XI. STRYMON.
STRYMON is a river of Thrace, that flows along by the
city Edonis. It was formerly called Palaestinus, from
Palaestinus the son of Neptune. For he being at war
with his neighbors, and seized with a violent sickness,
sent his son Haliacmon to be general of his army; who,
rashly giving battle to his enemies, was slain in the fight.
The tidings of which misfortune being brought to Palaestinus, he privately withdrew himself from his guards, and
in the desperation of his grief flung himself into the
River Conozus, which from that accident was afterwards
called Palaestinus. But as for Strymon, he was the son of
Mars and Helice; and hearing that his son Rhesus was
slain, he flung himself into the river Palaestinus, which
was after that called Strymon, by his own name.
In this river grows a stone which is called pausilypus,
or the grief-easing stone. This stone if any one find who
is oppressed with grief, he shall presently be eased of his
sorrow;—as Jason of Byzantium relates in his Thracian
Histories.
Near to this river lie the mountains Rhodope and Haemus. These being brother and sister, and both falling in
love with each other, the one was so presumptuous as to
call his sister his Juno, the other to call her brother her
Jupiter; which so offended the Deities, that they changed
them into mountains bearing their own names.
In these two mountains grow certain stones, which are
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called philadelphi, or the loving brethren. These stones
are of a crow-color, and resembling human shape, and if
they chance to be named when they are separated one
from another, they presently and separately, as they lie,
dissolve and waste away;—as Thrasyllus the Mendesian
testifies in his Third Book of Stones, but more accurately
in his Thracian Histories.
