[61]
Now Homer calls Thebe the city of Eëtion:“We went into Thebe, the sacred city of Eëtion;
”1and he clearly indicates that also Chrysa, which had the temple of Sminthian Apollo, belonged to Eëtion, if it be true that Chryseïs was taken captive at Thebe, for he says,“We went into Thebe, and laid it waste and brought hither all the spoil. And this they divided aright among themselves, but they chose out Chryseïs for the son of Atreus;
”2and that Lyrnessus belonged to Mynes, since Achilles“laid waste Lyrnessus and the walls of Thebe
”3and slew both Mynes and Epistrophus; so that when Briseïs says,“thou wouldst not even let me,4 when swift Achilles slew my husband and sacked the city of divine Mynes,
”5Homer cannot mean Thebe (for this belonged to Eëtion), but Lyrnessus. Both were situated in what was afterwards called the Plain of Thebe, which, on account of its fertility, is said to have been an object of contention between the Mysians and Lydians in earlier times, and later between the Greeks who colonized it from Aeolis and Lesbos. But the greater part of it is now held by the Adramytteni, for here lie both Thebe and Lyrnessus, the latter a natural stronghold; but both places are deserted. From Adramyttium the former is distant sixty stadia and the latter eighty-eight, in opposite directions.6
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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