And those who fight in single combat are first introduced as using javelin-spears, and then as resorting to swords. And close fighters are not those who use the sword alone, but also the spear hand-to-hand, as the poet says: he pierced him with bronze-tipped polished spear, and loosed his limbs.Now he introduces the Euboeans as using this mode of fighting, but he says the contrary of the Locrians, thatthey cared not for the tolls of close combat, . . . but relying on bows and well-twisted slings of sheep’s wool they followed with him to Ilium.There is current, also, an oracle which was given out to the people of Aegium,Thessalian horse, Lacedemonian woman, and men who drink the water of sacred Arethusa,meaning that the Chalcidians are best of all, for Arethusa is in their territory.
10.1.14.1
There are now two rivers in Euboea, the Cereus and the Neleus; and the sheep which drink from one of them turn white, and from the other black. A similar thing takes place in connection with the Crathis River, as I have said before.
10.1.15.1
When the Euboeans were returning from Troy, some of them, after being driven out of their course to Illyria, set out for home through Macedonia, but remained in the neighborhood of Edessa, after aiding in war those who had received them hospitably; and they founded a city Euboe. There was also a Euboea in Sicily, which was founded by the Chalcidians of Sicily, but they were driven out of it by Gelon; and it became a stronghold of the Syracusans. In Corcyra, also, and in Lemnos, there were places called Euboea; and in the Argive country a hill of that name.
10.1.16.1
Since the Aetolians, Acarnanians, and Athamanians (if these too are to be called Greeks) live to the west of the Thessalians and the Oetaeans, it remains for me to describe these three, in order that I may complete the circuit of Greece; I must also add the islands which lie nearest to Greece and are inhabited by the Greeks, so far as I have not already included them in my description.
10.2.1.1
Now the Aetolians and the Acarnanians border on one another, having between them the Acheloüs River, which flows from the north and from Pindus on the south through the country of the Agraeans, an Aetolian tribe, and through that of the Amphilochians, the Acarnanians holding the western side of the river as far as that part of the Ambracian Gulf which is near Amphilochi and the temple of the Actian Apollo, but the Aetolians the eastern side as far as the Ozalian Locrians and Parnassus and the Oetaeans. Above the Acarnanians, in the interior and the parts towards the north, are situated the Amphilochians, and above these the Dolopians and Pindus, and above the Aetolians are the Perrhaebians and Athamanians and a part of the Aenianians who hold Oeta. The southern side, of Acarnania and Aetolia alike, is washed by the sea which forms the Corinthian Gulf, into which empties the Acheloüs River, which forms the boundary between the coast of the Aetolians and that of Acarnania. In earlier times the Acheloüs was called Thoas. The river which flows past Dyme bears the same name as this, as I have already said, and also the river near Lamia. I have already stated, also, that the Corinthian Gulf is said to begin at the mouth of this river.
10.2.2.1
As for cities, those of the Acarnanians are Anactorium, which is situated on a peninsula near Actium and is a trading center of the Nicopolis of today, which was founded in our times; Stratus, where one may sail up the Acheloüs River more than two hundred stadia; and Oeneiadae, which is also on the river—the old city, which is equidistant from the sea and from Stratus, being uninhabited, whereas that of today lies at a distance of about seventy stadia above the outlet of the river. There are also other cities, Palaerus, Alyzia, Leucas, Argos Amphilochicum, and Ambracia, most of which, or rather all, have become dependencies of Nicopolis. Stratus is situated about midway of the road between Alyzia and Anactorium.
10.2.3.1
The cities of the Aetolians are Calydon and Pleuron, which are now indeed reduced, though in early times these settlements were an ornament to Greece. Further, Aetolia has come to be divided into two parts, one part being called Old Aetolia and the other Aetolia Epictetus. The Old Aetolia was the seacoast extending from the Acheloüs to Calydon, reaching for a considerable distance into the interior, which is fertile and level; here in the interior lie Stratus and Trichonium, the latter having excellent soil. Aetolia Epictetus is the part which borders on the country of the Locrians in the direction of Naupactus and Eupalium, being a rather rugged and sterile country, and extends to the Oetaean country and to that of the Athamanians and to the mountains and tribes which are situated next beyond these towards the north.
10.2.4.1
Aetolia also has a very large mountain, Corax, which borders on Oeta; and it has among the rest of its mountains, and more in the middle of the country than Corax, Aracynthus, near which New Pleuron was founded by the inhabitants of the Old, who abandoned their city, which had been situated near Calydon in a district both fertile and level, at the time when Demetrius, surnamed Aetolicus, laid waste the country; above Molycreia are Taphiassus and Chalcis, rather high mountains, on which were situated the small cities Macynia and Chalcis, the latter bearing the same name as the mountain, though it is also called Hypochalcis. Near Old Pleuron is the mountain Curium, after which, as some have supposed, the Pleuronian Curetes were named.
10.2.5.1
The Evenus River begins in the territory of those Bomians who live in the country of the Ophians, the Ophians being an Aetolian tribe (like the Eurytanians and Agraeans and Curetes and others), and flows at first, not through the Curetan country, which is the same as the Pleuronian, but through the more easterly country, past Chalcis and Calydon; and then, bending back towards the plains of Old Pleuron and changing its course to the west, it turns towards its outlets and the south. In earlier times it was called Lycormas. And there Nessus, it is said, who had been appointed ferryman, was killed by Heracles because he tried to violate Deïaneira when he was ferrying her across the river.
10.2.6.1
The poet also names Olenus and Pylene as Aetolian cities. Of these, the former, which bears the same name as the Achaean city, was razed to the ground by the Aeolians; it was near New Pleuron, but the Acarnanians claimed possession of the territory. The other, Pylene, the Aeolians moved to higher ground, and also changed its name, calling it Proschium. Hellanicus does not know the history of these cities either, but mentions them as though they too were still in their early status; and among the early cities he names Macynia and Molycreia, which were founded even later than the return of the Heracleidae, almost everywhere in his writings displaying a most convenient carelessness.
10.2.7.1
Upon the whole, then, this is what I have to say concerning the country of the Acarnanians and the Aetolians, but the following is also to be added concerning the seacoast and the islands which lie off it: Beginning at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf the first place which belongs to the Acarnanians is Actium. The temple of the Actian Apollo bears the same name, as also the cape which forms the mouth of the Gulf and has a harbor on the outer side. Anactorium, which is situated on the gulf, is forty stadia distant from the temple, whereas Leucas is two hundred and forty.
10.2.8.1
In early times Leucas was a peninsula of Acarnania, but the poet calls it “shore of the mainland,” using the term “mainland” for the country which is situated across from Ithaca and Cephallenia; and this country is Acarnania. And therefore, when he says, “shore of the mainland,” one should take it to mean “shore of Acarnania.” And to Leucas also belonged, not only Nericus, which Laertes says he took (verily I took Nericus, well-built citadel, shore of the mainland, when I was lord over the Cephallenians),but also the cities which Homer names in the Catalogue(and dwell in Crocyleia and rugged Aegilips).But the Corinthians sent by Cypselus and Gorgus took possession of this shore and also advanced as far as the Ambracian Gulf; and both Ambracia and Anactorium were colonized at this time; and the Corinthians dug a canal through the isthmus of the peninsula and made Leucas an island; and they transferred Nericus to the place which, though once an isthmus, is now a strait spanned by a bridge, and they changed its name to Leucas, which was named, as I think, after Leucatas; for Leucatas is a rock of white color jutting out from Leucas into the sea and towards Cephallenia and therefore it took its name from its color.
10.2.9.1
It contains the temple of Apollo Leucatas, and also the “Leap,” which was believed to put an end to the longings of love.Where Sappho is said to have been the first,as Menander says,when through frantic longing she was chasing the haughty Phaon, to fling herself with a leap from the far-seen rock, calling upon thee in prayer, O lord and master.Now although Menander says that Sappho was the first to take the leap, yet those who are better versed than he in antiquities say that it was Cephalus, who was in love with Pterelas the son of Deïoneus. It was an ancestral custom among the Leucadians, every year at the sacrifice performed in honor of Apollo, for some criminal to be flung from this rocky look-out for the sake of averting evil, wings and birds of all kinds being fastened to him, since by their fluttering they could lighten the leap, and also for a number of men, stationed all round below the rock in small fishing-boats, to take the victim in, and, when he had been taken on board, to do all in their power to get him safely outside their borders. The author of the Alcmaeonis says that Icarius, the father of Penelope, had two sons, Alyzeus and Leucadius, and that these two reigned over Acarnania with their father; accordingly, Ephorus thinks that the cities were named after these.
10.2.10.1
But though at the present time only the people of the island Cephallenia are called Cephallenians, Homer so calls all who were subject to Odysseus, among whom are also the Acarnanians. For after saying,but Odysseus led the Cephallenians, who held Ithaca and Neritum with quivering foliage(Neritum being the famous mountain on this island, as also when he says,and those from Dulichium and the sacred Echinades,Dulichium itself being one of the Echinades; andthose who dwelt in Buprasium and Elis,Buprasium being in Elis; andthose who held Euboea and Chalcis and Eiretria,meaning that these cities were in Euboea; andTrojans and Lycians and Dardanians,meaning that the Lycians and Dardanians were Trojans)—however, after mentioning “Neritum, he says,and dwelt in Crocyleia and rugged Aegilips, and those who held Zacynthos and those who dwelt about Samos, and those who held the mainland and dwelt in the parts over against the islands.By “mainland,” therefore, he means the parts over against the islands, wishing to include, along with Leucas, the rest of Acarnania as well, concerning which he also speaks in this way,twelve herd on the mainland, and as many flocks of sheep,perhaps because Epeirotis extended thus far in early times and was called by the general name “mainland.” But by “Samos” he means the Cephallenia of today, as, when he says,in the strait between Ithaca and rugged Samos;for by the epithet he differentiates between the objects bearing the same name, thus making the name apply, not to the city, but to the island. For the island was a Tetrapolis, and one of its four cities was the city called indifferently either Samos or Same, bearing the same name as the island. And when the poet says,for all the nobles who hold sway over the islands, Dulichium and Same and woody Zacynthos,he is evidently making an enumeration of the islands and calling “Same” that island which he had formerly called Samos. But Apollodorus, when he says in one passage that ambiguity is removed by the epithet when the poet saysand rugged Samos,showing that he meant the island, and then, in another passage, says that one should copy the reading,Dulichium and Samos,instead of “Same,” plainly takes the position that the city was called “Same” or “Samos” indiscriminately, but the island “Samos” only; for that the city was called Same is clear, according to Apollodorus, from the fact that, in enumerating the wooers from the several cities, the poet said,from Same came four and twenty men,and also from the statement concerning Ktimene,they then sent her to Same to wed.But this is open to argument, for the poet does not express himself distinctly concerning either Cephallenia or Ithaca and the other places near by; and consequently both the commentators and the historians are at variance with one another.
