Book 7
7.1
These alone, then, of all the tribes that are marked off by the Ister and by the Illyrian and Thracian mountains, deserve to be mentioned, occupying as they do the whole of the Adriatic seaboard beginning at the recess, and also the sea-board that is called “the left parts of the Pontus,” and extends from the Ister River as far as Byzantium. But there remain to be described the southerly parts of the aforesaidSee 7. 5. 1. mountainous country and next thereafter the districts that are situated below them, among which are both Greece and the adjacent barbarian country as far as the mountains. Now Hecataeus of Miletus says of the Peloponnesus that before the time of the Greeks it was inhabited by barbarians. Yet one might say that in the ancient times the whole of Greece was a settlement of barbarians, if one reasons from the traditions themselves: PelopsSee 8. 3. 31, 4. 4, 5. 5 and 12. 8. 2. brought over peoplesSee the quotation from Hesiod (2 following) and footnote on “peoples.” from Phrygia to the Peloponnesus that received its name from him; and DanaüsSee 8. 6. 9, 10. from Egypt; whereas the Dryopes, the Caucones, the Pelasgi, the Leleges, and other such peoples, apportioned among themselves the parts that are inside the isthmus—and also the parts outside, for Attica was once held by the Thracians who came with Eumolpus,son of Poseidon, king of the Thracians, and reputed founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Daulis in Phocis by Tereus,See 9. 3. 13. CadmeiaThebes and surrounding territory (9. 2. 3, 32). by the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, and Boeotia itself by the Aones and Temmices and Hyantes. According to Pindar, “there was a time when the Boeotian tribe was called “Syes.”Pind. Fr. Dith. 83 (Bergk)Strabo identifies “Hyantes” with “Syes”=“Hyes,” i.e. “swine.” Moreover, the barbarian origin of some is indicated by their names—Cecrops, Godrus, Aïclus, Cothus, Drymas, and Crinacus. And even to the present day the Thracians, Illyrians, and Epeirotes live on the flanks of the Greeks (though this was still more the case formerly than now); indeed most of the country that at the present time is indisputably Greece is held by the barbarians—Macedonia and certain parts of Thessaly by the Thracians, and the parts above Acarnania and Aetolia by the Thesproti, the Cassopaei, the Amphilochi, the Molossi, and the Athamanes—Epeirotic tribes.
