Book 7
frag.22
After the city Dium comes the Haliacmon River, which empties into the Thermaean Gulf. And the part after this, the seaboard of the gulf towards the north as far as the Axius River, is called Pieria, in which is the city Pydna, now called Citrum. Then come the cities Methone and Alorus. Then the Rivers Erigon and Ludias; and fromsc. “the mouth of the” (cp. Frag. 20). Ludias to the city of Pella the river is navigable, a distance of one hundred and twenty stadia. Methone is forty stadia distant from Pydna and seventy stadia from Alorus. Now Pydna is a Pierian city, whereas Alorus is Bottiaean.Cp. Frag. 20. Now it was in the plain before Pydna that the Romans defeated Perseus in war and destroyed the kingdom of the Macedonians, and it was in the plain before Methone that Philip the son of Amyntas, during the siege of the city, had the misfortune to have his right eye knocked out by a bolt from a catapult.
frag.23
As for Pella, though it was formerly small, Philip greatly enlarged it, because he was reared in it. It has a lake before it; and it is from this lake that the Ludias River flows, and the lake is supplied by an offshoot of the Axius. Then the Axius, dividing both Bottiaea and the land called Amphaxitis, and receiving the Erigon River, discharges its waters between Chalastra and Therma. And on the Anius River lies the place which Homer calls Amydon, saying that the Paeonians went to the aid of Troy from there, “from afar, out of Amydon, from wide-flowing Axius.”Hom. Il. 2.849Cp. Frag. 20. But since the Axius is muddy and since a certain spring rises in Amydon and mingles “water most fair” with it, therefore the next line, “Axius, whose water most fair is spread o’er Aea,”Hom. Il. 2.850The usual meaning of “aea” in Homer is “earth.” is changed to read thus, “Axius, o’er which is spread Aea’s water most fair”Hom. Il. 2.850; for it is not the “water most fair” of the Axius that is spread over the face of the earth, but that of the spring o’er the Axius.
