58. Myrsilus says that Assus was founded by Methymnæans; but according to Hellanicus it was an Æolian city, like Gargara and Lamponia of the Æolians. Gargara[1476] was founded from Assus; it was not well peopled, for the kings introduced settlers from Miletopolis,[1477] which they cleared of its inhabitants, so that Demetrius the Scepsian says that, instead of being Æolians, the people became semi-barbarians. In the time of Homer all these places belonged to Leleges, whom some writers represent as Carians, but Homer distinguishes them,
“Near the sea are Carians, and Pæonians with curved bows, Leleges, and Caucones.”[1478]
The Leleges were therefore a different people from the Carians, and lived between the people subject to Æneas and the Cilicians, as they are called by the poet. After being plundered by Achilles, they removed to Caria, and occupied the country about the present Halicarnassus.
59. Pedasus, the city which they abandoned, is no longer in existence. But in the interior of the country belonging to the people of Halicarnassus there was a city called by them Pedasa, and the territory has even now the name of Pedasis. It is said that this district contained eight cities, occupied by the Leleges, who were formerly so populous a nation as to possess Caria as far as Myndus, Bargylia, and a great part of Pisidia. In later times, when they united with the Carians in their expeditions, they were dispersed throughout the whole of Greece, and the race became extinct.
Mausolus, according to Callisthenes, assembled in Halicarnassus[1479] alone the inhabitants of six out of the eight cities, but allowed Suangela and Myndus to remain untouched. Herodotus[1480] relates that whenever anything unfortunate was about to befall the inhabitants of Pedasus[1481] and the neighbourhood a beard appeared on the face of the priestess of Minerva, and that this happened three times.
There is now existing in the territory of the Stratoniceis[1482] a small town called Pedasum. There are to be seen throughout the whole of Caria and at Miletus sepulchres, and fortifications, and vestiges of settlements of the Leleges.
60. The tract of sea-coast following next after the Leleges was occupied, according to Homer, by Cilicians, but at present it is occupied by Adramytteni, Atarneitæ, and Pitanæi as far as the mouth of the Caïcus. The Cilicians were divided into two dynasties, as we have before said,[1483] the head of one was Eetion, the other Mynes.
61. Homer says that Thebe was the city of Eetion;
“We went to Thebe, the sacred city of Eetion.”[1484]
To him also belonged Chrysa, which contained the temple of Apollo Smintheus, for Chryseïs was taken from Thebe;