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In the interior of Bithynia are, not only Bithynium, which is situated above Tieium and holds the territory round Salon, where is the best pasturage for cattle and whence comes the Salonian cheese, but also Nicaea, the metropolis of Bithynia, situated on the Ascanian Lake, which is surrounded by a plain that is large and very fertile but not at all healthful in summer. Nicaea was first founded by Antigonus1 the son of Philip, who called it Antigonia, and then by Lysimachus, who changed its name to that of Nicaea his wife. She was the daughter of Antipater.2 The city is sixteen stadia in circuit and is quadrangular in shape; it is situated in a plain, and has four gates; and its streets are cut at right angles, so that the four gates can be seen from one stone which is set up in the middle of the gymnasium. Slightly above the Ascanian Lake is the town Otroea, situated just on the borders of Bithynia towards the east. It is surmised that Otroea was so named after Otreus.
1 King of Asia; defeated by Lysimachus at the battle of Ipsus in Phrygia (301 B.C.), and fell in that battle in his 81st year (Diod. Sic. 20.46-86).
2 Appointed regent of Macedonia by Alexander in 334 B.C.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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