Kitap 9
1.23
Of the mountains, those which are most famous are Hymettus, Brilessus, and Lycabettus; and also Parnes and Corydallus. Near the city are most excellent quarries of marble, the Hymettian and Pentelic. Hymettus also produces the best honey. The silver mines in Attica were originally valuable, but now they have failed. Moreover, those who worked them, when the mining yielded only meager returns, melted again the old refuse, or dross, and were still able to extract from it pure silver, since the workmen of earlier times had been unskillful in heating the ore in furnaces. But though the Attic honey is the best in the world, that in the country of the silver mines is said to be much the best of all, the kind which is called acapniston,“Unsmoked,” i.e., the honey was taken from the hive without the use of smoke. from the mode of its preparation.
1.24
The rivers of Attica are the Cephissus, which has its source in the deme Trinemeis; it flows through the plain (hence the allusions to the “bridge” and the “bridge-railleries “Literally, the “gephyra” (“bridge”) and “gephyrismi” (“bridge-isms”). It appears that on this bridge the Initiated, on their procession to Eleusis, engaged in mutual raillery of a wanton character (but see Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Γεφυρισμοί).) and then through the legs of the walls which extend from the city to the Peiraeus; it empties into the Phaleric Gulf, being a torrential stream most of the time, although in summer it decreases and entirely gives out. And such is still more the case with the Ilissus, which flows from the other part of the city into the same coast, from the region above AgraA suburb in the deme of Agryle. and the Lyceium, and from the fountain which is lauded by Plato in the Phaedrus.229 A.D. So much for Attica.
