Book 13
1.1
Let this, then, mark the boundary of Phrygia.The translator must here record his obligations to Dr. Walter Leaf for his monumental works on the Troad: his Troy, Macmillan and Co., 1912, and his Strabo on the Troad, Cambridge, 1923, and his numerous monographs in classical periodicals. The results of his investigations in the Troad prove the great importance of similar investigations, on the spot, of various other portions of Strabo’s “Inhabited World.” The reader will find a map of Asia Minor in Vol. 5. of the Loeb edition. I shall now return again to the Propontis and the coast that comes next after the Aesepus River, and follow the same order of description as before. The first country on this seaboard is the Troad, the fame of which, although it is left in ruins and in desolation, nevertheless prompts in writers no ordinary prolixity. With this fact in view, I should ask the pardon of my readers and appeal to them not to fasten the blame for the length of my discussion upon me rather than upon those who strongly yearn for knowledge of the things that are famous and ancient. And my discussion is further prolonged by the number of the peoples who have colonized the country, both Greeks and barbarians, and by the historians, who do not write the same things on the same subjects, nor always clearly either; among the first of these is Homer, who leaves us to guess about most things. And it is necessary for me to arbitrate between his statements and those of the others, after I shall first have described in a summary way the nature of the region in question.
