Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/209

 LESBOS. 193 during the times of the Attalid and Seleukid kings. A like transfer of situation, from a height difficult of access to some lower and more convenient position, took place with other towns in and near this regionj such as Gambreion and Skepsis, which had their Palce-Gambreion and Palce-Skepsis not far distant. Of these twelve ^Eolic towns, it appears that all except Kyme were small and unimportant. Thucydides, in recapitulating the dependent allies of Athens at the commencement of the Pelo- ponnesian war, does not account them worthy of being enumer- ated. 1 Nor are we authorized to conclude, because they bear the general name of JEolians, that the inhabitants were all of kin- dred race, though a large proportion of them are said to have been Boeotians, and the feeling of fraternity between Boeotians and Lesbians was maintained throughout the historical times; ?ne etymology of the name is, indeed, founded upon the supposi- tion that they were of miscellaneous origin. 2 We do not hear, moreover, of any considerable poets produced by the .ZEolic con- tinental towns; in this respect Lesbos stood alone, an island (paid to have been the earliest of all the .ZEolic settlements, ante- rior even to Kyme. Six towns were originally established in Lesbos, Mitylene, Methymna, Eresus, Pyrrha, Antissa, and Arisbe : the last-mentioned town was subsequently enslaved and destroyed by the Methymnaeans, so that there remained only five towns in all. 3 According to the political subdivision usual in Greece, the island had thus, first six, afterwards five, independent governments, of which, however, Mitylene, situated in the south- eastern quarter and facing the promontory of Kane, was by far the first, while Methymna, on the north of the island over against taining the convention between the inhabitants of Smyrna and Magnesia. Pulse- Magnesia seems to have been a strong and important post. " Magnetes a Sipylo," Tacit. Annal. ii, 47 ; Pliny, H. N. v, 29 ; Pausan. iii, 24, 2. Trpbf fioppav TOV I,nrv/.ov. Stephan. Byzantinus notices only Magnesia ad Maeandrum, not Magnesia ad Sipylum. 1 Thucyd. ii, 9. 'ETE yup t/ Tra/Uu At'o/Udinc KI'/ZT? e/cnfero, avvffidoi v ravru TravTotiaira 'EA/.TJVIKU, nal drj Kal in Mayv^ir/'ac, etc. Etymolog. Magn. T, 3 Herodot. i, 151 ; Strabo, xiii, p. 590. VOL. III. 9 13OC.
 * Strabo, ix, p. 402: Thucyd. viii, 100; Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Homer, i.