[19]
In the interval between Lampsacus and Parium lay a city and river called Paesus; but the city is in ruins. The Paeseni changed their abode to Lampsacus, they too being colonists from the Milesians, like the Lampsaceni. But the poet refers to the place in two ways, at one time adding the first syllable,“and the land of Apaesus,
”1and at another omitting it,“a man of many possessions, who dwelt in Paesus.
”2And the river is now spelled in the latter way. Colonae,3 which lies above Lampsacus in the interior of Lampsacene, is also a colony of the Milesians; and there is another Colonae on the outer Hellespontine sea, which is one hundred and forty stadia distant from Ilium and is said to be the birthplace of Cycnus.4 Anaximenes says that there are also places in the Erythraean territory and in Phocis and in Thessaly that are called Colonae. And there is an Iliocolone in the territory of Parium. In the territory of Lampsacus is a place called Gergithium5 which is rich in vines; and there was also a city called Gergitha from Gergithes in the territory of Cyme, for here too there was a city called Gergithes, in the feminine plural, the birthplace of Cephalon the Gergithian. And still today a place called Gergithium is pointed out in the territory of Cyme near Larissa. Now Neoptolemus,6 called the Glossographer, a notable man, was from Parium; and Charon the historian7 and Adeimantus8 and Anaximenes the rhetorician9 and Metrodorus the comrade of Epicurus were from Lampsacus; and Epicurus himself was in a sense a Lampsacenian, having lived in Lampsacus and having been on intimate terms with the ablest men of that city, Idomeneus and Leonteus and their followers. It was from here that Agrippa transported the Fallen Lion, a work of Lysippus; and he dedicated it in the sacred precinct between the Lake and the Euripus.10
3 On the site of Colonae, see Leaf (Strabo on the Troad), p. 101.
4 King of Colonae, slain by Achilles in the Trojan War.
5 On Gergithium, see Leaf, p. 102.
6 Fl. in the Alexandrian period; author of works entitled Glosses and On Epigrams.
7 Early historian; author of Persian History and Annals of the Lampsaceni.
8 Known only as courtier of Demetrius Poliorcetes.
9 See Frazer's note on Paus. 6.18.2
10 "The Lake" seems surely to be the Stagnum Agrippae mentioned by Tac. Ann. 15.37, i.e., the Nemus Caesarum on the right bank of the Tiber (see A. Häbler, Hermes 19 (1884), p. 235). "The Stagnum Agrippae was apparently a pond constructed by Agrippa in connection with the Aqua Virgo and the canal called Euripus in the neighborhood of the Pantheon" (C. G. Ramsay, Annals of Tacitus, 15.37), or, as Leaf (op. cit., p. 108 puts it, "The Euripus is the channel filled with water set up by Caesar round the arena of the Circus Maximus at Rome to protect the spectators from the wild beasts."
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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