[12]
The Pindus Mountain is large, having the country of the Macedonians on the north, the Perrhaebian immigrants on the west, the Dolopians on the south, and Hestiaeotis1 on the east; and this last is a part of Thessaly. The Talares, a Molossian tribe, a branch of those who lived in the neighborhood of Mount Tomarus, lived on Mount Pindus itself, as did also the Aethices, amongst whom, the poet says, the Centaurs were driven2 by Peirithoüs; but history now tells us that they are "extinct." The term "extinct" is to be taken in one of two meanings; either the people vanished and their country has become utterly deserted, or else merely their ethnic name no longer exists and their political organization no longer remains what it was. When, therefore, any present political organization that survives from an earlier time is utterly insignificant, I hold that it is not worth mentioning, either itself or the new name it has taken; but when it affords a fair pretext for being mentioned, I must needs give an account of the change.
1 See 9. 5. 2 and note on "Hestiaeotis."
2 From Pelion (Hom. Il. 2.744).
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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