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 PHRYGIANS. 211 the two sides of the Hellespont appears to have presented simi- larity of feature and customs. To settle with any accuracy the extent and condition of these Asiatic nations during the early days of Grecian settlement among them is impracticable ; the problem was not to be solved even by the ancient geographers, with their superior means of knowledge. The early indigenous distribution of the Phrygian population is unknown to us, and the division into the Greater and Lesser Phrygia belongs to a period at least subsequent to the Persian conquest, like most of the recognized divisions of Asia Minor ; it cannot, therefore, be applied with reference to the period earlier than Croesus. It appears that the name Phry- gians, like that of Thracians, was a generic designation, and comprehended tribes or separate communities who had also spe- cific names of their own. "We trace Phrygians at wide distances: on the western bank of the river Halys, at Keicenrc, in the interior of Asia Minor, towards the rise of the river Meander, and on the coast of the Propontis near Kios ; in both of these latter localities there is a salt lake called Askanius, which is the name both of the leader of the Phrygian allies of Troy, and of the country from whence they are said to come, in the Iliad.i They thus occupy a territory bounded on the south by the Pisid- ian mountains, on the west by the Lydians (indicated by a termi- nal pillar set up by Croesus at Kydrara), 2 on the east by the river Halys, on the other side of which were Kappadokians or Syrians, on the north by Paphlagonians and Mariandynians. But it seems, besides this, that they must have extended farther to the west, so as to occupy a great portion of the region of Mount Ida and the Troad. For Apollodorus considered that The passage is too corrupt to support any inference, except the near approx imation in the poet's mind of Thracians and Phrygians. 1 Iliad, ii, 873; xiii, 792; Arrian, 5, 29; Hcrodot. vii, 30. The boundary of the Phrygians southward towards the Pisidians, and westward as well us north-westward towards the Lydians and Mysians, could never be distinctly traced (Strabo. xii, pp. 5C4, 576, 628): the volcanic region called Katake kanmcne is referred in Xenophon's time to Mysia (Anabas. 5, 2, 10) : com- pare the remarks of Kieperi in the treatise above referred to, Fiinf Inschriftcn and fiinf Stadtc, p. 27.
 * Herodot. i. 72 ; tii, 30.