Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/368

 386 HISTORY OF GREECE. fluence, and cannot be forced to intermix, into the clearei vision afforded by Herodotus, we learn from him that in the year 500 B. c. the whole coast-region from Dardanus southward to the promontory of Lektum (including the town of Ilium), and from Lektum eastward to Adramyttium, had been -^olized, or was occupied by JEolic Greeks likewise the inland towns of Skep- eis 1 and Kreben. So that if we draw a line northward from Adra- myttium to Kyzikus on the Propontis, throughout the whole ter- ritory westward from that line, to the Hellespont and the -<Egean Sea, all the considerable towns would be Hellenic, with the excep- tion of Gergis and the Teukrian population around it, all the towns worthy of note were either Ionic or ^Eolic. A century ear- lier, the Teukrian population would have embraced a wider range perhaps Skepsis and Kreben, the latter of which places was colonized by Greeks from Kyme : 2 a century afterwards, during the satrapy of Pharnabazus, it appears that Gergis had become Hellenized as well as the test. The four towns, Ilium, Gergis, Kebren and Skepsis, all in lofty and strong positions, were distin- guished each by a solemn worship and temple of Athen, and by the recognition of that goddess as their special patroness. 3 The author of the Iliad conceived the whole of this region as -occupied by people not Greek, Trojans, Dardanians, Lykians, Lelegians, Pelasgians, and Kilikians. He recognizes a temple and worship of Athene in Ilium, though the goddess is bitterly 1 Skepsis received some colonists from the Ionic Miletus (Anaximenes apud Strabo, xiv. p. 635) ; but the coins of the place prove that its dialect was JEolic. See Klausen, JEneas und die Penaten, torn. i. note 180. Arisbe also, near Abydus, seems to have been settled from Mitylene (Eu- stath. ad Iliad, xii 97). The extraordinary fertility and rich black mould of the plain around Ilium is noticed by modern travellers (see Franklin, Remarks and Observations on the Plain of Troy, London, 1800, p. 44) : it is also easily worked : " a couple of buffaloes or oxen were sufficient to draw the plough, whereas near Constan- tinople it takes twelve or fourteen. 3 Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10 ; iii. 1, 10-15. One of the great motives of Dio in setting aside the Homeric narrative of the Trojan war, is to vindicate Athene from the charge of having unjustly de- troyedher own city of Ilium (Orat. xi.p. 310: piJiiara tiiti. ri)v 'Adyvuv oiruf ut) tour] ud'iKue diafy'&cipai TJ)V iavrjjf 'ir67i.iv).
 * Ephorus ap. Harpocrat. v. Kf/3p^va.