Geography

​However, such is the account of Cnossus. After this city, the city of the Gortynians seems to hold the second place in power. For when they cooperated with each other, these two cities held all the other inhabitants in subjection, but when they dissented, they split the affairs of the island; and Cydonia was the greatest addition to whichever side it might attach itself. The city of the Gortynians also lies in a plain, in ancient times perhaps fortified with walls (just as Homer also said, “and walled Gortyn”), but later having lost its wall to the foundations, it remained unwalled for all time; for indeed Ptolemy Philopator, though he began to build a wall, advanced it only to about eighty stades. At any rate, the inhabited site once filled a remarkable circuit of about fifty stades. It is ninety stades distant from the Libyan Sea at Lebena, its trading port; it has also another seaport, Matalum, and is a hundred and thirty stades distant from it. The Lethaeus River flows through the whole of it.

​From Lebena came Leucocomas and his lover Euxynthetus, of whom Theophrastus records in his treatise On Love, saying that this was one of the tasks which Leucocomas imposed on Euxynthetus, namely, to bring back to him the dog in Prasus. The Prasians are neighbors to them, being seventy stades from the sea and a hundred and eighty from Gortyn. It has been said that Prasus belonged to the Eteocretans, and that the temple of Dictaean Zeus was there; for Mount Dicte is near, and not, as Aratus says, “near the Idaean mountain.” For Dicte is a thousand stades distant from Ida, lying to the rising sun from it, and a hundred stades from Samonium. Prasus was situated between Samonium and Cherronesus, sixty stades above the sea; but the Hierapytnians rased it to the ground. They say that Callimachus also is not correct in saying that Britomartis, fleeing the violence of Minos, leaped from Dicte into fishermen’s nets, and that because of this she herself was called Dictynna by the Cydoniatans, and the mountain Dicte; for Cydonia is not at all in the neighborhood of these places, but lies near the western limits of the island. However, there is a mountain in Cydonia, Tityrus, on which is a temple, not Dictaean, but Dictynnaean.

​Cydonia is situated on the sea, looking towards the Laconian territory, and is equidistant from both Cnossus and Gortyn, namely, about eight hundred stades, and is eighty stades from Aptera, and forty stades from the sea there. The seaport of Aptera is Cisamus. Towards the west, the Polyrrhenians are neighbors to the Cydoniatans, and in their territory is the temple of Dictynna; they are about thirty stades distant from the sea, and sixty from Phalasarna. They formerly lived in villages; then Achaeans and Laconians settled together, fortifying a strong place looking towards the south.

​Of the three cities that were founded as joint settlements by Minos, the remaining one (this was Phaestus) was rased to the ground by the Gortynians, being sixty stades distant from Gortyn, twenty from the sea, and forty from its seaport Matalum; and those who rased it possess its territory. Rhytium also belongs to the Gortynians along with Phaestus: “Phaestus and Rhytium.” And from Phaestus came Epimenides, who, they say, performed the purifications by means of his hexameters. Lissen also belongs to the territory of Phaestus. Of Lyttus, which we mentioned before, the seaport is the so-called Cherronesus, in which is the temple of Britomartis; but the cities that were catalogued together with them, Miletus and Lycastus, no longer exist, and the Lyttians partitioned the territory of the one, and the Cnossians that of the other, after rasing the city.