10.2.11.1
For instance, when Homer says in regard to Ithaca,those who held Ithaca and Neritum with quivering foliage,he clearly indicates by the epithet that he means the mountain Neritum; and in other passages he expressly calls it a mountain;but I dwell in sunny Ithaca, wherein is a mountain, Neritum, with quivering leaves and conspicuous from afar.But whether by Ithaca he means the city or the island, is not clear, at least in the following verse,those who held Ithaca and Neritum;for if one takes the word in its proper sense, one would interpret it as meaning the city, just as though one should say “Athens and Lycabettus,” or “Rhodes and Atabyris,” or “Lacedaemon and Taÿgetus”; but if he takes it in a poetical sense the opposite is true. However, in the words,but I dwell in sunny Ithaca, wherein is a mountain, Neritum,his meaning is clear, for the mountain is in the island, not in the city. But when he says as follows,we have come from Ithaca below Neïum,it is not clear whether he means that Neïum is the same as Neritum or different, or whether it is a mountain or place. However, the critic who writes Nericum instead of Neritum, or the reverse, is utterly mistaken; for the poet refers to the latter as “quivering with foliage,” but to the former as “well-built citadel,” and to the latter as “in Ithaca,” but to the former as “shore of the mainland.”
10.2.12.1
The following verse also is thought to disclose a sort of contradiction: Now Ithaca itself lies chthamale, panypertate on the sea; for chthamale means “low,” or “on the ground,” whereas panypertate means “high up,” as Homer indicates in several places when he calls Ithaca “rugged.” And so when he refers to the road that leads from the harbor asrugged path up through the wooded place,and when he saysfor not one of the islands which lean upon the sea is eudeielos or rich in meadows, and Ithaca surpasses them all. Now although Homer’s phraseology presents incongruities of this kind, yet they are not poorly explained; for, in the first place, writers do not interpret chthamale as meaning “low-lying” here, but “lying near the mainland,” since it is very close to it, and, secondly, they do not interpret panypertate as meaning “highest,” but “highest towards the darkness,” that is, farthest removed towards the north beyond all the others; for this is what he means by “towards the darkness,” but the opposite by “towards the south,” as inbut the other islands lie aneuthe towards the dawn and the sun,for the word aneuthe is “at a distance,” or “apart,” implying that the other islands lie towards the south and farther away from the mainland, whereas Ithaca lies near the mainland and towards the north. That Homer refers in this way to the southerly region is clear also from these words,whether they go to the right, towards the dawn and the sun, or yet to the left towards the misty darkness,and still more clear from these words,my friends, lo, now we know not where is the place of darkness, nor of dawn, nor where the sun, that gives light to men, goes beneath the earth; nor where he rises.For it is indeed possible to interpret this as meaning the four “climata,” if we interpret “the dawn” as meaning the southerly region (and this has some plausibility), but it is better to conceive of the region which is along the path of the sun as set opposite to the northerly region, for the poetic words are intended to signify a considerable change in the celestial phenomena, not merely a temporary concealment of the “climata,” for necessarily concealment ensues every time the sky is clouded, whether by day or by night; but the celestial phenomena change to a greater extent as we travel farther and farther towards the south or in the opposite direction. Yet this travel causes a hiding, not of the western or eastern sky, but only of the southern or northern, and in fact this hiding takes place when the sky is clear; for the pole is the most northerly point of the sky, but since the pole moves and is sometimes at our zenith and sometimes below the earth, the arctic circles also change with it and in the course of such travels sometimes vanish with it, so that you cannot know where the northern “clima” is, or even where it begins. And if this is true, neither can you know the opposite “clima.” The circuit of Ithaca is about eighty stadia. So much for Ithaca.
10.2.13.1
As for Cephallenia, which is a Tetrapolis, the poet mentions by its present name neither it nor any of its cities except one, Same or Samos, which now no longer exists, though traces of it are to be seen midway of the passage to Ithaca; and its people are called Samaeans. The other three, however, survive even to this day in the little cities Paleis, Pronesus, and Cranii. And in our time Gaius Antonius, the uncle of Marcus Antonius, founded still another city, when, after his consulship, which he held with Cicero the orator, he went into exile, sojourned in Cephallenia, and held the whole island in subjection as though it were his private estate. However, before he could complete the settlement he obtained permission to return home, and ended his days amid other affairs of greater importance.
10.2.14.1
Some, however, have not hesitated to identify Cephallenia with Dulichium, and others with Taphos, calling the Cephallenians Taphians, and likewise Teleboans, and to say that Amphitryon made an expedition thither with Cephalus, the son of Deïoneus, whom, an exile from Athens, he had taken along with him, and that when Amphitryon seized the island he gave it over to Cephalus, and that the island was named after Cephalus and the cities after his children. But this is not in accordance with Homer; for the Cephallenians were subject to Odysseus and Laertes, whereas Taphos was subject to Mentes: I declare that I am Mentes the son of wise Anchialus, and I am lord over the oar loving Taphians.Taphos is now called Taphius. Neither is Hellanicus in accord with Homer when he identifies Cephallenia with Dulichium, for Homer makes Dulichium and the remainder of the Echinades subject to Meges; and their inhabitants were Epeians, who had come there from Elis; and it is on this account that he calls Otus the Cylleniancomrade of Phyleides and ruler of the high-hearted Epeians;but Odysseus led the high-hearted Cephallenians.According to Homer, therefore, neither is Cephallenia Dulichium nor is Dulichium a part of Cephallenia, as Andron says; for the Epeians held possession of Dulichium, whereas the Cephallenians held possession of the whole of Cephallenia and were subject to Odysseus, whereas the Epeians were subject to Meges. Neither is Paleis called Dulichium by the poet, as Pherecydes writes. But that writer is most in opposition to Homer who identifies Cephallenia with Dulichium, if it be true that “fifty-two” of the suitors were “from Dulichium” and “twenty-four from Same”; for in that case would not Homer say that fifty-two came from the island as a whole and a half of that number less two from a single one of its four cities? However, if one grants this, I shall ask what Homer can mean by “Same” in the passage,Dulichium and Same and woody Zacynthos.
10.2.15.1
Cephallenia lies opposite Acarnania, at a distance of about fifty stadia from Leucatas (some say forty), and about one hundred and eighty from Chelonatas. It has a perimeter of about three hundred stadia, is long, extending towards Eurus, and is mountainous. The largest mountain upon it is Aenus, whereon is the temple of Zeus Aenesius; and where the island is narrowest it forms an isthmus so low-lying that it is often submerged from sea to sea. Both Paleis and Crannii are on the gulf near the narrows.
10.2.16.1
Between Ithaca and Cephallenia is the small island Asteria (the poet calls it Asteris), which the Scepsian says no longer remains such as the poet describes it,but in it are harbors safe for anchorage with entrances on either side;Apollodorus, however, says that it still remains so to this day, and mentions a town Alalcomenae upon it, situated on the isthmus itself.
10.2.17.1
The poet also uses the name “Samos” for that Thrace which we now call Samothrace. And it is reasonable to suppose that he knows the Ionian Samos, for he also appears to know of the Ionian migration; otherwise he would not have differentiated between the places of the same name when referring to Samothrace, which he designates at one time by the epithet,high on the topmost summit of woody Samos, the Thracian,and at another time by connecting it with the islands near it,unto Samos and Imbros and inhospitable Lemnos.And again,between Samos and rugged Imbros.He therefore knew the Ionian island, although he did not name it; in fact it was not called by the same name in earlier times, but Melampylus, then Anthemis, then Parthenia, from the River Parthenius, the name of which was changed to Imbrasus. Since, then, both Cephallenia and Samothrace were called Samos at the time of the Trojan War (for otherwise Hecabe would not be introduced as saying that he was for selling her children whom he might take captive “unto Samos and unto Imbros”), and since the Ionian Samos had not yet been colonized, it plainly got its name from one of the islands which earlier bore the same name. Whence that other fact is also clear, that those writers contradict ancient history who say that colonists came from Samos after the Ionian migration and the arrival of Tembrion and named Samothrace Samos, since this story was fabricated by the Samians to enhance the glory of their island. Those writers are more plausible who say that the island came upon this name from the fact that lofty places are called “samoi,”for thence all Ida was plain to see, and plain to see were the city of Priam and the ships of the Achaeans But some say that the island was called Samos after the Saïi, the Thracians who inhabited it in earlier times, who also held the adjacent mainland, whether these Saïi were the same people as the Sapaeï or Sinti (the poet calls them Sinties) or a different tribe. The Saïi are mentioned by Archilochus: One of the Saïi robbed me of my shield, which, a blameless weapon, I left behind me beside a bush, against my will.
10.2.18.1
Of the islands classified as subject to Odysseus, Zacynthos remains to be described. It leans slightly more to the west of the Peloponnesus than Cephallenia and lies closer to the latter. The circuit of Zacynthos is one hundred and sixty stadia. It is about sixty stadia distant from Cephallenia. It is indeed a woody island, but it is fertile; and its city, which bears the same name, is worthy of note. The distance thence to the Libyan Hesperides is three thousand three hundred stadia.
