[464] The story of invading Thessalians at Kerêssus, near Leuktra in Bœotia, (Pausan. ix. 13, 1,) is not at all probable.
[465] One story was, that these Achæans of Phthia went into Peloponnesus with Pelops, and settled in Laconia (Strabo, viii. p. 365).
[466] Aristoteles ap. Athenæ iv. p. 173 Conon, Narrat. 29; Strabo. xiv. p. 647.
Hoeck (Kreta, b. iii. vol. ii. p. 409) attempts (unsuccessfully, in my judgment) to reduce these stories into the form of substantial history.
[467] Thucyd. iii. 92. The distinction made by Skylax (c. 61) and Diodorus (xviii. 11) between Μηλιεῖς and Μαλιεῖς—the latter adjoining the former on the north—appears inadmissible, though Letronne still defends it (Périple de Marcien d’Héraclée, etc., Paris, 1839, p. 212).
Instead of Μαλιεῖς, we ought to read Λαμιεῖς, as O. Müller observes (Dorians, i. 6, p. 48).
It is remarkable that the important town of Lamia (the modern Zeitun) is not noticed either by Herodotus, Thucydidês, or Xenophon; Skylax is the first who mentions it. The route of Xerxes towards Thermopylæ lay along the coast from Alos.
The Lamieis (assuming that to be the correct reading) occupied the northern coast of the Maliac gulf, from the north bank of the Spercheius to the town of Echinus: in which position Dr. Cramer places the Μηλιεῖς Παράλιοι—an error, I think (Geography of Greece, vol. i. p. 436).
It is not improbable that Lamia first acquired importance during the course of those events towards the close of the Peloponnesian war, when the Lacedæmonians, in defence of Herakleia, attacked the Achæans of Phthiôtis, and even expelled the Œtæans for a time from their seats (see Thucyd. viii. 3; Diodor. xiv. 38).
[468] Aristot. Polit. iv. 10, 10.