Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/426

 412 STRABO. CASAUB. 272. a hill, and surrounded by spacious table-lands well adapted for tillage. The fugitive slaves, who placed themselves under the leading of Eunus, 1 and sustained in this city a long siege, scarcely being reduced by the Romans, occasioned much damage to the city. The Catanaei, Tauromenitas, and many others, suffered, much in like manner, f Eryx, 2 a very lofty mountain, is also inhabited. It possesses a temple of Venus, which is very much esteemed ; in former times it was well filled with women sacred to the goddess, whom the inhabitants of Sicily, and also many others, offered in accomplishment of their vows ; but now, both is the neighbourhood much thinner of inhabitants, and the temple not near so well supplied with priestesses and female attendants. 3 There is also an estab- lishment of this goddess at Rome called the temple of Venus Erycina, just before the Colline Gate ; in addition to the temple it has a portico well worthy of notice. j The other settlement and most of the interior have been left to the shepherds for pasturage ; for we do not know that Himera is yet inhabited, 4 or Gela, 5 or Callipolis, or Selinus, or Euboea, or many other places; of these the Zanclaei of MylaB 6 founded Himera, 7 the people of Naxos, Callipolis, 8 the Megaraeans of Sicily, 9 Selinus, 10 and the Leontini 11 Euboea. 12 Many too of the cities Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. cap. 3, says that there was a fable about the seizure of the virgin [Proserpine] in the meadows near Enna. The locality is very near the town, embellished with violets and all kinds of beautiful flowers. An ancient coin of the place described by Ezech. Spanheim, page 906, is inscribed with the letters MUN. HENNA E. Pliny, lib. iii. cap. 8, writes, " Municipes Hennenses." 1 About 146 years B. c. 2 The sentence from " Eryx " to " notice," placed between daggers, seems to have been transposed from the end of 5; it should immediately succeed the words ^Egestus the Trojan. 3 Diodorus Siculus, lib. iv. 83, torn. i. p. 326, gives a different ac- count of the state of this place at this time. 4 The Carthaginians had destroyed it about 409 years B. c. 5 Some colonists from Rhodes made a settlement here 45 years after the foundation of Syracuse. It was overthrown about 279 years B. c. 6 Milazzo. 7 About 649 B. c. 8 It is supposed that Callipolis anciently occupied the site of Mascalis. 9 Those who inhabited Hybla Minor. We know that Selinus was in existence 640 B. c., and destroyed 268 B. c. 10 Now ruins called di Pollece on the river Madiuni in the Terra de* Pulci. The Leontini arrived in Sicily 728 B. c., and founded Leontini, now Lentini. 13 Euboea was destroyed by the tyrant Gelon, who reigned from 491 to