Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/406

398 STRABO. CASAUB. 622. by Menestheus and the Athenians who accompanied him in the expedition against Ilium. The places about Pitane, and Atarneus, and others in this quarter, which follow Elaea, have been already described. 6. Cyme is the largest and best of the ^Eolian cities. This and Lesbos may be considered the capitals of the other cities, about 30 in number, of which not a few exist no longer. The inhabitants of Cyme are ridiculed for their stupidity, for, according to some writers, it is said of them that they only began to let the tolls of the harbour three hundred years after the foundation of their city, and that before this time the town had never received any revenue of the kind ; hence the report that it was late before they perceived that they inhabited a city lying on the sea. There is another story, that, having borrowed money in the name of the state, they pledged their porticos as security for the payment of it. Afterwards, the money not having been repaid on the appointed day, they were prohibited from walk- ing in them. The creditors, through shame, gave notice by the crier whenever it rained, that the inhabitants might take shelter under the porticos. As the crier called out, " Go under the porticos," a report prevailed that the Cymaeans did not perceive that they were to go under the porticos when it rained unless they had notice from the public crier. 1 Ephorus, a man indisputably of high repute, a disciple of Isocrates the orator, was a native of this city. He was an historian, and wrote the book on Inventions. Hesiod the poet, who long preceded Ephorus, was a native of this place, for he himself says, that his father Dius left Cyme in JEolis and migrated to the Bosotians ; " he dwelt near Helicon in Ascra, a village wretched in winter, in sum- mer oppressive, and not pleasant at any season." 1 In spite of the improbability "of these anecdotes, there must have been something real in the dulness of the Cymsoans ; for Cymaean was employed by the Greeks as a word synonymous with stupid. Cassar, among the Romans, (Plutarch, Caesar,) adopted this name in the same sense. This stupidity gave occasion to a proverb, OVOQ tig KvpaiovQ, an ass among the Cymaeans, which was founded on the following story. The first time an ass appeared among the Cymaeans, the inhabitants, who were unacquainted with the beast, deserted the town with such precipita- tion that one would have said they were escaping from an earthquake.