10.2.19.1
To the east of Zacynthos and Cephallenia are situated the Echinades Islands, among which is Dulichium, now called Dolicha, and also what are called the Oxeiae, which the poet called Thoae. Dolicha lies opposite Oeneiadae and the outlet of the Acheloüs, at a distance of one hundred stadia from Araxus, the promontory of the Eleians; the rest of the Echinades (they are several in number, all poor soiled and rugged) lie off the outlet of the Acheloüs, the farthermost being fifteen stadia distant and the nearest five. In earlier times they lay out in the high sea, but the silt brought down by the Acheloüs has already joined some of them to the mainland and will do the same to others. It was this silt which in early times caused the country called Paracheloïtis, which the river overflows, to be a subject of dispute, since it was always confusing the designated boundaries between the Acarnanians and the Aetolians; for they would decide the dispute by arms, since they had no arbitrators, and the more powerful of the two would win the victory; and this is the cause of the fabrication of a certain myth, telling how Heracles defeated Acheloüs and, as the prize of his victory, won the hand of Deïaneira, the daughter of Oeneus, whom Sophocles represents as speaking as follows: For my suitor was a river-god, I mean Acheloüs, who would demand me of my father in three shapes, coming now as a bull in bodily form, now as a gleaming serpent in coils, now with trunk of man and front of ox. Some writers add to the myth, saying that this was the horn of Amaltheia, which Heracles broke off from Acheloüs and gave to Oeneus as a wedding gift. Others, conjecturing the truth from the myths, say that the Acheloüs, like the other rivers, was called “like a bull” from the roaring of its waters, and also from the the bendings of its streams, which were called Horns, and “like a serpent” because of its length and windings, and “with front of ox” for the same reason that he was called “bull-faced”; and that Heracles, who in general was inclined to deeds of kindness, but especially for Oeneus, since he was to ally himself with him by marriage, regulated the irregular flow of the river by means of embankments and channels, and thus rendered a considerable part of Paracheloïtis dry, all to please Oeneus; and that this was the horn of Amaltheia. Now, as for the Echinades, or the Oxeiae, Homer says that they were ruled over in the time of the Trojan War by Meges,who was begotten by the knightly Phyleus, dear to Zeus, who once changed his abode to Dulichium because he was wroth with his father.His father was Augeas, the ruler of the Eleian country and the Epeians; and therefore the Epeians who set out for Dulichium with Phyleus held these islands.
10.2.20.1
The islands of the Taphians, or, in earlier times, of the Teleboans, among which was Taphos,. now called Taphius, were distinct from the Echinades; not in the matter of distances (for they lie near them), but in that they are classified as under different commanders, Taphians and Teleboans. Now in earlier times Amphitryon made an expedition against them with Cephalus the son of Deïoneus, an exile from Athens, and gave over their government to him, but the poet says that they were marshalled under Mentes, calling them pirates, as indeed all the Teleboans are said to be pirates. So much, then, for the islands lying off Acarnania.
10.2.21.1
Between Leucas and the Ambracian Gulf is a salt lake, called Myrtuntium. Next after Leucas one comes to Palaerus and Alyzia, cities of Acarnania; of these, Alyzia is fifteen stadia distant from the sea, where is a harbor sacred to Heracles and a sacred precinct. It is from this precinct that one of the commanders carried to Rome the “Labours of Heracles,” works of Lysippus, which were lying out of place where they were, because it was a deserted region. Then one comes to Cape Crithote, and the Echinades, and the city Astacus, which bears the same name as the city near Nicomedeia and Gulf Astacenus, the name being used in the feminine gender. Crithote also bears the same name as one of the little cities in the Thracian Chersonesus. All parts of the coast between these places have good harbors. Then one comes to Oeniadae and the Acheloüs; then to a lake of the Oeniadae, called Melite, which is thirty stadia in length and twenty in breadth; and to another lake, Cynia, which is twice the size of Melite, both in length and in breadth; and to a third, Uria, which is much smaller than those. Now Cynia empties into the sea, but the others lie about half a stadium above it. Then one comes to the Evenus, to which the distance from Actium is six hundred and seventy stadia. After the Evenus one comes to the mountain Chalcis, which Artemidorus has called Chalcia; then to Pleuron; then to the village Halicyrna, above which thirty stadia in the interior, lies Calydon; and near Calydon is the temple of the Laphrian Apollo. Then one comes to the mountain Taphiassus; then to the city Macynia; then to Molycreia and, near by, to Antirrhium, the boundary between Aetolia and Locris, to which the distance from the Evenus is about one hundred and twenty stadia. Artemidorus, indeed, does not give this account of the mountain, whether we call it Chalcis or Chalcia, since he places it between the Acheloüs and Pleuron, but Apollodorus, as I have said before, places both Chalcis and Taphiassus above Molycreia, and he also says that Calydon is situated between Pleuron and Chalcis. Perhaps, however, we should postulate two mountains, one near Pleuron called Chalcis, and the other near Molycreia called Chalcis. Near Calydon, also, is a lake, which is large and well supplied with fish; it is held by the Romans who live in Patrae.
10.2.22.1
Apollodorus says that in the interior of Acarnania there is a people called Erysichaeans, who are mentioned by Alcman: nor yet an Erysichaean nor shepherd, but from the heights of Sardeis. But Olenus, which Homer mentions in the Aetolian catalogue, was in Aetolia, though only traces of it are left, near Pleuron at the foot of Aracynthus. Near it, also, was Lysimachia; this, too, has disappeared; it was situated by the lake now called Lysimachia, in earlier times Hydra, between Pleuron and the city Arsinoe. In earlier times Arsinoe was only a village, and was called Conopa, but it was first founded as a city by Arsinoe, who was both wife and sister of Ptolemy the Second; it was rather happily situated at the ford across the Acheloüs. Pylene has also suffered a fate similar to that of Olenus. When the poet calls Calydon both “steep” and “rocky,” one should interpret him as referring to the country; for, as I have said, they divided the country into two parts and assigned the mountainous part, or Epictetus, to Calydon and the level country to Pleuron.
10.2.23.1
At the present time both the Acarnanians and the Aetolians, like many of the other tribes, have been exhausted and reduced to impotence by their continual wars. However, for a very long time the Aetolians, together with the Acarnanians, stood firm, not only against the Macedonians and the other Greeks, but also finally against the Romans, when fighting for autonomy. But since they are often mentioned by Homer, as also both by the other poets and by historians, sometimes in words that are easy to interpret and about which there is no disagreement, and sometimes in words that are less intelligible (this has been shown in what I have already said about them), I should also add some of those older accounts which afford us a basis of fact to begin with, or are matters of doubt.
10.2.24.1
For instance, in the case of Acarnania, Laertes and the Cephallenians acquired possession of it, as I have said; but as to what people held it before that time, many writers have indeed given an opinion, but since they do not agree in their statements, which have, however, a wide currency, there is left for me a word of arbitration concerning them. They say that the people who were called both Taphians and Teleboans lived in Acarnania in earlier times, and that their leader Cephalus, who had been set up by Amphitryon as master over the islands about Taphos, gained the mastery over this country too. And from this fact they go on to add the myth that Cephalus was the first to take the leap from Leucatas which became the custom, as I have said before. But the poet does not say that the Taphians were ruling the Acarnanians before the Cephallenians and Laertes came over, but only that they were friends to the Ithacans, and therefore, according to the poet, they either had not ruled over the region at all, or had yielded Acarnania to the Ithacans voluntarily, or had become joint occupants with them. It appears that also a colony from Lacedaemon settled in Acarnania, I mean Icarius, father of Penelope, and his followers; for in the Odyssey the poet represents both Icarius and the brothers of Penelope as living: who shrink from going to the house of her father, Icarius, that he himself may exact the bride-gifts for his daughter,and, concerning her brothers,for already her father and her brothers bid her marry Eurymachus;for, in the first place, it is improbable that they were living in Lacedaemon, since in that case Telemachus would not have lodged at the home of Menelaüs when he went to Lacedaemon, and, secondly, we have no tradition of their having lived elsewhere. But they say that Tyndareus and his brother Icarius, after being banished by Hippocoön from their homeland, went to Thestius, the ruler of the Pleuronians, and helped him to acquire possession of much of the country on the far side of the Acheloüs on condition that they should receive a share of it; that Tyndareus, however, went back home, having married Leda, the daughter of Thestius, whereas Icarius stayed on, keeping a portion of Acarnania, and by Polycaste, the daughter of Lygaeus, begot both Penelope and her brothers. Now I have already set forth that the Acarnanians were enumerated in the Catalogue of Ships, that they took part in the expedition to Ilium, and that among these were named “those who lived on the ’shore,’” and alsothose who held the mainland and dwelt in parts opposite. But as yet neither had the mainland been named “Acarnania” nor the shore “Leucas.”
10.2.25.1
Ephorus denies that they joined the Trojan expedition, for he says that Alcmaeon, the son of Amphiaraüs, made an expedition with Diomedes and the other Epigoni, and had brought to a successful issue the war against the Thebans, and then joined Diomedes and with him took vengeance upon the enemies of Oeneus, after which he himself, first giving over Aetolia to them, passed into Acarnania and subdued it; and meanwhile Agamemnon attacked the Argives and easily prevailed over them, since the most of them had accompanied the army of Diomedes; but a little later, when the expedition against Troy confronted him, he conceived the fear that, when he was absent on the expedition, Diomedes and his army might come back home (and in fact it was reported that a great army had gathered round him) and seize the empire to which they had the best right, for one was the heir of Adrastus and the other of his father; and accordingly, after thinking this all over, Agamemnon invited them both to resume possession of Argos and to take part in the war; and although Diomedes was persuaded to take part in the expedition, Alcmaeon was vexed and refused to heed the invitation; and for this reason the Acarnanians alone refused to share in the expedition with the Greeks. And it was probably by following this account that the Acarnanians tricked the Romans, as they are said to have done, and obtained from them their autonomy, urging that they alone had had no part in the expedition against the ancestors of the Romans, for they were named neither in the Aetolian catalogue nor separately, and in fact their name was not mentioned in the Epic poems at all.
