[10]
Now Zeleia1 is situated on the farthermost foothill of Mt. Ida, being one hundred and ninety stadia distant from Cyzicus and about eighty stadia from the nearest part of the sea, where the Aesepus empties. And the poet mentions severally, in continuous order, the places that lie along the coast after the Aesepus River:“And they who held Adrasteia and the land of Apaesus, and held Pityeia and the steep mountain of Tereia—these were led by Adrastus and Amphius of the linen corslet, the two sons of Merops of Percote.
”2These places lie below Zeleia,3 but they are occupied by Cyziceni and Priapeni even as far as the coast. Now near Zeleia is the Tarsius River,4 which is crossed twenty times by the same road, like the Heptaporus River,5.which is mentioned by the poet.6 And the river that flows from Nicomedeia into Nicaea is crossed twenty-four times, and the river that flows from Pholoe into the Eleian country7 is crossed many times . . . Scarthon twenty-five times,8 and the river that flows from the country of the Coscinii into Alabanda is crossed many times, and the river that flows from Tyana into Soli through the Taurus is crossed seventy-five times.
1 On the site of Zeleia, see Leaf, Strabo on the Troad, p. 66.
3 The places in question appear to have belonged to Zeleia. Leaf (op. cit., p. 65 translates: "are commanded by Zeleia"; but the present translator is sure that, up to the present passage, Strabo has always used ὑποπίπτω in a purely geographical sense (e.g., cf. 9. 1. 15, and especially 12. 4. 6, where Strabo makes substantially the same statement concerning Zeleia as in the present passage). But see Leaf's note (op. cit.), p. 67.
4 On this river see Leaf, work last cited p. 67.
5 Strabo does not mean that the Heptaporus was crossed twenty times. The name itself means the river of "seven fords" (or ferries).
7 i.e., Elis, in the Peloponnesus.
8 The text is corrupt; and "Scarthon," whether it applies to a river or a people, is otherwise unknown. However, this whole passage, "And the river that flows from Nicomedeia . . . crossed seventy-five times," appears to be a gloss, and is ejected from the text by Kramer and Meineke (see Leaf's Strabo and the Troad, p. 65, note 4).
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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