[6]
“But one tongue with others is mixed,
”the poet says;“there dwell Achaeans, there Eteo-Cretans1 proud of heart, there Cydonians and Dorians, too, of waving plumes, and goodly Pelasgians.
”23 Of these peoples, according to Staphylus,4 the Dorians occupy the part towards the east, the Cydonians the western part, the Eteo-Cretans the southern; and to these last belongs the town Prasus, where is the temple of the Dictaean Zeus; whereas the other peoples, since they were more powerful, dwelt in the plains. Now it is reasonable to suppose that the Eteo-Cretans and the Cydonians were autochthonous, and that the others were foreigners, who, according to Andron,5 came from Thessaly, from the country which in earlier times was called Doris, but is now called Hestiaeotis; it was from this country that the Dorians who lived in the neighborhood of Parnassus set out, as he says, and founded Erineüs, Boeüm, and Cytinium, and hence by Homer6 are called "trichaïces."7 However, writers do not accept the account of Andron at all, since he represents the Tetrapolis Doris as being a Tripolis,8 and the metropolis of the Dorians as a mere colony of Thessalians; and they derive the meaning of "trichaïces" either from the "trilophia,"9 or from the fact that the crests were "trichini."10
1 "Cretans of the old stock."
3 See 5. 2. 4, where the same passage is quoted.
4 Staphylus of Naucratis wrote historical works on Thessaly, Athens, Aeolia, and Arcadia, but only a few fragments are preserved. The translator does not know when he lived.
5 Andron (fl. apparently in the fourth century B.C.) wrote a work entitled Kinships, of which only a few fragments remain. It treated the genealogical relationships between the Greek tribes and cities, and appears to have been an able work.
7 Andron fancifully connects this adjective with "tricha" ("in three parts"), making it mean "three-fold" (so Liddell and Scott q.v.), but it is surely a compound of θρίξ and ἀΐσσω (cp. κορυθάϊξ), and mans "hairshaking," or, as translated in the above passage from Homer, "of waving plumes."
8 i.e., as composed of three cities instead of four.
9 "Triple.crest" (of a helmet).
10 "Made of hair."
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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