Strabo, Geography

In antiquity this country was under the mastery of the Ionians, who were sprung from the Athenians; and in antiquity it was called Aegialeia, and the inhabitants Aegialeians, but later it was called Ionia after the Ionians, just as Attica also was called Ionia¹ after Ion the son of Xuthus. They say that Hellen was the son of Deucalion, and that he was lord of the people between the Peneius and the Asopus in the region of Phthia and gave over his rule to the eldest of his sons, but that he sent the rest of them to different places outside, each to seek a settlement for himself. One of these sons, Dorus, united the Dorians about Parnassus into one state, and at his death left them named after himself; another, Xuthus, who had married the daughter of Erechtheus, founded the Tetrapolis of Attica, consisting of Oenoe, Marathon, Probalinthus, and Tricorynthus. One of the sons of Xuthus, Achaeus, who had committed involuntary manslaughter, fled to Lacedaemon and brought it about that the people there were called Achaeans; and Ion conquered the Thracians under Eumolpus, and thereby gained such high repute that the Athenians turned over their government to him. At first Ion divided the people into four tribes, but later into four occupations: four he designated as farmers, others as artisans, others as sacred officers, and a fourth group as the guards. And he made several regulations of this kind, and at his death left his own name to the country. But the country had then come to be so populous that the Athenians even sent forth a colony of Ionians to the Peloponnesus, and caused the country which they occupied to be called Ionia after themselves instead of Aegialus; and the men were divided into twelve cities and called Ionians instead of Aegialeians. But after the return of the Heracleidae they were driven out by the Achaeans and went back again to Athens; and from there they sent forth with the Codridae the Ionian colony to Asia, and these founded twelve cities on the seaboard of Caria and Lydia, thus dividing themselves into the same number of parts as the cities they had occupied in the Peloponnesus. Now the Achaeans were Phthiotae in race, but they lived in Lacedaemon; and when the Heracleidae prevailed, the Achaeans were won over by Tisamenus, the son of Orestes, as I have said before,² attacked the Ionians, and proving themselves more powerful than the Ionians drove them out and took possession of the land themselves; and they kept the division of the country the same as it was when they received it. And they were so powerful that, although the Heracleidae, from whom they had revolted, held the rest of the Peloponnesus, still they held out against one and all, and named the country Achaea. Now from Tisamenus to Ogyges they continued under the rule of kings; then, under a democratic government, they became so famous for their constitutions that the Italiotes, ³ after the uprising against the Pythagoreians,⁴ actually borrowed most of their usages from the Achaeans.⁵ And after the battle at Leuctra the Thebans turned over to them the arbitration of the disputes which the cities had with one another; and later, when their league was dissolved by the Macedonians, they gradually recovered themselves. When Pyrrhus made his expedition to Italy,⁶ four cities came together and began a new league, among which were Patrae and Dyme;⁷ and then they began to add some of the twelve cities, except Olenus and Helice, the former having refused to join and the latter having been wiped out by a wave from the sea.⁸ [2]

For the sea was raised by an earthquake and it submerged Helice, and also the temple of the Heliconian Poseidon, whom the Ionians⁹ worship even to this day, offering there¹⁰ the Pan-Ionian sacrifices. And, as some suppose, Homer recalls this sacrifice when he says: “"but he breathed out his spirit and bellowed, as when a dragged bull bellows round the altar of the Heliconian lord."
”¹¹And they infer that the poet lived after the Ionian colonization, since he mentions the Pan-Ionian sacrifice, which the Ionians perform in honor of the Heliconian Poseidon in the country of the Prienians; for the Prienians themselves are also said to be from Helice; and indeed as king for this sacrifice they appoint a Prienian young man to superintend the sacred rites. But still more they base the supposition in question on what the poet says about the bull; for the lonians believe that they obtain omens in connection with this sacrifice only when the bull bellows while being sacrificed. But the opponents of the supposition apply the above-mentioned inferences concerning the bull and the sacrifice to Helice, on the ground that these were customary there and that the poet was merely comparing the rites that were celebrated there. Helice was submerged by the sea two years before the battle at Leuctra. And Eratosthenes says that he himself saw the place, and that the ferrymen say that there was a bronze Poseidon in the strait, standing erect, holding a hippo-campus in his hand, which was perilous for those who fished with nets. And Heracleides¹² says that the submersion took place by night in his time, and, although the city was twelve stadia distant from the sea, this whole district together with the city was hidden from sight; and two thousand men who had been sent by the Achaeans were unable to recover the dead bodies; and they divided the territory of Helice among the neighbors; and the submersion was the result of the anger of Poseidon, for the lonians who had been driven out of Helice sent men to ask the inhabitants of Helice particularly for the statue of Poseidon, or, if not that, for the model of the temple; and when the inhabitants refused to give either, the Ionians sent word to the general council of the Achaeans; but although the assembly voted favorably, yet even so the inhabitants of Helice refused to obey; and the submersion resulted the following winter; but the Achaeans later gave the model of the temple to the lonians. Hesiod¹³ mentions still another Helice, in Thessaly. [3]

