[133] This looks like a local name, but no place is known corresponding to it. A Diactorides of Sparta is mentioned in Herodotus, 6, 127; and perhaps, as Hultsch suggests, we ought to read “Cletis and Diactorius.”
[134] The mission to Eumenes and Pharnaces has been already mentioned in bk. 23, ch. 9, but the name of the ambassador was not given; nor is it mentioned by Livy (40, 20), who records the mission. It is uncertain who is meant by Marcus, some editors have altered it to Marcius, i.e. Q. Marcius Philippus, who had been sent to Macedonia, imagining him to have fulfilled both missions.
[135] From Strabo (vii. 5, 13), who adds: “But this is not true, for the distance from the Adriatic is immense, and there are many obstacles in the way to obscure the view.”
[136] Perhaps thirty, which seems to have been the legal age for admission to political functions. See 29, [24].
[137] See Hicks’s Greek Inscriptions, p. 330.
[138] Something is lost from the text.
[139] From Strabo 3, ch. 4, who quotes Poseidonius as criticising this statement by remarking that Polybius must count every tower as a city.
[140] The notices are put up at the three places visited yearly by great numbers, and by many separate pilgrims. It is interesting to notice the persistence in a custom common from the earliest times, at any rate as far as Delos and Delphi are concerned. Iton was in Thessaly, and the temple and oracle of Athena there was celebrated throughout Greece, and was the central place of worship for the Thessalians. The town stood in a rich plain on the river Cuarius, and hence its name—sometimes written Siton—was connected by some with σιτόφορος, “corn-bearing” (Steph. Byz.) Homer calls it μητέρα μήλων, “mother of sheep.” Pyrrhus hung up in this temple the spoils of Antigonus and his Gallic soldiers about B. C. 273. [Pausan. 1, 13, 2]. “Itonian Athena” had temples in other parts of Greece also, e.g. in Boeotia [Paus. 9, 34, 1].
[141] The war in Istria, and the mutiny of the troops against the consul Manlius, are described in Livy, 41, 8-11.
[142] Besides this connexion with Seleucus of Syria, sure to be offensive to Rome, Perseus gave a sister to Prusias, another enemy of Rome and Eumenes. Livy, 42, 12.