[703] Iliad, xi. 782.
[704] Telephus was the son of Augê, daughter of king Aleus of Tegea in Arcadia, by Hêraklês: respecting her romantic adventures, see the previous [chapter on Arcadian legends]—Strabo’s faith in the story (xii. p. 572).
The spot called the Harbor of the Achæans, near Gryneium, was stated to be the place where Agamemnôn and the chiefs took counsel whether they should attack Telephus or not (Skylax, c. 97; compare Strabo, xiv. p. 622).
[705] Iliad, xi. 664; Argum. Cypr. p. 11, Düntzer; Diktys Cret. ii. 3-4.
[706] Euripid. Telephus, Frag. 26, Dindorf; Hygin. f. 101; Diktys, ii. 10. Euripidês had treated the adventure of Telephus in this lost tragedy: he gave the miraculous cure with the dust of the spear, πριστοῖσι λογχῆς θέλγεται ῥινήμασι. Diktys softens down the prodigy: “Achilles cum Machaone et Podalirio adhibeutes curam vulneri,” etc. Pliny (xxxiv. 15) gives to the rust of brass or iron a place in the list of genuine remedies.
“Longe omnino a Tiberi ad Caicum: quo in loco etiam Agamemnôn errasset, nisi ducem Telephum invenisset” (Cicero, Pro L. Flacco, c. 29). The portions of the Trojan legend treated in the lost epics and the tragedians, seem to have been just as familiar to Cicero as those noticed in the Iliad.
Strabo pays comparatively little attention to any portion of the Trojan war except what appears in Homer. He even goes so far as to give a reason why the Amazons did not come to the aid of Priam: they were at enmity with him, because Priam had aided the Phrygians against them (Iliad, iii. 188: in Strabo, τοῖς Ἰῶσιν must be a mistake for τοῖς Φρυξίν). Strabo can hardly have read, and never alludes to, Arktinus; in whose poem the brave and beautiful Penthesileia, at the head of her Amazons, forms a marked epoch and incident of the war (Strabo, xii. 552).
[707] Nothing occurs in Homer respecting the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (see Schol. Ven. ad Il. ix. 145).
[708] No portion of the Homeric Catalogue gave more trouble to Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis and the other expositors than these Alizonians (Strabo, xii. p. 549; xiii. p. 603): a fictitious place called Alizonium, in the region of Ida, was got up to meet the difficulty (εἶτ᾽ Ἀλιζώνιον, τοῦτ᾽ ἤδη πεπλασμένον πρὸς τὴν τῶν Ἀλιζώνων ὑπόθεσιν, etc., Strabo, l. c.).
[709] See the Catalogue of the Trojans (Iliad, ii. 815-877).