Now for twenty¹⁴ years the Achaeans continued to have a general secretary and two generals, elected annually; and with them a common council was convened at one place (it was called Amarium),¹⁵ in which these, as did the Ionians before them, dealt with affairs of common interest; then they decided to elect only one general. And when Aratus was general he took the Acrocorinthus away from Antigonus¹⁶ and added the city of Corinth to the Achaean League, just as he had added his native city; and he also took over the Megarians; and breaking up the tyrannies in the several cities he made the peoples who were thus set free members of the Achaean League. And he set the Peloponnesus free from its tyrannies, so that Argos, Hermion, Phlius, and Megalopolis, the largest city in Arcadia, were added to the League; and it was at this time that the League reached the height of its power. It was the time when the Romans, after their expulsion of the Carthaginians from Sicily,¹⁷ made their expedition against the Galatae¹⁸ who lived in the region of the Padus River. But although the Achaean League persisted rather firmly until the time of the generalship of Philopoemen, yet it was gradually dissolved, since by this time the Romans were in possession of the whole of Greece, and they did not deal with the several states in the same way, but wished to preserve some and to destroy others. Then he¹⁹ tells the cause of his enlarging upon the subject of the Achaeans, saying that, although they increased in power to the point of surpassing even the Lacedaemonians, they are not as well known as they deserve to be. [4]

The order of the places in which the Achaeans settled, after dividing the country into twelve parts, is as follows:²⁰ First after Sicyon lies Pellene; then, second, Aegeira; third, Aegae, which has a temple of Poseidon; fourth, Bura; after Bura, Helice, whither the Ionians fled for refuge after they were conquered in battle by the Achaeans, and whence at last they were expelled; and, after Helice, Aegium and Rhypes and Patrae²¹ and Pharae;²² then Olenus, past which flows the Peirus, a large river; then Dyme and Tritaea.²³ Now the Ionians lived in villages, but the Achaeans founded cities; and to certain of these they later united others, transferring them from the other divisions, as, for example, Aegae to Aegeira (the inhabitants, however, were called Aegaeans), and Olenus to Dyme. Traces of the old settlement of the Olenians are shown between Patrae and Dyme; and here, too, is the notable temple of Asclepius, which is forty stadia distant from Dyme and eighty from Patrae. Of the same name as this Aegae is the Aegae in Euboea; and of the same name as Olenus is the settlement in Aetolia, this too preserving only traces of its former self. Now the poet does not mention the Olenus in Achaea, just as he does not mention several other inhabited places in the region of the Aegialus, although he speaks of them in a rather general way: “"And through all the Aegialus and about broad Helice."
”²⁴But he mentions the Aetolian Olenus, when he says: “"those who dwelt in Pleuron and Olenus."
”²⁵And he speaks of both places called Aegae: the Achaean Aegae, when he says, “"yet they bring up gifts for thee into both Helice and Aegae"
”²⁶but when he says, “"Aegae, where is his famous palace in the deeps of the mere,"
”²⁷“"where Poseidon halted his horses,"
”²⁸it is better to take him as meaning the Aegae in Euboea, from which it is probable that also the Aegean Sea got its name; and here too the poet has placed the activities of Poseidon in connection with the Trojan War. Close to the Achaean Aegae flows the Crathis River, which is increased by the waters of two other rivers; and it gets its name from the fact that it is a mixture,²⁹ as does also the Crathis in Italy. [5]

