Book 10
1.10
The power which the Eretrians once possessed, is evinced by a pillar which was placed in the temple of Diana Amarynthia. There is an inscription on it to this effect, that their processions upon their public festivals consisted of three thousand heavy-armed soldiers, six hundred horsemen, and sixty chariots. They were masters, besides other islands, of Andros, Tenos, and Ceos. They received colonists from Elis, whence their frequent use of the letter R, (οͅ,)A common practice of the Dorians. not only at the end, but in the middle of words, which exposed them to the raillery of comic writers. Oechalia,B. viii. c. iii. § a village, the remains of a city destroyed by Hercules, belongs to the district of Eretria. It has the same name as that in Trachinia, as that near Tricca,In Thessaly. as that in Arcadia, (which later writers call Andania,) and as that in Aetolia near the Eurytanes.
1.11
At present ChalcisNegropont. It was one of the three cities which Philip of Macedon called the chains of Greece. Brass (χαλκὸς) was said to have been first found there. is allowed, without dispute, to hold the first rank, and is called the capital of the Euboeans. Eretria holds the second place. Even in former times these cities had great influence both in war and peace, so that they afforded to philosophers an agreeable and tranquil retreat. A proof of this is the establishment at Eretria of the school of Eretrian philosophers, disciples of Menedemus; and at an earlier period the residence of AristotleHe retired there B. C. 322. at Chalcis, where he also died.
