[823] Iliad, ii. 863. Asius, the brother of Hecabê, lives in Phrygia on the banks of the Sangarius (Iliad, xvi. 717).
[824] See Hellanik. Fragm. 129, 130. ed. Didot; and Kephalôn Gergithius ap. Steph. Byz. v. Ἀρισβή.
[825] Skêpsis received some colonists from the Ionic Miletus (Anaximenês apud Strabo, xiv. p. 635); but the coins of the place prove that its dialect was Æolic. See Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, tom. i. note 180.
Arisbê also, near Abydus, seems to have been settled from Mitylênê (Eustath. ad Iliad. xii. 97).
The extraordinary fertility and rich black mould of the plain around Ilium is noticed by modern travellers (see Franklin, Remarks and Observations on the Plain of Troy, London, 1800, p. 44): it is also easily worked: “a couple of buffaloes or oxen were sufficient to draw the plough, whereas near Constantinople it takes twelve or fourteen.”
[826] Ephôrus ap. Harpocrat. v. Κεβρῆνα.
[827] Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10; iii. 1, 10-15.
One of the great motives of Dio in setting aside the Homeric narrative of the Trojan war, is to vindicate Athênê from the charge of having unjustly destroyed her own city of Ilium (Orat. xi. p. 310: μάλιστα διὰ τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν ὅπως μὴ δοκῇ ἀδίκως διαφθεῖραι τὴν ἑαυτῆς πόλιν).
[828] Strabo, x. p. 473; xiii. p. 604-605. Polemon. Fragm. 31. p. 63, ed. Preller.
Polemon was a native of Ilium, and had written a periegesis of the place (about 200 B. C., therefore earlier than Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis): he may have witnessed the improvement in its position effected by the Romans. He noticed the identical stone upon which Palamêdês had taught the Greeks to play at dice.