Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/186

178 STRABO. C.v^.u H. 465. present state of places, both as to position and distances ; for this is the peculiar province of chorography." J But you, Polybius, who introduce popular hearsay, and rumours on the subject of distances, not only of places bey nd Greece, but in Greece itself, have you not been called to answer the charges sometimes of Posidonius, sometimes of Artemidorus, and of many other writers ? ought you not there- fore to excuse us, and not to be offended, if in transferring into our own work a large part of the historical poets from such writers we commit some errors, and to commend us when we are generally more exact in what we say than others, or supply what they omitted through want of information. 6. With respect to the Curetes, some facts are related which belong more immediately, some more remotely, to the history of the -ZEtolians and Acarnanians. The facts more immediately relating to them, are those which have been mentioned before, as that the Curetes were living in the country which is now called jEtolia, and that a body of JEtolians under the command of ^Etolus came there, and drove them into Acarnania ; and these facts besides,, that ^Eolians invaded Pleuronia, which was inhabited by Curetes, and called Curetis, took away their territory, and expelled the possessors. But Archemachus 2 of Euboea says that the Curetes had their settlement at Chalcis, but being continually at war about the plain Lelantum, and finding that the enemy used to seize and drag them by the hair of the forehead, they wore their hair long behind, and cut the hair short in front, whence they had the name of Curetes, (or the shorn,) from cura, (Kovpa,) or the tonsure which they had undergone ; that they removed to ^Etolia, and occupied the places about Pleuron ; that others, who lived on the other side of the Achelous, because they kept their heads unshorn, were called Acarnanians. 3 But according to some writers each tribe derived its name from some hero ; 4 according to others, that they had the 1 As distinguished from geography.. See b. i. c. i. $ 16, note l . 2 The author of a work in several books on Eubcea. Athena?us, b. vi. c. 18. 3 The unshorn. 4 From Acarnan, son of Alcmaeon. Thucyd. b. ii. c. 102. But the hero from whom the Curetes obtained their name is not mentioned.