Strabo, Geography

Yes, by Zeus, but he goes on to say that some things are arbitrarily inserted in the text, for example,“from Ascania far away,
”¹and“Arnaeus was his name, for his revered mother had given him this name at his birth,
”²and“Penelope took the bent key in her strong hand.
”³Now let this be granted, but those other things are not to be granted to which Demetrius assents without even making a plausible reply to those who have assumed that we ought to read "from Chalybe far away"; for although he concedes that, even if the silver-mines are not now in the country of the Chalybians, they could have been there in earlier times, he does not concede that other point, that they were both famous and worthy of note, like the iron-mines. But, one might ask, what is there to prevent them from being famous like the iron-mines? Or can an abundance of iron make a place famous but an abundance of silver not do so? And if the silver-mines had reached fame, not in the time of the heroes, but in the time of Homer, could any person find fault with the assertion of the poet? How, pray, could their fame have reached the poet? How, pray, could the fame of the copper-mine at Temesa in Italy have reached him? How the fame of the wealth of Thebes in Egypt,⁴ although he was about twice as far from Thebes as from the Chaldaeans? But Demetrius is not even in agreement with those for whose opinions he pleads; for in fixing the sites round Scepsis, his birth-place, he speaks of Nea, a village, and of Argyria and Alazonia as near Scepsis and the Aesepus River. These places, then, if they really exist, would be near the sources of the Aesepus; but Hecataeus speaks of them as beyond the outlets of it; and Palaephatus, although he says that they⁵ formerly lived in Alope, but now in Zeleia, says nothing like what these men say. But if Menecrates does so, not even he tells us what kind of a Place "Alope" is or "Alobe," or however they wish to write the name, and neither does Demetrius himself.