[803] Strabo, vii, p. 324. In these same regions, under the Turkish government of the present day, such is the mixture and intercourse of Greeks, Albanians, Bulgaric Sclavonians, Wallachians, and Turks, that most of the natives find themselves under the necessity of acquiring two, sometimes three, languages: see Dr. Grisebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa, ch. xii, vol. ii, p. 68.
[804] Livy, xlv, 34; Thucyd. i, 47. Phanotê, in the more northerly part of Epirus, is called only a castellum, though it was an important military post (Livy, xliii, 21).
[805] Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, ch. xxxviii, vol. iv, pp. 207, 210, 233; ch. ix. vol. i, p. 411; Cyprien Robert, Les Slaves de Turquie, book iv, ch. 2.
Βουβόται πρῶνες ἐξόχοι—Pindar, Nem. iv, 81; Cæsar, Bell. Civil. iii, 47.
[806] Polybius, ii, 5, 8.
[807] Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. i; Livy, xlv, 26.
[808] See the description of the geographical features of Epirus in Boué, La Turquie en Europe, Géographie Générale, vol. i, p. 57.
[809] See the account of this territory in Colonel Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i. ch. v; his journey from Janina, through the district of Suli and the course of the Acheron, to the plain of Glyky and the Acherusian lake and marshes near the sea. Compare, also, vol. iv, ch. xxxv, p. 73.
“To the ancient sites (observes Colonel Leake) which are so numerous in the great valleys watered by the lower Acheron, the lower Thyamis, and their tributaries, it is a mortifying disappointment to the geographer not to be able to apply a single name with absolute certainty.”
The number of these sites affords one among many presumptions that each must have been individually inconsiderable.