[2642] A note in the French translation says that this place has not been identified in the works of Aristotle now remaining, and suggests that there may be some error in the text.
[2643] See what Strabo has said on this subject in book i. chap. ii. § 37, pp. 70, 71.
[2644] Strabo will speak further on the subject of Gerena in book viii. chap. iii. § 7, and § 29.
[2645] Reference is here made to the epithet ἀκάκητα, which Homer applies to Mercury, Iliad xvi. 185. The grammarians explain it correctly as “free from evil,” or “who neither does nor suffers wrong.” However, there were some who interpreted it differently. They maintain that Mercury was so called from a cavern in Arcadia, called Acacesium, (see Schol. in Homer, edit. Villois. pag. 382,) which was situated near Cyllene, a mountain of Arcadia, where he was born. See Apollodor. Biblioth. lib. iii. cap. x. § 2. Hesiod, however, applies the same epithet to Prometheus, (Theogon. verse 613,) who, according to the scholiast, was thus designated from Acacesium, a mountain, not a cavern, of Arcadia, where he was greatly revered.
[2646] Homer, Iliad iii. verse 201, in speaking of Ulysses, says, Ὃς τράφη ἐν δήμῳ Ἰθάκης. Some writers affirmed that the Δῆμος was the name of a place in Ithaca, while others think it a word, and understand the passage “who was bred in the country of Ithaca.” On comparing this passage with others, Iliad xvi. vss. 437, 514, and with a parallel expression of Hesiod Theogon. verse 971, one is greatly astonished at the ignorance and eccentricity of those who sought to make a place Demus out of this passage of Homer.
[2647] According to some, Pelethronium was a city of Thessaly; according to others, it was a mountain there, or even a part of Mount Pelion.
[2648] There is no mention of any Glaucopium throughout the writings of Homer. Eustathius, on the Odyssey, book ii. page 1451, remarks that it was from the epithet γλαυκῶπις, blue-eyed or fierce-eyed, which he so often gives to Minerva, that the citadel at Athens was called the Glaucopium, while Stephen of Byzantium, on Ἀλαλκομένιον, asserts that both the epithet γλαυκῶπις and the name of the citadel Glaucopium comes from Glaucopus, the son of Alalcomeneus.
[2649] And the close-fighting Mysians, and the illustrious Hippemolgi, milk-nourished, simple in living, and most just of men. Iliad xiii. 5. The word which Cowper renders “blest with length of days,” and Buckley “simple in living,” is ἄβιοι. Its signification is very uncertain. Some propose to derive it from α, privative, and βιὸς, a bow, or bowless; while others regard it as a proper name, Abii. In Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, xv. 3, it means, without a living, poor, as derived from α, privative, and βίος, a means of living, livelihood. Cowper’s meaning is made up from α, intensive, and βίος, life.
[2650] Pontus Axenus.
[2651] This word is corrupt in the MSS.