Strabo, Geography

Apollodorus somewhere states, also, that the poet got an account of those Paphlagonians who lived in the interior from men who had passed through the country on foot, but that he was ignorant of the Paphlagonian coast, just as he was ignorant of the rest of the Pontic coast; for otherwise he would have named them. On the contrary, one can retort and say, on the basis of the description which I have now given, that Homer traverses the whole of the coast and omits nothing of the things that were then worth recording, and that it is not at all remarkable if he does not mention Heracleia and Amastris and Sinope, cities which had not yet been founded, and that it is not at all strange if he has mentioned no part of the interior. And further, the fact that Homer does not name many of the known places is no sign of ignorance, as I have already demonstrated in the foregoing part of my work;¹ for he says that Homer was ignorant of many of the famous things round the Pontus, for example, rivers and tribes, for otherwise, he says, Homer would have named them. This one might grant in the case of certain very significant things, for example, the Scythians and Lake Maeotis and the Ister River, for otherwise Homer would not have described the nomads by significant characteristics as "Galactophagi" and "Abii" and as "men most just," and also as "proud Hippemolgi,"² and yet fail to call the Scythians either Sauromatae or Sarmatae, if indeed they were so named by the Greeks, nor yet, when he mentions the Thracians and Mysians, pass by the Ister River in silence, greatest of the rivers, and especially when he is inclined to mark the boundaries of places by rivers, nor yet, when he mentions the Cimmerians, omit any mention of the Bosporus or Lake Maeotis.