At Larisa Phriconis Piasus is said to receive great honours. He was chief of the Pelasgi, and enamoured, it is said, of his daughter Larisa, whom he violated, and was punished for the outrage. She discovered him leaning over a cask of wine, seized him by his legs, lifted him up, and dropped him down into the vessel. These are ancient accounts.
5. To the present Æolian cities we must add Ægæ and Temnus, the birth-place of Hermagoras, who wrote a book on the Art of Rhetoric.
These cities are on the mountainous country which is above the district of Cyme, and that of the Phocæans and Smyrnæans, beside which flows the Hermus.
Not far from these cities is Magnesia under Sipylus, made a free city by a decree of the Romans. The late earthquakes have injured this place. To the opposite parts, which incline towards the Caïcus to Cyme from Larisa, in passing to which the river Hermus is crossed, are 70 stadia; thence to Myrina 40 stadia; thence to Grynium 40 stadia, and thence to Elæa. But, according to Artemidorus, next to Cyme is Adæ; then, at the distance of 40 stadia, a promontory, which they call Hydra, that forms the Elaïtic Gulf with the opposite promontory Harmatus. The breadth of the entrance is about 80 stadia, including the winding of the bays. Myrina, situated at 60 stadia, is an Æolian city with a harbour, then the harbour of Achæans, where are altars of the twelve gods; next is Grynium, a small city [of the Myrinæans], a temple of Apollo, an ancient oracle, and a costly fane of white marble. To Myrina are 40 stadia; then 70 stadia to Elæa, which has a harbour and a station for vessels of the Attalic kings, founded by Menestheus and the Athenians who accompanied him in the expedition against Ilium.
The places about Pitane, and Atarneus, and others in this quarter, which follow Elæa, have been already described.
6. Cyme is the largest and best of the Æolian cities. This and Lesbos may be considered the capitals of the other cities, about 30 in number, of which not a few exist no longer. The inhabitants of Cyme are ridiculed for their stupidity, for, according to some writers, it is said of them that they only began to let the tolls of the harbour three hundred years after the foundation of their city, and that before this time the town had never received any revenue of the kind; hence the report that it was late before they perceived that they inhabited a city lying on the sea.
There is another story, that, having borrowed money in the name of the state, they pledged their porticos as security for the payment of it. Afterwards, the money not having been repaid on the appointed day, they were prohibited from walking in them. The creditors, through shame, gave notice by the crier whenever it rained, that the inhabitants might take shelter under the porticos. As the crier called out, “Go under the porticos,” a report prevailed that the Cymæans did not perceive that they were to go under the porticos when it rained unless they had notice from the public crier.[1525]
Ephorus, a man indisputably of high repute, a disciple of Isocrates the orator, was a native of this city. He was an historian, and wrote the book on Inventions.
Hesiod the poet, who long preceded Ephorus, was a native of this place, for he himself says, that his father Dius left Cyme in Æolis and migrated to the Bœotians;
“he dwelt near Helicon in Ascra, a village wretched in winter, in summer oppressive, and not pleasant at any season.”