Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/505

 Chap. 31.] ACCOrNT OF COUNTEIES ETC. 47 L by Draco, Draco running into Tmolus, Tmolus into Cadmus and Cadmus into Taurus. Leaving Smyrna, the river Hermus forms a tract of plains, and gives them its own name. It rises near Dorylaeum'', a city of Phrygia, and in its course receives several rivers, among them the one called the Phryx, which divides Caria from the nation to which it gives name ; also the Hyllus^ and the Cryos, themselves swollen by the rivers of Phrygia, Mysia, and Lydia. At the mouth of the Hermus formerly stood the town of Temnos^ : we now see at the extremity of the gulf^ the rocka called Myrmeces^, the town of Leuce'' on a promontory which was once an island, and Phocaea^, the frontier town of Ionia. A great part also of ^olia, of which we shall have pre- sently to speak, has recourse to the jurisdiction of Smyrna ; as well as the Macedones, surnamed Hyrcani'*, and the Mag- netes^" from Sipylus. But to Ephesus, that other great lumi- nary of Asia, resort the more distant peoples known as the ^ It does not appear that all these mountains have been identified. Cadmus is the Baba Dagh of the Tui-ks. 2 Mentioned in C. 29 of the present Book. 3 In the time of Strabo this tributary of the Hermus seems to have been known as the Plu-ygius. ■* Its site is now called Menemen, according to D'Anville. The Cryus •was so called from the Greek Kpvos, "cold." 5 The present Gulf of Smyrna. 6 Or the "Ants." 7 Probably so called from the whiteness of the promontory on which it was situate. It was built by Tachos, the Persian general, in B.C. 352, and remarkable as the scene of the battle between the Consid Licinius Crassus and Aristonicus in B.C. 131. The modern name of its site ia Lefke. 8 Its ruins are to be seen at Karaja-Fokia or Old Fokin, soutli-west of Fouges or New Fokia. It was said to have bei-n louuded by Phocian colonists under Philogcncs and Damon. 9 The people of HjTcania, one of the twelve cities which were prostrated by an eartliquake in the reign of Tiberius Ca-sar ; see B. ii. c. 86. 10 The people of Magnesia "ad Sipyluin," or the city of Magnesia on the Sipylus. It was situate on the south bank of the llerinus, and is famous in history as (he scene of the vielury gained by the two Seipios over Antiochus the Great, which secured tt) the Romans the empire of the East, B.C. 190. Tliis place also suilered from the great earthquake in the reign of Tiberius, but was still a place of importance in the fifth century.