Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/380

This page needs to be proofread.

372 STRABO. CASATTB. 603. (the silver mines,) 1 which are another fiction framed to sup- port the same hypothesis, in order that the words of Homer may be defended, "where silver is produced." a Where then is Alybe, or Alope, or in whatever way they please to play upon the name ? For they ought to have had the impudence to invent this place also, and not to leave their system imperfect and exposed to detection, when they had once ventured so far. This is the contradiction which may be given to Demetrius. As to the rest, we ought at least in the greatest number of instances to attend to a man of experience, and a native of the country, who also had bestowed so much thought and time on this subject as to write thirty books to interpret little more than 60 lines of the catalogue of the Trojan forces. Palaescepsis, according to Demetrius, is distant from JEnea 50, and from the river ^Esepus 30, stadia, and the name of Palaescepsis is applied to many other places. 3 We return to the sea-coast, from which we have digressed. 46. After the Sigeian promontory, and the Achilleium, is the coast opposite to Tenedos, the Achsei'um, and Tenedos it- self, distant not more than 40 stadia from the continent. It is about 80 stadia in circumference. It contains an JEolian city, and has two harbours, and a temple of Apollo Smin- theus, as the poet testifies ; " Smintheus, thou that reignest over Tenedos." * There are several small islands around it, and two in particu- lar, called Calydnae, 5 situated in the course of the voyage to Lectum. There are some writers who call Tenedos Calydna, 1 'Apywpior, in the neuter gender, with the accent on the antipenultima, means " silver mines." But 'Apyupia, with the accent on the penultima, becomes the name of a town.

  • II. ii. 856.

3 What other places ? I do not think that Strabo or Demetrius have mentioned any other place bearing the name of Palaescepsis. Du Theil. 4 II. i. 38. 4 There are no islands to the south of Tenedos, that is, between Tene- dos and Cape Lectum (Baba). The state of the text might induce us to suppose that, instead of Lectum, Strabo wrote Sigeum. Then the Ca- lydnae islands would answer to the Mauro islands or to the isles des Lap ins. Gossellin.