Antissa[1507] is next to Sigrium. It is a city with a harbour. Then follows Methymna, of which place Arion was a native, who, as Herodotus relates the story, after having been thrown into the sea by pirates, escaped safe to Tænarus on the back of a dolphin. He played on the cithara and sang to it. Terpander, who practised the same kind of music, was a native of this island. He was the first person that used the lyre with seven instead of four strings, as is mentioned in the verses attributed to him:
“we have relinquished the song adapted to four strings, and shall cause new hymns to resound on a seven-stringed cithara.”
The historian Hellanicus, and Callias, who has commented on Sappho and Alcæus, were Lesbians.
5. Near the strait situated between Asia and Lesbos there are about twenty small islands, or, according to Timosthenes, forty. They are called Hecatonnesoi,[1508] a compound name like Peloponnesus, the letter N being repeated by custom in such words as Myonnesus, Proconnesus, Halonnesus, so that Hecatonnesoi is of the same import as Apollonnesoi, since Apollo is called Hecatus;[1509] for along the whole of this coast, as far as Tenedos, Apollo is held in the highest veneration, and worshipped under the names of Smintheus, Cillæus, Gryneus, or other appellations.
Near these islands is Pordoselene, which contains a city of the same name, and in front of this city is another island[1510] larger than this, and a city of the same name, uninhabited, in which there is a temple of Apollo.
6. Some persons, in order to avoid the indecorum couched in these names,[1511] say that we ought to read in that place Poroselene, and to call Aspordenum, the rocky and barren mountain near Pergamum, Asporenum, and the temple there of the mother of the gods the temple of the Asporene mother of the gods; what then are we to say to the names Pordalis, Saperdes, Perdiccas, and to this word in the verse of Simonides, “with clothes dripping with wet,” (πορδάκοισιν for διαβρόχοις,) and in the old comedy somewhere, “the country is πορδακόν, for λιμνάζον, or ‘marshy.’”
Lesbos is at the same distance, rather less than 500 stadia, from Tenedos, Lemnos, and Chios.
CHAPTER III.
1. Since there subsisted so great an affinity among the Leleges and Cilicians with the Trojans, the reason is asked, why these people are not included in Homer’s Catalogue. Perhaps it is that, on account of the loss of their leaders and the devastation of the cities, the few Cilicians that were left placed themselves under the command of Hector. For Eetion and his sons are said to have been killed before the Catalogue is mentioned;