Each of the twelve divisions consisted of seven or eight communities, so populous was the country. Pellene is situated sixty stadia above the sea, and it is a strong fortress. But there is also a village Pellene, from which come the Pellenic cloaks, which they were also wont to set up as prizes at the games; it lies between Aegium and Pellene. But Pellana is different from these two; it is a Laconian place, and its territory inclines, approximately, towards the territory of Megalopolis. Aegeira is situated on a hill. Bura, which was swallowed up in an, earthquake, is situated above the sea at a distance of about forty stadia; and they say that it was from the spring Sybaris in Bura that the river³⁰ in Italy got its name. Aega (for Aegae is also called thus) is now uninhabited, and the city³¹ is in the possession of the people of Aegium. But Aegium has a considerable population. The story is told that Zeus was nursed by a goat there, just as Aratus says: “"Sacred goat, which, in story, didst hold thy breast o'er Zeus;"
”³²and he goes on to say that “"the interpreters call her the Olenian goat of Zeus,"
”³³thus clearly indicating that the place is near Olene. Here too is Ceraunia,³⁴ which is situated on a high rock. These places belong to the people of Aegium, and so does Helice, and the Amarium, where the Achaeans met to deliberate on affairs of common interest. And the Selinus River flows through the territory of Aegium; it bears the same name as the river that flows in Ephesus past the Artemisium, and also the river in the Eleia of today³⁵ that flows past the plot of land which Xenophon says he bought for Artemis in accordance with an oracle.³⁶ And there is another Selinus; it flows past the territory of the Hyblaean Megarians,³⁷ whom the Carthaginians forced to migrate. As for the remaining cities, or divisions, of the Achaeans, one of them, Rhypes, is uninhabited, and the territory called Rhypis was held by the people of Aegium and the people of Pharae. Aeschylus, too, says somewhere: “"Sacred Bura and thunder-smitten Rhypes."
”³⁸Myscellus, the founder of Croton, was from Rhypes. And Leuctrum too, a deme of Rhypes, belonged to the district of Rhypis. After Rhypes comes Patrae, a noteworthy city; between the two, however, is Rhium (also Antirrhium),³⁹ which is forty stadia distant from Patrae. And recently the Romans, after their victory at Actium, settled a considerable part of the army at Patrae; and it is exceptionally populous at present, since it is a Roman colony; and it has a fairly good anchoring-place. Next comes Dyme, a city without a harbor, the farthest of all towards the west, a fact from which it takes its name.⁴⁰ But in earlier times it was called Stratos. The boundary between it and the Eleian country, Buprasium, is formed by the Larisus River, which flows from a mountain. Some writers call this mountain Scollis, but Homer calls it the Olenian Rock. When Antimachus calls Dyme "Cauconian," some interpret "Cauconian" as an epithet derived from the Cauconians, since the Cauconians extended as far as Dyme, as I have already said above,⁴¹ but others as derived from a River Caucon, just as Thebes is called "Dircaean" and "Asopian," Argos "Inacheian," and Troy "Simuntian." But shortly before my time Dyme received as colonists a mixed group of people whom Pompey still had left over from the crowd of pirates, after he broke up all piracy and settled some of the pirates at Soli in Cilicia and others in other places—and in particular at Dyme. Phara borders on the territory of Dyme. The people of this Phara are called Phareis, but those of the Messenian city Pharaeatae; and in the territory of Phara is a spring Dirce which bears the same name as the spring at Thebes. But Olenus is deserted; it lies between Patrae and Dyme; and its territory is held by the people of Dyme. Then comes Araxus, the promontory of the Eleian country, one thousand and thirty stadia from the isthmus.