10.2.26.1
Ephorus, then, makes Acarnania subject to Alcmaeon even before the Trojan War; and he not only declares that the Amphilochian Argos was founded by him, but also says that Acarnania was named after Alcmaeon’s son Acarnan, and the Amphilochians after Alcmaeon’s brother Amphilochus; therefore his account is to be cast out amongst those contrary to Homeric history. But Thucydides and others say that Amphilochus, on his return from the Trojan expedition, was displeased with the state of affairs at Argos, and took up his abode in this country, some saying that he came by right of succession to the domain of his brother, others giving a different account. So much may be said of the Acarnanians specifically; I shall now speak of their history in a general way, in so far as their history is interwoven with that of the Aetolians, in so far as I have thought best to add to my previous narrative.
10.3.1.1
As for the Curetes, some assign them to the Acarnanians, others to the Aetolians; and some assert that they originated in Crete, but others in Euboea; but since Homer mentions them, I should first investigate his account. It is thought that he means that they were Aetolians rather than Acarnanians, if indeed the sons of Porthaon wereAgrius and Melas, and, the third, Oeneus the knight;and they lived in Pleuron and steep Calydon.These are both Aetolian cities, and are referred to in the Aetolian catalogue; and therefore, since, even according to the poet, the Curetes obviously lived in Pleuron, they would be Aetolians. Those writers who oppose this view are misled by Homer’s mode of expression when he says,the Curetes were fighting, and the Aetolians steadfast in battle, about the city of Calydon;for, they add, neither would he have spoken appropriately if he had said, “the Boeotians and the Thebans were fighting against one another”; or “the Argives and the Peloponnesians.” But, as I have shown heretofore, this habit of expression not only is Homeric, but is much used by the other poets also. This interpretation, then, is easy to defend; but let those writers explain how the poet could catalogue the Pleuronians among the Aetolians if they were not Aetolians or at least of the same race.
10.3.2.1
Ephorus, after saying that the Aetolians were a race which had never become subject to any other people, but throughout all time of which there is any record had remained undevastated, both because of the ruggedness of their country and because of their training in warfare, says at the outset that the Curetes held possession of the whole country, but when Aetolus, the son of Endymion, arrived from Elis and overpowered them in war, the Curetes withdrew to what is now called Acarnania, whereas the Aetolians came back with Epeians and founded the earliest of the cities of Aetolia, and in the tenth generation after that Elis was settled by Oxylus the son of Haemon, who had crossed over from Aetolia. And he cites as evidence of all this two inscriptions, the one at Therma in Aetolia (where it is their ancestral custom to hold their elections of magistrates), engraved on the base of the statue of Aetolus: Founder of the country, once reared beside the eddies of the Alpheius, neighbor of the race-courses of Olympia, son of Endymion, this Aetolus has been set up by the Aetolians as a memorial of his valor to behold; and the other inscription in the marketplace of the Eleians on the statue of Oxylus: Aetolus once left this autochthonous people, and through many a toil with the spear took possession of the land of Curetis; but the tenth scion of the same stock, Oxylus, the son of Haemon, founded this city in early times.
10.3.3.1
Now through these inscriptions Ephorus correctly signifies the kinship of the Eleians and Aetolians with one another, since both inscriptions agree, not merely as to the kinship of the two peoples, but also that each people was the founder of the other, through which he successfully convicts of falsehood those who assert that, while the Eleians were indeed colonists of the Aetolians, the Aetolians were not colonists of the Eleians. But here, too, Ephorus manifestly displays the same inconsistency in his writing and his pronouncements as in the case of the oracle at Delphi, which I have already set forth; for, after saying that Aetolia has been undevastated throughout all times of which there is any record, and after saying also that in the beginning the Curetes held possession of this country, he should have added as a corollary to what he had already said that the Curetes continued to hold possession of the Aetolian land down to his own time, for only thus could it have been rightly said that the land had been undevastated and that it had never come under the power of others; and yet, utterly forgetting his promise, he does not add this, but the contrary, that when Aetolus arrived from Elis and overpowered the Curetes in war, they withdrew into Acarnania. What else, pray, is specifically characteristic of a devastation than being overpowered in war and abandoning the country? And this is evidenced also by the inscription among the Eleians, for Aetolus, it says,through many a toil with the spear took possession of the land of Curetis.
10.3.4.1
Perhaps, however, one might say that Ephorus means that Aetolia was undevastated from the time when it got this name, that is, after Aetolus arrived there; but Ephorus has deprived himself of the argument in support of this idea by saying in his next words that this, meaning the tribe of the Epeians, constituted the greatest part of the people who stayed on among the Aetolians, but that later, when Aeolians, who at the same time with Boeotians had been compelled to migrate from Thessaly, were intermingled with them, they in common with these held possession of the country. Is it credible, pray, that without war they invaded the country of a different people and divided it up with its possessors, when the latter had no need of such a partnership? Or, since this is not credible, is it credible that those who were overpowered by arms came out on an equality with the victors? What else, pray, is devastation than being overpowered by arms? Apollodorus, also, says that, according to history, the Hyantes left Boeotia and settled among the Aetolians. But Ephorus, as though he had achieved success in his argument, adds: “It is my wont to examine such matters as these with precision, whenever any matter is either altogether doubtful or falsely interpreted.”
10.3.5.1
But though Ephorus is such, still he is better than others. And Polybius himself, who praises him so earnestly, and says concerning the Greek histories that Eudoxus indeed gave a good account, but Ephorus gave the best account of the foundings of cities, kinships, migrations, and original founders, “but I,” he says, shall show the facts as they now are, as regards both the position of places and the distances between them; for this is the most appropriate function of Chorography.But assuredly you, Polybius, who introduce “popular notions” concerning distances, not only in dealing with places outside of Greece, but also when treating Greece itself, must also submit to an accounting, not only to Poseidonius, and to Apollodorus, but to several others as well. One should therefore pardon me as well, and not be vexed, if I make any mistakes when I borrow from such writers most of my historical material, but should rather be content if in the majority of cases I improve upon the accounts given by others, or if I add such facts as have elsewhere, owing to lack of knowledge, been left untold.
10.3.6.1
Concerning the Curetes still further accounts, to the following effect, are given, some of them being more closely related to the history of the Aetolians and the Acarnanians, others more remotely. More closely related are such accounts as I have given before—that the Curetes were living in the country which is now called Aetolia, and that the Aetolians came with Aetolus and drove them into Acarnania; and also accounts of this kind, that, when Pleuronia was inhabited by the Curetes and was called Curetis, Aeolians made an invasion and took it away from them, and drove out its occupants. Archemachus the Euboean says that the Curetes settled at Chalcis, but since they were continually at war for the Lelantine Plain and the enemy would catch them by the front hair and drag them down, he says, they let their hair grow long behind but cut short the part in front, and because of this they were called “Curetes,” from the cut of their hair, and they then migrated to Aetolia, and, after taking possession of the region round Pleuron, called the people who lived on the far side of the Acheloüs “Acarnanians,” because they kept their heads “unshorn.” But some say that each of the two tribes got its name from a hero; others, that the Curetes were named after the mountain Curium, which is situated about Pleuron, and also that this is an Aetolian tribe, like the Ophians and the Agraeans and the Eurytanians and several others. But, as I have already stated, when Aetolia was divided into two parts, the region round Calydon, they say, was in the possession of Oeneus, whereas a certain part of Pleuronia was in the possession of the sons of Porthaon, that is, Agrius and his followers, if it be true thatthey lived in Pleuron and steep Calydon;the mastery over Pleuronia, however, was held by Thestius (the father-in-law of Oeneus and father of Althaea), who was leader of the Curetes; but when war broke out between the sons of Thestius, on the one hand, and Oeneus and Meleager, on the other (about the hog’s head and skin,as the poet says, following the mythical story of the boar, but in all probability about the possession of a part of the territory), according to the words of the poet,the Curetes were fighting, as also the Aetolians steadfast in battle.So much for the accounts which are more closely related.
10.3.7.1
The accounts which are more remotely related, however, to the present subject, but are wrongly, on account of the identity of the names, brought into the same connection by the historians—I mean those accounts which, although they are called “Curetan History” and “History of the Curetes,” just as if they were the history of those Curetes who lived in Aetolia and Acarnania, not only are different from that history, but are more like the accounts of the Satyri, Sileni, Bacchae, and Tityri; for the Curetes, like these, are called genii or ministers of gods by those who have handed down to us the Cretan and the Phrygian traditions, which are interwoven with certain sacred rites, some mystical, the others connected in part with the rearing of the child Zeus in Crete and in part with the orgies in honor of the mother of the gods which are celebrated in Phrygia and in the region of the Trojan Ida. But the variation in these accounts is so small that, whereas some represent the Corybantes, the Cabeiri, the Idaean Dactyli, and the Telchines as identical with the Curetes, others represent them as all kinsmen of one another and differentiate only certain small matters in which they differ in respect to one another; but, roughly speaking and in general, they represent them, one and all, as a kind of inspired people and as subject to Bacchic frenzy, and, in the guise of ministers, as inspiring terror at the celebration of the sacred rites by means of war-dances, accompanied by uproar and noise and cymbals and drums and arms, and also by flute and outcry; and consequently these rites are in a way regarded as having a common relationship, I mean these and those of the Samothracians and those in Lemnos and in several other places, because the divine ministers are called the same. However, every investigation of this kind pertains to theology, and is not foreign to the speculation of the philosopher.
