Book 8
3.22
Cyparissia is on the Triphylian Sea, and so are Pyrgi, and the Acidon and Neda Rivers.As often, Strabo means the mouths of rivers. At the present time the stream of the Neda is the boundary between Triphylia and Messenia (an impetuous stream that comes down from Lycaeus, an Arcadian mountain, out of a spring, which, according to the myth, Rhea, after she had given birth to Zeus, caused to break forth in order to have water to bathe in); and it flows past Phigalia, opposite the place where the Pyrgetans, last of the Triphylians, border on the Cyparissians, first of the Messenians; but in the early times the division between the two countries was different, so that some of the territories across the Neda were subject to Nestor—not only Cyparissëeis, but also some other parts on the far side. Just so, too, the poet prolongs the Pylian Sea as far as the seven cities which Agamemnon promised to Achilles: “and all are situated near the sea of sandy Pylus;”Hom. Il. 9.153This line from the Iliad, though wrongly translated above, is translated as Strabo interpreted it. He, like Aristarchus, took νέαται as a verb meaning “are situated,” but as elsewhere in the Iliad (e.g., Hom. Il. 11.712) it is an adjective meaning “last.” for this phrase is equivalent to “near the Pylian Sea.”
