Strabo, Geography
H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., Ed.

---

[2]

We reason from probability when we endeavour to determine by the words of the poet the exact bounds of the territory of the Cilicians, Pelasgi, and of the people situated between them, namely, the Ceteii, who were under the command of Eurypylus.

We have said of the Cilicians and of the people under the command of Eurypylus what can be said about them, and that they are bounded by the country near the Caïcus.

It is agreeable to probability to place the Pelasgi next to these people, according to the words of Homer and other histories. Homer says, “‘Hippothous led the tribes of the Pelasgi, who throw the spear, who inhabited the fertile Larisa; their leaders were Hippothous and Pylæus, a son of Mars, both sons of Lethus the Pelasgian, son of Teutamis.’¹”

He here represents the numbers of Pelasgi as considerable, for he does not speak of them as a tribe, but ‘tribes,’ and specifies the place of their settlement, Larisa. There are many places of the name of Larisa, but we must understand some one of those near the Troad, and perhaps we might not be wrong in supposing it to be that near Cyme; for of three places of the name of Larisa, that near Hamaxitus is quite in sight of Ilium and very near it, at the distance of about 200 stadia, so that Hippothous could not be said consistently with probability to fall, in the contest about Patroclus,

“ far from Larisa²

”

Il. xvii. 301.

at least from this Larisa, but rather from the Larisa near Cyme, for there are about 1000 stadia between them. The third Larisa is a village in the Ephesian district in the plain of the Caÿster; which, it is said, was formerly a city containing a temple of Apollo Larisæus, and situated nearer to Mount Tmolus than to Ephesus. It is distant from Ephesus 180 stadia, so that it might be placed rather under the government of the Mæonians. The Ephesians, having afterwards acquired more power, deprived the Mæonians, whom we now call Lydians, of a large part of their territory; but not even this, but the other rather, would be the Larisa of the Pelasgi. F o w e have no strong evidence that the Larisa in the plain of Caÿster was in existence at that time, nor even of the existence of Ephesus. But all the Æolian history, relating to a period a little subsequent to the Trojan times, proves the existence of the Larisa near Cyme.