[21]
Then one comes to Iasus, which lies on an island close to the mainland. It has a harbor; and the people gain most of their livelihood from the sea, for the sea here is well supplied with fish, but the soil of the country is rather poor. Indeed, people fabricate stories of this kind in regard to Iasus: When a citharoede1 was giving a recital, the people all listened for a time, but when the bell that announced the sale of fish rang, they all left him and went away to the fish market, except one man who was hard of hearing. The citharoede, therefore, went up to him and said: "Sir, I am grateful to you for the honor you have done me and for your love of music, for all the others except you went away the moment they heard the sound of the bell." And the man said, "What's that you say? Has the bell already rung?" And when the citharoede said "Yes," the man said, "Fare thee well," and himself arose and went away. Here was born the dialectician Diodorus, nicknamed Cronus, falsely so at the outset, for it was Apollonius his master who was called Cronus, but the nickname was transferred to him because of the true Cronus' lack of repute.2
1 One who played the cithara and sang to its accompaniment.
2 "Cronus" was a nickname for "Old Timer," "Old Dotard." Diodorus is said to have been given the nickname by Ptolemy Soter because he was unable immediately to solve some dialectic problem put forth by Stilpo. He became the head of the Megarian school of philosophy.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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