Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/477

 B. VII. C. III. GETJE. 463 ger of Darius]. Take again what Chrysippus relates of the kings of the Bosphorus, [Satyrus 1 and] Leuco. The letters of the Persians are full of the sincerity I have described ; so likewise are the memorials of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Indians. It was on this account that both Anacharsis and Abaris, and certain others of the same class, gained so great a reputation among the Greeks ; for we may well be- lieve they displayed their national characteristics of affability of manner, simplicity, and love of justice. But what occasion is there for me to speak of such as belonged to the times of old? for Alexander [the Great], the son of Philip, in his campaign against the Thracians beyond Mount Haemus, 2 is said to have penetrated as far as this in an incursion into the country of the Triballi, and observed that they occupied the territory as far as the Danube and the island Peuce, 3 which is in it, and that the Getag possessed the country beyond that river; however, he was unable to pass into the island for want of a sufficient number of ships, and because Syrmus, the king of the Triballi, who had taken refuge in that place, resisted the undertaking : but Alexander crossed over into the country of the Getas and took their city, after which he returned home in haste, carrying with him presents from those nations, and also from Syrmus. Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, relates that in this campaign the Kelts who dwell on the Adriatic 4 came to Alexander for the purpose of making a treaty of friendship and mutual hospitality, and that the king received them in a friendly way, and asked them, while drinking, what might be the chief object of their dread, supposing that they would say it was he ; but that they replied, it was no man, only they felt some alarm lest the heavens should on some occasion or other 1 Satyrus is supplied by Koray. See also chapter iv. of this book, 4, and book xi. chap. ii. 7. Groskurd refers also to Diodorus, book xiv. 93, and says that Leuco was the son of Satyrus. 2 The mountains in the north of Thrace still bear the name of Emineh- Dag, or Mount Emineh, at their eastern point ; but the western portion is called the Balkan. 3 Piczina, at the embouchure of the Danube, between Babadag and Ismail. lapodes, who having followed Sigovesus, in the reign of the elder Tar- quin, had taken up their abode in the neighbourhood of the Adriatic; and refers to the Examen Critique des Anciens Historiens d* Alexandre' by M. de Sainte Groix, page 855.
 * A note in the French translation says, these were the Garni and the