Book 9
2.14
Near Anthedon, and belonging to Boeotia, is a place that is esteemed sacred, and contains traces of a city, Isus, as it is called, with the first syllable pronounced short. Some, however, think that the verse should be written, “sacred Isus and Anthedon at the extremity,”Hom. Il. 2.508 lengthening the first syllable by poetic licence on account of the meter,i.e., they make the letter “I” long, and so indicate by using the circumflex accent instead of the acute; or he might mean that they lengthen the syllable by pronouncing the “s” as a double “s.” instead of “sacred Nisa,”The “i” in Nisa is long by nature. for Nisa is nowhere to be seen in Boeotia, as Apollodorus says in his work On Ships;see 1. 2. 24. so that Nisa could not be the correct reading, unless by “Nisa” the poet means “Isus”; for there was a city Nisa bearing the same name in the territory of Megara, whose inhabitants emigrated to the foothills of Cithaeron, but it has now disappeared. Some, however, think that we should write “sacred Creusa,” taking the poet to mean the Creusa of today, the naval station of the Thespians, which is situated in the Crisaean Gulf; but others think that we should read “sacred Pharae.” Pharae is one of the “Four United Villages” in the neighborhood of Tanagra, which are: Heleon, Harma, Mycalessus, and Pharae. And still others write as follows: “sacred Nysa.” And Nysa is a village in Helicon.The range of mountains in Boeotia between Lake Copais and the Corinthian Gulf. Such, then, is the seaboard facing Euboea.
