Book 13
1.7
The people, also, who lived between the Aesepus and Abydos were Trojans, for the country about Abydos was governed by Asius; those who dwelt about Percote and Practius, at Sestos, Abydos, and the noble Arisbe, were led by Asius, the son of Hyrtacus.Il. i. 835. Now it is manifest that a son of Priam, who had the care of his father’s brood mares, dwelt at Abydos; he wounded the spurious son of Priam, Democoon, who came from Abydos from the pastures of the swift mares.Il. iv. 499. At Percote,Bergas. the son of Hicetaon was the herdsman of oxen, but not of those belonging to strangers; first he addressed the brave son of Hicetaon, Melanippus, who was lately tending the oxen in their pastures at Percote.Il. xv. 546. so that this country also was part of the Troad, and the subsequent tract as far as Adrasteia, for it was governed by the two sons of Merops of Percote.Il. ii. 831.Il. ii. 831.
1.7
All therefore were Trojans from Abydos to Adrasteia, divided, however, into two bodies, one governed by Asius, the other by the Meropidae, as the country of the Cilicians is divided into the Thebaic and the Lyrnessian Cilicia. To this district may have belonged the country under the sway of Eurypylus, for it follows next to the Lyrnessis, or territory of Lyrnessus.So that Cilicia was divided into three principalities, as Strabo observes below, c. i. § 70. But perhaps this division was only invented for the purpose of completing the number of the nine principalities, for Strabo above, c. i. § 2, speaks in a manner to let us suppose that other authors reckoned eight only. However this may be, the following is the number of the dynasties or principalities established by our author. 1. That of Mynes; 2. that of Eetion, both in Cilicia; 3. that of Altes; 4. that of Hector; 5. that of Aeneas; 6. that of Pandarus; 7. that of Asius; 8. that of the son of Merops; 9. that of Eurypylus, also in Cilicia. Coraÿ.
