Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/471

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B. VII. C. III. § 6.
GETÆ.
457

men, he there passed his life, rarely communicating with anybody except the king and his ministers. The king himself assisted him to play his part, seeing that his subjects obeyed him more readily than formerly, as promulgating his ordinances with the counsel of the gods. This custom even continues to our time; for there is always found some one of this character who assists the king in his counsels, and is styled a god by the Getæ. The mountain likewise [where Zamolxis retired] is held sacred, and is thus distinguished, being named Cogæonus,[1] as well as the river which flows by it; and at the time when Byrebistus, against whom divus Cæsar prepared an expedition, reigned over the Getæ, Decæneus held that honour: likewise the Pythagorean precept to abstain from animal food, which was originally introduced by Zamolxis, is still observed to a great extent.

6. Any one may well entertain such questions as these touching the localities mentioned by the poet [Homer], and with regard to the Mysians and the illustrious Hippemolgi; but what Apollodorus has advanced in his preface to the Catalogue of Ships in the Second Book [of the Iliad] is by no means to be adopted. For he praises the opinions of Eratosthenes, who says that Homer and the rest of the ancients were well versed in every thing that related to Greece, but were in a state of considerable ignorance as to places at a distance, in consequence of the impossibility of their making long journeys by land or voyages by sea. In support of this he asserts,[2] that Homer designated Aulis as ‘rocky,’ as indeed it is; Eteonus as ‘mountainous and woody,’ Thisbe as ‘abounding in doves,’ Haliartus as ‘grassy;’ but that neither Homer nor the others were familiar with localities far off; for although there are forty rivers which discharge themselves into the Black Sea,[g 1] he makes no mention whatever even of the most considerable, as the Danube,[p 1] the Don,[p 2] the Dnieper,[p 3] the Bog,[p 4] the Phasz,[p 5] the Termeh,[p 6] the Kisil-Irmak,[p 7] nor does

  1. ↑ D’Anville imagines that this is the modern mountain Kaszon, and the little river of the same name on the confines of Transylvania and Moldavia.
  2. ↑ See Strabo’s former remarks on this identical subject, book i. chap, ii. § 3, page 25.
  1. ↑ εἰς τὸν Πόντον.
  1. ↑ Ister.
  2. ↑ Tanaïs.
  3. ↑ Borysthenes.
  4. ↑ Hypanis.
  5. ↑ Phasis.
  6. ↑ Thermodon.
  7. ↑ Halys.
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