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[8]

But since even the historians, through the similarity of the name Curetes, have collected into one body a mass of dissimilar facts, I myself do not hesitate to speak of them at length by way of digression, adding the physical considerations which belong to the history.1 Some writers however endeavour to reconcile one account with the other, and perhaps they have some degree of probability in their favour. They say, for instance, that the people about Ætolia have the name of Curetes from wearing long dresses like girls, (κόραι,) and that there was, among the Greeks, a fondness for some such fashion. The Ionians also were called ‘tunic-trailers,’2 and the soldiers of Leonidas,3 who went out to battle with their hair dressed, were despised by the Persians, but subjects of their admiration in the contest. In short, the application of art to the hair consists in attending to its growth, and the manner of cutting it,4 and both these are the peculiar care of girls and youths;5 whence in several ways it is easy to find a derivation of the name Curetes. It is also probable, that the practice of armed dances, first introduced by persons who paid so much attention to their hair and their dress, and who were called Curetes, afforded a pretence for men more warlike than others, and who passed their lives in arms, to be themselves called by the same name of Curetes, I mean those in Eubœa, Ætolia, and Acarnania. Homer also gives this name to the young soldiers; “‘selecting Curetes, the bravest of the Ach$eans, to carry from the swift ship, presents, which, yesterday, we promised to Achilles.’6” And again;

“ Curetes Acheei carried the presents.7

Il. xvi. 617.
So much then on the subject of the etymology of the name Curetes. [The dance in armour is a military dance; this is shown by the Pyrrhic dance and by Pyrrichus, who, it is said, invented this kind of exercise for youths, to prepare them for military service.]8

1 προσθεὶς τὸν οἰκεῖον τῆ ἱστορίᾳ θυσικὸν λόγον. rationem naturalem, utpote congruentum huc, histories adjiciens. Xylander. Or paraphrased, ‘The history of this people will receive additional and a fitting illustra- tion by a reference to physical facts,’ such as the manner of wearing their hair, tonsure, &c.

2 ἑλκεχίτεωνας. The words καὶ κρώβυλον καὶ τἐττιγα ἐυπλεχθῆναι appear, according to Berkel. ad Steph. p. 74, to be here wanting, ‘and to bind the hair in the form of the Crobulus and ornamented with a grasshopper.’ The hair over the forehead of the Apollo Belvidere is an example of the crobulus.

3 Herod. vii. 208.

4 κουρὰν τριχὁς.

5 κόραις καὶ κὀροις.

6 Strabo therefore considered the 193, 194, 195 verses of II. xix. as authentic. Heyne was inclined to consider them as an interpolation, in which he is supported by other critics.

7 Il. xix. 248. The text is probably mutilated, and Strabo may have quoted the verses in Homer in which Merion is represented as dancing in armour. Il. xvi. 617.

8 Kramer suspects this passage to be an interpolation.

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