10.3.8.1
But since also the historians, because of the identity of name of the Curetes, have classed together things that are unlike, neither should I myself shrink from discussing them at greater length, by way of digression, adding such account of their physical habits as is appropriate to history. And yet some historians even wish to assimilate their physical habits with those others, and perhaps there is something plausible in their undertaking. For instance, they say that the Curetes of Aetolia got this name because, like “girls,” they wore women’s clothes, for, they add, there was a fashion of this kind among the Greeks, and the Ionians were called “tunic-trailing,” and the soldiers of Leonidas were “dressing their hair” when they were to go forth to battle, so that the Persians, it is said, conceived a contempt for them, though in the battle they marvelled at them. Speaking generally, the art of caring for the hair consists both in its nurture and in the way it is cut, and both are given special attention by “girls” and “youths”; so that there are several ways in which it is easy to derive an etymology of the word “Curetes.” It is reasonable to suppose, also, that the war-dance was first introduced by persons who were trained in this particular way in the matter of hair and dress, these being called Curetes, and that this dance afforded a pretext to those also who were more warlike than the rest and spent their life under arms, so that they too came to be called by the same name, “Curetes “—I mean the Curetes in Euboea, Aetolia, and Acarnania. And indeed Homer applied this name to young soldiers,choose thou the noblest young men from all the Achaeans, and bring the gifts from the swift ship, all that we promised yesterday to Achilles”;and again,the young men of the Achaeans brought the gifts. So much for the etymology of the word “Curetes.” The war-dance was a soldiers’ dance; and this is plainly indicated both by the “Pyrrhic dance,” and by “Pyrrichus,” who is said to be the founder of this kind of training for young men, as also by the treatises on military affairs.
10.3.9.1
But I must now investigate how it comes about that so many names have been used of one and the same thing, and the theological element contained in their history. Now this is common both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, to perform their sacred rites in connection with the relaxation of a festival, these rites being performed sometimes with religious frenzy, sometimes without it; sometimes with music, sometimes not; and sometimes in secret, sometimes openly. And it is in accordance with the dictates of nature that this should be so, for, in the first place, the relaxation draws the mind away from human occupations and turns the real mind towards that which is divine; and, secondly, the religious frenzy seems to afford a kind of divine inspiration and to be very like that of the soothsayer; and, thirdly, the secrecy with which the sacred rites are concealed induces reverence for the divine, since it imitates the nature of the divine, which is to avoid being perceived by our human senses; and, fourthly, music, which includes dancing as well as rhythm and melody, at the same time, by the delight it affords and by its artistic beauty, brings us in touch with the divine, and this for the following reason; for although it has been well said that human beings then act most like the gods when they are doing good to others, yet one might better say, when they are happy; and such happiness consists of rejoicing, celebrating festivals, pursuing philosophy, and engaging in music; for, if music is perverted when musicians turn their art to sensual delights at symposiums and in orchestric and scenic performances and the like, we should not lay the blame upon music itself, but should rather examine the nature of our system of education, since this is based on music.
10.3.10.1
And on this account Plato, and even before his time the Pythagoreians, called philosophy music; and they say that the universe is constituted in accordance with harmony, assuming that every form of music is the work of the gods. And in this sense, also, the Muses are goddesses, and Apollo is leader of the Muses, and poetry as a whole is laudatory of the gods. And by the same course of reasoning they also attribute to music the upbuilding of morals, believing that everything which tends to correct the mind is close to the gods. Now most of the Greeks assigned to Dionysus, Apollo, Hecate, the Muses, and above all to Demeter, everything of an orgiastic or Bacchic or choral nature, as well as the mystic element in initiations; and they give the name “Iacchus” not only to Dionysus but also to the leader-in-chief of the mysteries, who is the genius of Demeter. And branch-bearing, choral dancing, and initiations are common elements in the worship of these gods. As for the Muses and Apollo, the Muses preside over the choruses, whereas Apollo presides both over these and the rites of divination. But all educated men, and especially the musicians, are ministers of the Muses; and both these and those who have to do with divination are ministers of Apollo; and the initiated and torch-bearers and hierophants, of Demeter; and the Sileni and Satyri and Bacchae, and also the Lenae and Thyiae and Mimallones and Naïdes and Nymphae and the beings called Tityri, of Dionysus.
10.3.11.1
In Crete, not only these rites, but in particular those sacred to Zeus, were performed along with orgiastic worship and with the kind of ministers who were in the service of Dionysus, I mean the Satyri. These ministers they called “Curetes,” young men who executed movements in armour, accompanied by dancing, as they set forth the mythical story of the birth of Zeus; in this they introduced Cronus as accustomed to swallow his children immediately after their birth, and Rhea as trying to keep her travail secret and, when the child was born, to get it out of the way and save its life by every means in her power; and to accomplish this it is said that she took as helpers the Curetes, who, by surrounding the goddess with tambourines and similar noisy instruments and with war-dance and uproar, were supposed to strike terror into Cronus and without his knowledge to steal his child away; and that, according to tradition, Zeus was actually reared by them with the same diligence; consequently the Curetes, either because, being young, that is “youths,” they performed this service, or because they “reared” Zeus “in his youth” (for both explanations are given), were accorded this appellation, as if they were Satyrs, so to speak, in the service of Zeus. Such, then, were the Greeks in the matter of orgiastic worship.
10.3.12.1
But as for the Berecyntes, a tribe of Phrygians, and the Phrygians in general, and those of the Trojans who live round Ida, they too hold Rhea in honor and worship her with orgies, calling her Mother of the gods and Agdistis and Phrygia the Great Goddess, and also, from the places where she is worshipped, Idaea and Dindymene and Sipylene and Pessinuntis and Cybele and Cybebe. The Greeks use the same name “Curetes” for the ministers of the goddess, not taking the name, however, from the same mythical story, but regarding them as a different set of “Curetes,” helpers as it were, analogous to the Satyri; and the same they also call Corybantes.
10.3.13.1
The poets bear witness to such views as I have suggested. For instance, when Pindar, in the dithyramb which begins with these words,In earlier times there marched the lay of the dithyrambs long drawn out,mentions the hymns sung in honor of Dionysus, both the ancient and the later ones, and then, passing on from these, says,To perform the prelude in thy honor, great Mother, the whirling of cymbals is at hand, and among them, also, the clanging of castanets, and the torch that blazeth beneath the tawny pine-trees,he bears witness to the common relationship between the rites exhibited in the worship of Dionysus among the Greeks and those in the worship of the Mother of the gods among the Phrygians, for he makes these rites closely akin to one another. And Euripides does likewise, in his Bacchae, citing the Lydian usages at the same time with those of Phrygia, because of their similarity: But ye who left Mt. Tmolus, fortress of Lydia, revel-band of mine, women whom I brought from the land of barbarians as my assistants and travelling companions, uplift the tambourines native to Phrygian cities, inventions of mine and mother Rhea.And again,happy he who, blest man, initiated in the mystic rites, is pure in his life, . . . who, preserving the righteous orgies of the great mother Cybele, and brandishing the thyrsus on high, and wreathed with ivy, doth worship Dionysus. Come, ye Bacchae, come, ye Bacchae, bringing down Bromius, god the child of god, out of the Phrygian mountains into the broad highways of Greece.And again, in the following verses he connects the Cretan usages also with the Phrygian: O thou hiding-bower of the Curetes, and sacred haunts of Crete that gave birth to Zeus, where for me the triple-crested Corybantes in their caverns invented this hide-stretched circlet, and blent its Bacchic revelry with the high-pitched, sweet-sounding breath of Phrygian flutes, and in Rhea’s hands placed its resounding noise, to accompany the shouts of the Bacchae, and from Mother Rhea frenzied Satyrs obtained it and joined it to the choral dances of the Trieterides, in whom Dionysus takes delight. And in the Palamedes the Chorus says,Thysa, daughter of Dionysus, who on Ida rejoices with his dear mother in the Iacchic revels of tambourines.
10.3.14.1
And when they bring Seilenus and Marsyas and Olympus into one and the same connection, and make them the historical inventors of flutes, they again, a second time, connect the Dionysiac and the Phrygian rites; and they often in a confused manner drum on Ida and Olympus as the same mountain. Now there are four peaks of Ida called Olympus, near Antandria; and there is also the Mysian Olympus, which indeed borders on Ida, but is not the same. At any rate, Sophocles, in his Polyxena, representing Menelaus as in haste to set sail from Troy, but Agamemnon as wishing to remain behind for a short time for the sake of propitiating Athena, introduces Menelaüs as saying,But do thou, here remaining, somewhere in the Idaean land collect flocks of Olympus and offer them in sacrifice.
10.3.15.1
They invented names appropriate to the flute, and to the noises made by castanets, cymbals, and drums, and to their acclamations and shouts of “ev-ah,” and stampings of the feet; and they also invented some of the names by which to designate the ministers, choral dancers, and attendants upon the sacred rites, I mean “Cabeiri” and “Corybantes” and “Pans” and “Satyri” and “Tityri,” and they called the god “Bacchus,” and Rhea “Cybele” or “Cybebe” or “Dindymene” according to the places where she was worshipped. Sabazius also belongs to the Phrygian group and in a way is the child of the Mother, since he too transmitted the rites of Dionysus.
10.3.16.1
Also resembling these rites are the Cotytian and the Bendideian rites practiced among the Thracians, among whom the Orphic rites had their beginning. Now the Cotys who is worshipped among the Edonians, and also the instruments used in her rites, are mentioned by Aeschylus; for he says,O adorable Cotys among the Edonians, and ye who hold mountain-ranging instruments;and he mentions immediately afterwards the attendants of Dionysus: one, holding in his hands the bombyces, toilsome work of the turner’s chisel, fills full the fingered melody, the call that brings on frenzy, while another causes to resound the bronze-bound cotylaeand again,stringed instruments raise their shrill cry, and frightful mimickers from some place unseen bellow like bulls, and the semblance of drums, as of subterranean thunder, rolls along, a terrifying sound;for these rites resemble the Phrygian rites, and it is at least not unlikely that, just as the Phrygians themselves were colonists from Thrace, so also their sacred rites were borrowed from there. Also when they identify Dionysus and the Edonian Lycurgus, they hint at the homogeneity of their sacred rites.
10.3.17.1
From its melody and rhythm and instruments, all Thracian music has been considered to be Asiatic. And this is clear, first, from the places where the Muses have been worshipped, for Pieria and Olympus and Pimpla and Leibethrum were in ancient times Thracian places and mountains, though they are now held by the Macedonians; and again, Helicon was consecrated to the Muses by the Thracians who settled in Boeotia, the same who consecrated the cave of the nymphs called Leibethrides. And again, those who devoted their attention to the music of early times are called Thracians, I mean Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris; and Eumolpus, too, got his name from there. And those writers who have consecrated the whole of Asia, as far as India, to Dionysus, derive the greater part of music from there. And one writer says, “striking the Asiatic cithara”; another calls flutes “Berecyntian” and “Phrygian”; and some of the instruments have been called by barbarian names, “nablas,” “sambyce,” “barbitos,” “magadis,” and several others.
