previous next
[11]

Since certain people in Triphylia near Messenia are called Cauconians, and since Dyme also is called Cauconian by some writers, and since in the Dymaean territory between Dyme and Tritaea there is also a river which is called Caucon, in the feminine gender, writers raise the question whether there are not two different sets of Cauconians, one in the region of Triphylia, and the other in the region of Dyme, Elis, and the River Caucon. This river empties into another river which is called Teutheas, in the masculine gender; Teutheas has the same name as one of the little towns which were incorporated into Dyme, except that the name of this town, "Teuthea," is in the feminine gender, and is spelled without the s and with the last syllable long. In this town is the temple of the Nemydian 1 Artemis. The Teutheas empties into the Acheloüs which flows by Dyme2 and has the same name as the Acarnanian river. It is also called the "Peirus"; by Hesiod, for instance, when he says: “"he dwelt on the Olenian Rock along the banks of a river, wide Peirus."
3Some change the reading to "Pierus," wrongly. They raise that question about the Cauconians, they say, because, when Athene in the guise of Mentor, in the Odyssey says to Nestor, “"but in the morning I will go to the great-hearted Cauconians, where a debt is due me, in no way new or small. But do thou send this man on his way with a chariot and with thy son, since he has come to thy house, and give him horses,"
4the poet seems to designate a certain territory in the country of the Epeians which was held by the Cauconians, these Cauconians being a different set from those in Triphylia and perhaps extending as far as the territory of Dyme. Indeed, one should not fail to inquire both into the origin of the epithet of Dyme, "Cauconian," and into the origin of the name of the river "Caucon," because the question who those Cauconians were to whom Athene says she is going in order to recover the debt offers a problem; for if we should interpret the poet as meaning the Cauconians in Triphylia near Lepreum, I do not see how his account can be plausible. Hence some read: “"where a debt is due me in goodly Elis, no small one."
5 But this question will be investigated with clearer results when I describe the country that comes next after this, I mean Pisatis and Triphylia as far as the borders of the country of the Messenians.6

1 "Nemydian" is otherwise unknown; perhaps "Nemidian" or "Nemeaean."

2 Cp. 10. 2. 1.

3 Hes. Fr. 74

4 Hom. Od. 3.366

5 Hom. Il. 11.698

6 8. 3. 17.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1877)
load focus English (H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., 1903)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (2 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: