Book 7
3.10
It is but fair, too, to ask Apollodorus to account for the Mysians that are mentioned in the verses of Homer, whether he thinks that these too are inventionsCp. 7. 3. 6. (when the poet says, “and the Mysians, hand-to-hand fighters and the proud Hippenlolgi”Hom. Il. 13.4), or takes the poet to mean the Mysians in Asia. Now if he takes the poet to mean those in Asia, he will misinterpret him, as I have said before,7. 3. 2. but if he calls them an invention, meaning that there were no Mysians in Thrace, he will contradict the facts; for at any rate, even in our own times, Aelius CatusPerhaps as governor of Macedonia. He was consul with C. Sentius 4. A.D. transplanted from the country on the far side of the Ister into ThraceLower Moesia. fifty thousand persons from among the Getae, a tribe with the same tongue as the Thracians.Cp. 7. 3. 2. And they live there in Thrace now and are called “Moesi”—whether it be that their people of earlier times were so called and that in Asia the name was changed to “Mysi,”See 7. 3. 4. or (what is more apposite to history and the declaration of the poet) that in earlier times their people in Thrace were called “Mysi.” Enough, however, on this subject. I shall now go back to the next topic in the general description.
