Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/96

 88 STRABO. CASAUB. 397- " drinking of the pure waters of the Eridanus," from which even the herds would turn away. There are indeed fountains of water, pure and fit for drinking, it is said, without the gate called Diochares, near the Lyceium ; formerly also a fountain was erected near it, which afforded a large sup- ply of excellent water ; but if it is not so at present, is it at all strange, that a fountain supplying abundance of pure and potable water at one period of time, should afterwards have the property of its waters altered ? In subjects, however, which are so numerous, we cannot enter into detail ; yet they are not so entirely to be passed over in silence as to abstain from giving a condensed account of some of them. 20. It will suffice then to add, that, according to Philo- chorus, when the country was devastated on the side of the sea by the Carians, and by land by the Boaotians, whom they called Aones, Cecrops first settled a large body of people in twelve cities, the names of which were Cecropia, Tetrapolis, Epacria, Deceleia, Eleusis, Aphidna, (although some persons write it in the plural number, Aphidnse,) Thoricus, Brauron, Cytherus, Sphettus, Cephisia [Phalerus]. Again, at a sub- sequent period, Theseus is said to have collected the inhabit- ants of the twelve cities into one, the present city. Formerly, the Athenians were governed by kings ; they afterwards changed the government to a democracy ; then tyrants were their masters, as Pisistratus and his sons ; after- wards there was an oligarchy both of the four hundred and of the thirty tyrants, whom the Lacedasmonii set over them ; these were expelled by the Athenians, who retained the form of a democracy, till the Romans established their empire. For, although they were somewhat oppressed by the Macedo- nian kings, so as to be compelled to obey them, yet they pre- served entire the same form of government. Some say, that the government was very well administered during a period of ten years, at the time that Casander was king of the Macedonians. For this person, although in other respects he was disposed to be tyrannical, yet, when he was master of the city, treated the Athenians with kindness and generosity. He placed at the head of the citizens Demetrius the Phalerean, a disciple of Theophrastus the philosopher, who, far from dissolving, restored the democracy. This appears from his