Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/438

 406 HISTORY OF GREECE. the Korkyrean navy in times preceding the Peloponnesiaa war. 1 2. He notices, with equal confidence, the story of Tereus and Prokne, daughter of Pandion, and the murder of the child Itys by Prokne his mother, and Philomela; and he produces this ancient mythe with especial reference to the alliance between the Athenians and Teres, king of the Odrysian Thracians, during the time of the Peloponnesian war, intimating that the Odrysian Teres was neither of the same family nor of the same country as Tereus the husband of Prokne. 2 The conduct of Pandion, in giving his daughter Prokne in marriage to Tereus, is in his view dictated by political motives and interests. 3. He mentions the Strait of Messina as the place through which Odysseus is said to have sailed. 3 4. The Cyclopes and the Laestrygones (he says) were the most ancient reported inhabitants of Sicily ; but he can- not tell to what race they belonged, nor whence they came. 4 5. Italy derived its name from Italus, king of the Sikels. 6. Eryx and Egesto in Sicily were founded by fugitive Trojans after thf capture of Troy ; also Skione, in the Thracian peninsula of Pal lene, by Greeks from the Achaean town of Pellene, stopping thither in their return from the siege of Troy : the Amphilochian Argos in the Gulf of Ambrakia was in like manner founded by 1 Thucyd. i. 25. 2 Thucyd. ii. 29. Kai rb epjov rb irepl rbv 'Irvv ai yvvalKEf h ry yy TO.VTJJ lirpa^av Tro/Motf 6e not TUV TTOIIJTUV h> urjdovof fivrnii) AavAfdf fj opvif iiruvofiacrTai. E/:6f 6e not rb K7j6of Hav6iova wai/>av tf 'Otipvoaf 66ov. Tlie first of these sentences would lead us to infer, if it came from any other pen than that of Thucydides, that the writer believed the metamorphosis of Philomela into a nightingale : see above, ch. xi. p. 270. The observation respecting the convenience of neighborhood for the mar- riage is remarkable, and shows how completely Thucydides regarded the event as historical. What would he have said respecting the marriage of Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, with Boreas, and the prodigious distance which she is reported to have been carried by her husband ? 'ICnep re TOVTOV navr in' laxara %&ovbs, etc. (Sophokles ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295.) From the way in which Thucydides introduces the mention of this event, we see that he intended to correct the misapprehension of his countrymen, who having just made an alliance with the Odrysian Ttrs, were led by that circumstance to think of the old mythical T6reus, and to regard him as the ancestor of TZrts. 3 Thucyd. iv. 24. 4 Thucyd. vi. 2.