Book 9
2.21
These lakes suggest the order of the places that come next after them, so that nominally their positions are clearly determined, because the poet observes no order in naming the places, whether those that are worthy of mention or those that are not. But it is difficult, in naming so many places, most of them insignificant and situated in the interior, to avoid error in every case in the matter of their order. The seaboard, however, has a certain advantage with regard to this: the places there are better known; and, too, the sea more readily suggests the order of places. Therefore I, too, shall try to take my beginnings from the seaboard, although at present I shall disregard this intention, and following the poet shall make my enumeration of the places, adding everything taken from other writers, but omitted by him, that may be useful to us. He begins at Hyria and Aulis, concerning which I have already spoken.9. 2. 8 and 9. 2. 12.
2.22
SchoenusHom. Il. 2.497 is a district of the Theban territory on the road that leads from Thebes to Anthedon, and is about fifty stadia distant from Thebes; and there is also a river Schoenus which flows through it.
2.23
Scolus is a village in the Parasopiani.e., along the Asopus River. country at the foot of Mount Cithaeron, a place that is rugged and hardly habitable; whence the proverb, “neither go to Scolus thyself nor follow another thither.” And this is also said to be the place from which Pentheus was brought when he was torn to pieces.i.e., by the Bacchic women. And there was another Scolus among the cities in the neighborhood of Olynthus bearing the same name as this village. And, as I have already said,8. 6. 24. there is also in the Trachinian Heracleia a village called Parasopii, past which flows a River Asopus; and in Sicyonia there is another Asopus River, and also the country Asopia, through which that Asopus flows; and there are also other rivers which bear this name.