10.3.18.1
Just as in all other respects the Athenians continue to be hospitable to things foreign, so also in their worship of the gods; for they welcomed so many of the foreign rites that they were ridiculed therefore by comic writers; and among these were the Thracian and Phrygian rites. For instance, the Bendideian rites are mentioned by Plato, and the Phrygian by Demosthenes, when he casts the reproach upon Aeschines’ mother and Aeschines himself that he was with her when she conducted initiations, that he joined her in leading the Dionysiac march, and that many a time he cried out “evoe saboe,” and “hyes attes, attes hyes”; for these words are in the ritual of Sabazius and the Mother.
10.3.19.1
Further, one might also find, in addition to these facts concerning these genii and their various names, that they were called, not only ministers of gods, but also gods themselves. For instance, Hesiod says that five daughters were born to Hecaterus and the daughter of Phoroneus,from whom sprang the mountain-ranging nymphs, goddesses, and the breed of Satyrs, creatures worthless and unfit for work, and also the Curetes, sportive gods, dancers.And the author of Phoronis speaks of the Curetes as “flute-players” and “Phrygians”; and others as “earth-born” and “wearing brazen shields.” Some call the Corybantes, and not the Curetes, “Phrygians,” but the Curetes “Cretes,” and say that the Cretes were the first people to don brazen armour in Euboea, and that on this account they were also called “Chalcidians”; still others say that the Corybantes, who came from Bactriana (some say from among the Colchians), were given as armed ministers to Rhea by the Titans. But in the Cretan accounts the Curetes are called “rearers of Zeus,” and “protectors of Zeus,” having been summoned from Phrygia to Crete by Rhea. Some say that, of the nine Telchines who lived in Rhodes, those who accompanied Rhea to Crete and “reared” Zeus “in his youth” were named “Curetes”; and that Cyrbas, a comrade of these, who was the founder of Hierapytna, afforded a pretext to the Prasians for saying among the Rhodians that the Corybantes were certain genii, sons of Athena and Helius. Further, some call the Corybantes sons of Cronus, but others say that the Corybantes were sons of Zeus and Calliope and were identical with the Cabeiri, and that these went off to Samothrace, which in earlier times was called Melite, and that their rites were mystical.
10.3.20.1
But though the Scepsian, who compiled these myths, does not accept the last statement, on the ground that no mystic story of the Cabeiri is told in Samothrace, still he cites also the opinion of Stesimbrotus the Thasian that the sacred rites in Samothrace were performed in honor of the Cabeiri: and the Scepsian says that they were called Cabeiri after the mountain Cabeirus in Berecyntia. Some, however, believe that the Curetes were the same as the Corybantes and were ministers of Hecate. But the Scepsian again states, in opposition to the words of Euripides, that the rites of Rhea were not sanctioned or in vogue in Crete, but only in Phrygia and the Troad, and that those who say otherwise are dealing in myths rather than in history, though perhaps the identity of the place-names contributed to their making this mistake. For instance, Ida is not only a Trojan, but also a Cretan, mountain; and Dicte is a place in Scepsia and also a mountain in Crete; and Pytna, after which the city Hierapytna was named, is a peak of Ida. And there is a Hippocorona in the territory of Adramyttium and a Hippocoronium in Crete. And Samonium is the eastern promontory of the island and a plain in the territory of Neandria and in that of the Alexandreians.
10.3.21.1
Acusilaüs, the Argive, calls Cadmilus the son of Cabeiro and Hephaestus, and Cadmilus the father of three Cabeiri, and these the fathers of the nymphs called Cabeirides. Pherecydes says that nine Cyrbantes were sprung from Apollo and Rhetia, and that they took up their abode in Samothrace; and that three Cabeiri and three nymphs called Cabeirides were the children of Cabeiro, the daughter of Proteus, and Hephaestus, and that sacred rites were instituted in honor of each triad. Now it has so happened that the Cabeiri are most honored in Imbros and Lemnos, but they are also honored in separate cities of the Troad; their names, however, are kept secret. Herodotus says that there were temples of the Cabeiri in Memphis, as also of Hephaestus, but that Cambyses destroyed them. The places where these deities were worshipped are uninhabited, both the Corybanteium in Hamaxitia in the territory now belonging to the Alexandreians near Sminthium, and Corybissa in Scepsia in the neighborhood of the river Eurëeis and of the village which bears the same name and also of the winter torrent Aethalöeis. The Scepsian says that it is probable that the Curetes and the Corybantes were the same, being those who had been accepted as young men, or “youths,” for the war-dance in connection with the holy rites of the Mother of the gods, and also as “corybantes” from the fact that they “walked with a butting of their heads” in a dancing way. These are called by the poet “betarmones”:Come now, all ye that are the best ‘betarmones’ of the Phaeacians. And because the Corybantes are inclined to dancing and to religious frenzy, we say of those who are stirred with frenzy that they are “corybantising.”
10.3.22.1
Some writers say that the name “Idaean Dactyli” was given to the first settlers of the lower slopes of Mt. Ida, for the lower slopes of mountains are called “feet,” and the summits “heads”; accordingly, the several extremities of Ida (all of which are sacred to the Mother of the gods) were called Dactyli. Sophocles thinks that the first male Dactyli were five in number, who were the first to discover and to work iron, as well as many other things which are useful for the purposes of life, and that their sisters were five in number, and that they were called Dactyli from their number. But different writers tell the myth in different ways, joining difficulty to difficulty; and both the names and numbers they use are different; and they name one of them “Celmis” and others “Damnameneus” and “Heracles” and “Acmon.” Some call them natives of Ida, others settlers; but all agree that iron was first worked by these on Ida; and all have assumed that they were wizards and attendants of the Mother of the gods, and that they lived in Phrygia about Ida; and they use the term Phrygia for the Troad because, after Troy was sacked, the Phrygians, whose territory bordered on the Troad, got the mastery over it. And they suspect that both the Curetes and the Corybantes were offspring of the Idaean Dactyli; at any rate, the first hundred men born in Crete were called Idaean Dactyli, they say, and as offspring of these were born nine Curetes, and each of these begot ten children who were called Idaean Dactyli.
10.3.23.1
I have been led on to discuss these people rather at length, although I am not in the least fond of myths, because the facts in their case border on the province of theology. And theology as a whole must examine early opinions and myths, since the ancients expressed enigmatically the physical notions which they entertained concerning the facts and always added the mythical element to their accounts. Now it is not easy to solve with accuracy all the enigmas, but if the multitude of myths be set before us, some agreeing and others contradicting one another, one might be able more readily to conjecture out of them what the truth is. For instance, men probably speak in their myths about the “mountain-roaming” of religious zealots and of gods themselves, and about their “religious frenzies,” for the same reason that they are prompted to believe that the gods dwell in the skies and show forethought, among their other interests, for prognostication by signs. Now seeking for metals, and hunting, and searching for the things that are useful for the purposes of life, are manifestly closely related to mountain-roaming, whereas juggling and magic are closely related to religious frenzies, worship, and divination. And such also is devotion to the arts, in particular to the Dionysiac and Orphic arts. But enough on this subject.
10.4.1.1
Since I have already described the islands of the Peloponnesus in detail, not only the others, but also those in the Corinthian Gulf and those in front of it, I must next discuss Crete (for it, too, belongs to the Peloponnesus) and any islands that are in the neighborhood of Crete. Among these are the Cyclades and the Sporades, some worthy of mention, others of less significance.
10.4.2.1
But at present let me first discuss Crete. Now although Eudoxus says that it is situated in the Aegaean Sea, one should not so state, but rather that it lies between Cyrenaea and that part of Greece which extends from Sunium to Laconia, stretching lengthwise parallel with these countries from west to east, and that it is washed on the north by the Aegaean and the Cretan Seas, and on the south by the Libyan Sea, which borders on the Aegyptian. As for its two extremities, the western is in the neighborhood of Phalasarna; it has a breadth of about two hundred stadia and is divided into two promontories (of these the southern is called Criumetopon, the northern Cimarus), whereas the eastern is Samonium, which falls toward the east not much farther than Sunium.
10.4.3.1
As for its size, Sosicrates, whose account of the island, according to Apollodorus, is exact, defines it as follows: In length, more than two thousand three hundred stadia, and in breadth, . . . , so that its circuit, according to him, would amount to more than five thousand stadia; but Artemidorus says it is four thousand one hundred. Hieronymus says that its length is two thousand stadia and its breadth irregular, and therefore might mean that the circuit is greater than Artemidorus says. For about a third of its length . . . ; and then comes an isthmus of about one hundred stadia, which, on the northern sea, has a settlement called Amphimalla, and, on the southern, Phoenix, belonging to the Lampians. The island is broadest near the middle. And from here the shores again converge to an isthmus narrower than the former, about sixty stadia in width, which extends from Minoa, city of the Lyctians, to Hierapytna and the Libyan Sea; the city is situated on the gulf. Then the island projects into a sharp promontory, Samonium, which slopes in the direction of Aegypt and the islands of the Rhodians.
10.4.4.1
The island is mountainous and thickly wooded, but it has fruitful glens. Of the mountains, those towards the west are called Leuca; they do not fall short of Taÿgetus in height, extend in length about three hundred stadia, and form a ridge which terminates approximately at the narrows. In the middle, in the most spacious part of the island, is Mount Ida, loftiest of the mountains of Crete and circular in shape, with a circuit of six hundred stadia; and around it are the best cities. There are other mountains in Crete that are about as high as the Leuca, some terminating towards the south and others towards the east.
10.4.5.1
The voyage from Cyrenaea to Criumetopon takes two days and nights, and the distance from Cimarus to Taenarum is seven hundred stadia, Cythera lying between them; and the voyage from Samonium to Aegypt takes four days and nights, though some say three. Some state that this is a voyage of five thousand stadia, but others still less. Eratosthenes says that the distance from Cyrenaea to Criumetopon is two thousand, and from there to the Peloponnesus less . . .
10.4.6.1
But one tongue with others is mixed,the poet says;there dwell Achaeans, there Eteo-Cretans proud of heart, there Cydonians and Dorians, too, of waving plumes, and goodly Pelasgians. Of these peoples, according to Staphylus, the Dorians occupy the part towards the east, the Cydonians the western part, the Eteo-Cretans the southern; and to these last belongs the town Prasus, where is the temple of the Dictaean Zeus; whereas the other peoples, since they were more powerful, dwelt in the plains. Now it is reasonable to suppose that the Eteo-Cretans and the Cydonians were autochthonous, and that the others were foreigners, who, according to Andron, came from Thessaly, from the country which in earlier times was called Doris, but is now called Hestiaeotis; it was from this country that the Dorians who lived in the neighborhood of Parnassus set out, as he says, and founded Erineüs, Boeüm, and Cytinium, and hence by Homer are called “trichaïces.” However, writers do not accept the account of Andron at all, since he represents the Tetrapolis Doris as being a Tripolis, and the metropolis of the Dorians as a mere colony of Thessalians; and they derive the meaning of “trichaïces” either from the “trilophia,” or from the fact that the crests were “trichini.”
10.4.7.1
There are several cities in Crete, but the greatest and most famous are three: Cnossus, Gortyna and Cydonia. The praises of Cnossus are hymned above the rest both by Homer, who calls it “great” and “the kingdom of Minos,” and by the later poets. Furthermore, it continued for a long time to win the first honors; then it was humbled and deprived of many of its prerogatives, and its superior rank passed over to Gortyna and Lyctus; but later it again recovered its olden dignity as the metropolis. Cnossus is situated in a plain, its original circuit being thirty stadia, between the Lyctian and Gortynian territories, being two hundred stadia distant from Gortyna, and a hundred and twenty from Lyttus, which the poet named Lyctus. Cnossus is twenty-five stadia from the northern sea, Gortyna is ninety from the Libyan Sea, and Lyctus itself is eighty from the Libyan. And Cnossus has Heracleium as its seaport.
10.4.8.1
But Minos is said to have used as seaport Amnisus, where is the temple of Eileithuia. In earlier times Cnossus was called Caeratus, bearing the same name as the river which flows past it. According to history, Minos was an excellent law-giver, and also the first to gain the mastery of the sea; and he divided the island into three parts and founded a city in each part, Cnossus in the . . . And it, too, lies to the north. As Ephorus states, Minos was an emulator of a certain Rhadamanthys of early times, a man most just and bearing the same name as Minos’s brother, who is reputed to have been the first to civilize the island by establishing laws and by uniting cities under one city as metropolis and by setting up constitutions, alleging that he brought from Zeus the several decrees which he promulgated. So, in imitation of Rhadamanthys, Minos would go up every nine years, as it appears, to the cave of Zeus, tarry there, and come back with commandments drawn up in writing, which he alleged were ordinances of Zeus; and it was for this reason that the poet says,there Minos reigned as king, who held converse with great Zeus every ninth year. Such is the statement of Ephorus; but again the early writers have given a different account of Minos, which is contrary to that of Ephorus, saying that he was tyrannical, harsh, and an exactor of tribute, representing in tragedy the story of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, and the adventures of Theseus and Daedalus.
10.4.9.1
Now, as for these two accounts, it is hard to say which is true; and there is another subject that is not agreed upon by all, some saying that Minos was a foreigner, but others that he was a native of the island. The poet, however, seems rather to advocate the second view when he says,Zeus first begot Minos, guardian o’er Crete.In regard to Crete, writers agree that in ancient times it had good laws, and rendered the best of the Greeks its emulators, and in particular the Lacedaemonians, as is shown, for instance, by Plato and also by Ephorus, who in his Europe has described its constitution. But later it changed very much for the worse; for after the Tyrrhenians, who more than any other people ravaged Our Sea, the Cretans succeeded to the business of piracy; their piracy was later destroyed by the Cilicians; but all piracy was broken up by the Romans, who reduced Crete by war and also the piratical strongholds of the Cilicians. And at the present time Cnossus has even a colony of Romans.
10.4.10.1
So much for Cnossus, a city to which I myself am not alien, although, on account of man’s fortune and of the changes and issues therein, the bonds which at first connected me with the city have disappeared: Dorylaüs was a military expert and one of the friends of Mithridates Euergetes. He, because of his experience in military affairs, was appointed to enlist mercenaries, and often visited not only Greece and Thrace, but also the mercenaries of Crete, that is, before the Romans were yet in possession of the island and while the number of mercenary soldiers in the island, from whom the piratical bands were also wont to be recruited, was large. Now when Dorylaüs was sojourning there war happened to break out between the Cnossians and the Gortynians, and he was appointed general, finished the war successfully, and speedily won the greatest honors. But when, a little later, he learned that Euergetes, as the result of a plot, had been treacherously slain in Sinope by his closest associates, and heard that the succession had passed to his wife and young children, he despaired of the situation there and stayed on at Cnossus. There, by a Macetan woman, Sterope by name, he begot two sons, Lagetas and Stratarchas (the latter of whom l myself saw when he was an extremely old man), and also one daughter. Now Euergetes had two sons, one of whom, Mithridates, surnamed Eupator, succeeded to the rule when he was eleven years old. Dorylaüs, the son of Philetaerus, was his foster brother; and Philotaerus was a brother of Dorylaüs the military expert. And when the king Mithridates reached manhood, he was so infatuated with the companionship of his foster brother Dorylaüs that he not only conferred upon him the greatest honors, but also cared for his kinsmen and summoned those who lived at Cnossus. These were the household of Lagetas and his brother, their father having already died, and they themselves having reached manhood; and they quit Cnossus and went home. My mother’s mother was the sister of Lagetas. Now when Lagetas prospered, these others shared in his prosperity, but when he was ruined (for he was caught in the act of trying to cause the kingdom to revolt to the Romans, on the understanding that he was to be established at the head of the government), their fortunes were also ruined at the same time, and they were reduced to humility; and the bonds which connected them with the Cnossians, who themselves had undergone countless changes, fell into neglect. But enough for my account of Cnossus.
10.4.11.1
After Cnossus, the city of the Gortynians seems to have ranked second in power; for when these two cooperated they held in subjection all the rest of the inhabitants, and when they had a quarrel there was dissension throughout the island. But Cydonia was the greatest addition to whichever side it attached itself. The city of the Gortynians also lies in a plain; and in ancient times, perhaps, it was walled, as Homer states,and well-walled Gortyn,but later it lost its walls from their very foundations, and has remained unwalled ever since; for although Ptolemy Philopator began to build a wall, he proceeded with it only about eighty stadia; at any rate, it is worth mentioning that the settlement once filled out a circuit of about fifty stadia. It is ninety stadia distant from the Libyan Sea at Leben, which is its trading center; it also has another seaport, Matalum, from which it is a hundred and thirty stadia distant. The Lethaeus River flows through the whole of its territory.
10.4.12.1
From Leben came Leucocomas and his lover Euxynthetus, the story of whom is told by Theophrastus in his treatise On Love. Of the tasks which Leucocomas assigned to Euxynthetus, one, he says, was this—to bring back his dog from Prasus. The country of the Prasians borders on that of the Lebenians, being seventy stadia distant from the sea and a hundred and eighty from Gortyn. As I have said, Prasus belonged to the Eteo-Cretans; and the temple of the Dictaean Zeus was there; for Dicte is near it, not “close to the Idaean Mountain,” as Aratus says, for Dicte is a thousand stadia distant from Ida, being situated at that distance from it towards the rising sun, and a hundred from Samonium. Prasus was situated between Samonium and the Cherronesus, sixty stadia above the sea; it was razed to the ground by the Hierapytnians. And neither is Callimachus right, they say, when he says that Britomartis, in her flight from the violence of Minos, leaped from Dicte into fishermen’s “nets,” and that because of this she herself was called Dictynna by the Cydoniatae, and the mountain Dicte; for Cydonia is not in the neighborhood of these places at all, but lies near the western limits of the island. However, there is a mountain called Tityrus in Cydonia, on which is a temple, not the “Dictaean” temple, but the “Dictynnaean.”
10.4.13.1
Cydonia is situated on the sea, facing Laconia, and is equidistant, about eight hundred stadia, from the two cities Cnossus and Gortyn, and is eighty stadia distant from Aptera, and forty from the sea in that region. The seaport of Aptera is Cisamus. The territory.of the Polyrrhenians borders on that of the Cydoniatae towards the west, and the temple of Dictynna is in their territory. They are about thirty stadia distant from the sea, and sixty from Phalasarna. They lived in villages in earlier times; and then Achaeans and Laconians made a common settlement, building a wall round a place that was naturally strong and faced towards the south.
10.4.14.1
Of the three cities that were united under one metropolis by Minos, the third, which was Phaestus, was razed to the ground by the Gortynians; it is sixty stadia distant from Gortyn, twenty from the sea, and forty from the seaport Matalum; and the country is held by those who razed it. Rhytium, also, together with Phaestus, belongs to the Gortynians: and Phaestus and Rhytium. Epimenides, who performed the purifications by means of his verses, is said to have been from Phaestus. And Lissen also is in the Phaestian territory. Of Lyctus, which I have mentioned before, the seaport is Cherronesus, as it is called, where is the temple of Britomartis. But the Cities Miletus and Lycastus, which are catalogued along with Lyctus, no longer exist; and as for their territory, the Lyctians took one portion of it and the Cnossians the other, after they had razed the city to the ground.
10.4.15.1
Since the poet speaks of Crete at one time as “possessing a hundred cities,” and also at another as “possessing ninety cities,” Ephorus says that the ten were founded later than the others, after the Trojan War, by the Dorians who accompanied Althaemenes the Argive; he adds that it was Odysseus, however, who called it “Crete of the ninety cities.” Now this statement is plausible, but others say that the ten cities were razed to the ground by the enemies of Idomeneus. However, in the first place, the poet does not say that Crete had one hundred cities at the time of the Trojan War, but rather in his own time (for he is speaking in his own person, although, if the statement was made by some person who was living at the time of the Trojan War, as is the case in the Odyssey, when Odysseus says “of the ninety cities,” then it would be well to interpret it accordingly). In the second place, if we should concede this, the next statement could not he maintained; for it is not likely that these cities were wiped out by the enemies of Idomeneus either during the expedition or after his return from Troy; for when the poet said,and all his companions Idomeneus brought to Crete, all who escaped from the war, and the sea robbed him of none, he would also have mentioned this disaster; for of course Odysseus could not have known of the obliteration of the cities, since he came in contact with no Greeks either during his wanderings or later. And he who accompanied Idomeneus on the expedition to Troy and returned safely home at the same time could not have known what occurred in the homeland of Idomeneus either during the expedition or the return from Troy, nor yet even after the return; for if ldomeneus escaped with all his companions, he returned home strong, and therefore his enemies were not likely to be strong enough to take ten cities away from him. Such, then, is my description of the country of the Cretans.
10.4.16.1
As for their constitution, which is described by Ephorus, it might suffice to tell in a cursory way its most important provisions. The lawgiver, he says, seems to take it for granted that liberty is a state’s greatest good, for this alone makes property belong specifically to those who have acquired it, whereas in a condition of slavery everything belongs to the rulers and not to the ruled; but those who have liberty must guard it; now harmony ensues when dissension, which is the result of greed and luxury, is removed; for when all citizens live a self-restrained and simple life there arises neither envy nor arrogance nor hatred towards those who are like them; and this is why the lawgiver commanded the boys to attend the “Troops,” as they are called, and the full grown men to eat together at the public messes which they call the “Andreia,” so that the poorer, being fed at public expense, might be on an equality with the well-to-do; and in order that courage, and not cowardice, might prevail, he commanded that from boyhood they should grow up accustomed to arms and toils, so as to scorn heat, cold, marches over rugged and steep roads, and blows received in gymnasiums or regular battles; and that they should practise, not only archery, but also the war-dance, which was invented and made known by the Curetes at first, and later, also, by the man who arranged the dance that was named after him, I mean the Pyrrhic dance, so that not even their sports were without a share in activities that were useful for warfare; and likewise that they should use in their songs the Cretic rhythms, which were very high pitched, and were invented by Thales, to whom they ascribe, not only their Paeans and other local songs, but also many of their institutions; and that they should use military dress and shoes; and that arms should be to them the most valuable of gifts.
10.4.17.1
It is said by some writers, Ephorus continues, that most of the Cretan institutions are Laconian, but the truth is that they were invented by the Cretans and only perfected by the Spartans; and the Cretans, when their cities, and particularly that of the Cnossians, were devastated, neglected military affairs; but some of the institutions continued in use among the Lyctians, Gortynians, and certain other small cities to a greater extent than among the Cnossians; in fact, the institutions of the Lyctians are cited as evidence by those who represent the Laconian as older; for, they argue, being colonists, they preserve the customs of the mother city, since even on general grounds it is absurd to represent those who are better organized and governed as emulators of their inferiors; but this is not correct, Ephorus says, for, in the first place, one should not draw evidence as to antiquity from the present state of things, for both peoples have undergone a complete reversal; for instance, the Cretans in earlier times were masters of the sea, and hence the proverb, “The Cretan does not know the sea,” is applied to those who pretend not to know what they do know, although now the Cretans have lost their fleet; and, in the second place, it does not follow that, because some of the cities in Crete were Spartan colonies, they were under compulsion to keep to the Spartan institutions; at any rate, many colonial cities do not observe their ancestral customs, and many, also, of those in Crete that are not colonial have the same customs as the colonists.
10.4.18.1
Lycurgus the Spartan law-giver, Ephorus continues, was five generations later than the Althaemenes who conducted the colony to Crete; for historians say that Althaemenes was son of the Cissus who founded Argos about the same time when Procles was establishing Sparta as metropolis; and Lycurgus, as is agreed by all, was sixth in descent from Procles; and copies are not earlier than their models, nor more recent things earlier than older things; not only the dancing which is customary among the Lacedaemonians, but also the rhythms and paeans that are sung according to law, and many other Spartan institutions, are called “Cretan” among the Lacedaemonians, as though they originated in Crete; and some of the public offices are not only administered in the same way as in Crete, but also have the same names, as, for instance, the office of the “Gerontes,” and that of the “Hippeis” (except that the “Hippeis” in Crete actually possessed horses, and from this fact it is inferred that the office of the “Hippeis” in Crete is older, for they preserve the true meaning of the appellation, whereas the Lacedaemonian “Hippeis” do not keep horses); but though the Ephors have the same functions as the Cretan Cosmi, they have been named differently; and the public messes are, even today, still called “Andreia” among the Cretans, but among the Spartans they ceased to be called by the same name as in earlier times; at any rate, the following is found in Alcman: In feasts and festive gatherings, amongst the guests who partake of the Andreia, ’tis meet to begin the paean
10.4.19.1
It is said by the Cretans, Ephorus continues, that Lycurgus came to them for the following reason: Polydectes was the elder brother of Lycurgus; when he died he left his wife pregnant; now for a time Lycurgus reigned in his brother’s place, but when a child was born he became the child’s guardian, since the office of king descended to the child, but some man, railing at Lycurgus, said that he knew for sure that Lycurgus would be king; and Lycurgus, suspecting that in consequence of such talk he himself might be falsely accused of plotting against the child, and fearing that, if by any chance the child should die, he himself might be blamed for it by his enemies, sailed away to Crete; this, then, is said to be the cause of his sojourn in Crete; and when he arrived he associated with Thales, a melic poet and an expert in lawgiving; and after learning from him the manner in which both Rhadamanthys in earlier times and Minos in later times published their laws to men as from Zeus, and after sojourning in Egypt also and learning among other things their institutions, and, according to some writers, after meeting Homer, who was living in Chios, he sailed back to his homeland, and found his brother’s son, Charilaüs the son of Polydectes, reigning as king; and then he set out to frame the laws, making visits to the god at Delphi, and bringing thence the god’s decrees, just as Minos and his house had brought their ordinances from the cave of Zeus, most of his being similar to theirs.
10.4.20.1
The following are the most important provisions in the Cretan institutions as stated by Ephorus. In Crete all those who are selected out of the “Troop” of boys at the same time are forced to marry at the same time, although they do not take the girls whom they have married to their own homes immediately, but as soon as the girls are qualified to manage the affairs of the house. A girl’s dower, if she has brothers, is half of the brother’s portion. The children must learn, not only their letters, but also the songs prescribed in the laws and certain forms of music. Now those who are still younger are taken to the public messes, the “Andreia”; and they sit together on the ground as they eat their food, clad in shabby garments, the same both winter and summer, and they also wait on the men as well as on themselves. And those who eat together at the same mess join battle both with one another and with those from different messes. A boy director presides over each mess. But the older boys are taken to the “Troops”; and the most conspicuous and influential of the boys assemble the “Troops,” each collecting as many boys as he possibly can; the leader of each “Troop” is generally the father of the assembler, and he has authority to lead them forth to hunt and to run races, and to punish anyone who is disobedient; and they are fed at public expense; and on certain appointed days “Troop” contends with “Troop,” marching rhythmically into battle, to the tune of flute and lyre, as is their custom in actual war; and they actually bear marks of the blows received, some inflicted by the hand, others by iron weapons.
10.4.21.1
They have a peculiar custom in regard to love affairs, for they win the objects of their love, not by persuasion, but by abduction; the lover tells the friends of the boy three or four days beforehand that he is going to make the abduction; but for the friends to conceal the boy, or not to let him go forth by the appointed road, is indeed a most disgraceful thing, a confession, as it were, that the boy is unworthy to obtain such a lover; and when they meet, if the abductor is the boy’s equal or superior in rank or other respects, the friends pursue him and lay hold of him, though only in a very gentle way, thus satisfying the custom; and after that they cheerfully turn the boy over to him to lead away; if, however, the abductor is unworthy, they take the boy away from him. And the pursuit does not end until the boy is taken to the “Andreium” of his abductor. They regard as a worthy object of love, not the boy who is exceptionally handsome, but the boy who is exceptionally manly and decorous. After giving the boy presents, the abductor takes him away to any place in the country he wishes; and those who were present at the abduction follow after them, and after feasting and hunting with them for two months (for it is not permitted to detain the boy for a longer time), they return to the city. The boy is released after receiving as presents a military habit, an ox, and a drinking-cup (these are the gifts required by law), and other things so numerous and costly that the friends, on account of the number of the expenses, make contributions thereto. Now the boy sacrifices the ox to Zeus and feasts those who returned with him; and then he makes known the facts about his intimacy with his lover, whether, perchance, it has pleased him or not, the law allowing him this privilege in order that, if any force was applied to him at the time of the abduction, he might be able at this feast to avenge himself and be rid of the lover. It is disgraceful for those who are handsome in appearance or descendants of illustrious ancestors to fail to obtain lovers, the presumption being that their character is responsible for such a fate. But the parastathentes (for thus they call those who have been abducted) receive honors; for in both the dances and the races they have the positions of highest honor, and are allowed to dress in better clothes than the rest, that is, in the habit given them by their lovers; and not then only, but even after they have grown to manhood, they wear a distinctive dress, which is intended to make known the fact that each wearer has become “kleinos,” for they call the loved one “kleinos” and the lover “philetor.” So much for their customs in regard to love affairs.
10.4.22.1
The Cretans choose ten Archons. Concerning the matters of greatest importance they use as counsellors the “Gerontes,” as they are called. Those who have been thought worthy to hold the office of the “Cosmi” and are otherwise adjudged men of approved worth are appointed members of this Council. I have assumed that the constitution of the Cretans is worthy of description both on account of its peculiar character and on account of its fame. Not many, however, of these institutions endure, but the administration of affairs is carried on mostly by means of the decrees of the Romans, as is also the case in the other provinces.

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-eng3. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.